Practical, indexable resource
Award-to-Invention Readiness Checklist
Use these twelve categories to see whether your company can connect its federal awards, technical work, inventions, patent families, reporting records, ownership documents, and upcoming business triggers.
General information only. This checklist is not legal advice. It does not determine whether an invention is a subject invention and does not establish compliance or noncompliance. The funding agreement, facts, agency requirements, and current law control. Do not upload or send records or confidential information through this checklist.
- Award inventory. List each current and relevant historical federal R&D award, recipient, agency, instrument type, award number, performance period, principal investigator, and responsible internal owner.
- Funded scope and modifications. Collect the executed award, statement of work, incorporated patent-rights clause, modifications, current agency instructions, subcontracts, and closeout requirements.
- Invention intake owner. Identify who receives technical disclosures, when written inventor disclosures reach responsible patent personnel, and how potential inventions are escalated.
- Candidate invention list. Maintain a list of inventions and technical developments, contributors, chronology, supporting records, funding questions, disclosure status, and unresolved facts.
- Patent-family map. Connect each application, patent, continuation, divisional, PCT, foreign filing, status, inventor list, assignee, priority claim, and maintenance decision to the relevant technical development.
- Government-support-statement check. Review potentially applicable statements across the patent family without assuming that a statement alone proves or disproves subject-invention status.
- iEdison and reporting record. Reconcile invention reports, elections, patent reports, confirmatory licenses, notices, requests, utilization records, and closeout information with source documents.
- Ownership and assignments. Collect founder, employee, consultant, subcontractor, collaborator, and university agreements; identify missing assignments and state-law or dispute questions requiring other counsel.
- Third-party relationships. Identify STTR research-institution agreements, university policies, consultant and subcontractor terms, background IP, publication rights, data rights, and prosecution responsibility.
- Utilization and commercialization information. Identify responsible factual owners for development status, products, licenses, first commercial use, Phase III activity, manufacturing, and requested utilization facts.
- Upcoming trigger events. Calendar planned filings, publications, closeout, utilization reporting, financing, licensing, acquisition, Phase III, collaboration changes, and changes in counsel or grant personnel.
- Responsible owner and twelve-month calendar. Assign every known next action to a person, source, target date, approval path, backup owner, and escalation or specialist trigger.
Three questions after the checklist
- Which connections are supported by a source?
- Which questions remain unresolved because records or people are missing?
- Which next actions belong to management, technical staff, patent counsel, grant professionals, Cognivito, or another specialist?
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The launch version is an indexable HTML resource with print styles. It does not require an email address, accept uploads, or invite confidential records. A downloadable PDF can be added after Stewart approves the final content.