1. Actions may involve or have as their primary aim the pre-commercial procurement or public procurement of innovative solutions that shall be carried out by beneficiaries which are contracting authorities or contracting entities as defined in Directives 2014/24/EU (29) and 2014/25/EU (30) of the European Parliament and of the Council.
2. The procurement procedures:
(a)
shall comply with competition rules and with the principles of transparency, non-discrimination, equal treatment, sound financial management, proportionality;
(b)
may authorise the award of multiple contracts within the same procedure (multiple sourcing);
(c)
shall provide for the award of the contracts to the tenders offering best value for money while ensuring absence of conflicts of interest.
In the case of pre-commercial procurement, where appropriate and without prejudice to the principles enumerated in point (a), the procurement procedure may be simplified or accelerated and may provide for specific conditions such as limiting the place of performance of the procured activities to the territory of the Member States and of the associated countries.
3. The contractor generating results in pre-commercial procurement shall own at least the intellectual property rights attached to those results. The contracting authorities shall enjoy at least royalty-free access rights to the results for their own use and the right to grant, or require the participating contractors to grant, non-exclusive licences to third parties to exploit the results for the contracting authority under fair and reasonable conditions without any right to sub-license. If a contractor fails to commercially exploit the results within a given period after the pre-commercial procurement as identified in the contract, the contracting authorities, after having consulted the contractor on the reasons for the non-exploitation, may require it to transfer any ownership of the results to the contracting authorities.