System Name: Invention Reports Submitted to the Department of Health and Human Services by Its Employees, Grantees, Fellowship Recipients, and Contractors. HHS/OS/OGC.
Security Classification: None.
System Location(s): Office of the General Counsel, Patent Branch, Westwood Building – Room 5A03, 5333 Westbard Avenue, Bethesda, Maryland 20016.
Categories of Individuals Covered by the System: Department employees, investigators funded under HHS research grants, fellowship awardees, investigators funded under HHS research contracts.
Categories of Records in the System: Invention reports.
Authority for Maintenance of the System: 45 CFR Parts 6, 7, and 8, E.O. 10096.
Purpose(s): To maintain the information and patent records for the entire Department.
Routine Uses of Records Maintained in the System, Including Categories of Users and the Purposes of such Uses:
(1) Department of Justice Claims Section for purpose of defending the Government in litigation.
(2) Scientific personnel, both in this agency, and other Government agencies, and in non-Governmental organizations such as Universities, who possess the expertise to understand the invention and evaluate its importance as a scientific advance.
(3) Contract patent counsel and their employees and foreign contract personnel retained by the Department for patent searching and prosecution in both the United States and foreign Patent Offices.
(4) All other Government agencies whom we contact regarding possible use, interest in, or ownership rights in our inventions.
(5) Prospective licensees or technology finders who may further make the invention available to the public through sale, use or publication.
(6) Parties, such as supervisors of inventors, whom we contact to determine ownership rights, and those parties contacting us to determine the Government's ownership.
(7) The United States and foreign Patent Offices for our filing of patent applications. Disclosure may be made to a congressional office from the record of an individual in response to an inquiry from the congressional office made at the request of that individual.
(8) In the event of litigation where the defendant is (a) the Department, any component of the Department, or any employee of the Department in his or her official capacity; (b) the United States where the Department determines that the claim, if successful, if likely to directly affect the operations of the Department or any of its components; or (c) any Department employee in his or her individual capacity where the Justice Department has agreed to represent such employee, the Department may disclose such records as it deems desirable or necessary to the Department of Justice to enable that Department to present an effective defense, provided such disclosure is compatible with the purpose for which the records were collected.
(9) Records may be disclosed to student volunteers, individuals working under a personal services contract, and other individuals performing functions for the Department but technically not having the status of agency employees, if they need access to the records in order to perform their assigned agency functions.
Policies and Practices for Storing, Retrieving, Accessing, Retaining, and Disposing of Records in the System—
Storage: These records are kept in individual file folders.
Retrievability: Indexed by both inventor's name and case identification number.
Safeguards: During normal business hours a member of the staff of the Patent Section regulates the availability of the files. During evening and weekend hours, the building is closed, with a guard at the front entrance, and only personnel authorized to be in the building are permitted entry.
Retention and Disposal: The records are maintained here for the life of any patent issued (seventeen years), for seven years for any invention which is not patented, and they are sent to the Federal Records Center for retention when they are no longer required here.
System Manager(s) and Address(es): Patent Counsel, Department of Health and Human Services, Westwood Building –Room 5A03, 5333 Westbard Avenue, Bethesda, Maryland 20016.
Notification Procedure: An individual is required to provide his own name together with that of any other individual who contributed to the making of an invention, on which the system contains a record. Any inquiries regarding these systems of records should be addressed to the System Manager.
Record Access Procedures: Same as notification procedures. Requesters should also reasonably specify the record contents being sought. (These access procedures are in accordance with Department Regulations (45 CFR 5b.5(a)(2)) Federal Register, October 8, 1975, page 47410.)
Contesting Record Procedures: Contact the official at the address specified under System Manager(s) and Address above, and reasonably identify the record and specify the information to be contested and corrective action sought with supporting justification. (These procedures are in accordance with Department Regulations (45 CFR 5b.5(a)(2)) Federal Register, October 8, 1975, page 47411.)
Record Source Categories: The information comes from the inventors, their supervisors, other scientists with expertise in the particular area of the invention, scientific publications, newspapers, contract patent counsel who have searched and/or prosecuted the invention, and commercial organizations.
System Exempted from Certain Provisions of the Act: None.