Government Releases Long-Awaited Answer On SBIR Technical Data Rights

Under the federal Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program and the companion Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program, small businesses are encouraged to engage in research and development on behalf of the federal government with the end goal of commercializing newly developed or improved upon technology. In doing so, small businesses necessarily create new intellectual property. But, they do so – at least in part – using federal dollars to fund their employees' work.

In order to be fair to the American taxpayers as well as the innovators and creators, the SBIR program has always provided for a sharing of intellectual property rights, known as technical data rights with the government. Traditionally, the government had Government Purpose Rights for a period of four years, and after that period of time obtained Unlimited Rights. For the small business, this meant its technical data was "protected" for four years – during that time it could