Companies

A research partnership is a win-win situation

Industrial partnership is at the heart of IRIT’s DNA. The benefits for the company of a research partnership with the laboratory are:

  • the reinforcement of its competitiveness through the development of a new product/process/service or through the improvement of the existing one,
  • a competitive edge,
  • a secured intellectual property,
  • support in the further development of the technology.

By approaching laboratories, companies:

  • bring the knowledge they have of specific markets.
  • More broadly, they give us the opportunity to apply our results to concrete problems and thus enrich our work.
  • use the existing know-how and specialized equipment of the laboratory
  • do not involve any inventive activity
  • must lead to concrete and tangible results.
  • generally take place over a short period of time
  • is generally carried out over a short period (< 12 months)
  • will be invoiced at full cost.

At the end of the service, the results belong to the company but the laboratory remains the owner of the associated know-how and will be able to deploy it for other services.

To manage a research project that is built on shared objectives by pooling resources.

  • Contrary to the service, the laboratory is only bound by an obligation of means in terms of results. By nature, research is confronted with uncertainty!
  • The goal is to produce new knowledge and technologies that will be exploited by the company.
  • The essential clauses to be negotiated are therefore the following:
    • Industrial property rights,
    • The rights and duties in terms of publications,
    • The principle of a fair profit-sharing in case of exploitation.
  • The industrial partner finances the project up to the marginal cost or the project benefits from public funding.
  • The duration of research collaborations is longer than that of the services
  • The CIFRE thesis support contract is a research collaboration contract that is based on the Industrial Research Training Agreements (Conventions Industrielles de Formation par la REcherche), thanks to which the National Research and Technology Association (ANRT) subsidizes any company under French law that hires a doctoral student to place him or her at the heart of a research collaboration with a public laboratory.
  • The work must lead to the defense of a thesis in three years.

The doctoral student is recruited by the company and is co-supervised by the laboratory.

  • This type of contract allows IRIT’s supervisory institutions that own the results generated by the laboratory to grant, in whole or in part, the right to use or exploit a software or patented innovation resulting from the laboratory’s work.
  • The license contract is negotiated with Toulouse Tech Transfer. TTT is a affiliated entity of the University of Toulouse, the CNRS and the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations. TTT have been entrusted with the valorization of the laboratory results by the IRIT supervisory institutions.

*As outsourced R&D expenses, these actions are eligible for the Research Tax Credit – Crédit Impôt Recherche (CIR) declarations (rate of 30%).