Limitations of the Federal Bio-Technology Transfer Directory

The utility and relevance of technologies are often broadly interpreted, often more broadly than official claims, to assist with retrieval and idenfication of potentially relevant entries. In many cases, certain presumptions are made, e.g., an invention describing a viral antigen is likely to be interpreted as useful for production of antibodies, vaccines and/or immunodiagnostics.

Users with serious interest in federal inventions and collaborations should keep in mind that there are a number of other information resources and databases which may provide additional and more current information. Commercial (copyright protected) patent and other databases were not used in developing this Directory. Use of these is recommended and will likely provide additional and complementary information. Additional information resources are provided at the Links to Other Sites page.

The Federal Bio-Technology Transfer Directory is a cumulation of information from many sources. In some cases, this may result in presentation of misleading or erroneous information reported by federal agencies/laboratories or other sources. Also, some errors on the part of the authors are inevitable. Much of the information provided by federal agencies/labs is of poor quality and the authors have done their best to interpret this information.

In many cases, particularly patent applications and CRADAs where federal agencies/labs are the only sources and only minimal information (e.g., titles and numbers) has been disclosed, certain presumptions or educated guesses are made. These are usually indicated by the use of "apparently" or other qualifiers.

Federal agencies/laboratories, including PHS/NIH, generally report licenses granted in terms of the first (priority filing) or a series of patent applications packaged into a single license granted to a company [rather than explicitly identifying the relevant issued patent(s) and/or the actively pending application(s)]. In many cases it was necessary to follow a trail of related applications and patents or use other information to determine or make educated guesses regarding what current patent properties are presumed to be included in a license package.