Tapping Into Federal Rd

Here are some approaches for linking the private sector and public labs.

 

* COOPERATIVE R&D. Federal labs can now enter into a wide range of agreements with businesses, universities, even municipalities. Lab directors are free to decide which proposals from the outside best coincide with their overall mission. As part of such arrangements, labs supply researchers, equipment, and even funds.

* EXCLUSIVE LICENSING. In the past, the government made it difficult to obtain exclusive rights to its patents. But without protected positions, companies shunned nonexclusive arrangements as too risky. So the new law permits labs to sell off exclusive rights for "whatever we can get," according to one lab's attoney. It is now the individual lab, not government attorneys in Washington, that has the authority to strike such deals.

* CLEARINGHOUSE FOR INFORMATION. The Federal Laboratory consortium for Technology Transfer now acts as a clearinghouse for federal R&D information. Each federal member will designate a full-time technology-transfer officer to keep tabs on all work of potential commercial value and be the liaison with the business community. The consortium will also keep a centralized computer bank that will be able to tell companies what research is being done at what labs.

* INCENTIVES FOR GOVERNMENT INVENTORS. Under the old law, lab staffers who came up with something patentable got a plaque and a bonus. Now, if the lab licenses rights to that patent, the inventor receives at least 15% of net royalties due the laboratory. That's an attractive incentive -- so attractive, in fact, that it's controversial. Purists worry that the lure of big dollars could divert scientists from the labs' fundamental role: long-range, high-risk research that industry often doesn't do because the payoff is neither quick nor certain.