Comment Re: Anyone can sue... (Score 1) 137
Contracts, or portions of contracts that license existing IP for government use do not typically gain any rights whatsoever to the products beyond those normally granted by law or license. The case you reference has little, if anything, to do with the typical weapon system acquisition process.
I work in this area. It would help you if you actually read the FAR that you're citing, since it says the exact opposite of what you claim.
The standard license rights that a licensor grants to the Government are unlimited rights, government purpose rights, or limited rights. Those rights are defined in the clause at 252.227-7013 , Rights in Technical Dataâ"Other Than Commercial Products and Commercial Services. In unusual situations, the standard rights may not satisfy the Government's needs or the Government may be willing to accept lesser rights in data in return for other consideration. In those cases, a special license may be negotiated. However, the licensor is not obligated to provide the Government greater rights and the contracting officer is not required to accept lesser rights than the rights provided in the standard grant of license. The situations under which a particular grant of license applies are enumerated in paragraphs (a) through (d) of this section.
A license is a right to exploit (make, have made, sell, offer to sell, import, reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute, publicly display and/or perform, and/or generally use, depending upon the IP and the transaction).
What it is not is an assignment of ownership of the IP. The private entity developing the IP retains ownership of the IP and can exploit it itself for commercial purposes, excepting ITAR issues and other technology restrictions that would apply to similar technologies generally.
The original claim was "the government owns most it (sic) not all of its IP in its supply chain." That's false. It has a license to it, and rarely anything more.