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Cross-Border Cases
Practice review: disputes over ownership in cross-border joint R&D
Who owns and how to use joint-R&D output must be agreed clearly before collaboration.
A typical scenario: two cross-border companies jointly develop, then dispute ownership, use scope, and commercial returns over the output, turning collaboration into a burden.
Joint-R&D ownership involves a complex split of background IP, foreground IP, and improvements, and unclear terms easily go wrong.
The lesson: define background and foreground IP, each side's use and commercialization rights, and dispute mechanisms clearly in the collaboration agreement.