InterRAI aims to increase the effectiveness and use of our instruments and applications through cross-national research and development activities.  Thus, we actively pursue partnerships with organizations and governments that wish to adopt our tools. Generally, non-commercial users, e.g., governments, care providers, or researchers, are granted a royalty-free license.

As a non-profit corporation under the US Tax Code, interRAI holds the copyright to a number of assessment systems, including those for long term care facilities (MDS Version 2.0 is in the public domain within the US), home care, assisted living, palliative care, mental health (outside of Canada), intellectual disability, well elderly, and acute care, among others. Each instrument generally has training and Client Assessment Protocol manuals. Screening systems (e.g., the Contact Assessment) are also licensed if a full assessment system is also adopted.

The scales, algorithms, and case-mix measures based on these assessment instruments cannot be copyrighted and are thus available to everyone (although the individual items on which they are based are copyrighted).

The major clauses of our royalty-free licenses follow:

• the instrument is not to be changed substantially (excepting individual identifiers and demographics) and only licensed translations can be used; 
• the license is limited to non-commercial use (i.e., the instrument will not be incorporated into products to be sold to or paid for by others); 
• no royalties will be charged;
• the organization will make appropriate efforts to inform others of the copyright status of the instrument;
• interRAI's logo and copyright notice are to appear on the form and any other publication;
• authors, author institutions, and translators (as appropriate) are to be acknowledged in any document where authors would regularly be indicated (e.g., publication of a training manual);
• publication of any training or other manual is limited to the period until a commercially-published version is available;
• data from use of the instrument are to be shared with interRAI, subject to existing laws on confidentiality and data use. 

Commercial use usually requires royalties. In this instance, interRAI may omit the data requirement, but
retains the other requirements for a logo, attribution, etc. Software vendors are usually required to: 

• develop methods to sublicense the interRAI instruments to users
• implement export routines in their software
• implement scales and other algorithms in reports available to users

We will be pleased in any contract negotiations to acknowledge the participation of individuals or organizations which have played a substantial role in getting the instrument to the point of implementation.

For more information on licensing with interRAI, please contact the President of interRAI:

Brant E. Fries, Ph.D.
Institute of Gerontology
University of Michigan
300 North Ingalls
Ann Arbor, Michigan USA 48109
Email: bfries@umich.edu