The government is skeptical around intellectual property rights—and understandably so. The threat of being held hostage by a systems integrator that owns the IP is all too real for some agencies. Consider the Pentagon’s embattled attempt to access F-35 data from Lockheed Martin. What started as a request for technical data turned into a full-fledged rights war over rights to the support software.
The outlook that the government needs to own all IP can stop innovation in its tracks because it often discourages emerging technology companies from venturing into the public sector. When federal opportunities include strong IP ownership claims, tech companies risk losing their competitive edge.
Working directly with government customers at Dcode, I hear over and over that rigid IP assertions cause confusion, dampen relationships, and bar tech companies from the federal market.
Why Government Fights to Own IP
Decades ago, when the government contracted with massive vendors and did not have IP assertions, agencies found themselves at the mercy of the tech companies and often ended up locked in with a single vendor for maintenance and future work. Not only was the government beholden to these contractors, but vendor lock made integration between systems, whose data was owned by competing vendors, nearly impossible, stifling competition.
Vendor lock still poses a risk to the operability of systems in the future. Traditional contractors built legacy systems in code that may never have been updated. Sometimes agencies have attempted to modify code only to discover they do not own the IP rights, and the only company with access is the one that implemented those systems.
Vendor lock has led to countless headaches in government. The understanding of software, IP, and the policy surrounding it did not ..
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