What level of sponsor ownership is normal for an industry-sponsored research project?
I would consider this to be generally a rather extreme (and perhaps inappropriate) contract for a university to sign, particularly if graduate students are going to be asked to work on the project.

My key reasons for concern are:


Graduate students need to be able to publish their work openly in order to advance their careers.  An open-ended clause like this could readily become a "gag order" that prevents any publication.  Restrictions, particularly regarding the use of confidential data, may be reasonable in an academia contract.  Such restrictions, however, should have a precise and clearly delineated boundary, and it sounds like this one does not.
A contract that says "the sponsor gets all the IP" is rare even for companies doing contract research.  More typically, at least some of the IP will be reserved to the inventors, while the sponsor will be given some sort of expansive license to the IP.


This sounds like a company that doesn't want to pay the cost of contract R&amp;D and that is instead trying to inappropriately exploit graduate students as cheap labor.  I would strongly suggest pushing back to ensure appropriate education of graduate students and to more equitably divide IP.