The research partnerships staff manages and facilitates various research agreements and contracts. Our staff ensures that proper agreements and contracts are in place in order to proceed with a collaborative project with industry, non-profit and government agencies. Our office will draft, solicit and negotiate agreements to protect researchers as well as the University, and ensures all preliminary requirements are complete to mitigate any potential future risks.
Our office can assist faculty members with:
- Confidentiality Agreements or Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA)
- Material Transfer Agreements (MTA)
- Collaborative Research Agreements (Industry and Government)
- Data Transfer Agreements – Industry
- Inter-University Research Agreements
- Other zero dollar and/or in-kind only Agreements - Industry
We may request additional information for the completion of various agreements. This documentation may include but is not limited to: scope of work, funding status, rights of data and innovation, publication policy, payment schedule, budget, research ethics certification, and biohazard certification.
Principal Investigators are not authorized to sign applications, proposals, contracts, or contract amendments on behalf of the University. All documents of this nature must be signed by an authorized signatory of the University of Windsor, such as the Executive Director, Research and Innovation. All financial statements reports and invoices must be submitted to the sponsors by Research Finance after review and approval.
Non-Disclosure Agreements FAQs
A non-disclosure agreement (NDA) (also known as confidentiality agreement, CA, or confidential disclosure agreement, CDA) is a legally-binding contract which governs the sharing of information between different persons or organizations and sets out any conditions or limitations on the use of the information.
You should use an NDA whenever you are going to disclose proprietary information that may have commercial value and is not yet in the public domain or any other type of information that you or the other party deem to be confidential. This way, your information will remain confidential and you can control how it is used.
If you provide information to another person or organization without an NDA in place, the information could be used in ways that you do not approve of and you lose the ability to obtain certain forms of intellectual property protection (such as patent and trade secret). If you do not use an NDA, the recipient could be free to use the information for whatever purposes they choose and if you disclose proprietary information before a patent application is filed, you may not be able to patent or it may lead to an invalidation of the patent.
An NDA identifies the information that is to be kept confidential and stipulates how that information may be used by the recipient. It requires the recipient to take reasonable measures to keep the information confidential and prohibits them from disclosing it to any other party. This way, your information is only used by those who you approve to use it and is only used for the purposes you stated in the NDA.
You will need to provide the following information for the University of Windsor to assist in drafting an NDA for you:
- The name and address of the recipient company/organization
- The name of the designated contact person for the company/organization
- A description of the information you intend to disclose
- The reason you are disclosing the information (eg. is it for a research collaboration, contract, grant, some form of partnership)
- Any particular concerns or issues involved.
Contact Vesna Kaps of Research Services to have her review the document for you. She will review the NDA and work with you to complete an NDA that satisfies your needs and the requirements of industry.
Once an NDA has been finalized, you will need to abide by the terms of the NDA. This means that if you will responsible for:
- Receiving/disclosing confidential information – You may be appointed as the designated representative, in which case you will be responsible for providing the confidential information to the other party, or receiving it from them, depending on the circumstances.
- Respecting the limits on the use of the information – You must make sure you that only use the confidential information for the purpose that is specified in the NDA and not for any other purpose.
- Keeping the information confidential – You must not disclose the information to anyone else unless that is specifically permitted in the NDA.
- Taking appropriate measures to protect the information – When you receive the confidential information, you must make sure you take reasonable measures to keep it secure, such as storing it in a password protected system or locked filing cabinet. And if you discover that the information has been accessed by an unauthorized person, you must immediately notify the other party.
Any NDA that is research related must be signed by either Dr. K.W. Michael Siu, Vice-President, Research and Innovation OR Heather Pratt, Executive Director, Research and Innovation. In some cases, you will also be required to sign the NDA to acknowledge your duties under the agreement.
Please contact:
Vesna Kaps,
Contract/Technology Transfer Manager
519-253-3000 ext. 3922
vesna@uwindsor.ca