AFRL Tech Portfolio

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Frank Born

Mr Born founded the CAESAR Group along with Dr Kevin Kwiat to facilitate the transfer of Air Force technology to the commercial sector. Prior to this he was a research scientist at the Air Force Research Laboratory in Rome NY. Mr Born has degrees in both Physics and Mechanical Engineering.

Latest posts by Frank Born (see all)

• Patenting Survey - February 24, 2020
• Tech Transfer in an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem - June 12, 2019
• AFRL Tech Portfolio - October 10, 2018

The US government has mandated that taxpayer funded technology be made available to commercialization purposes to the maximum extent possible. The problem is that companies and entrepreneurs wishing to capitalize on AFRL developed technology have no way of knowing what is available. For this reason the Caesar Group has started building the AFRL Tech Portfolio that is available on this web site. First and foremost are the patents that are assigned to the US Air Force. These have the clearest path to licensing of all the funded technology at AFRL. During the month of Sept we made nearly all the patents issued to AFRL since 2001 available in the Tech Portfolio. (https://www.caesargroup.org/afrl-tech-portfolio/) This effort involved grouping together like patents, making them more readable to the common man, and attempting to identify potential markets for these technologies as commercial products.

  We hope to continue to expand the Tech Portfolio by including Government sponsored research that was conducted by AFRL’s research contractors. This actually represents a HUGE amount of potential licensable technology compared to what is available in AFRL patents. In many cases the contractor is able to patent the technology themselves even if it is developed with government funding. Also, the contractors have the commercialization rights for the tech, not the government. An additional benefit of contractor developed tech is that it is often accompanied by software. While the license will need to be negotiated with the AFRL research contractor this should rarely present a problem since they have the same interests as AFRL – to see their tech used in the commercial world.