[time-nuts] Xtendwave

[Jim Lux]

On 3/16/12 5:35 AM, Chuck Harris wrote:
> I was of the understanding that SBIR's results are in
> the public domain.... that however, doesn't mean that
> a patented receiver that uses the SBIR results cannot
> be had.
>
> You too can use the results of this SBIR and patent
> your receiver's special features.


Unfortunately, this is not the case..

SBIR is different from many other government procurement mechanisms: it 
explicitly encourages retention of proprietary rights by the innovator. 
  The idea is to get small businesses (the SB) to do something useful 
for the government, by providing seed money (phase 1 100k, Phase 2 1M), 
  but mostly, to get the SB to be able to become commercially successful 
(in the Phase 3, not funded by government).  In theory (probably more 
than in practice), the SBIR is supposed to find commercial customers for 
their technology (i.e. the commercial customer isn't supposed to be the 
government).  And you have to describe those plans in your SBIR 
proposal. Although, having both written and read a lot of SBIR 
proposals.. that aspect is pretty thin, and the bar is pretty low.  For 
instance, in microdevices, you might be developing a microwave low noise 
amplifier, so you can make a hand waving assertion that there's a 
potential market for millions, if not billions of these for personal 
communication devices, direct broadcast satellite TV, radars, collision 
detection, metrology for automatic bread slicers, etc.

Think of SBIR (and related STTR) as government paid angel investment 
with no equity participation.
Full disclosure here.. my entire income was derived from SBIR (and 
follow on) contracts for several years, and I don't think the government 
got a particularly bad deal.  We developed something useful for the 
government, although, granted, the government was the only feasible (and 
legal) customer when you are developing certain kinds of things.  And 
indeed, it did lead to a successful phase 3, with a different part of 
the government buying the product than had funded the original SBIR work.

I think of SBIR as replacing "company funded R&D/IRAD)" for the big 
contractors.



And even in normal government contracting, these days, to save money 
when funding research and development, the government generally gets 
"government purpose rights".  That is, the government gets a license to 
use the stuff (and they can hire another contractor to execute that 
use), but if you're not the government, you have to pay the going rate.

The big exception would be if *civil servants* are doing the work, in 
which case it is generally not subject to copyright, nor are patent 
royalties required. Bear in mind that with the pressure to reduce the 
number of civil servants, a LOT of the work of the government, even at 
government labs, is done by contractor personnel, and it depends on the 
nature of the contract.

Another wrench in the "taxpayer funded research not available to the 
general public" is the Bayh-Dole act, which says that if the government 
pays an educational research institution (e.g. Universities and 
colleges), the institution gets first crack at the IP.  The Government 
gets a "fully paid non-exclusive license", but the university is free to 
commercialize the development.  This was designed to encourage the 
nascent biotech industry for the most part, but has a pretty pervasive 
effect in many areas.  It's also lead, in my opinion, to a more ruthless 
and competitve, non-disclosing research environment in academia. 
Everyone thinks they'll have the key to the next Genentech or SUN (as in 
Stanford University Network).