License Terms for Software

Far away are the days when a CD, containing a software, was sold over the counter to clients. Today, the business with the software is very diverse and allows different sales strategy by a company. ETH Zurich takes into account the different business strategies and opportunities of a licensee, and proposes the license conditions according to such strategy.

In principle, each license agreement is unique, but we provide homogeneity to ensure that similar business cases are treated similarly. ETH Zurich does not have as principle the maximization of the licensing revenue. Nevertheless, ETH Zurich, as a public research institution, should ensure a fair return of license revenues if a company is successful with an ETH Zurich technology.

These license revenues are used by ETH Zurich to finance research projects and, according to ETH law, to reward the developers of the software with a share of the profit from the license revenue.