Research and development

Research and development

Research and development are key parts of innovation. While some organisations can do much of this work in-house, in the life sciences sector there is often a need to collaborate with another entity in order to:

1. •

   obtain synergies of skills

2. •

   rationalise costs by, for example, jointly using specialised equipment or other technical resources, or

3. •

   obtain other economies of scale

For an example of a letter of intent between two companies, which may be used at the outset of a collaboration while the parties are in discussion, see Precedent: Letter of intent between two companies—proposing an IP licence agreement and a research agreement: Encyclopaedia of Forms and Precedents [2304].

For an illustration of the typical lifecycle of a pharmaceutical product, demonstrating the three main stages of research and development; commercialisation; and post-market, see: Lifecycle of a Pharmaceutical Product—flowchart.

Agreements

The collaborations between different entities mean that there are many different types of agreement which need to be drafted, depending on factors such as the stage at which the collaboration is happening (whether early stage, or later towards