By: Laura Dempsey
The Wright Brothers Institute’s Collaboration Services team and Small Business Hub recently planned and executed two Colliders aimed at helping small businesses navigate the world of government contracting. Both events partnered WBI with Taft Law to offer expert legal opinions and answer questions from small businesses.
The first Collider, held 19 May 2021, featured specialty attorneys who explained facts and processes when a business is involved in a contract protest, agreeing that there is a good chance business bidding for government contracts will be involved in a contract protest on one side or the other.
Sixty attendees, most from small businesses with a handful from the government side, attended. The Collider informed them of their right to protest a contract they believe might have been awarded unfairly and to ask questions seeking justification. The other scenario is, of course, being a business whose contract award is subject to a protest.
The second Collider, held 26 May 2021, featured a panel of two attorneys from Taft Law who informed the companies with Federal Contracts of the facts and processes to protect their Intellectual Property while legally under federal contract or sub-contract.
Companies must understand the various types of data rights the government may obtain, and steps business owners must take to protect that data.
Topics covered included:- Differences between IP right and technical data rights
- Unlimited rights
- Limited rights
- Government Purpose License rights
- SBIR technical data rights
- Restrictive rights
- What entitles a contractor to greater rights
- Reservation of rights form
- Recent changes in Technical Data Rights
The event was attended by 63 people, most from small business located across the country. One feature of WBI’s Collider protocol is to send a survey immediately following the presentation, together with the presentation slides.
The survey comments were overwhelmingly positive: “I have attended several webinars that talk about IP rights, and I felt like this is the first time that it was explained in plain English so that I have a better basic understanding of where we might stand and how we can better protect ourselves,” said one attendee. Another commented: “The presenters from Taft Law were excellent and the content was presented at the perfect level of detail for us.”
The main impact for the event is to prepare Small Businesses to understand protection of their Technical Data Rights when working with the federal government. The level of government/contractor rights in technical data establishes the degree of protection afforded contractors from competitors for future government contracts for the same items/services and prevents commercializing the data in other venues.
Government agencies are to strike a balance between government’s need to have rights in technical data and the contractor’s legitimate proprietary interest in data resulting from private investment.