Department of Defense Launches Pilot Program Providing No-Fee Patent Licenses to Accelerate Technology from Lab to Warfighter

A new Defense Patent Holiday initiative from the Office of the Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering aims to ease the licensing pathway and help industry partners accelerate commercialization timelines from the lab to the American warfighter. The initiative offers no-fee commercial evaluation licenses (CEL) for a curated selection of approximately 400 patents from Department of Defense (DoD) laboratories.

A CEL allows a licensee to assess the technical, market, and business potential of a patent, along with any scale-up challenges. The program then provides a two-year window that includes access to no-fee licenses that essentially allow partners to “try before they buy” without the usual upfront costs.

The Patent Holiday initiative is a first-of-its-kind initiative that offers qualified companies unprecedented access to government intellectual property (IP). The program maximizes the value of the DoD’s $3.5 billion annual research budget and increases and improves the technologies made available for the benefit of the American warfighter and the general public.

The Pentagon identified the patents available as most interesting and relevant to industry partners, chosen for the two-year, royalty-free patent holiday. The DoD is highlighting the patents in a searchable database, accessible here.

The DoD’s newly restructured innovation ecosystem aims to ensure the nation’s investment in research realizes its full value and transfers IP from defense labs to the American public and/or warfighter.