|
PATENTS
 Most Federal labs have
intellectual property (IP) that they are willing to
license to the private sector. Oftentimes, the IP
has been patented and the labs have produced
summaries that they post on their web sites. A
potential licensee can scan the web site postings,
find items of potential interest and contact the
technology transfer officers of the lab to start a
process of in-depth investigation that can result in
acquisition of legal rights to the IP. It is
important to note that the labs may have far more
accessible expertise, capabilities and IP than are
represented by the patents. A potential licensee
should view the listed patents as large hints about
treasures that may lay beyond. The additional IP
may be discovered through conversations with the
technology transfer agents and scientists at the
labs.
Some dream for a constantly
up-to-date, comprehensive, single source for
discovering all available technologies, expertise
and facilities within the Federal government. Such
a source does not exist; however, there are
initiatives to provide central sources for entire
agencies. For example, the central point of
reference for all 100 labs belonging to the USDA’s
Agricultural Research Service is
www.ars.usda.gov
The Department of Defense provides centralized
access points at
www.dodtechmatch.com and
www.techlink.org. All of the EPA labs are
represented at
www.epatechmatch.com. First
responder technologies are accumulated at
www.dodfirstlink.com.
A number of information
gathering and commercial, technology brokering
organizations have accumulated thousands of
government technologies from many of the agencies.
They are combined with technologies from commercial
and academic sources and presented on the web for
identification by potential licensees.
Representative of these web sites are:
Birchbob
www.birchbob.com
Free Patents Online
www.freepatentsonline.com
Next Techs Technologies:
www.nexttechs.com
Ocean Tomo
www.oceantomofederal.com
Technology Transfer Offices
http://www.autm.net/index.cfm
Click Into “Technology Transfer Offices.” Major
focus is on academic technologies.
Techquisition is a free on-line community of
technology buyers and sellers. Sponsored by
NIH Office of Technology Transfer.
www.techquisition.com
UTEK
http://www.utekcorp.com/
UVentures
www.uventures.com
Yet2Com
www.yet2.com
|
