Commercial Products and Services (FAR Part 12)
Commercial products and commercial services are items of a type sold, leased, licensed, or offered in the commercial marketplace, defined at FAR 2.101. FAR Part 12 implements the statutory preference for buying them whenever market research shows they can meet the agency's need.
Congress wrote the preference into 41 U.S.C. 3307: state requirements in terms of function and performance, research the market before drafting a new specification, and buy commercial products, commercial services, or nondevelopmental items when they are available. FAR 12.101 turns those duties into acquisition policy.
Everything downstream rides on the FAR 2.101 definition. A commercial product is an item "of a type" customarily used by the general public and sold, leased, licensed, or merely offered in the marketplace; a product with no sales history can still qualify if it evolved from a commercial item through technology advances and will reach the market in time for delivery. Commercial services qualify when sold competitively in substantial quantities at established catalog or market prices.
The commerciality determination is where buyers get hurt. A file that asserts "of a type" status without market evidence hands ammunition to auditors and protesters, and a requirement written as a design spec can shut commercial offerors out of a competition the statute meant them to win.
Regulatory Reference
FAR Part 12; FAR 2.101; 41 U.S.C. 3307
RFO Status
The Part 12 model deviation (adopted by agencies through class deviations in fall 2025) rebuilds the part around presolicitation, solicitation and award, postaward, and micro-purchase subparts and strips dozens of clause requirements; Part 12 is not in the June 2026 first-batch proposed rules, so the published text remains the baseline absent an agency deviation.
Category
Regulations & Policy
How AcqBot Helps
AcqBot assembles the commerciality determination from your market research record, tests the "of a type" rationale against the FAR 2.101 definition, and flags design-spec language that would block commercial offerors before the solicitation posts.
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