The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) (Washington, DC, USA) has developed polysiloxane nonskid coatings with extended durability. Recently, paints and coatings company Sherwin-Williams (Cleveland, Ohio, USA) requested a limited government purpose license (GPL) to make, use, and sell the invention directly and solely to shipyards or contractors performing maintenance, repair, or new construction of vessels owned by government entities.
“The polysiloxane nonskid coating developed by NRL represents a significant advancement in technology over standard products available on the market today,” says Mark Schultz, business development manager for Sherwin-Williams Protective & Marine. “This is a novel solution with extended durability and excellent color retention. The coating doesn’t chalk, discolor, or fade, and can be rolled or spray-applied. This helps minimize waste, increases efficiencies in the coatings maintenance process, and reduces overcoating for aesthetic purposes. This combination of benefits has been well received by the U.S. Navy.”
A key part of NRL’s mission is the development and transition of technologies to support the Navy, and more broadly, the warfighter. NRL’s intellectual property can be used to support those efforts, as well as other government-specific initiatives. NRL offers no-cost GPLs to more than 1,200 patented or patent-pending technologies and protected software.
“NRL’s wide breadth of intellectual property are available for use at no cost by the private sector in performance of awarded U.S. government contracts,” says Dr. Holly Ricks-Laskoski, senior partnership manager at NRL’s technology transfer office. “Leveraging NRL’s intellectual property in this way is an opportunity for cost savings for our government contractor partners.”
NRL says it partners with a wide variety of organizations within industry, academia, and other government organizations to accelerate the development and transition of new and innovative warfighter technologies.
“We are very appreciative of our long-standing partnership with NRL,” says Bryan Draga, global vice president of marketing at Sherwin-Williams Protective & Marine. “The innovation, testing, and evaluation of forward-looking technologies has produced tangible results for our customers in terms of lowering total ownership cost and effectively maintaining ship schedules. Sherwin-Williams has been uniquely qualified to bring the MIL-Spec products and technologies to the market thanks to our quality manufacturing processes and MIL-Spec controls.”
Sherwin-Williams’ formulation was submitted for the Qualified Products Database evaluation by the U.S. Department of Defense, and it is qualified under military specification MIL-PRF-24667 forza Type V nonskid coating. For companies looking to work with NRL, Ricks-Laskoski says the laboratory is open for business.
The polysiloxane non-skid coating is described and claimed in U.S. Patent Nos. 9,006,307 and 9,034,946 issued April 14, 2015, and May 19, 2015, respectively.
Source: U.S. Navy, www.navy.mil.