Easy Contract Management

Doing Business With The Government Using Contracts Software

If you are an organization which wishes to supply government contracts software there are certain regulations that you need to know about in regard to what rights you have and the government have in regard to retention of the product that you provide to them.

All businesses that work in partnership with any Government agency is governed by the FAR (Federal Acquisition Regulations). However in this article we will be looking more closely at Section 27 of these Regulations in relation to intellectual property, which includes any kind of software programs that a business provides to them.

Generally when it comes to supplying software to any Government agency a business will come under two categories where the Government has either unlimited or restricted rights.

When it comes to unlimited rights this means that the agency to whom the contracts software was supplied has the right to not just use but also to disclose, reproduce as well as prepare derivatives of these documents and also distribute copies of them to the public if they so wish. Plus it can also display the material that it produces using this software in any manner that they want or for any purpose that they want.

However any supplier will still retain certain rights to the data that they have supplied even if the Government agency in question has unlimited rights to it. In fact the rights that the software developer has are in fact the same as those that the agency have obtained. But they do not have any right to make derivative versions of the software that they have produced.

Only will a Government agency be provided with restricted rights to any kind of Government Contract software if it has been developed by a company with no investment from the agency in question. Plus if at any time should any changes be made to the software program in question then the agency will have restricted rights to these also. But what this also means is that the agency in question who has been supplied with this software program can no either use or reproduce the software elsewhere. Nor may it be disclosed to sources that are outside the Government agency parameters. However such software programs may be used or copied for use on computers which it was acquired for. Plus it may also be used and copied on to those computers which are to act as a backup should any of the other computers within the agency and its department fail.