As
part of President Obama’s commitment to helping U.S. businesses create
jobs and strengthen their competitiveness by speeding up the transfer of
federal research and development from the laboratory to the
marketplace, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman
announced a new pilot initiative to reduce some of the hurdles that
prevent innovative companies from working with the Department of
Energy’s national laboratories. The new Agreements for Commercializing
Technology (ACT) will help businesses bring job-creating technologies to
the market faster by allowing them to work with the Department of
Energy’s (DOE’s) national laboratories from start to finish to develop
and deliver new clean energy technologies and other innovations.
“To
compete in the 21st global economy, we need to make it easier for
businesses to move great ideas from the drawing board to the
marketplace,” said Deputy Secretary Poneman. “The Agreements for
Commercializing Technology will cut red tape for businesses and
start-ups interested in working with our nation’s crown jewels of
innovation, the national laboratories, and strengthen new domestic
industries by helping bring innovative, job-creating technologies to the
market faster.”
In
January, the Department will announce the laboratories selected to
participate in the pilot. This initiative will remove barriers for
businesses and startup companies that are interested in accessing the
research, facilities, and scientists available at the laboratories,
catapulting innovative new products to the marketplace.
In
October, the President issued a memorandum to executive departments and
agencies directing agencies with federal laboratories to accelerate
technology transfer and commercialization of research, and to take steps
to increase partnerships between businesses and laboratories. The
Department of Energy’s ACT will serve as a vehicle
to help accomplish this at the DOE laboratories.
ACT
also complements the goals of the Administration’s “Startup America”
initiative by supporting high-growth entrepreneurship and start-up
companies. ACT is part of DOE’s broader efforts to unleash American
innovation by reducing barriers so industry can more easily work with
our national labs. In March, DOE launched “America’s Next Top Energy
Innovator'” Challenge, which gives start-up companies access to the
Energy Department’s thousands of unlicensed patents at a greatly reduced
cost and paperwork.
The Department also announced the Rooftop Solar Challenge, which
allocates $12 million to support 22 regional teams. The teams compete to
spur solar power deployment by cutting red tape—streamlining and
standardizing permitting, zoning, metering, and connection processes—and
improving finance options to reduce barriers and lower costs for
residential and small commercial rooftop solar systems.
DOE’s
laboratories have a long tradition of working with businesses and
academia on scientific research and technology development efforts that
have generated many advances, spawned new businesses and supported the
creation of new industries and jobs. The ACT framework joins other
current DOE legal mechanisms for working with the national laboratories,
including Work for Others and Cooperative Research and Development
Agreements (CRADAs).
Addressing input from industries based on their experience working with the laboratories, ACT authorizes:
- A
more flexible framework for negotiation of intellectual property (IP)
rights to facilitate getting technology from the laboratory to the
marketplace. - Contractors
operating national laboratories to partner with businesses using terms
that are better aligned with industry practice, attracting more private
investment. - National laboratories to participate in groups formed to address complex technological challenges that are of mutual interest.
