Economic Report of the President 1994 - The American Presidency ...

ico and Lawrence Livermore in California), offer a repository ofvast technical expertise that can be leveraged to enhance the competitiveperformance of American industry. As part of its plan toalter the balance between military and civilian objectives in theFederal R&D budget, the Administration has authorized the weaponslabs to redirect at least 10 to 20 percent of their defense programbudgets to commercial technology-transfer activities with industry.The Department of Energy's 31 laboratories, which employover 23,000 scientists and engineers and perform $6 billion in civilianand military research annually, already have in place over 650cooperative research and development agreements (CRADAs) withprivate firms, totaling $1.4 billion in combined public and privatefunds. CRADAs are also used to structure public-private partnershipsinvolving laboratories at NIST and the Department of Defense.A similar program is in place at NASA.Using CRADAs, Federal laboratories have already begun orstrengthened jointly financed collaborations with companies and industryconsortia in a number of research and productionprototyping projects. These have covered semiconductor productionequipment, flat panel display technology, new technologies for textilemanufacturing, the investigation of new polymer blends,biosensors, new aerospace alloys, and microscopic-sized machinesknown as microelectromechanical systems. These partnerships maybegin a longer term process of redirecting the defense-oriented labs'missions toward civilian needs—ranging from the development ofenergy-efficient and environmentally sustainable industries to theinvention of new medical, manufacturing, and transportation technologies—whileutilizing the labs' expertise in such fields as highperformancecomputing, communications, and new materials.Collaboration in Research and Development. Competition promotesR&D, but collaboration can also promote both research andthe effective commercialization of research results. When firmshave complementary skills or information, an R&D joint ventureamong them may speed the development and commercial adoptionof a new technology. And when firms have similar skills or information,an R&D joint venture may avoid costly duplication of effort.Yet allowing collaboration in R&D risks facilitating undesirablecooperation in the firms' other activities. For example, it maymake it easier to engage in price fixing or other anticompetitivepractices in the sale of the products manufactured by the firms collaboratingon research. This risk is small if collaboration is limitedto early-phase R&D, however.The Congress balanced these concerns in 1984 when it passedlegislation guaranteeing that collaborative research would violatethe antitrust laws only if the collaboration were found unreasonable.That legislation also provided that research joint ventures196