Export controls divide the concept of "technology" into three subcategories - development, use, and production - and build the protection and compliance rules around the risks presented by each subcategory in the context of the equipment, materials, or software to which it applies.
Development Technology: This subcategory generally presents the most significant exposure to export controls for university research. "Development" applies to both new items as well as to improvements in existing items. It applies to a broad range of activity prior to production, including: design, layouts, pilot and proof-of-concept schemes, assembly and testing of prototypes, and design analysis. The application of "development" is limited, however, to only those aspects that are required to achieve the specific performance level, characteristic, or function that creates the controls on the final item or article, as enumerated in the Commerce Control List or U.S. Munitions List.
Use Technology: This subcategory is one that also requires close attention in a university setting, but typically requires more than the ordinary operation of equipment. Instead it requires exposure to non-public information regarding the operation, installation, maintenance, repair, overhaul and refurbishing of a controlled piece of equipment or software. Generally, there must be a release of all six aspects, unless a particular entry on the CCL indicates something less. As it regards software, however, it is likely that exposure of the source code of controlled software, to a person with expertise in coding, would meet the requirements of use.
Production Technology: Far less common in academic research, this subcategory involves the exposure of non-public information regarding product engineering, manufacture, integration, assembly, inspection, testing, and quality assurance of a controlled item. Whereas "development" centers on reducing a scientific principle to practice in the real world, "production" is geared toward commercial viability from both a "look and feel" as well as efficiency perspective.
Each of the three subcategories varies in application and control policy across the range of ECCNs on the CCL. Please contact OEC if you need to determine if there has been an inadvertent release of a controlled technology.