3. Access Rights, Background, Foreground
Beneficiaries cooperate within the consortium to execute the project. They often need to exchange information and know-how (software, patents, work methods, etc.) in order to benefit from each other’s resources and carry out their tasks or their exploitation efforts. Those exchanges are made through the system of access rights.
The information that beneficiaries are likely to exchange is background and foreground.
"Background"is the project-related information and IP rights beneficiaries hold before entering the project. Usually, each beneficiary is expected to contribute key background information to the project.
"Foreground" is the information and IP rights that beneficiaries generate within the project, the results of the project.
Each beneficiary has the right to request access rights to the other beneficiaries’ background and foreground, as long as it needs them in order to carry out its work under the project or to use its own foreground.
In the example above, the beneficiary enters the project with three elements of background: secret know-how, a patent and software. During the project execution, it is required to grant access to its know-how and to license its software to another beneficiary that needs them to carry out its project work. Furthermore, it grants a licence to its software to another beneficiary, who needs it in order to use its own foreground.
The beneficiary also generates foreground through its work: a new compound and some hard data related to it. Another beneficiary, who needs them in order to use its own foreground, is granted a licence to use the compound and a copy of the hard data.
The granting of access rights is usually done using a specific agreement where the beneficiaries define the exact rights to be transferred, the purposes for which the access rights may be used, confidentiality and other obligations, and royalties.
The grant agreement establishes the economic conditions for the granting of access rights, according to the nature of the information (background or foreground) and the purpose for which it is requested. Beneficiaries may further define it in their consortium agreement, where allowed.
Access Rights
For project execution purposes
For use purposes
To background
Royalty-free, unless otherwise agreed before signature of the grant agreement
Royalty-free or on fair and reasonable conditions
To foreground
Royalty-free
It is important to stress that beneficiaries have the right to define, by common agreement, the background that each one of them is going to make available to the project and/or exclude specific background from their obligation to grant access rights. Beneficiaries are thus able to delimitate the background they are going to share. All beneficiaries’ agreements on the identification/exclusion of background shall be made in writing, usually in the consortium agreement.
In the example above, the beneficiary is made up of three different departments, each of which holds its own information and IP rights.
The beneficiary enters into negotiations with the other beneficiaries in order to define the background that is necessary to carry out the project work. It states that only the background belonging to one of its departments will be made available, since that of the other departments is irrelevant. The background originating from the other two departments is thus automatically excluded.
But it also negotiates an exclusion of secret know-how of the department implicated in the project, since it still wants to keep this particular information secret. Consequently, the background that is made available to the project is the background of one of the departments, with the exception of the know-how.
http://www.ipr-helpdesk.org/documents/ES_HowIPRules_0000006585_00.xml.html#N2004A
Forums 
