Early Assessment of Air Force Efforts to Ensure Contractor Relinquishment (Within Five Years) of Proprietary Data Rights as a Method for Improving Future Spare Parts Acquisitions

摘要

This thesis investigated the effect of Secretary of the Air Force Vern Orr's direction to use a contract clause limiting a manufacturer's rights in proprietary data to five years or less from the date of manufacture of the first production unit of weapon system. The Orr clause represented an abrupt shift in policy relating to a contractor's ability to restrict the government's releasing of proprietary information to a third party and how long the restrictions would last. The clause was written in broad terms and is viewed by private industry as an attempt by the government to siphon off the contractor's rights to data developed at private expense - including trade secrets. There is no guarantee that sole-source spare parts contracts will be replaced by contracts obtained through competition, even if the government has unlimited rights to all the data the original contractor used to make the item. Even with relatively simple items, there still remain possible aspects of blueprints and assembly instructions that are open to interpretation. As a result, there remains the possibility that the end product will not work as intended, or, even worse, not work at all.