EPFL publishes a Start-Up Guideline
© 2016 EPFL
Besides education and research, the third mission of EPFL is innovation and technology transfer. There are various ways to transfer technology for the benefit of economy and society: the competences acquired by EPFL graduates and researchers, collaborations with industry, the licensing of EPFL technologies and the creation of start-ups based on EPFL research findings.
The EPFL Vice-Presidency for Innovation and Technology Transfer (VPIV) is responsible for encouraging and coordinating all relationships between EPFL and industry through its various units: the Technology Transfer Office (TTO) manages the intellectual property created by EPFL employees and licensing with industry and start-ups; the TTO is also in charge of establishing the collaboration agreements with industry. Alliance is supporting the relationships between EPFL and SMEs. Relations with large companies are more specifically handled by the Corporate Relations unit whereas the support to start-up creation is provided by the Entrepreneurship unit.
EPFL has a long history of supporting the commercial exploitation of its research results through the creation of start-ups. While a license from EPFL to a company is based on arm’s length conditions, EPFL takes into account the uncertain and fragile status of a start-up (in comparison to other companies) by providing it encouragement and support.
This document presents the rules and practice that EPFL has put in place over the years regarding the creation and development of start-ups at EPFL. The Start-up Guideline can be downloaded in pdf format on the TTO web site. In addition a license template of Intellectual Property (IP) can be found aon the TTP document page.