Changes Proposed to Improve ATP

Royalty payback requirements and expanding roles for universities are among the changes outlined by the U.S. Department of Commerce in The Advanced Technology Program: Reform with a Purpose. With goals of improving the Advanced Technology Program (ATP) and providing "stability" — making the program more palatable to its perennial Congressional detractors — the Department of Commerce has identified six structural changes within ATP.



Since its first competition in 1990, ATP has provided $1.8 billion in funding for more than 580 projects supporting early-stage, high-risk research. For much of its history and despite several independent evaluations, the program has seen protracted appropriations battles with the House of Representatives. Even the President's FY 2002 budget request, the first submitted by the Bush Administration, proposed a funding hiatus for ATP while the program was reviewed. (Congress appropriated $185 million for ATP in FY 2002.)



While giving a nod to ATP critics, the high-profile release of Reform with a Purpose by Commerce Secretary Don Evans and National Institute of Standards and Technology Director Dr. Arden Bement reveals the department's desire to put the ATP controversy behind it. Further reflection of this desire is the President's FY 2003 budget request of $107.9 million for the program. Nearly one-third of the request, $35 million, would be available for new awards.



The specific reforms are:

• Allowing universities to lead ATP joint ventures.
• Allowing universities to negotiate with joint venture partners over the rights to hold the intellectual property that results from research.
• Limit large companies' participation in ATP to joint ventures.
• Reinvest a percentage of revenues derived from awards back into ATP to fund additional high-risk research and help stabilize the program. To accomplish this, ATP-funded companies that achieve successful commercialization would pay an annual royalty to the government of 5 percent, up to 500 percent of the amount of the original award.
• Modify ATP project management activities and selection criteria to ensure that the program does not fund product development and marketing.
• Determine, when appropriate, whether additional private-sector, non-proprietary input would improve the ability of ATP's selection boards to assess funding requests. "Although ATP uses a competitive peer-review process in selecting research projects for funding, its selection panels sometimes consider funding requests without complete information on planned or ongoing private-industry research in the technological areas under consideration."

The full report is available on the ATP website at: http://www.atp.nist.gov/atp/secy_rept/evans_rpt.htm