Abstract
Academia-industry cooperation has become the recent emphasis of national technology policies in Taiwan. In the field of biomedicine, materials of fundamental research potentially could generate immense interests in the commercial application. Material transfer agreements (MTA) are therefore used to allocate rights and obligations of both parties. In order to lower the cost and to expedite the transfer of research materials, U.S. National Institute of Health provides “Uniform Biological Material Transfer Agreement” and “Simple Letter Agreement for the Transfer of Materials”. The first chapter of this article introduces the development of MTA, its importance, definition and content. The next chapter examines the model agreements provided by Harvard University and Stanford University, whose statutes are to be analyzed and compared. The third chapter emphasizes legal and ethical issues concerning collecting and transferring materials involving human tissue. Judging from the recurrent breach of ethical guidelines in Taiwan’s academia-industry cooperation, issues pertaining to conflict of interests and other ethical requirements are to be addressed. Chapter four will comment on the MTA of Academia Sinica in Taiwan before proposing a modified version of model agreement. The fifth chapter concludes with suggestions.