WASHINGTON
—
The
Pentagon
spends
$3.3
billion
a
year
on
its
216
laboratories,
which
have
piled
up
thousands
of
patents,
often
for
technologies
which
may
never
see
the
light
of
day,
let
alone
a
battlefield.
But
this
morning,
the
Department’s
CTO,
Under
Secretary
for
Research
&
Engineering
Emil
Michael,
publicly
launched
a
two-pronged
crusade
to
change
that.
“[It’s]
a
frustrating
point:
Why
do
these
innovations
—
and
we
have
thousands
of
them
in
the
labs,
billions
of
dollars
worth
of
IP
that’s
been
created
by
the
great
minds
in
the
labs
—
why
does
it
not
get
all
the
way
out
there
to
the
warfighter?”
Michael
asked
a
packed
conference
room
in
downtown
Washington,
DC.
“In
part,
it’s
because
you
don’t
know
where
to
go
to
find
them.
They’re
all
over
the
place.
They’re
not
categorized,
they’re
not
available.”
Hence
his
two-part
plan:
Step
one,
effective
immediately,
is
to
make
roughly
400
carefully
picked
patents
available
online
for
a
free
two-year
trial
period.
Specifically,
any
company
that
wants
to
try
out
one
of
the
400
technologies
in
its
own
research,
development,
and
products
can
get
what’s
called
a
Commercial
Evaluation
License
(CEL)
without
the
usual
fee.
Those
400
technologies
—
everything
from
a
Navy-developed
drone
tracking
system
to
novel
Army
mortar
fuses
—
were
chosen
out
of
the
thousands
of
possibilities
by
Michael’s
staff,
with
an
eye
to
his
recently
announced
top
six
Critical
Technology
Areas.
There
were
so
many
options
from
so
many
labs,
he
said,
that
they
had
to
use
AI
to
help
sort
through
them.
“Here
are
the
patents
we
think
are
important,
are
interesting,
have
merit,
that
you
can
develop
on
and
potentially
productize,”
Michael
said.
“We’re
going
to
give
you
a
two-year
patent
holiday,
royalty-free.”
If
the
project
goes
well
and
the
company
wants
to
keep
using
the
patent
beyond
the
two-year
free
trial,
well,
in
true
Trumpian
fashion,
Michael
says
he’s
ready
to
make
a
deal.
“See
what
you
could
do
with
them,
see
if
you
can
make
a
business
out
of
them,
and
then
come
back
to
us
…
and
let’s
figure
out
a
long
term-arrangement,”
he
told
the
executives
at
the
Pentagon-backed
conference,
hosted
by
consulting
firm
SMI.
It’s
not
as
if
the
Pentagon
is
giving
up
a
lot
of
revenue
by
sharing
this
intellectual
property
for
free,
he
said.
While
it
does
license
some
patents
to
industry
already,
Michael
told
the
executives,
“the
amount
of
money
that
we
make
from
patent
fees
today
is
infinitesimal
—
and
it’s
not
because
they’re
not
good
patents,
[it’s]
because
you
don’t
know
about
them,
and
we
haven’t
created
enough
of
a
way
for
you
to
get
to
them
and
develop
on
them.”
More
Data,
More
Problems
Step
two,
in
progress,
is
to
put
all
those
thousands
of
patents
from
all
216
labs
into
a
single
searchable
database
for
the
first
time,
using
a
longstanding
public-private
partnership
called
TechLink
and
an
interagency
database
called
iEdison.
(Explicitly
not
included:
classified
patents
for
technologies
who
very
existence
is
kept
secret.)
After
almost
two
years
of
work
behind
the
scenes,
things
are
now
moving
fast,
said
Bethany
Loftin,
director
of
the
Technology
Partnerships
Office
at
the
National
Institute
of
Standards
&
Technology
(NIST),
the
Commerce
Department
agency
that
runs
iEdison.
That
database
currently
holds
ideas
from
some
36
federal
agencies
that
fund
research,
including
10
of
the
Defense
Department’s
labs.
But
now
an
interagency
Memorandum
of
Understanding
has
been
thrashed
out
to
bring
in
the
other
206.
RELATED:
Hegseth
presses
defense
execs
to
move
faster
in
speech
laying
out
sweeping
acquisition
changes
“I
keep
checking
my
phone
this
morning
because
the
final
MOU
for
that
relationship
is
on
my
boss’s
desk
for
final
signature,”
Loftin
said
excitedly
on
a
panel
after
Michael’s
keynote
speech.
“So
hopefully,
maybe
even
before
the
end
of
the
day
we’ll
be
able
to
officially
start
the
process
of
getting
DoW,
as
a
whole,
onboarded
onto
iEDISON.”
Those
thousands
of
patents
won’t
be
available
for
free,
Michael
made
clear
—
although,
again,
he’s
willing
to
negotiate.
As
for
the
first
400
royalty-free
patents,
they’re
more
like
the
free
samples
a
supermarket
puts
on
display
to
get
customers
in
the
door,
he
told
reporters
after
his
speech.
“It’s
the
freebie
…
the
door-buster
…
the
loss-leader,”
Michael
said.
“Then
hopefully
you’ll
get
interested
enough
that
you
could
look
at
the
whole
broad
portfolio.”
That
said,
if
the
first
400
attract
not
only
a
lot
of
interest
but
actual
investment
that
starts
turning
into
usable
military
gear,
“maybe
we
expand
it,”
he
told
the
reporters.
“That’s
why
it’s
a
pilot,
right?
We’re
trying
to
see
what
happens
when
you
put
things
out
in
the
wild.”
In
fact,
the
whole
“Patent
Holiday”
idea
came
out
of
Michael’s
desire
to
hype
up
the
patent
database
and
get
things
moving
quickly,
one
of
his
subordinates
told
the
assembled
executives.
“I
was
like,
‘I
want
to
build
a
data
estate,’”
said
Steve
Luckowski,
the
Pentagon’s
director
of
Technology
Transfer,
Transition,
and
Commercial
Partnerships.
Luckowski
said
Michael
told
him,
“Let’s
curate
the
patents.
Let’s
analyze
them.
Let’s
make
them
available
to
industry.
Let’s
not
wait.
Let’s
move
fast.’”
AI
was
essential
to
that
speed,
Michael
told
reporters.
“We
used
our
best
minds
[on]
manufacturing,
biotechnology,
[etc.],
had
them
do
the
prompts
…
and
try
to
distill
it
down
to
something
that
they
thought
was
usable.
So
it
had
a
kind
of
machine
and
human
component
to
it.”
In
the
longer
run,
putting
all
the
Pentagon
patents
into
a
single,
searchable
database
is
a
classic
big-government,
big-data
problem.
There
are
thousands
of
files
scattered
across
hundreds
of
organizations
with
no
central
clearinghouse
or
common
standards.
Again,
it
will
take
AI
to
tame
the
chaos.
“You
heard
Hon.
Michael
talking
about
how
all
these
assets
are
all
over
the
place.
They’re
literally
scattered
amongst
the
216
laboratories,”
said
Clara
Asmail,
a
contractor
working
for
Michael’s
office
as
senior
program
manager
for
technology
transitions.
“It’s
very
challenging
to
be
able
to
compile,
department-wide,
all
of
those
assets.
So
that
is
the
crux
of
what
our
office
is
now
engaged
in
doing.”
“That
characterization
cannot
be
done
manually,”
Asmail
told
the
conference.
“Everybody
would
agree
here
the
reason
that
it’s
never
been
done,
but
we
now
finally
have
nascent
AI
tools
that,
if
we
are
careful
and
apply
them
in
a
way
that
we
are
intentional
…
we
can
start
that
processs.”