Liability and the marketing of high-tech law enforcement technologies: the air bag and barrier strip stories
Trudy K. Overlin · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1999
This paper will present information regarding the fate of technologies developed in the national laboratory, which were designed to meet a specific law enforcement user need, but were or were not successful in making it to market. The two examples, one successful and one not completely successful, will be presented in a perspective to provide discussion as too why their individual fates were as such. The two examples, air bag restraint and barriers strip, both law enforcement technologies, were both designed to meet a targeted need, and yet their success was different. One has been licensed to an industry partner and is currently on the shelf for purchase. The other is awaiting a licensee and its future is still undetermined. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the specific paths these technologies have taken to market, and to demonstrate that even when researchers have a good idea, their technology may never make it to the shelf. This paper also addresses some of the pitfalls of what occurs when researchers are too distant from the user community and what that distance can do to a successful or unsuccessful technology. Understanding this process is essential to the user communities that anticipate the market of technologies that they often help assist with or provide insight to. It is also important for users and manufacturers to understand why the research and development process can take years, and why some things do not fully actualize in accepted technologies.© (1999) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.