APPENDIX II APPENDIX II was not made because of a need for accountability over available resources. NASA made a separate delegation for Space Act agreements involving reimbursements on July 12, 1984. Under these types of agreements, participants reimburse NASA for work or services NASA performs for them. This delegation also sets forth various limitations, including a $10 million limit. The NASA laboratory we visited, the Lewis Research Center, had been delegated authority to enter into reimbursable agreements under the Space Act. NIH NIH established a Patent Policy Board to oversee the invention development program and to implement the 1986 act. The Patent Policy Board has established subcommittees for areas such as CRDAS, royalty distribution, data systems, and NIH-industry collaboration. On June 23, 1987, the Secretary of Health and Human Services delegated authority to carry out the activities necessary to implement the 1986 act to the Assistant Secretary for Health, who is responsible for the Public Health Service. All of the Department of Health and Human Services' research laboratories are under the Public Health Service. On February 4, 1988, the Assistant Secretary, in turn, delegated the authority to the Public Health Service agency heads, including the Director, NIH. The Director, NIH, on March 15, 1988, delegated authority to sign CRDAS to the Director of each of NIH's 12 institutes. The Patent Policy Board's CRDAs subcommittee, acting for the Director, NIH, reviews each agreement within 30 days after it is received. APPENDIX III APPENDIX III NUMBER OF COOPERATIVE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT AGREEMENTS The 12 federal agencies we contacted reported entering into a total of 172 CRDAS specifically under the authority of the Federal Technology Transfer Act of 1986 as of February 1989. In their 1989 budget submissions to the Office of Management and Budget and their cognizant appropriations subcommittees, the agencies reported that they had entered into a total of 1,217 CRDAs in fiscal year 1987 and another 1,285 in fiscal year 1988. In reporting these amounts, some agencies included various cooperative agreements entered into under the authority of their respective authorizing acts, while others reported only those entered into under the authority of the 1986 act. Further, some agencies included estimates of the number expected to be entered into, while others reported only agreements already entered into. For this report, we focused on CRDAs entered into under the specific authority of the 1986 act. The agencies with the most CRDAs were Agriculture, NIH, and NIST. These agencies had entered into similar agreements with private industry prior to the 1986 act. Other agencies, such as the Air Force and the Army, which had not entered into similar agreements prior to the act, have begun entering into CRDAS. NASA has continued to enter into cooperative agreements under the Space Act. The first agency to enter into a CRDA under the 1986 act was the Agriculture Research Service, which had already been working extensively to transfer technology to the private sector. In 1983, an Agriculture Research Service survey showed that its scientists had made over 61,000 industry and public contacts that fiscal year. Between 1980 and 1986, 28 inventions were patented for which exclusive licenses were granted to private sector APPENDIX III APPENDIX III entities. The Agriculture Research Service entered into its first CRDA under the authority of the 1986 act in July 1987 and had entered into 59 CRDAS as of February 1989. Similarly, NIH and NIST had entered into a large number of CRDAS. NIH had been collaborating with companies prior to the act and had entered into 48 CRDAs under the authority of the 1986 act as of February 1989. Commerce's NIST and its predecessor, the National Bureau of Standards, have worked cooperatively with industry for about 60 years. NIST usually has about 1,100 cooperative agreements at any one time, but most of these agreements have not been made under the authority of the 1986 act and NIST does not consider them to be CRDAS. NIST defines CRDAS to be cooperative agreements that include preassigning titles or exclusive licensing rights to the collaborator. As of February 1989, NIST had entered into 37 CRDAs under the authority of the 1986 act. Several agencies with no prior experience with collaborative agreements have also started to enter into CRDAS. For example, the Air Force entered into its first CRDA in September 1988. By February 1989, the Air Force had entered into eight CRDAs and was processing another nine. Similarly, the Army had entered into 12 CRDAS, and the Navy and EPA had entered into 1 each by February 1989. Table III.1 shows the number of all agencies' CRDAs as of February 1989. APPENDIX III APPENDIX III Table III.1: Number of CRDAs, by Agency, as of February 1989 According to a NOAA official, NOAA is proceeding cautiously because it had not entered cooperative agreements with the private sector prior to the 1986 act. As of April 1989, NOAA was developing procedures for pursuing CRDAS and had one potential CRDA in process. bsince 1986 the Department of Energy's energy technology centers have entered into 12 cooperative agreements, but these were not negotiated under the authority of the Federal Technology Transfer Act. The Bureau of Mines entered into about 180 other cooperative agreements under its authorizing legislation. |