SBIR and STTR data you deliver is protected for a defined period, during which the government's ability to disclose it outside the government or use it to have your work reproduced is restricted. When that period ends, those restrictions fall away. Knowing roughly when your window closes is a business planning question, not a paperwork question.
What the period does while it runs
During the protection period the government may use your delivered data for its own purposes but is limited in releasing it outside the government or using it to procure the same item from another source. In practice this is what keeps a delivered design package from becoming a competitor's starting point while you are still trying to commercialize. It applies to the data — reports, drawings, specifications, software, test results — not to your ownership, which the award does not touch, and not to your patents, which run on their own separate clock.
Why this article does not give you a number
Because a number here would be unreliable. The length of the SBIR data protection period, the event it starts running from, and the rules for extending or restarting it when the same data is used in a follow-on award have all been revised over the years, and agencies have implemented those revisions on their own timelines. An award signed several years ago and one signed today may carry different terms, and a defense contract may carry a different clause from a civilian grant. Anyone who quotes you a confident figure without asking which agency and which award year is guessing.
The reliable procedure is short. Find the data rights clause incorporated into your award document, read the period it states, note what event starts it, and check the current SBIR Policy Directive for the framework your agency is operating under. If the two seem to disagree, ask your contracting officer in writing. Then put the end date in the same calendar as your reporting and milestone obligations, because it is the kind of deadline nobody notices passing.
What happens when it lapses
When the period ends, the government's rights in that data generally broaden — it can use and disclose the data more freely, including outside the government. You still own the technology. What you lose is the practical shield that kept the delivered package out of wider circulation. Two things survive the lapse and are worth having in place before it arrives: issued patents, which protect the invention regardless of who has read the report, and material you never delivered at all, held as a properly maintained trade secret. Deciding early which know-how goes into a deliverable and which stays out is the most useful lever you have, and it belongs in your overall IP strategy rather than in a last-minute conversation with an editor formatting the final report. The ownership picture is unchanged throughout.
This is general information, not legal advice. The period in your award governs, and questions about it belong with counsel experienced in federal contracting.
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