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"NASA's Goal: NASA wishes to maximize the benefit to the public from NASA's R&D investments yielding new technologies and patents. Seeking no-cost methods to further advance dissemination of NASA's patent investment will provide the best value to the public through the introduction of new and efficient licensing processes and tools. NASA recognizes that there are many business models in the U.S. for providing IP management services, such as patent brokering, using a variety of different transaction methods and platforms. NASA is issuing this request for information in an effort to better understand the range of possible models and services available for assisting NASA with the dissemination of NASA technology, at no additional cost to the taxpayer."
Or better still, why doesn't NASA patent it's research on the behalf of the citizens of the United States of America, the people who pay their salaries? That way any American could use the technology and not pay a patent fee, but if any foreign national wanted to use it, then they'd have to pay a fee. No, it's far more important for NASA to protect the interests of the contractors who wholly control everything they do and every dime of ours they spend. Isn't that working our great for us all?
I believe one rationale for the government to patent and license inventions is that licensees would be more likely to invest the money to commercialize an invention if they have a period of exclusivity. Of course, the government also wants to make money off of licensing fees.
However, I am uncomfortable with the whole idea of the federal government owning and licensing patents. Just as federal government publications are mostly in the public domain, I believe that federal government inventions should likewise be public domain. The government belongs to the people, not the other way around, and if the public pays for something, it should belong to the public. As far as I know, the U.S. government is unusual in not copyrighting its works, but I think not copyrighting is a good principle that has helped make federal information more widely available.
This also looks like another aspect of the current cult of IP, where it seems like anything and everything can be patented. It's created a situation that primarily benefits lawyers and large companies that can afford to pay those lawyers, and to accumulate an IP war chest.
I don't think you gentlemen understand patent law as well as you think. NASA's got a legal obligation to disseminate technical and scientific data, which it has adhered to by publications and releases of data. People are simply simply looking to see if there are better or additional ways of doing this.
As for whether such data should be copyrighted, or designs patented... in the "free software" world, it's been found that simply releasing stuff with NO controls has its pitfalls, and there isn't absolute agreement about what the best standards should be. Which is why there are GNU copyrights and BSD copyrights and Open Source copyrights and so forth. Go off to Wikipedia, I suggest; type in "COPYLEFT"; read that entry, and as many of the highlighted entries as you can find time for; and you ill find yourself much enlightened. Alternately, go to debian.org and follow the discussions in the developer maillists for 6 months or so.
THEN you will be better prepared to make judgments of the "dimwits" at NASA and their surrender to the "current cult of IP".
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If these NASA dimwits really wanted to "maximize the benefit to the public from NASA's R&D investments" they wouldn't be protecting the research we fund with our tax dollars with patents. As usual, NASA is all about the interests of their contractors and not at all for those of the US taxpayer.