Begin by matching the form to your task. DA Form 2873-R is titled LICENSE OF INVENTION (LRA), and you reach for it when you need to license of invention (lra). Once that matches, check the date. The edition here is 04/01/1993, published with the status ACTIVE. After that, glance at the length: you will be working through 1 page(s) and somewhere near 103 fields.
Next, find out whether you are the one who fills it. In most cases you complete the entries yourself, and an administrator in your unit reviews what you wrote before it moves on. If you are the administrator, you will be working from what the individual gives you. Either way, TJAG owns the form and AR 27-60 tells you when to raise it and where it goes afterward, so read the directive first if your situation is not routine.
Work from the top down, one block at a time. First the name — copy it from your official records rather than writing it the way you usually do. Then the identification number, then the unit, then today's date. Fill these before anything else. When the form reaches a file cabinet or a database, these are the entries someone searches on, so get them right before you worry about the rest.
Now for the body. Use tab to advance through the fields; the order was set when the form was built and following it keeps you from leaving gaps. Check boxes and option buttons take a click. Where the options are mutually exclusive, choosing one will clear another, which is how the group is meant to behave. As you type longer entries, watch the field edge. One-line fields do not wrap, and anything past the edge prints missing even when you can still read it on screen — when that happens, put the text in remarks or on a continuation sheet. Leave nothing blank because it does not apply; enter the mark that means it does not apply, so the reviewer knows you read the question.
Sign at the end and not before. Use ink or the electronic method your office accepts; whatever the state of the entries, an unsigned form is still a draft. When a reviewer, approver or witness has to sign as well, collect those signatures in printed block order and make sure each one is dated the day it was applied, not the day you started. Then read the form through once from the beginning. Three faults account for most rejections: a required field left blank, an identification number with two digits swapped, and a date whose day and month are reversed. Add a fourth if you began from an old working copy — data left over from the last time will travel forward untouched.
You will find a Privacy Act statement on the form wherever personal information is collected. Read it at that point rather than skipping past it, because it tells you the authority for the collection, the purpose, the routine uses, and whether answering is mandatory. After you fill the form, remember that your copy contains personal data. Store it and transmit it as your office requires for records of that kind.
Download the form
Then choose a file to download. What you will see offered is PDF, XFDL, and the only question you need to answer is whether you are typing or writing. Type, and you want the fillable pdf, where the entry areas respond to your keyboard. Write, and you want the printable pdf, which you print empty and complete with a pen. The layout does not change between them, so pick whichever fits how you plan to work today.
After you download, open the file the right way. Double-click a pdf and your browser may take it, which is fine for reading but risky for filling: some browser viewers show you the fields, let you type, and then lose the text when you close the tab. Save the file to your computer first, then open it in a full pdf reader, and check that your entries survive a save before you type the whole form. If you downloaded the xfdl file, do not try a pdf reader on it. That format is IBM Lotus Forms, and you need the Lotus Forms Viewer to open it at all.
One last point before you move on: every format is free. No registration stands between you and the file, and what you download is the published form, unaltered.
What the form asks for
- COUNTYOF
- ContentArea1
- DATE
- DATEEXEC
- DATEKNOWN
- DUTYADD
- EXPIRES
- FILEDATE
- INVENTSIGN
- NAMEINVEN
- NOTARY
- PAGE
- PAGES
- Page1
- R100
- R87
- R88
- R89
- R90
- R91
- R92
- R93
- R94
- R95
Once you have signed, route the form. The prescribing directive names the destination: an office, your unit administrative channel, or your personal file, according to the case. Make yourself a copy first, because you will not get the original back. After that, retention is out of your hands — the applicable records schedule fixes how long the document is kept, whatever the practice in a particular office.
If you find you need a second form to go with this one, look by series and number. Forms in the DA series that share a proponent or a prescribing directive are often used together, and any form named on the face of this one normally goes forward with it. Gather continuation sheets, cover sheets and transmittal documents before you submit, not after somebody asks for them.
Before you reuse a saved copy, look at the edition date printed on it. The proponent revises the form from time to time, and your stored file will not tell you when that happens — you compare its date against the current edition yourself. If a revision has come out since you last filed one of these, leave the earlier submission alone; the change does not reach backwards.
Read this before you go. The file you download is a reproduction of a published Department of the Army document, offered as it was published. We are an independent site with no connection to the Department of the Army and no authority to issue anything, and we make no statement about whether your completed form will be accepted anywhere. Treat what you read here as information, not legal advice. Take real questions — about an entry, a requirement, or your eligibility — to TJAG or to your servicing administrative office.
Questions and answers
- What is DA Form 2873-R?
- LICENSE OF INVENTION (LRA)
- Which edition is current?
- 04/01/1993
- Who is responsible for this form?
- TJAG
- In which formats can it be downloaded?
- PDF, XFDL, PDF
Publisher notes
- 41-ITEM ALSO PRODUCED IN ELECTRONIC MEDIA,