230 ORGANIZING SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH FOR WAR 



had come to the attention of the officers in charge of the various groups, 

 and at the next meeting of the GRPP a determination was made as to the 

 scope of the invention to be covered in the apphcations to be filed by 

 the War and Navy Departments. As the volume of new cases increased, 

 the War and Navy Departments established patent sections in Cambridge, 

 where they could work closely with the Radiation Laboratory and the 

 Radio Research Laboratory. As of January i, 1946, 2600 Exchange Sheets 

 had been submitted to the GRPP, 603 being the subject of applications for 

 patent filed in the Patent Office. 



The Atomic Energy Patent Program 



When the program on atomic fission was taken over by NDRC in 1940, 

 the initial contracts were executed with organizations which already had 

 done work in that field or related fields. The program started on a small 

 scale, and the chances of success in terms of weapons (which was the NDRC 

 interest) were considered relatively modest. The early NDRC and OSRD 

 contracts in the field of atomic fission contained the long form patent 

 clause under which the contractors would receive titles to patents and the 

 Government would receive a royalty-free license. As the project grew, as 

 the contracts began to produce successful results, and as the tremendous 

 possibilities of those successful results extending far beyond the field of 

 military weapons began to take shape. Bush communicated the results of 

 the combined efforts to President Roosevelt, who fully grasped the sig- 

 nificance of the project and the results of its solution. The President decided 

 that Government control should, at least initially, be exercised through the 

 handling of patent rights, and he directed Bush to arrange as far as pos- 

 sible for the vesting in the Government of the title to patents on inventions 

 and discoveries made on the project. 



Because of the unusual public interest involved, all the OSRD contractors 

 in the field of atomic fission agreed to accept a change to the short form 

 patent clause covering all research and development work in the field un- 

 der OSRD contracts, and to make that change retroactive to the beginning 

 of work under those contracts. It was agreed that no monetary considera- 

 tion would be given by the Government for the patent rights that already 

 had been vested in the contractors through operation of the original pro- 

 vision, but instead that the necessary legal consideration would be supplied 

 by the signing of supplemental agreements to continue the work, as each of 

 the contracts involved required renewal. The process of supplementing and 

 amending the contracts case by case took a few months, but all necessary 

 contract amendments were executed well before the OSRD research and 

 development contracts were terminated and the project transferred to the 



