Accepting a Third Party’s Export Controlled Items or Information

1. A Third Party's Export Controlled Items or Information

The conduct of fundamental research may proceed openly and its informational results shared freely with foreign nationals without regard to export licensing concerns. Export-controlled items, proprietary software source code, or confidential technical information provided by a third party, however, may not be openly shared with certain foreign nationals, even though those individuals may be important contributors to the performance of the fundamental research. For example, a corporate sponsor or a research collaborator may have to disclose confidential technical information in the form of background intellectual property (IP) such as the proprietary heat and vibration tolerances on a piece of export-controlled hardware it may be providing for use in carrying out a fundamental research experiment. Confidential technical information that is required for the development, production or use of export-controlled equipment is itself export-controlled. It carries with it export control restrictions that must be honored by the researcher who agrees to be a recipient of such information.

Before a researcher decides to accept such information, he or she must 1) review the conditions of the University's Openness in Research Policy and 2) notify the University Export Control Office (ECO) of the need to receive the export-controlled information before it is disclosed.  The ECO will review the proposed disclosure to assess potential deemed export licensing requirements. If the ECO concurs that receipt of such information is in compliance with University policy – namely that receipt of the export controlled information does not restrict any foreign national member of the research group ineligible to access that information from participating fully in the intellectually significant portions of the project – the researcher must then complete a Certification on the Handling and Use of Third-Party Export Controlled Information. At that point, the researcher is free to receive the third party’s export controlled information.