To promote the timely transfer of technology from government laboratories to the private sector and to improve the competitiveness of U.S. industry, Congress passed the Federal Technology Transfer Act (FTTA) of 1986. With this legislation, Congress authorized federal organizations to enter into CRADAs with non-federal parties.

NRL signed the Navy's first CRADA in 1989. Since that time, the Laboratory has continued to pursue and promote this program actively, entering into more than 260 cooperative research and development agreements with industries, universities, nonprofit organizations and other government organizations.

NRL has entered into CRADAs directed at the development of novel techniques for airport luggage screening, detectors for drugs of abuse, location and mapping devices for unexploded ordnance, fiberoptic dosimeters for radiation exposure, and other technological advances that have impacted the military and the civilian sectors.

Because of the enactment of the FTTA, the effort to encourage the commercial use of government-funded technology has expanded in the federal laboratories. Title 35, Section 207, of the United States Code authorizes federal agencies to license their patents. The license authorizes the licensee to manufacture and market the product while allowing government inventors and the laboratories where they work to share the royalties generated by commercial licensing of their inventions. NRL supports an active licensing program and has over 1,000 patents available for licensing in fields as diverse as advanced materials, chemistry, biotechnology, optics, ocean and atmospheric sciences, electronics, radar, and satellite technology. NRL has licenses with small and large U.S. businesses, foreign and multinational businesses, and non-profit organizations and universities. NRL has executed 55 licenses to its inventions. The majority of NRL's licensees are U.S. small businesses.