University-industry research contracts: Arrangements for producing private, collective and public wealth

Beyond the much too simple view that sees basic and industrial research - universities and the economy - as being opposed, a series of more or less explicit contracts link actors' rationales. This analysis of 158 contracts signed between laboratories and industrialists over a 20-year period shows that multiple situations are created, as well as various forms of compromise that defer to actors' rationales while taking into account legal requirements, the need to publish and hierarchies of knowledge.