Overview
FAR 27.402 establishes the foundational policy for how Federal agencies manage data rights, emphasizing a balance between the Government’s operational needs and the protection of a contractor’s proprietary interests. It outlines the specific justifications for data acquisition while mandating the protection of private intellectual property to encourage industrial innovation.
Key Rules
- Government Data Needs: Agencies acquire data to foster competition, fulfill statutory dissemination requirements, support logistics, and ensure the utilization of R&D results.
- Protection of Proprietary Interests: Agencies are required to protect contractors' proprietary data from unauthorized use and disclosure to safeguard their commercial interests.
- Innovation Incentive: The policy recognizes that protecting proprietary data is essential to encouraging highly qualified contractors to participate in government programs.
- Requirement to Balance: Agencies must actively balance the Government's functional requirements against the contractor's legitimate rights to their own innovative concepts and data.
Practical Implications
- Contracting Officers must ensure that data rights clauses are tailored to meet specific agency needs (like future competition or maintenance) without overreaching into a contractor’s private intellectual property.
- Failure to adequately protect proprietary data can discourage commercial innovators from entering the federal marketplace, potentially limiting the government's access to cutting-edge technology.