The Commission of Specialists for Research and Development (EFI), a body that advises Germany’s Federal government, highlights in its 2026 yearly report that IP transfer constitutes a critical traffic jam in the start-up procedure. If a start-up’s copyright rights are not safeguarded, it does not have actually the structure required for establishing a viable business design and raising external capital. Complex legal designs and partially diverging expectations between the university and the start-up business owner often cause lengthy settlements. Usually, the transfer of such rights presently takes around 18 months– and in private cases far longer. In the dynamic global start-up landscape, this represents a considerable competitive disadvantage.
As Dr. Ronald Kriedel from the Center for Entrepreneurship and Transfer (CET) at TU Dortmund University highlights: “Essential modification will only happen if we select an approach that no longer undertakings to minimize or leave out all the possible threats associated with the transfer of rights but instead acknowledges and promotes the opportunities. The brand-new standard is a real breakthrough that will not just assist us to transpose clinical developments and findings to start-ups more quickly and successfully however likewise contribute to their commercial success.”
Creating legal certainty through lean procedures
Ina Brandes, Minister for Culture and Science, states: “North Rhine-Westphalia’s science and research study landscape uses optimum conditions for spin-offs and start-ups: a density of universities and research institutions distinct in Europe and strong commercial partners. I am persuaded that we can leverage this asset much more effectively. To do so, we need standardized processes with clear and simple rules that quickly create legal certainty and are thus attractive to external financiers.”
With this in mind, the team at TU Dortmund University has developed a brand-new requirement for IP transfer. It develops a lean, transparent and at the very same time flexible procedure that is customized to the specific start-up project. A leak-proof and clearly structured contract of just a couple of pages controls the transfer of IP rights in a start-up’s different advancement stages. In the future, the entire negotiation process must be finished within three months at the majority of. Thanks to secured intellectual property rights, start-ups will end up being attractive to external financiers more quickly.
Proven in practice
The new IP transfer standard visibly simplifies and accelerates the whole start-up process. It is a key part in increasing the variety of tech-driven start-ups over the longer term and has actually already been shown in practice: Simplyfined, a start-up from TU Dortmund University, has successfully concluded the brand-new contract on the transfer of copyright rights. The young business has actually submitted a patent for an ingenious process for developing bio-based basic materials from vegetable oils as an option to petroleum for the chemical industry. The raw materials are for that reason more sustainable and more eco-friendly and will, in the long term, contribute substantially to protecting the self-reliance of Germany’s chemical industry.
Dr. Thomas Seidensticker, one of Simplyfined’s founders, describes: “We are grateful that TU Dortmund University has started this journey with us to make IP transfer a lot clearer and more effective, likewise for future spin-offs from deep-tech start-ups. Individuals accountable at TU Dortmund University have thoroughly remodelled the previous process, and the result is a framework that will benefit us as a start-up.”
In the future, universities and start-ups beyond the City of Dortmund might likewise take advantage of the contractual design established by the group. At the Ruhr Innovation Laboratory run jointly by TU Dortmund University and Ruhr University Bochum too, the transfer of intellectual property rights is very important for shifting knowledge from the universities into start-ups and in this method likewise into the economy and society.
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