A Study of the Legal Scheme for Technology Cooperation between Government libraries and Private Industry-Comparison between the CRADA system in the Stevenson-Wydler Act and Taiwan's Science and Technology Basic Act

96

In 1986, the Congress of the United States passed the Federal Technology Transfer Act to amend the original Stevenson-Wydler Technology Innovation Act of 1980, and creates the “Cooperative Research and Development Agreements” (CRADA). Under the CRADA system, the federal laboratories provide equipment and/or personnel, while the cooperating contractors provide fund to jointly develop certain technology. After the adoption of CRADA, the cooperation between federal lab and private industries become more interactive, and many successful cases have been made. In contrast to the Bayh-Dole Act model, under which the government provides fund for universities and private industries, under the CRADA model, the government (federal labs) provides equipment, place, and/or personnel, instead of fund for the contractors. Consequently, the ownership of the intellectual property rights in relation to the research results under the two systems shall be different as well. Taiwan, mimics the system of the United States and passed the Science and Technology Basic Act in 1990. Nonetheless, under the Science and Technology Basic Act, there is only the “Bayh-Dole Act system” but no CRADA system. This article introduces the CRADA and the model CRADA contract promulgated by the US Department of Energy, and argues that Taiwan needs to amend the Science and Technology Basic Act to adopt the CRADA system as well.