If you invent something under a federal award, you have to tell the agency — and there is a deadline. iEdison is the interagency reporting system most federal agencies use for that purpose, and the consequence of ignoring it is not a fine. It is that the government can take title to the invention you were planning to build a company around.
What has to be reported
The reportable item is a subject invention: any invention conceived or first actually reduced to practice in the performance of the award. That is broader than founders expect. It is not limited to what you named in the proposal, it includes improvements discovered along the way, and it can include work by a subcontractor or, on an STTR, by your research institution partner. It does not depend on whether you intend to patent it — the disclosure obligation attaches to the invention, not to your filing decision. Once reported, further events get reported too: your election of title, your patent filing, issuance, and periodic utilization reporting on what you have done to commercialize.
How the deadlines work
Think of three clocks rather than three dates. The first starts when the invention is disclosed internally to whoever in your company handles patent matters; the agency disclosure is due a short time after that, measured in months. The second is election of title, due within a longer window after your disclosure to the agency. The third is your patent filing, which has its own deadline and also has to respect the ordinary bars created by public disclosure — a conference talk or a published paper can close doors independently of anything the agency requires. The exact periods have been revised over time and can differ by agency, so read the terms in your own award and confirm which portal your agency uses; iEdison's administration has moved between agencies, and a few agencies collect this information their own way.
Missing a deadline is expensive
The statutory remedy for late or missing disclosure is that the agency may request and receive title to the invention. Agencies have discretion, late disclosures are sometimes accepted, and there are procedures for asking — but you are then negotiating from a weak position over an asset you assumed was yours. This is also the reason to coordinate reporting with your patent counsel rather than treating it as an administrative task. If you are working out when to file, do it against the reporting clock, and pick an attorney who has handled federally funded inventions before.
Build the habit internally
The failure mode is almost never bad faith. It is an engineer solving a problem elegantly on a Tuesday and nobody recognizing that it was an invention until months later. Fix it with a small standing routine: one named person responsible for invention reporting, a one-page disclosure form anyone can fill out in ten minutes, and a standing question at every project review — did anything this month look novel? Fold it into your existing award reporting rhythm and it costs nothing. See also the broader question of who owns IP from a federal grant.
This is general information, not legal advice. Reporting obligations vary by agency and award, and specific questions belong with counsel experienced in federal contracting.
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