Procedures for the Evaluation of Energy-related Inventions; Removal of Regulations

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is terminating the current NIST program which evaluated inventions as a service to the Department of Energy's (DOE) Energy-Related Inventions Program (ERIP). During the twenty-plus years of the evaluation program's existence, NIST transmitted recommendations based on its evaluations to the Department of Energy, which used the recommendations in its decision-making for DOE's award of grants to inventors and small businesses for further development of the NIST-recommended inventions. The Department of Energy will continue the Energy Related Inventions Program with a newly designed evaluation process consistent with a competitive procurement. The DOE has renamed ERIP as part of the DOE-operated Inventions and Innovation Program. DOE will issue a solicitation for proposals to be evaluated by DOE under the new program, beginning on May 1, 1998. Since DOE will now process evaluations through a competitive procurement and since evaluations made by NIST under 15 CFR part 270 will no longer be used in the award selection process, there is no function for the NIST Energy-Related Invention Evaluation Program to perform, and the NIST evaluation program is being terminated.