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NASA Wants To Share Great Ideas, NASA
"NASA is seeking information from potential partners who could provide no-cost brokerage services for intellectual property transactions, such as patent brokering, to help transfer NASA-owned technologies into the U.S. marketplace."
"Technology transfer always has been an important objective of America's aeronautics and space program," said NASA Chief Technologist Bobby Braun at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "We want to accelerate the agency's efforts to get groundbreaking technologies and innovations from development efforts out into commercial markets. We're asking for information from broker services on how they might help us do this, without any cost to the taxpayer."
The article in Spaceref "NASA Wants To Share Great Ideas" mentions as an example of successfully brokering NASA technology through a no-cost brokerage partnership was the exclusive license for the Hilbert-Huang Transform, composed of 10 U.S. patents and one domestic patent application, which was part of a lot auctioned by Ocean Tomo Federal Services LLC, in October 2008.
From a business perspective, how could this be a success? Lot 56 of the auction: "Hilbert Huang Transform and Applications" consisted of 10 patents that sold for $50,000 ($5000 for each patent).
The government has paid a patent issue fee of $1400 and a $770 application fee for each patent. These costs totaling $2170 are just a facture of what the government pays. Other cost include the cost of having the patent written by an attorney or patent agent. These cost pale in comparison to cost of developing this technology which based upon the first patent of the portfolio being issued in 1999, the research started years earlier. The cost of research (salary, fringe benefits, supplies, etc) propably exceeds $1,000,000. So how could any reasonable person consider this a success?
NASA should not be bragging about selling something that costs the taxpayers over a millions dollars to produce for $50000!!!!