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NASA Patents To Be Auctioned

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the free-pair-of-scissors-for-the-red-tape dept.

Presto Vivace writes to tell us that as a continuing push to commercialize NASA-funded technology a group of 25 NASA patents will be auctioned off this coming October. "The sale, which will include rights to signal processing, GPS for spacecraft and sensor technologies, is the first auction under a partnership announced earlier this month between Goddard's Innovative Partnerships Program (IPP) and Ocean Tomo Federal Services LLC. Ocean Tomo provides a marketplace for intellectual property, which NASA wants to leverage in commercializing its technology."

17 of 224 comments (clear)

  1. Great! by BitterOldGUy · · Score: 4, Funny

    The HHT technology is a highly efficient, adaptive and user-friendly set of algorithms for analyzing time-varying processes, designed specifically for nonlinear and nonstationary signals.

    Finally a version that can be used in the home! I'll see if my grandma needs this.

  2. Auctioned off? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Those patents belong to the American people!

  3. Great, we get to pay for them again! by Eric+Smith · · Score: 5, Insightful
    As a US taxpayer, I already funded the research that led to these patents. Now they'll sell them off, which superficially sounds like a good thing. But the reality is that it means that I get to pay for them again. The companies buying the patents aren't ultimately the ones paying, it's those of us that buy products from those companies.

    The results of taxpayer-funded research need to be made freely available, not sold to the highest bidder.

    1. Re:Great, we get to pay for them again! by morikahnx · · Score: 5, Funny

      Maybe NASA is planning on paying us back?

    2. Re:Great, we get to pay for them again! by BitterOldGUy · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Ah. So the American Corp who would get these patents (by lottery or by political connections), saving money on R&D, can now pass the savings on to the CEO in terms of even higher salary and perks. He earned it after all by saving the company millions of dollars in R&D costs.

      In the meantime, NASA doesn't get to recover the costs that they spent (our tax dollars) and therefore has to beg Congress for more money. Congress, on the other hand, has things they would rather spend money on: wars, pork barrel spending, things that buy votes from joe sixpack who doesn't give a rat's ass about space - space science is one of those "elitist" pursuits, bridges to no-where, tax breaks to big oil, tax breaks to big corps who've lobbied for them, their own increasing salaries and perks, etc....

      Sorry, I didn't mean to sound bitter.

    3. Re:Great, we get to pay for them again! by msauve · · Score: 4, Funny

      "Maybe NASA is planning on paying us back?"

      Free Tang for everyone!

      --
      "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
    4. Re:Great, we get to pay for them again! by CodeBuster · · Score: 5, Insightful

      But the reality is that it means that I get to pay for them again.

      Suppose instead that you were the sole owner of the patents, but for some reason (you choose) you didn't want to spend money to develop and market products based upon the patents, even though you might personally be interested in buying whatever products are ultimately produced using the patents. Would you not be happy with a cash settlement from the sale of your patents? Presumably you could still purchase whatever products came out of the patents and enjoy them while paying a small share of what the patent buyer paid you (in the form of a higher product price) in exchange for a product that you want. How is this not a good deal?

      Now, in theory it would be better if all of us taxpayers saw some "return" on our investment in the form of lower taxes going forward based upon the proceeds of a successful sale of patents generated from publicly funded research. However, in practice any proceeds will probably go to NASA and not be returned to the US Treasury so in that sense the US taxpayer is getting a bit of the shaft. On the other hand, maybe some useful products, which wouldn't otherwise be available to the public, will come of this so it may not all be bad.

      If the patents were made freely available then other countries and foreign companies could free-ride and enjoy the fruits of our research efforts without reimbursing us for any of the costs that we have already paid for the research. How would that make you feel? Perhaps you prefer that nobody earns any profit, even though your tax dollars are already a sunk cost either way, just to spite the winning bidders? Either way you still paid for the research and got no direct return.

    5. Re:Great, we get to pay for them again! by Eric+Smith · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, I get to pay more every time I buy products using the patented technology. When I paid the taxes to fund NASA, it was most certainly NOT with the intention or stated purpose that they would develop things to sell to me.

    6. Re:Great, we get to pay for them again! by evilklown · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I would like to be the first to suggest a class action lawsuit against both the government and the highest bidder. I wish not to recoup any money but, as previously mentioned, I would like these breakthroughs (made possible by tax-funded research) to be freely available to any citizen of the United States. I think it's time we, the taxpayers, set a precedence for publicly funded research to be publicly available.

  4. "Socialize losses, privatize gains" variation? by hirschma · · Score: 4, Insightful

    TFA didn't really get into detail, but does this mean:

    1. Taxpayers fund research,
    2. Government patents results,
    3. Government sells patents to private concern,
    4. Taxpayer gets to pay for research again via the consumer channel,
    5. Private concern profits?

    Seems like another form of corporate welfare to me. Is this the case?

  5. Strange disparity between patents and copyrights by compumike · · Score: 4, Insightful

    For copyrightable material, "Works created by an agency of the United States government are public domain at the moment of creation."

    But here, for patentable material, it's clear that that is not the case. The theory goes that since the taxpayer paid for it, the taxpayer should get the rights to it. It's essentially always the case that the inventors will "assign" the work to the organization... but should NASA really be able to hold a competitive IP position when we're all forced to pay for its work?

    Think of the private spaceflight organizations, for example, who might want to enter similar fields. They're already being forced to pay for NASA's research (via taxes), but they're being excluded from the result, while the opposite (NASA forced to pay for private company XYZ's research without a return of IP) is not happening.

    --
    Hey code monkey... learn electronics! Powerful microcontroller kits for the digital generation.

  6. The Public Owns That Stuff by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's bad enough that NASA patents its inventions at all. But perhaps it's occasionally necessary, to prevent dangerous tech from getting into private hands. And maybe if the patents were awarded to American holders strategically to "promote progress in science and the useful arts", which is the only basis patents have, from the Constitution, they might be worth their infringements on free communication and further innovation.

    But those inventions were paid for by the entire American public, as directed under the government elected by the public to serve the entire public. Simply turning them over to private corps for a little money doesn't justify the public investment.

    It's just another subsidy forced on the entire public on some special preference for some private corporation. I thought Republicans hated that kind of thing.

    --

    --
    make install -not war

  7. Re:Hell No! by Adambomb · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why not NASA as well?

    Easy answer with a question: Why would they set up a licensing setup (with all the overhead and fun as their investment) when the government can instead get the big boost from the initial sale and then tax both the sale itself, the revenue of the company, and the sales of the consumer? This would then shunt any overhead of profiting off the patent to the winning bidder as well.

    Granted, the answer only makes sense when it goes with the assumption that it can be spun such that your objection doesn't become the 51%+ demographic as you're exactly right that this is complete bull.

    --
    Ice Cream has no bones.
  8. The Best Way? by MozeeToby · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They claim they want to sell the patents so that the technology is available for American businesses? Wouldn't the best way to do that be to not patent them at all in the first place? Or at least liscense the patents cheaply to any and all interested American businesses?

    We already paid for the research once, now we'll end up paying for it again when some company begins gouging prices because they hold the patent and no one else can compete.

  9. Only you can prevent orbital bombardment. by mrmeval · · Score: 4, Funny

    The only way they could possibly pay me back is to go back to the moon and deliver several thousand payloads of rock to DC. That should cover any debt they owe me nicely.

    --
    I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
  10. I had the same reaction by Presto+Vivace · · Score: 4, Informative

    this is our property.

  11. We own NASA by kwerle · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Your cut is a wealthier NASA.