Aviation Week & Space Technology News | By: Philip J. Jasper | May 25 2017:
Recently, the U.S. Defense Department stepped up its outreach to commercial technology companies to ensure that its warfighters have access to the latest innovation and capabilities. Based on my experience, U.S. commercial industry enthusiastically supports the department’s aim to deliver innovation that enables warfighters to win at the best possible value for the American taxpayer. Yet one area that is working against this outreach is that of commercial intellectual property (IP) rights.
The Pentagon’s acquisition system is struggling to provide innovative commercial technology at the best value for the U.S. taxpayer while keeping commercial companies viable and interested in defense work. The crux of the issue is that the Defense Department is overreaching on its demand for unrestricted access to IP for commercially developed items. The reasons cited for this demand range from the need to provide service and support to the need to develop competition.
“The Defense Department should not ask for blanket intellectual property rights unless it will pay for them.”
Commercial companies that deliver leading-edge innovation to the Defense Department are concerned with two critical elements at the core of a commercial business:
It takes vast sums of internal investment to bring a commercial product to market. Sometimes profit is only
generated during the service-and-support phase of the product’s life cycle. In its demand for unrestricted commercial IP, the government dismisses the business case upon which the invention was based and eliminates a company’s ability to continue to invest in leading-edge products and capabilities.
When this happens, the basic free-enterprise business model breaks down.
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