CDE: intellectual property
This guidance explains how your intellectual property (IP) is protected when you submit a proposal to the Centre for Defence Enterprise (CDE).
The only way to submit a research proposal to CDE is online.
CDE is required to protect all third-party IP. We use a number of safeguards to protect your IP while also allowing proper scrutiny of your proposals by our expert assessors and appropriate transparency of how public money is being spent.
After a fixed period of time (usually around 6 months after the competition has completed), most of your submission will be deleted from our system. We do this to protect your IP.
We don’t use information received from external organisations other than for the purpose for which it’s provided to CDE.
Any information you provide to us as part of a CDE proposal that’s not already available from other sources will be handled in confidence. It won’t be used or disclosed for other purposes without having the right or getting permission to do so. Submitting a proposal to CDE won’t jeopardise a potential patent application as it’s submitted in confidence.
Information we keep
We must keep indefinitely the following information on your proposal:
- title
- summary
- total price
- technology area(s)
- (if applicable) previous submission reference number
- organisation
Information that can be made public
For those projects we fund, we’ll also release to the public:
- title
- total price
- names of deliverables
- organisation
Digital watermarks
We make sure all proposals through our online submission service get a digital watermark. The watermark names the person who’s logged in to view the proposal and shows the proposal reference number.
Centre for Defence Enterprise
Building R103
Fermi Avenue
Harwell Oxford
Oxfordshire
OX11 0QX
Please email for the quickest response.