Key Issues > Duplication & Cost Savings > GAO's Action Tracker > Patent Licensing at Federal Labs (2019-16)
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Science and the Environment: Patent Licensing at Federal Labs (2019-16)

The Department of Commerce could help federal agencies and laboratories more successfully license federal inventions to the private sector by addressing fragmentation of information on comparable licenses.

Action:

The Secretary of Commerce should instruct the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to facilitate formal information sharing among the agencies to provide federal labs with information on financial terms in comparable lab patent licenses, as appropriate.

Progress:

The Department of Commerce concurred with GAO’s June 2018 recommendation, and NIST stated that it is working with a contractor to create a website to inform a community of practice in sectors to share expertise across agencies. According to NIST, it is also working with the Interagency Working Group on Technology Transfer and Federal Laboratory Consortium to produce guidelines on items to consider in determining royalty rates. Once completed, NIST said it plans to disseminate the material produced through the consortium’s website. By facilitating the formal sharing of comparable license information, NIST could help provide agencies and labs with benchmarks for evaluating which financial terms are best suited to successfully license inventions. These actions are expected to be completed by March 2020, according to NIST.

Implementing Entity:

Department of Commerce
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    • John Neumann
    • Managing Director, Science, Technology Assessment, and Analytics
    • neumannj@gao.gov
    • (202) 512-6888