These 12 enterprises believe the principles will speed innovation and contribute to open source software research, thus enabling the development of related industry standards and greater interoperability, while managing intellectual property in a more balanced manner.

The principles specifically address open collaboration models, in particular, instances where researchers will create and disseminate software knowledge freely to the public. As one step, the organizations agreed to make intellectual property arising from selected collaborations available free of charge for commercial and academic use. The group also established guidelines to address the rights of the participants and the public.

The agreements emerged from a University and Industry Innovation Summit cosponsored by IBM and the Kauffman Foundation, a private foundation focused on advancing innovation and entrepreneurship. Summit participants developing and adopting the principles include the Kauffman Foundation, Carnegie Mellon University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Stanford University, University of California at Berkeley, University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign, The University of Texas at Austin, Cisco, HP, IBM and Intel.

"American universities and industry have a long history of collaborative efforts that have spawned significant innovations and fueled our entrepreneurial economy," said Lesa Mitchell, vice president of Advancing Innovation at the Kauffman Foundation. "It is imperative to take the lessons from these relationships so that we may improve the process by which discoveries and innovations move into the marketplace."