Inventors earn portrait of Ulysses S. Grant

Starting this week, Laboratory inventors who file record of invention (ROI) applications will gain a reward — a $50 check from the Industrial Partnerships Office (IPO).

The $50 check, or "fast fifty," will be issued quarterly for the inventors on each approved ROI, and will be in addition to the 35 percent share of royalty income for licensed technologies to which Lab inventors are entitled under Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC policy.

For the past decade, Lab inventors and innovators have annually turned in about 160 ROIs. However, last year new ROIs fell to just 111 — and this year's pace isn't any better.

"The 'fast fifty,' " according to IPO Director Erik Stenehjem, "is an incentive to encourage our scientists and engineers to return to their old habits. In reality, the IPO also hopes that its own little 'stimulus' package will result in a significantly larger number of ROIs and keep LLNL competitive with other Department of Energy (DOE) laboratories."

In conversations with directorates in March, Stenehjem, Jan Tulk of the Office of Laboratory Counsel and John Lee of the Intellectual Property Law Group pointed to changes in the patenting and licensing systems that have occurred in the last 18 months.

"Today, we have drastically reduced the backlog of older ROIs and installed a new vetting system to judge ideas solely on the basis of their patentability and marketability," Stenehjem said.

"Considerations of parity across organizations do not apply. We're searching for the best ideas with the highest probability of being patented and disrupting markets," Stenehjem added.

The award of a patent is a measure of the achievements of Livermore's scientists and engineers and of the Laboratory itself. The number and quality of LLNL patents is a metric used by others to evaluate LLNL's capabilities and to decide whether to engage with the Lab in research programs. Those patents, which have the effect of creating commercial monopolies, prove their value in the marketplace, Stenehjem said.

In the 2008 fiscal year, LLNL garnered $9.4 million in royalties, one of the highest amounts of royalty income ever achieved by a DOE national laboratory.

The problem, in Stenehjem's view, is that the Laboratory's high level of royalty income is not sustainable in the long term without new ideas and ROIs. Although the Lab has worked hard to speed up the vetting process and generated new resources to support patenting, if the ideas stop coming in, the Lab can expect to see a decline in patents, prestige and market impact in the years ahead.

Patenting and licensing is performed to serve the nation, the Laboratory and its inventors, Stenehjem said.  The "value" of that service is measured by the amount that commercial and industrial firms have been willing to pay for the rights to make, use or sell the ideas emanating from Livermore. That value is shared by the Laboratory and the inventors who created it through royalty distributions.

Another consideration is that in recent years, royalties have become an increasingly relied upon source for funding strategic Laboratory initiatives.

Lab royalty income has provided $1.5 million for funding efforts to develop a compact proton therapy system to treat cancer patients and $1 million to study the Laser Inertial Fusion-Fission Energy, or LIFE program, an advanced energy concept that would burn nuclear waste for its fuel.

This year, royalty funds also will be used to support the institution's five-year science and technology plan.