3015.175—Intangible personal property.
(a) Inventions and Patents.
(1)
If the recipient is a small business or nonprofit organization (including universities and other institutions of higher education), the allocation of rights in inventions produced under a grant or cooperative agreement shall be determined in accordance with the provisions of sections 200 through 206 of Pub. L. 96-517 (35 U.S.C. 200-206) and OMB Circular A-124.
(2)
For all other recipients, the allocation of rights in inventions shall be determined in accordance with the “Government Patent Policy” (President's Memorandum for Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies, February 18, 1983) and OMB Circular A-124.
(b) Copyrights—
(1) Applicability.
This section applies to the copyright in any original work of authorship prepared with grant support. Additionally, if ownership of a copyright or of any of the exclusive rights comprising a copyright are purchased with grant support, this section applies to the purchased copyright or rights.
(2) Basic rules.
(i)
USDA reserves a royalty-free, nonexclusive, and irrevocable license to exercise, and to authorize others to exercise, the rights for Federal Government purposes. Subject to this license, the owner is free to exercise, preserve, or transfer all its rights. The recipient shall ensure that no agreement is entered into for transferring the rights which would conflict with the nonexclusive license of USDA.
(ii)
One way that USDA may exercise its nonexclusive license is to authorize exercise of the rights in another project or activity that receives or has received grant support from the Federal Government.
(iii)
A recipient awarding a subgrant is allowed to impose subgrant terms reserving a nonexclusive license for itself, similar to the one reserved by this section for USDA, with respect to any copyright or rights subject to this section that arise under the subgrant.