Technology Transfer and the Federal Laboratories

Abstract

Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs) are at the heart of recent federal efforts to increase United States technological competitiveness through the commercialization of public technologies. CRADAs are comprehensive legal agreements for the sharing of research personnel, equipment, and intellectual property rights in joint government‐industry research. Since 1986, over 2200 CRADAs have been entered into. This study provides a midterm evaluation of the CRADA process. It finds that important legal obstacles remain in the use of CRADAs. Progress is also impeded by a lack of industry familiarity with research in the federal laboratories, as well as inadequate federal funding for research collaboration.

Company interactions with federal laboratories: What they do and why they do it

“…Concerns have been raised about the commercial effectiveness of federal laboratory-industry interactions (Gillespie 1988, Berman 1994, but empirical evidence remains scant. A few relevant findings from laboratory-focused studies have been reported (Bozeman 1994, Bozeman and Coker 1992, Brown et al 1987, O'Keefe 1982; private firm perspectives on interactions with the federal labs are conspicuously absent.…”

Comparison of technology transfer from government labs in the US and Vietnam

“…Berman (1994) conducted a midterm assessment of CRADAs and found that important legal obstacles remain in their use. Progress is also impeded by a lack of industry familiarity with research in the federal laboratories, as well as inadequate federal funding for research collaboration [19]. Spanns, Adams, and Souder (1995) presented exploratory, empirically based taxonomy measures or metrics used in technology transfer and surveyed three groups of players, namely sponsors, developers, and adopters, to study their roles and the measures of transfer effectiveness used in their work units [20].…”

Technology transfer contracts between R&D labs and commercial partners: choose your words wisely

“…All the contracts were Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs): a ''comprehensive legal agreement for the sharing of personnel, equipment, funding, and intellectual property rights in joint government-industry research (Berman 1994)''. CRADAs are an attractive contractual vehicle to evaluate for this research effort because they are the most popular method of conducting a technology transfer from government research laboratories to a commercial partner (SIDAC 1995).…”