NIH Patent Legal Services

Pursuant to the Federal Technology Transfer Act (FTTA), the NIH established a significant technology transfer program that includes the management, patenting, and licensing of inventions with commercial potential originating from research conducted at said intramural research programs. The patent-related legal services NIH's needs in pursuing patent protection for some such inventions and may also include ancillary intellectual property related services. Generally and as applicable to the proposed contract, NIH's day-to-day technology transfer operations are divided into nine (9) centers housed within the National Cancer Institute; National Center for Advancing Transitional Science; National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute; National Human Genome Research Institute; National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research; National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases; National Institute of Mental Health, and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. The current nine centers conduct technology transfer operations for the Institute or Center which houses them as well as acting as service centers for other NIH Institutes or Centers that do not have in-house technology transfer operations.
NIH expects to file about 200-300 patent applications each year. NIH's current active patent prosecution docket is more than two thousand and five hundred (2,500) cases. Inventions for which NIH seeks patent protection are generally biological or medical in nature.