Pathway Solutions Inc., Academic Policy

Policies

Academic Policy
In the spirit of academic cooperation, the Kanehisa Laboratory is pleased to provide academic users with various KEGG products free of charge or at a substantial rebate. To ensure the ongoing financial support of the KEGG project, the Kanehisa Laboratory is also providing KEGG products to commercial users for a fee. To ensure fairness, as well as the long-term maintainability of the KEGG project, only bona fide academic projects may qualify. This document describes the Kanehisa Laboratory's policy concerning “Academic Status”.
The Kanehisa Laboratory has appointed Pathway Solutions Inc. as its exclusive worldwide licensing agent. For any questions, we invite you to contact Pathway Solutions at licensing@pathway.jp.
In this document, “we”, “our”, etc., refers to Pathway Solutions as well as the Kanehisa Laboratory. “You” refers to you, a licensee or potential licensee of any of our products.
“Academic Status” is the term we use when we believe that your project is a purely bona fide academic project. Generally, we will grant academic licenses for various KEGG products on condition that you have Academic Status. Whether or not you qualify as having Academic Status is determined solely by Pathway, based on information provided by you. You must keep any information provided to us up to date in order to maintain Academic Status.
We recognize that increasingly, there is overlap between what is academic and what is commercial. In this respect, our policy is to grant Academic Status to academic organizations that use KEGG products for non-commercial use only, either directly or indirectly. In other words, not all university research groups are eligible to receive Academic Status, and occasionally research groups that are not at universities may be eligible.
One clear means of judging whether or not your project may qualify as having Academic Status relates to how you use your intellectual property. Academic Status is intended only for research from which any resulting product or service remains freely available to the public. Research that is intended to lead to a commercial product or for which any of the resulting intellectual property is expected to be held by or licensed to a private corporation, regardless of the nature of the institution at which the research is conducted, disqualifies you from having Academic Status.
We will determine whether or not you qualify for Academic Status based on the written description of the project that you provide us. Since Academic Status is determined on a case-by-base basis, eligibility may differ between distinct research groups within a single institution, and Academic Status will only apply to the research group of a specific individual, whom we call the “Principal Investigator”. You should also note that Academic Status is not permanent; Academic Status may be re-evaluated or revoked at any time. Also, we may update or change this policy from time to time.
We understand that conditions change and that you may have to modify the goals of your project. At the same time, we would like to ensure fairness to all users of KEGG products. In this respect, if the status of your project changes from academic to commercial, our policy is as follows.
In cases where a research project is represented in good faith as being academic and you are granted Academic Status, but later any data, intellectual property or products resulting from the research project are subsequently commercialized, then you agree to enter into a commercial license agreement with us. This commercial license will be retroactive from the date of your first academic agreement with us (i.e. the day you first started using our products). This commercial license will then supersede your academic license and you agree to pay equivalent license fees as you would have been required to do had you had a commercial license from the beginning.
In cases where a research project is wilfully misrepresented as being academic and you are granted Academic Status, but any data, intellectual property or products resulting from the research project are subsequently commercialized, then you agree to pay three times the license fees that would have been charged for a regular commercial license. Furthermore, we may also decide to discontinue to provide you a license.
Note that we reserve the right to update or modify this Academic Policy at any time without notice.
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