Background: In a country like India, where more than 60% of the national expenditure on research and development is made by the central government, national RSLD laboratories have a major role to play in technological development. India's Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) was set external earnings target in the late 19805 with the objective of making CSIR laboratories more responsive to user needs. The laboratories had to respond to this target in an environment made more complex by (a) the new Indian economic policies of J July I991 that (i) de-regulated the import of technology (ii) removed industrial licensing in most sectors, and (iii) announced a more liberalized trade The region, and (ii) the signing of the GATT accord in I994 that signifies impending changes in the Intellectual Property Rights Regime. There is -little-published work about how national R&D laboratories face peculiar …