Technology Transfer Systems in the United States and Germany Lessons and Perspectives (1997) / Chapter Skim
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U.S. Federal Laboratories and Technology Transfer to Industry
U.S. Federal Laboratories and Technology Transfer to Industry
Pages 124-150
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From page 124... ...
Many leading U.S. research universities appear to have developed effective policies, practices, and institutional frameworks for engaging private companies in mutually beneficial cooperative research.
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Because of their special status, FFRDCs are often used by federal agencies to execute new federally funded R&D programs that require rapid start-up.58 FEDERAL LABORATORY R&D EXPENDITURES Federal laboratories spend fully one-third of all federal dollars devoted to research and development (Figure 2.14)
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Federal Laboratories by Major Mission Area DEFENSE LABORATORIES In this chapter, "defense laboratories" refers to the laboratories of the military services and the Department of Energy's (DOE's) three nuclear weapons laboratories (Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, and Sandia)
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DOE Laboratories The three DOE defense laboratories, Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, are the largest federal laboratories. Although their annual budgets are declining, the three labs still spend nearly $1 billion each on R&D, and each employs many thousands of scientists and engineers.
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The National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Denver, Colorado, is the nation's primary federal laboratory for renewable energy research. It focuses on alternative fuels, analytic studies, basic sciences, buildings and energy systems, industrial technologies, photovoltaics, and wind technology.
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It carries out this mission through work in four areas: • research planned and implemented in cooperation with industry and fo cused on measurements, standards, evaluated data, and test methods; • the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and an associated quality outreach program; • the Advanced Technology Program, which provides cost-shared grants to industry for the development of high-risk technologies with significant commercial potential; and • the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, which helps small and medium sized companies adopt new technologies. As a GOGO laboratory, NIST's staff of more than 3,200 scientists, engineers, technicians, and support personnel are federal employees (National Institute of Standards and Technology, 1997)
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• Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, conducts work in near and deep-space mission engineering, microspacecraft, space communica tions, information systems, remote sensing, and robotics. • Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, has technological strengths in artificial intelligence and human computer interface, life sciences, human space flight operations, avionics, sensors, and communications.
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The laboratories and centers in EPA's new R&D structure are • the National Risk Management Research Laboratory in Cincinnati, Ohio, which is the principal EPA research laboratory responsible for environ mental risk management; • the National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, which is the EPA focal point for
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The total number of ARS R&D sites is around 110; some of these facilities are being closed in response to budget pressures. With a staff of 350 scientists, the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center in Beltsville, Maryland, is the largest ARS laboratory.
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. Federal Laboratories and Technology Transfer: History and Legislation The current era of federal technology transfer began in 1980 with passage of the Bayh-Dole (P.L.
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The laws have been subsequently amended and supplemented with new legislation to support additional federal laboratory technology transfer activities. A brief review of the four principal technology transfer laws now on the books follows.
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99-502) amended Stevenson-Wydler to accelerate technology transfer by requiring that personnel evaluations of federal laboratory scientists and engineers include information about their support for technology transfer activities and that GOGO laboratories pay inventors a minimum of a 15-percent share of any royalties generated by the licensing of their inventions.
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, there has been only a modest increase in the number of exclusive licenses issued by the 700 25 600 20 500 Millions of Dollars 15 Licenses 400 300 10 200 5 100 0 0 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 Fiscal Year Total Nonexclusive Licenses Total Exclusive Licenses Licensing Revenue FIGURE 2.15 Federal laboratory licensing activity, 1987–1994. NOTE: 1991 "bump" represents a one-time AIDS-test payment.
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The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) /NIH accounted for another 20 percent of nonexclusive licenses.
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.59 As of 1994, an estimated 3,500 CRADAs had been negotiated between federal laboratories and private companies. DOE accounted for the largest share, nearly a third, of all active CRADAs in 1994, followed by the Department of Commerce/NIST, which claimed another 12 percent (Table 2.16)
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Foremost among these is the authority CRADAs give participating laboratories to protect any intellectual property relevant to the agreement from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. CRADAs constitute the only mechanism by which the federal government can define the disposition of intellectual property rights in advance.
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The NTTC's mission is to create a user-friendly system with a single point of contact that will permit business, government, and the general public to locate information on science and technology in the federal laboratory system and beyond. The NTTC has acquired and created a large set of databases, with more than a million records, that list the technologies and expertise available in federal laboratories and elsewhere.
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, assisted with over 100 technology-licensing deals, and played a role in over 200 technology-partnership agreements. In addition to the NASA-funded technology transfer information system, the Federal Laboratory Consortium provides a similar function.
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Other customers include state and local governments and private firms. Work for others is generally undertaken because the customer wants to take advantage of highly specialized scientific expertise and facilities in a federal laboratory that cannot be otherwise obtained.
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As of 1994, 40 percent of NIST's 250 CRADAs were with small companies. DOE estimates that its national laboratories alone engage SMEs in several thousand technical assistance projects per year.66 LIMITS TO FEDERAL LABORATORY TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER There are a number of factors that make technology transfer more difficult for federal laboratories than for private-sector organizations.
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While important, these limits have slowed the process of technology transfer, since administrators must focus more on conflict-of-interest issues at the expense of more productive activities, such as technology marketing. Measuring the Performance of Federal Laboratory Technology Transfer Many in government are asking whether increased technology transfer activities and increased spending on technology programs have had a significant impact on the economy and whether that impact was high relative to the federal dollars spent.
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While these two categories of investigation look at phenomena different from technology transfer, they nonetheless use techniques and produce a body of knowledge that are useful to the study of the economic value of federal laboratory technology transfer. Anecdotal Evidence Much of the early evidence of effectiveness of federal laboratories' technology transfer activities has been anecdotal.
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Overall satisfaction with the interactions was generally high, with 89 percent reporting that the interaction was a good use of company resources, and many responding companies were repeat customers. Responding companies were asked to estimate in dollar terms the costs and benefits of their federal laboratory interaction.
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In spite of their public hostility toward the ATP and TRP, the Republican majority did not express significant opposition to federal laboratory technology transfer activities, including licensing and CRADAs.70 Bipartisan legislation (H.R.
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The memorandum required all R&D elements of the Defense Department to "make domestic technology transfer and dual-use technology development a priority element in the accomplishment of their science and technology missions" and gave the DOD's Office of Technology Transition increased oversight authorities. In a sense, these new DOD activities do little more than assure full implementation of the provisions of the 1986 and 1989 technology transfer acts by the military services and their labs.
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The program is ambitious and seeks to make NASA a leading player in federal technology transfer activities. Conclusions Until the 1980s, technology transfer from federal laboratories was tightly linked to the primary missions of the sponsoring federal agencies and, for the most part, involved closely related industries or regions.
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Many federal labs, however, have traditionally performed R&D that has little direct relevance to most civilian industries, and have had limited experience dealing with private companies as clients. For the most part (there are some notable exceptions)
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