Pricing the Sale of Proprietary Software

fieds32--

Your question is difficult to answer because it's not worded so clearly as one might wish. For example, the title refers to "proprietary software" but the post states that the issue is "limited rights technical data." Which is it?

Intellectual property comes in different flavors. Have your reviewed this ancient (yet still helpful) DOD document --

http://www.acq.osd.m...s/intelprop.pdf

Finally, you seem to some difficulty differentiating between "cost or pricing data" which has a specific FAR definition (found in FAR 2.101), and the estimating methodology used to arrive at a proposed sales price for your ... whatever it is .

May I suggest that you engage (a) a government contracts attorney with experience in the DOD IP regime, and ( an experienced accounting/pricing consultant. I believe you will find the investment in those two resources to be worthwhile.

Hope this helps.

My fault on the conflicting title's. We have both proprietary software and proprietary technical data that will need to be priced. I am not sure why that would be confusing to the issue at hand. I understand they are different flavors of IP, but for this question the treatment of software and technical data should be identical.

The cost or pricing data that I am going to have to provide with the proposal is inevitably going to be the cost to develop the software. However, the impact to our business in selling the Gov't an unlimited rights license far outweighs the cost to develop. I know there are some generally accepted ways of pricing the sale of IP that won't be foreign to the PCO, I just can't put my hands on that information. I was hoping somebody else had run into this issue and could help to point me in the right direction.

"for this question the treatment of sofware and technical data should be identical".

fieds32, let me be as constructive as I can be on this complex topic.

You are not going to get this right by applying common sense to the issue(s) you have raised. The only way you are going to get this right is by engaging people with deep expertise in the relevant areas.

For example --

http://us.kpmg.com/microsite/attachments/2005/SoftwareRevRecognitionBook2005.pdf

I wish you the best.

I am not looking to employ a "common sense approach" to this issue. There are several generally accepted ways to price the sale of an unlimited rights license. I can't put my hands on the documentation, hence the question.

What are market-based, cost-based, and based on estimates of past and future economic benefits?

Does this help? http://www.wipo.int/sme/en/documents/value_ip_intangible_assets.htm

Yes Don, this is almost exactly what I was thinking of when I asked the question. I believe there are some resources that specifically deal with pricing in the Government Contracting context, but this is a great resource. Thanks!