NIH Patent Legal Services

The Department of Health and Human Services National Institutes of Health awarded four Master IDIQs on April 20, 2020 for patent legal services across biotechnology, chemistry, mechanical engineering, and software technology categories, with a combined ten-year potential value exceeding $520 million. Ordering closed on April 19, 2021, making this vehicle inactive for new task orders.

The vehicle is functionally closed to new awards. The last date to order was April 19, 2021—more than five years ago. While the portfolio shows 691 total task orders and continued spending activity through April 2026, NIH is no longer issuing new orders under these vehicles. The portfolio has obligated $59.3 million of the combined potential value, representing complete obligation of all task-order ceilings that were ultimately issued.

Work contracted spans patent prosecution, filing, and defense across the four designated technology areas. Awarded task orders show granular patent work: preparing and filing provisional, non-provisional, and international (PCT) applications; responding to office actions; conducting conflict-of-interest checks and prior-art searches; and managing national-stage filings in jurisdictions including Europe, Japan, and China. Time-and-materials and firm fixed-price orders typical of the portfolio average roughly $12,000 to $15,000 per delivery order ceiling, though individual orders range from below $5,000 to $87,794 thousand. Duration runs one year or less for most fixed-price work, with some time-and-materials orders extending to two years.

Competition is highly concentrated among two primes. Leydig, Voit & Mayer, LTD. and Klarquist Sparkman, LLP together hold 97% of the combined potential value—$24.9 million and $21.2 million respectively—across 493 orders. Mcdonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff LLP, Polsinelli PC, and Mcbee Moore & Vanik IP, LLC account for the remaining 3%, split across roughly 77 orders. A small tail of nine additional firms holds single-digit orders.

Customer concentration is moderately broad within NIH. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases leads by count with 330 orders ($7.3 million), followed by the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute with 148 orders ($1.7 million) and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences with 73 orders ($1 million). Thirteen distinct federal agencies placed orders, though NIH institutes dominate.

All 691 task orders were awarded on an unrestricted, competitive basis with no set-aside designations.

Pursuant to the Federal Technology Transfer Act (FTTA), the NIH established a significant technology transfer program that includes the management, patenting, and licensing of inventions with commercial potential originating from research conducted at said intramural research programs. The patent-related legal services NIH's needs in pursuing patent protection for some such inventions and may also include ancillary intellectual property related services.