Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1998 09:17:20 -0700
From: owen@DeLong.SJ.CA.US (Owen DeLong)
To: nanog@merit.edu, salo@networkcs.com
Subject: Re: Director Database Marketing (Herndon VA US) (http://www.saic.com/career/jobs/c5
[...]
Under both common law and various federal regulations, NSI has posession
of that data because of a federal contract supported and (previously)
paid for by taxpayers. As such, at least that much of the data is, by
law, in the public domain. ...
[...]
Thank you for summarizing one of the great myths about Federal contracting.
Your statement is, in general, false.
Intellectual property developed under federal contracts is, in general,
_not_ public domain. In general, the intellectual property developed under
federal contracts is owned by the contractor, although the government
has broad rights to the data.
See for example:
o NSF General Grant Conditions (GC-1)
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/1998/nsf98gc1a/nsf98gc1a.txt
Including sections:
17. Information Collection
18. Copyrightable Material
21. Patent Rights
o NSF Grant Policy Manual (95-26)
Including sections:
730 Intellectual Property
731 Patent and Inventions
731.1 Background
731.2 National Science Foundation Patent Policy
731.3 Standard Patent Rights Clause
732 Copyright
732.1 Rights to Copyrightable Material
732.2 Standard Copyrightable Material Clause
733 Special Patent and Copyright Situations
733.1 Special Grant Provisions
733.2 Grants Not Primarily for Research
733.3 Grants Affected by International Agreements
734 Dissemination and Sharing of Research Results
735 Tangible Property
735.1 Background
735.2 Legal Rights to Tangible Property
o Federal Acquisition Regulations
http://farsite.hill.af.mil/
Particularly:
Part 27 - Patents, Data, and Copyrights
The first sentence of the following quote from the FARs may help
explain the motivation for this approach.
27.404 Basic Rights in Data Clause.
(f) Copyrighted Data.--(1) Data First Produced in the Performance of a
Contract.
(i) In order to enhance the transfer or dissemination of information produced
at Government expense, contractors are normally authorized, without prior
approval of the contracting officer, to establish claim to copyright
subsisting in technical or scientific articles based on or containing
data first produced in the performance of work under a contract containing
the clause at 52.227-14, Rights in Data--General and published in
academic, technical or professional journals, symposia proceedings and
similar works. ...
-tjs