Brussels, January 12, 2010 - DIGITALEUROPE, the industry body representing the European digital technology industry, publishes today a revised model contract for consortium agreements within FP7 in the Information / Communication Technology and Consumer Electronics sector.
Benefiting from the experience acquired from earlier Framework Programmes by the legal experts of the large and small company members of DIGITALEUROPE, the Integrated Project Consortium Agreement (IPCA) template has been reviewed over the last months to facilitate the collaboration between the consortia members, by providing a reliable basis for the key European industrial R&D players when entering into agreements with their partners under the ICT theme of FP7. Where applied, the IPCA template's clear, flexible and balanced IPR provisions will also diminish the barriers to the use of projects results.
The DIGITALEUROPE IPCA template is composed of two parts:
- IPCA Part I contains the list of the parties, involved in the project, and is also used to specify certain requirements for the management of the project, set out in detail in part II. 
- IPCA Part II contains the substantive legal provisions defining the roles and duties of each party, the intellectual property rights and liability regimes, and the conditions to leave the project or to use its outputs. A number of options are included to support the parties when negotiating the conditions of the consortium agreement.
The IPCA template has been established in a joint effort between DIGITALEUROPE's members and the European telecom operators such as British Telecom and France Telecom, and will be the contractual model for the European telecommunications, information technology and consumer electronics industries in setting-up project consortia under the ICT theme of FP7.

For further information on European industry's Integrated Project Consortium Agreement (IPCA) template, please contact:

Tony Graziano, +32 (0)2 609 53 14, tony.graziano@digitaleurope.org

or

Alberto Zilio, +32 (0)2 609 53 25, alberto.zilio@digitaleurope.org

Altogether with the IPCA template, a number of documents were prepared to simplify and accelerate the setting up of consortia:





 FP7 STREPCA (.pdf)

 DE FP7 IPCA version 3 (.pdf)

 DE FP7 IPCA opt for access rights (.pdf)