Perhaps I should have been a little more precise. A contract amendment typically does not alter the contract in a way substantial enough to warrant re-pricing. A contract modification alters the contract such that re-pricing is required. Thus the scope of an amendment differs substantially from that of a contract modification, revolving around whether there ia a change to cost/price.

Further, the approvals required to execute a contract amendment are typically minimal (e.g., Director of Contracts, CLO, CEO), while a contract modification requires approvals (typically) as were required for the original contract (e.g., adding Directors of QA and Materiel/Logistics, VP of Manufacturing and/or Product Development, as appropriate, and CFO) - unless of course the contract value grows beyond that of the approval threshold of the original contract thereby necessitating higher level approvals than were originally required (i.e., BoD, and higher tier organization management if your company is a subsidiary).

How this language, "amendment" vs. "modification", should be perceived in the patent context may have no relation. There is obviously no relation/consideration of cost/price.

SGE