I. Who should read this?

This Handbook is written primarily for one who is either setting up or running a program for transferring products developed within a VA Government Laboratory to a private sector entity which will take on the manufacturing and marketing of the product.

Presumably, such a program or group also has the responsibility of seeking collaborators in the commercialization process and of negotiating agreements with these parties. Such groups are usually referred to as Technology Transfer groups, and automatically assume the responsibilities of all of the legal and business aspects involved in the technology transfer process, including patents, patent disclosures, nondisclosure agreements, Cooperative R&D Agreements, negotiations, marketing studies, government regulations, software protection, product selection and evaluation, etc. If there is no such group at your Medical Center, it may be that the inventor or Principal Investigator (or perhaps ACOS/Research) will need to handle technology transfer (TT) issues, at least for a particular invention.

For these reasons, this document will attempt to touch upon all the above subjects, but obviously cannot cover them in any significant detail. Rather, an attempt will be made to produce a source book, from which one may be introduced to the various subjects, referred to other, more extensive documents, and perhaps warned about some of the problems, complications, challenges, and pitfalls that might arise in performing the job of transferring government technology to the private sector.

The reader is also referred to Facilitating the Transfer of Rehabilitation Technology [Weisgerber and Armstrong, 1989], which was prepared under contract for us and covers more of the basic fundamentals of TT prepared especially for investigators working here at our Rehab R&D Center.