PATENT POLICY 225 



those where it had been necessary for OSRD to contract with an academic 

 institution to build up a special staff for work in a field in which there was 

 no existing composite group of specialists, e.g., radar, rockets and anti- 

 submarine devices. The long form was standard where the contractor had 

 an established position or an existing fund of knowledge upon which OSRD 

 wished him to build for the development of specialized equipment or in- 

 struments. 



OSRD adhered closely to the two standard forms of patent clause as 

 being adequate to meet all situations. Many industrial contractors were 

 originally reluctant to accept the long form without change; it seemed that 

 patent counsel for nearly every firm wanted to modify the language to 

 conform to his favorite modes of expression. Many of the suggestions can- 

 celled each other out, although this was not very helpful as the suggestions 

 originated with different counsel and were presented by different con- 

 tractors. Believing that uniformity of language was essential if the possibili- 

 ties of later misconstruction of intent were to be minimized, OSRD permit- 

 ted few variations from the standard clause. 



The permitted variations were largely by way of additions to the stand- 

 ard clause. Thus in a few cases a clause was added to assure the contractor 

 that the Government would hold him harmless under the provisions of 

 the Act of June 25, 191 0, for infringement of any patents involving equip- 

 ment used under the contract. In a few other cases the subject work was 

 more accurately stated in the patent clause than in Article i of the con- 

 tract, i.e., certain aspects of a problem not intended to be worked upon, 

 but capable of inclusion by a broad construction of Article i, were specifi- 

 cally excluded in the patent clause. In another group of contracts the 

 interpretation OSRD gave to the long form was spelled out in slightly 

 different terms upon the insistence of the contractor; these included such 

 points as that the applicability of the license to "processes" was coextensive 

 with the license covering "materials," and a refinement of the obligation 

 to grant licenses under prior developed inventions. 



The short form clause was used by OSRD in 780 contracts involving 

 $338,911,644.92 and the long form in 1410 contracts under which $165,- 

 675,748.52 was obligated. The distribution is given in further detail in 

 Bush's testimony contained in Hearings on Science Legislation (5. 7297 

 and Related Bills), 79th Congress, First Session, Volume 5, pp. 1118-1121. 



An entirely different patent clause was used in a group of contracts di- 

 rected toward the synthesis of penicillin or a therapeutic equivalent thereof. 

 The commercial organizations most concerned had been carrying on re- 

 search in the field at their own expense for some time and they desired to 

 continue at their own expense. Some of them had already discovered valuable 

 information although mostly not of a patentable nature. OSRD's primary 

 interest was to work out a procedure whereby the synthesis of peni- 



