Primer - Understanding Intellectual Property/Data Rights in DoD Contracting
Protecting Intellectual Property While Enabling Government Collaboration
*Please consult with an Attorney or contracting professional before taking any action.
What Are Data Rights?
Why Data Rights Impact Your IP
When you show up to a DoD contract with your own capability—something that’s been privately developed—you’re risking dilution of your IP position if you don’t assert rights clearly and early. This isn’t just about legal posture. If you let GPR or Unlimited Rights bleed into your core tech, you’re giving competitors a leg up—sometimes with your own material. And you’ll have no recourse because you didn’t draw the line up front.
Example: Government Requests GPR for Integrated System
You’ve built a next-gen RF processing module in-house. Call it SpectraCore. It’s not government-funded, not co-developed, and not part of any deliverable priced into the contract. But now you’re integrating it into a larger JADC2 package that is funded by the government.
They come back and say they want Government Purpose Rights on the full stack. Not just the wrapper. Not just the integration code. Everything—including SpectraCore.
You hold the line: “You get GPR on the shell and anything we write to stitch SpectraCore into your environment. But SpectraCore itself is ours. You get a license to operate it in this program, but you don’t get reuse rights, and you don’t get disclosure authority.”
That’s the right call.
How You Protect Your IP
1. Assert Early –Don’t assume the government knows or cares—they don’t.
2. Segregate the Work – Keep what’s new separate from what’s existing. Tag versions. Document milestones.
3. Define the Scope – GPR on wrappers or glue code is fine. But not on core tech.
4. License, Don’t Surrender – Scope the license to the program. Don’t assign rights unless paid to do so.
Summary Table
Bottom Line
This isn’t about saying no to the government—it’s about making sure the value you bring isn’t given away for free. You can be a partner, you can be interoperable, and you can deliver capability at speed—but you have to protect what’s yours.
Data rights aren’t boilerplate—they’re terrain. If you don’t fight to hold it, you’ll lose ground without even noticing. So draw the lines early, mark your positions clearly, and never give up rights you didn’t get paid for.
Data rights are about control. In a DoD contract, when you deliver technical data or software, you’re also defining how much leash the government gets to run with that material. If you're not deliberate, you’ll find your proprietary edge eroded by boilerplate assumptions.
There are three buckets to be aware of:
• Unlimited Rights – This is the government’s ideal state. They can use, modify, and share the data however they want, with anyone they want, forever. If something is fully funded by the government—meaning your IRAD or IP didn’t touch it—this is generally what you’re handing over.
• Government Purpose Rights (GPR) – This is the middle ground. The government can use the data internally or give it to other contractors, but only for government work—not for commercial use. It’s typically a five-year window, after which it converts to Unlimited unless you’ve locked down renewals or carve-outs. GPR applies when development is co-funded—some of your dollars, some of theirs.
• Limited Rights – This is where you want to be if you’re protecting your proprietary tech. It locks government use to internal purposes only and bars them from disclosing it without your permission. This applies when you’ve done all the work with internal resources and you’re integrating it into something broader without giving up the crown jewels.
