Wargaming Intellectual Property

The Pentagon this month will host an online war game aimed at crowd-sourcing ideas about leveraging intellectual property and technical data rights.

The "Business Innovation Initiative IP and Technical Data Rights War Game," scheduled for July 14-25, is designed to help answer the following question, according to a brochure released by the Navy's research and development office:

The effectiveness of our national security systems depend on the intellectual capital forged from America's industrial base.

Large and small industry players each want to compete and profit effectively, now and in the future.

Meanwhile, the Navy needs technical data for long-term system interoperability, maintainability, and competition.

How can the government cultivate a welcome atmosphere of competition? Can we work together to create better license options for intellectual property and technical data?

In this month's Massively Multiplayer Online Wargame Leveraging the Internet, or MMOWGLI, participants would do the following, according to the brochure:

− You communicate your ideas using 140 character message cards.

− People play off your ideas or you play off others and you get points.

− You can play as little or as much as you like. Come back from time to time when it's convenient. The game is designed to suit your schedule.

This month's event is not the first time the Navy has crowd-sourced ideas via an online war game.

Last summer, the Navy completed a second round of an online war game about how its acquisition workforce can best implement the Open Systems Architecture (OSA) strategy, with resulting recommendations for increased automated testing, procurement workforce training and rewarding companies for saving money. As Inside the Navy reported in November:

"We want to think artfully about how do we change our business practice," Nick Guertin, director of transformation under the deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development, test and evaluation, said of the game last week at Defense Daily's annual Open Architecture Summit in Washington.

At the summit, Navy officials who ran the war game, including Guertin, as well as industry and academia participants weighed in on the results of the crowd-sourcing.

The game, run through Massive Multiplayer Online Wargame Leveraging the Internet, or MMOWGLI, the gaming platform sponsored by the Office of Naval Research, began on July 15 and ran through July 26.

During the game, players, including contractors, government and academia representatives, suggested and voted on ideas on how best to incentivize the use of open systems strategies. And the ideas voted highly were moved up as action plans.