License Agreement (LA)

The purpose of a License Agreement is to provide an external entity the right to use intellectual property owned by SDSU for development of commercial products. The LAs often contain milestones and due diligence, which ensures that the commercial entity will continue to make an effort to commercialize the licensed intellectual properties. Also, LAs contain details such as how the entity will share royalties from the sales of products utilizing SDSU-owned intellectual property. The terms of the LA could be exclusive, allowing only one entity to license, or non-exclusive, allowing multiple entities to license, depending on the types of the intellectual property and the commercial market. For example, pharmaceutical compounds are typically licensed exclusively due to large development costs which necessitate an exclusive position in the market to recover the development cost. There are several different types of LAs. Two are listed below:

• Tangible Property License Agreement (TPLA): A type of LA for a tangible property to be used by an external entity for their internal research, testing, and/or evaluation purposes. Typically, LAs are executed to create a product to be sold; however there are many instances where commercial entities wish to use unique tangible property such as research tools (e.g. antibody, plasmid, prototype device) but not to develop a commercial product and in those instances, TPLA will be executed.
  
  
• Technology Development License Agreement (TDLA): A type of LA usually executed for small or start-up Companies to allow development ofSDSU-owned intellectual property without strict milestone achievements or due diligence for a limited period.