Announcing the historic signing of the Intellectual Property Bundling Agreement Among Sandia National Laboratories, Los Alamos National Lab, the Nevada Test Site, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for the purpose of commercialization
Albuquerque-Technology Ventures Corporation (TVC) will host Clay Sell, Deputy Secretary of the Department of Energy, Senator Pete V. Domenici, and the directors of the NNSA national laboratories for the historic signing of the Intellectual Property Bundling Agreement (IPBA), a unique agreement to pool intellectual property to accelerate the commercialization of lab technologies.
The IPBA, which will be signed by the directors of Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, Nevada Test Site, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory facilitates the commercialization of intellectual property (IP) that is owned by each of the four National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) facilities.
As part of this agreement the laboratories voluntarily agree to work together to collect their patents and form those patents into IP bundles, which can then be packaged or separately licensed to companies and individuals looking for technology.
The Intellectual Property Bundling Agreement that is being signed on 24 August will enable a private sector business to negotiate and contract with just one laboratory for bundled intellectual property owned by all four laboratories (LANL, LLNL, SNL, and the NTS)
The private sector market pull of laboratory technologies is greatly enhanced and accelerated because it will be easier for the private sector to engage in the licensing process. A license to bundled IP (group of patents) is of significantly greater value to the private sector than a single patent, as the related and complementary patents within the bundle enable the far greater potential for multiple commercial applications and wider fields of use. IP bundling is already known and in use in the private sector.
More specifically the IP (patents) Bundling Agreement advantages include:
• Encourages the leveraging of DOE R&D; funds dedicated to complementary projects within the laboratory complex, and then leverage the IP developed by these projects
• Facilitates licensing negotiations
• Non-exclusive bundle licensing of IP is more cost-effective and allows the licenses to fulfill equal opportunity, minimize the potential for conflicts, and spreads DOE technology across larger numbers of licensees
• Improves probabilities of successful deployment of the technologies created in the laboratories into the commercial marketplace
• Enhances IP portfolios of each participating laboratory by placing them into a bundle making the IP more desirable to private industry
• Helps DOE fulfill a statutory mission of the national laboratories in technology transfer
The IPBA was developed under a cooperative agreement between the Department of Energy’s NNSA and Technology Ventures Corporation.
