Collaborative R&;D: intellectual property rights between Tsinghua University and multinational companies

Tsinghua University, one of the top universities in China, has conducted a lot of collaborative R&D projects with multinational companies in the recent years. One of tough issues in the collaborative R&D is to deal with the intellectual property rights. The Chinese Patent Law and other relevant laws make Tsinghua University to look for more intellectual property rights. Several factors such as the input from the collaborative parties, the property of R&D, the relation between the collaborative project and the activities of R&D made before, or to be made after, the collaboration, and the life and potential market of the technologies play an important rule in the treatment of Intellectual property rights. The different collaborative models have different models of the distribution of intellectual property rights between the University and multinational companies.