[nvrspyx]

IANAL, but it appears the default is the former.

> Licenses to practice inventions covered by patents and pending patent applications owned by the U.S. Government as represented by this Department will generally be royalty free, revocable and nonexclusive. They will normally be issued to all applicants and will generally contain no limitations or standards relating to the quality or testing of the products to be manufactured, sold, or distributed thereunder.

But...

> Where it appears however that the public interest will be served under the circumstances of the particular case by licenses which impose conditions, such as those relating to quality or testing of products, requirement of payment of royalties to the Government, etc., or by the issuance of limited exclusive licenses by the Secretary after notice and opportunity for hearing thereon, such licenses may be issued.

In other words, if it would be in the public interest to impose royalties, exclusivity, or conditions of use, the Government can do so. In this case since it's a high energy density battery, I suppose an argument could easily be made that it would be in the public interest for the government to impose conditions related to quality and testing.

Source: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-34/subtitle-A/part-6/sect...

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EDIT: With all of that said, it appears that patents related to this project, such as [1], have UChicago Argonne LLC as the applicant and not a US government agency, so the above might not even be applicable in this case. But, again, IANAL.

1: https://image-ppubs.uspto.gov/dirsearch-public/print/downloa...

[londons_explore]

Those kind of rules infuriate me... Some politicians friend will manage to argue that it's in the public interest to grant an exclusive license in return for commercializing the tech. They would argue that without being granted exclusivity, nobody will commercialize it. Then one company gets to reap all the profits of government work.

[nvrspyx]

I'm a little late in responding, but I want to correct my previous comment. It appears that I linked and quoted a section from a title specific to the Department of Education. Instead, [1] applies to all federal agencies. It appears that it's up to individual agencies to determine when it's appropriate to grant exclusivity, so the rules may vary between Departments and their agencies.

With that said, any exclusive license, including prospective exclusive licenses, must be published in the Federal Register. So, any exclusive licensing should be available to the public. Additionally, the agency has to give first preference to small business applicants. However, this only applies if the small business capable and have "equal or greater likelihood as those from other applicants to bring the invention to practical application within a reasonable time", both of which are at the federal agency's discretion.

I think your concern is still valid, as I share it. I just wanted to correct the misinformation I presented previously. It still appears that the "default" licensing of Government-owned patents is to be royalty-free and non-exclusive, but what I didn't previously consider is that is only the default if they choose to license it. They could just as easily not license it at all.

1: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-37/chapter-IV/part-404