Ownership of Intellectual Property (IP) rights is an extremely important topic in the industry and our IP policy is very clear and transparent.

In Synectix's contract research activities, all IP relevant to the customer, i.e. related to the product and process, belongs to the customer. However, should we generate IP on enabling technologies or methodologies during a customer project, this IP would belong to Synectix.

Customer projects are in principle not used to generate IP on enabling technologies, however Synectix invests significantly in the development of these technologies to remain at the cutting edge of the industry, and it is these self-funded programs that are the main source of our IP on enabling technologies.

In addition to generating IP from contract research activities, Synectix conducts its own internal discovery programs. These are aimed at developing IP on products and processes, but are restricted to well-defined niche areas. For obvious reasons, Synectix has chosen to prevent any conflict of interest between these internal discovery activities and its contract research business, i.e., internally developed product and process IP shall not interfere with IP that Synectix develops for its customers.

Although our IP policy is very clear, it is nevertheless the IP clause in our contracts which is most discussed, underlining the importance of generating IP for our customers.