Open Systems Architecture License Rights: A New Era for the Public

Abstract

The prosperity of our nation is driven by brilliant and hardworking entrepreneurs who convert their intellectual property into revenue in our free market economy. Abraham Lincoln, in his creation of the Patent Office, understood that guaranteeing an entrepreneur’s ownership of his or her own intellectual property is the only thing that could add the “fuel of interest to the fire of genius”1 necessary to incentivize entrepreneurs to take the risks and provide the sweat equity necessary to make our nation truly prosper. The resulting commercial business cycle, that interposes the entrepreneur, intellectual property rights, venture capital, and a vast and complex commercial market, has produced the world’s most innovative and extensive market place. The efforts of these entrepreneurs, when harnessed by the Department of Defense, built the world’s most advanced military. The extent to which an entrepreneur is able to control the use of his or her intellectual property in this business partnership is a continuing source of struggle. It pits a Federal Government that needs to minimize cost using the mechanism of competition against an entrepreneur who seeks to protect his or her intellectual property to stay in business. This paper, using the metaphor of the “Shark Tank®” (a television show aired on the American Broadcasting Company (ABC®) examines this relationship—and argues that the Federal Government should extend the IP protections currently afforded to the entrepreneur in the DFARS 252.227 to include what we term “Open Systems Architecture License Rights.”