A material transfer agreement (MTA) is a contract that governs the transfer of tangible research materials between two organizations when the recipient intends to use it for his or her own research purposes.
[1] For simple transfers not involving intellectual property, in the US the National Institutes of Health (NIH) recommends a simple letter agreement.
Many U.S. educational institutions have signed the UBMTA Master Agreement.
[2] AUTM (previously the Association of University Technology Managers) serves as the repository for the original UBMTA Master Agreement and maintains the list of the signatories.
[3] Signatories to the UBMTA Master Agreement only have to sign an implementing letter with the details of the particular transfer since they have already agreed to all the terms of the Master Agreement.