Advancing Commercialization of Digital Products from Federal Laboratories (2021) / Chapter Skim
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6 Technology Transfer Pathways for Digital Products
6 Technology Transfer Pathways for Digital Products
Pages 79-92
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From page 79... ...
Thus, the pathway for commercializing or disseminating a particular digital product often depends on both the lab and the type of product. TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER OFFICES AT THE FEDERAL LABORATORIES As discussed in Chapter 2, the Stevenson-Wydler Act, 15 U.S.C.
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. Decisions about the dissemination and commercialization of digital products are not always centralized within federal labs.
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. Among other things, the TTWG has developed materials intended to assist labs with technology transfer activities.2 Despite these initiatives, however, no overarching organization oversees the technology commercialization activities of all of the federal labs or any subset of labs across agency lines.
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From page 82... ...
is a discovery tool that makes peer-reviewed scientific publications resulting from DOE research publicly accessible within 12 months of publication.4 Today, most open-access publication policies are self-executing, requiring little intervention from a lab's TTO or management. In many fields, the scientific publishing industry has largely internalized federal open-access policies, and has adjusted publication agreements to accommodate both the lack of federal copyright in publications by federal employees and the need to make articles publicly available within a designated time period following publication (Contreras, 2013)
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From page 83... ...
. Other agencies spend less, and private actors wishing to utilize some publicly accessible government data may need to invest resources to make the data useful in particular commercial contexts.
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From page 84... ...
First, there appears to be no uniform decision maker responsible for this determination. While representatives of several labs stated that new software programs must be reported using a system operated by the lab TTO, the mode of software release can be determined by the individual software developer, the relevant research group or group leader, or a higher-ranking research or administrative official at the lab.
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_____________ SOURCE: Based on description provided to the committee by Sandia National Laboratories in an email dated March 27, 2020.
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From page 86... ...
Projects of this nature may require 8 Robert Leland, NREL presentation at open session of committee meeting on December 5, 2019; open session of committee meeting on January 30, 2020 with representatives of DOE's TTWG; and presentations by Mary Monson and Robert Westervelt, Sandia National Laboratories, at open session of committee meeting on March 2, 2020. 9 For example, the GNU General Public License (GPL)
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From page 87... ...
Representatives of the seven labs providing input to the committee reported that 45–90 percent of invention disclosures result in filed patent applications (although they did not differentiate digital products from other inventions)
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From page 88... ...
have made certain patents freely available in the fight against COVID-19 pursuant to the Open COVID Pledge.11 Cooperative Research Arrangements An additional important pathway for commercialization of federally developed digital products is the use of cooperative research arrangements, which include formal CRADAs, joint ventures, and other research or development arrangements between federal laboratories and both universities and industry partners. Indeed, researchers have suggested that cooperative research arrangements such as CRADAs are "the single most important channel" for private firms to acquire the underlying inventions12 that lead to commercialized innovations (Arora et al., 2016)
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From page 89... ...
This program pairs researchers with industry mentors to foster a culture of market awareness within the lab and encourage lab employees to undertake entrepreneurial activities. DOE also recently initiated a Technology Commercialization Fund to leverage R&D funding in the applied energy programs to assist in the commercialization of promising energy technologies developed at DOE labs.
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From page 90... ...
Still another is that federal rules regarding conflicts of interest may constrain both lab researchers and labs themselves from participating in the financial gains of their licensees and from forming startup companies based on licensed technology, as do many university researchers and universities. Finally, federal lab scientists have important roles and priorities other than commercialization, including work furthering the primary governmental missions of the individual labs and agencies, much of which holds no potential for commercialization.
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From page 91... ...
Programs to support technology transfer as a career path for postdocs, such as the Technology Transfer Ambassadors Program at the National Cancer Institute, may help transfer technology out of the lab.17 However, a recent study found that postdocs at federal labs would like to engage in technology transfer but are not encouraged to do so by some PIs (Choi et al., 2020)
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From page 92... ...
Recommendation 6-1: The Federal Interagency Working Group on Technology Transfer should develop a set of written best practices for federal laboratories to use in determining dissemination pathways for lab-developed software. Recommendation 6-2: An appropriate federal agency should conduct a study of the potential impact of different incentive and organizational factors on the motivation of federal laboratory researchers to engage in technology transfer and commercialization and the success of such efforts.
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