2.1. Concluding project related contracts

All contracts, incl. grant agreements, consortium agreements, shall be reviewed by the Legal Officer of the Research Administration Office before signing. To this end,  the draft agreement shall be sent to the  action consultant in the Research Administration Office, who will forward it to the Legal Officer together with whom the document will be reviewed. As a rule, a document is approved and signed in the document management system Delta.

The comments of the Legal Officer or expert, if any, will be sent to the project manager, who shall forward the comments to the funder or leading partner. The contract is exchanged between the parties until a consensus that satisfies all parties is reached. The Legal Officer of the Research Administration Office reviews all the legal issues of the contract, the project implementer assesses the substantive issues.

As regards contracts, it should be kept in mind that:

• Contracts, in particular consortium agreements, contain, in addition to legal subtleties, also organisational arrangements to be considered by the parties before signing (e.g. which managing bodies are established, how often are meetings held, how many representatives of each party must there be in the managing body, etc.). If there are many parties to the contract, it can be expected that the negotiations will take time, as any amendment must be approved by each party. It is therefore reasonable to start the negotiation process as early as possible.
• Avoid the trap of going into too much detail in the contract on issues that would be more reasonable to resolve in the course of ongoing cooperation. In order to amend the provisions of a contract, the amendments shall be annexed to the contract and signed by all parties. It is therefore necessary to consider the importance of the matter and only include agreements in the contract that must be established as binding commitments before commencing cooperation and that are expected to remain unchanged throughout the project. If necessary, the contract may provide for a simpler amendment procedure, e.g. a detailed schedule may be attached to the contract, while stipulating that the parties may agree on changes to certain milestones by e-mail.
• As the researchers involved in a project are the creators of the intellectual property and new information generated, the issues related to intellectual property need to be carefully considered. Attention must also be paid to the provisions concerning existing intellectual property and the information that we provide to contribute to the project. The right of a funder or partner to use the other parties’ intellectual property during and after the project is often laid down in agreements. In order for the university to fulfil this condition, i.e. to grant authorisation for the use of intellectual property, the university shall be the holder of the respective rights, which is why the contracts concluded between the university and the researchers involved in the project should be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. Contact: Technology Transfer Office, Mart Enn Koppel, e-mail mart.koppel@taltech.ee.
• As regards copyright, it is laid down by law that:
• The economic rights to work created under an employment contract shall transfer to the employer unless otherwise prescribed by a contract.
• There is no such legal provision regarding authorisation agreements, which means that the author retains the rights.
• The author retains the right to apply for the registration of a patent or a utility model regardless of the type of contract.
• The right to apply for the registration of an industrial design is transferred to the employer/ contracting authority both in the case of an employment contract and an authorisation agreement.

These terms and conditions apply generally unless otherwise agreed in a contract. Therefore, all contracts should be reviewed and, if necessary, an annex to the employment contract should be added, in order to lay down an exception regarding the intellectual property created in the specific project. If a student who has not concluded an employment contract or authorisation agreement with the university is involved in the project, a contract governing intellectual property rights and information (incl. confidentiality) should be concluded with the student.

If necessary, the legal officer shall involve an intellectual property expert.

A funding agreement shall be signed by an authorised person, see the credentials HERE, or in the case of an online application, the agreements shall be approved on the portal by an authorised person:

• Funding and Tenders Portal (Participant Portal, European Commission’s funding database). If you have submitted your proposal via the Participant Portal and have received a positive funding decision, the person who enters the project shall assign a LSIGN (legal signature - Marika Lunden) and FSIGN (financial signature - Siret Malleus) to the project.

This can be done as follows:

select your project, select manage consortium, select Tallinn University of Technology, select edit or add roles on the right and add persons.

Once the persons have been added, the LSIGN can approve the documents on the portal and the project can proceed.

For signing the agreements, please send the final funding agreement 3 working days before the deadline for signing to the action consultant of the Research Administration Office or to Riina Vilgats, at riina.vilgats@taltech.ee.

An agreement signed by all the parties to the project is registered in the document management system and added to the project folder.

The Horizon model agreements are the following:

Horizon Model Grant Agreement

Horizon Model Grant Agreement lump sum in the case of funding models