Department of Energy (DOE) takes very seriously the confidentiality of all applicants and will treat information submitted in applications, as well as the identity of applicants, as confidential to the fullest extent permissible under Federal law. In order for DOE to protect confidential information, the applicant must also treat the information as confidential and properly mark it as described below. DOE will not be able to protect information that the applicant has released publicly or is in the public domain. For additional information on DOE’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) regulations, see 10 CFR 1004.
An application may include technical data and other data, including trade secrets and commercial or financial information that are privileged or confidential, which the applicant does not want disclosed to the public or used by the Government for any purpose other than application evaluation. Examples of documents that may contain proprietary information include the commercialization plan and the project narrative.
Proprietary Data Legend and Instructions
To protect such data, the following guidelines must be followed:
1. The following legend must appear on the title page of the document:
This proposal contains information that shall not be disclosed outside the Federal Government and shall not be duplicated, used, or disclosed in whole or in part for any purpose other than evaluation of this proposal, unless authorized by law. The Government shall have the right to duplicate, use, or disclose the data to the extent provided in the resulting contract if award is made as a result of the submission of this proposal. The information subject to these restrictions are contained on all pages of the proposal except for pages [insert page numbers or other identification of pages that contain no restricted information.]
and
2. The following legend must appear on each page of the proposal that contains information the Applicant wishes to protect:
Use or disclosure of information contained on this sheet is subject to the restriction on the title page of this proposal.
Note that the SBA Commercialization History and the Foreign Relations Disclosure form documents are permitted to contain proprietary information and do not require applicant markings as they are pre-populated with data protection legends.
Applicants should not include business sensitive information (e.g., commercial or financial information that is privileged or confidential), trade secrets, proprietary, or otherwise confidential information in their application unless such information is necessary to convey an understanding of the proposed project or to comply with a requirement in the FOA. Applicants are advised to not include any critically sensitive proprietary detail.
If an application includes trade secrets or information that is commercial or financial, or information that is confidential or privileged, it is furnished to the Government in confidence with the understanding that the information shall be used or disclosed only for evaluation of the application. Such information will be withheld from public disclosure to the extent permitted by law, including the FOIA. Without assuming any liability for inadvertent disclosure, DOE will seek to limit disclosure of such information to its employees and to outside reviewers when necessary for merit review of the application or as otherwise authorized by law. This restriction does not limit the Government’s right to use the information if it is obtained from another source.
