In addition, all sponsors are welcome to visit the Laboratory at mutually convenient times, to see research in progress and discuss areas of common interest. Faculty members also travel to sponsor sites. From time to time, at the request of sponsor companies, the Laboratory organizes special events on particular themes. Periodically, it also hosts Laboratory-wide events that are open to representatives from all sponsor companies. In addition to offering presentations by outstanding speakers, such events provide an ideal environment for sponsors who share an interest in new technologies to meet one another.
Sponsors also have access to internal technical reports and unpublished research.
The Media Laboratory is unique among the laboratories, centers, and research programs at MIT in that full sponsors of the Laboratory have the opportunity to share in all of the Laboratory's intellectual property, license-fee free and royalty free. Non-sponsors are precluded from making use of the Laboratory's developments for at least two years after the filing of a patent or copyright. As a result, the Laboratory is an intellectually open environment where ideas are readily exchanged, and is a community in which each sponsor is entitled to acquire non-exclusive licensing rights to all intellectual property that is conceived, developed, or reduced to practice. Over the years, this policy has fostered a large number of unexpected and highly successful solutions that have led to new technologies and products, greatly benefiting both sponsors and the world community. The centers are designed to bring new forms of medical care, education, entertainment, and commerce to remote areas.