Collaboration and Development Agreements including Grant Funded Research Projects, Confidentiality / NDA / Non-Competition Agreements

At its essence a collaboration agreement is a formal contractual arrangement between two parties to work together in a joint endeavour. The two parties may not bring the same skills or assets and the agreement deals with how their contributions should be valued, combined and exploited. For example, one party may bring know-how and the other financing, but the price for financing may be sharing the value of the output or giving away some of the rights to exploit it.

The range of collaborations is very broad and varied as our clients businesses are and includes joint venture or partnership agreements, brand extension licenses and collaborations for R&D in relation to inventions, product, and scientific materials.

Our work in the technology, communications, life sciences, fashion and media sectors, provides our lawyers, many of whom have technical or science degrees, with an exceptional industry knowledge. This knowledge combined with their commercial acumen enables us to provide the very best protection for our collaborator and investment clients.

Our lawyers are adept at finding the right structure for every collaboration arrangement and help to balance out any inequalities between the relative size, negotiating position and financial might between the parties.

For information on commercial contractual disputes, please see our specialist disputes team and for assistance with protecting your know-how with patents, please see our specialist patent team.