Collaboration agreements

Collaboration agreement(s): Agreement(s) regulating among other things the approach, rights and obligations between the Project Owner and the partners that have assumed obligations to participate in the project.

Partner(s): Institutions, companies and other activities (as well as any designated individuals), also foreign, that the Research Council, in its contract with the Project Owner, has stipulated are under obligation to provide professional or financial resources for the implementation of the project. The Research Council stipulates that a collaboration agreement must be drawn up for all projects that involve partners.

• Normally, Project Owners will be able to choose whether they wish to draw up a joint collaboration agreement with all partners (like the former consortium agreement) or, in the case of projects with multiple partners, different collaboration agreements with each partner.
• Contractually, the Research Council will deal only with the Project Owner and is not party to the agreements signed between project participants.
• The Research Council must have received copies of the signed collaboration agreements along with all the other contract documents before the contract with the Project Owner will enter into force.
• The names and enterprise numbers of all partners are to be listed in the agreement document signed by the Research Council and the Project Owner. Project participants who are not named as partners do not incur the same obligations and will not be granted the same type of rights as those defined as partners.
• The Project Owner is responsible for ensuring that the collaboration agreement(s) comply with the terms and assumptions of the contract, and that the partners at all times are informed about relevant elements of the contract.
• Further provisions relating to projects with partners are set out in the Research Council General Terms of Contract, see Section 2.2.

As from 1 January 2010, the term “collaboration agreement” will be used to replace the term “consortium agreement” in all contracts.

Template for collaboration agreements

A template has been created as a point of departure for the parties' own efforts to design a collaboration agreement.

The purpose of the collaboration agreement is to clarify the parties' rights and obligations in relation to one another. Several of the items in the template will need to be adjusted and/or supplemented by provisions of relevance for the individual project.

The items proposed in the template will only in rare cases be sufficient to regulate all potential conflicts of interest or factors of relevance to a project. Accordingly, it is important that participants carefully consider the need for additions and adaptations.

The wording of the agreement template should be used as a reminder/check list for factors that ought to be discussed and regulated between the parties, rather than as a key to how these should be regulated.