DoD Updates Data Rights Regulations for SBIR/STTR Programs

As of January 17, 2025, the Department of Defense’s data rights regulations and contract clauses look a little different, yet substantively very little has changed. The update is to formally incorporate changes the Small Business Administration made to its Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs in 2019. Previously, SBIR/STTR contractors could assert restrictions on the Government’s rights in SBIR/STTR data until five years after the final deliverable was submitted on the final contract for the relevant SBIR/STTR project – an SBIR/STTR protection period that could run indefinitely, as long as the contractor continued to win Phase III awards. Following SBA’s 2019 policy change, that protection period runs a fixed 20 years from the award of the specific SBIR/STTR contract under which data were developed or generated.

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