
Nasa Releases Dozens of Patents into the Public Domain - denzil_correa
http://technology.nasa.gov/publicdomain
======
cmsmith
Some confusion here about government research and patents. As a government
researcher with patents, I will weigh in with an approximation of our patent
criteria:

1\. Increases the potential for commercialization of the technology. If you
have an invention which will take effort to commercialize, companies are less
likely to spend that effort without any patent protection. Offering an
exclusive license on the patent can increase the chance of anyone doing
anything with it.

2\. Fulfill the goals of a collaborative research agreement between the
government and a private company.

3\. Further US manufacturing. The taxpayers pay us to do research to fuel
industry in the USA, not Germany or China.

4\. May lead to commercialization license. This is way down on the list, and
total patent royalties amount to <0.1% of our budget.

I would guess that the NASA patent set represents cases where the patent did
not end up fulfilling one of those goals, and they are releasing it into the
wild to see if it does better on its own.

~~~
sitkack
> 1\. increases the potential for commercialization

I don't get this. If an idea is good, monopoly is icing, but not required for
its adoption. If say NREL comes up with a something that increases efficiency
of something by 2%, I'd want all of America and potentially the world to use
it. If NIST finds a cheap way to make welds more robust and void free, I'd
want every bridge, building and car to use these new techniques, not trapped
in a patent monopoly.

> 3\. Further US manufacturing

Do US Gov patents require that manufacturing be in the US? Is government
sponsored research an R&D arm of industry or is it to undertake projects that
_don't_ have a direct economic payback or are too large or too risky?

What you say might be the "correct answer" but it isn't one I find palatable.
The majority of government sponsored research should be open to all. In some
circumstances I can see limiting it to people in the US and under even
narrower circumstances, limiting it via a patent.

~~~
tgb
If the new welding method is developed enough to patent, but possibly not
enough to mass produce new welding equipment, then it will require an
investment from someone to get it into use outside the laboratory. Being able
to license them a patent provides a greater incentive to make that investment.
It's possible for an idea to be simultaneously an improvement, cheap in the
long run, and also require an up-front investment that might never be made
back without a guarantee of monopoly.

I can't judge how frequently this occurs, but it seems reasonable.

~~~
mindcrime
_Being able to license them a patent provides a greater incentive to make that
investment._

In theory. But that's not the only way things can play out. It's just as
likely that if such an innovation is offered freely to everyone, that everyone
will feel compelled to adopt it, exactly because of the fear that their
competitors will. And nobody wants to get left behind.

Given that it's basically impossible to know how a given scenario will play
out ahead of time, I don't buy this whole "grant patents on government
sponsored developments and then sell them" based on some hypothetical scenario
that lacks any real justification.

------
eganist
To those asking the question "why aren't patents automatically in the public
domain?", the question received a decent answer on Stack Exchange two years
ago:

[http://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/9994/are-
patents-...](http://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/9994/are-patents-
granted-to-the-us-government-public-domain)

"No, they are owned by the U.S. and controlled by the specific agency where
the inventing happened. However, there is a policy of licensing. It is covered
in 35 USC 209. The logic behind this is that the U.S. would like the public to
benefit from the invention and if anybody can do it, it may very well be that
no one actually does it. Without some exclusivity it may be that no one will
be able to justify the investment to enter the market." -George White

One of the comments to that answer also suggests inventors of government
patents also get a fixed percentage of revenue, which wouldn't surprise me as
an incentive to drive government employees to come up with novel inventions on
the clock.

~~~
unchocked
A similar argument could be made for copyrighting government works: maybe no
one would publish them if not granted a monopoly, and maybe getting a kickback
would incentivize government employees to create copyrightable works.

... I'm glad it isn't, and am inclined to view government patents in the same
way most of us view crown copyright.

~~~
ghaff
The cases are pretty different. The government isn't generally creating
copyrightable works with the hope of turning a profit on them. They're
creating them, e.g. as part of the mission of an agency. Think NASA
photographs for example.

To be copyrightable, the work needs to exist in more or less final form.
That's what is copyrighted.

By contrast, while what's patented goes beyond an idea, it may not be usable
for anything until someone has spent significant money to commercialize it--
and maybe not even then.

------
ChuckMcM
Finally! I can build coils for my plasmoid thrusters[1] and not worry about
NASA coming after me. :-)

More seriously, this is something I really like about NASA and their mission,
they are excellent at technology transfer. They did a lot of work on Lithium
batteries that got widely licensed for little to no money and that has made
for an explosion of battery applications (no pun intended)

[1]
[http://technology.nasa.gov/public_domain/MFS-32364-1](http://technology.nasa.gov/public_domain/MFS-32364-1)

~~~
daveloyall
Here's a better view of the same thing:
[https://www.google.com/patents/US7808353](https://www.google.com/patents/US7808353)

Note that this coil essentially _is_ the thruster. You put gas (from a
compressed tank) in one end and it fires out the back, creating thrust from
electricity + the gas. It's not quite a massless thruster, but very close!

This represents a major improvement over the ion propulsion on Deep Space 1.

~~~
ChuckMcM
In my case I've modified it to be an Plasmoid overthruster. :-)

------
WalterBright
The government using tax money to develop things, patent them, then charge
license fees for them seems quite at odds with the Constitutional purpose of
patents:

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited
Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective
Writings and Discoveries;"

~~~
sitkack
Analogously, the FCC auctioning off spectrum to the highest bidder instead of
leasing it to the provider who will provide the best or cheapest service using
that spectrum. Seems like an effort to ensure that the citizens get gouged.

~~~
rayiner
There is a deep body of economic theory that argues that it's much more
efficient to simply auction off spectrum than to have a government agency make
decisions about "who will provide the best or cheapest service" using that
spectrum. Indeed, the old model of licensing spectrum to who the FCC thought
of as the best users resulted in the current problem of prime spectrum being
allocated to low-value uses like broadcast television.

Tom Hazlett's papers are a good introduction into the orthodox view of
spectrum economics:
[http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1583098](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1583098).

~~~
sitkack
You have got to be kidding me, is this writing typical of economic publishing?
This is a circle jerk echo chamber of cliche and truism.

Low-value broadcast television is a by product of auctioning spectrum and
maximizing profit. If something is a public good, it isn't in the publics good
to maximize the profit. The fitness function of the whole thing is flawed. In
what measure of efficiency does the duplication of poor cellular service and
capability rank? How far into the future will such byzantine structures exist?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Coase](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Coase)

~~~
rayiner
> Low-value broadcast television is a by product of auctioning spectrum and
> maximizing profit.

Broadcast television spectrum wasn't allocated by auction. It was allocated by
government bureaucrats deciding what was most important.

> If something is a public good, it isn't in the public's good to maximize the
> profit.

It's in the public's interest to maximize the economic revenues generated from
the resource.

------
payne92
Can anyone explain: why are government works automatically public domain (not
copyrighted) but government inventions are not unless explicitly stated?

~~~
delecti
Probably because copyright is automatic and patents aren't. You have to
actively patent an invention to make sure nobody else patents it, but the same
risk (someone else copyrighting the government's work) isn't really applicable
on the other side.

~~~
unchocked
I don't think that's the case: an unpatented invention (that is disclosed)
becomes prior art, which protects the invention from being patented by someone
else.

Theoretically. The US patent system is a mess, from the rubber-stamp examiners
in DC to the ridiculous judges in East Texas.

~~~
refurb
_I don 't think that's the case: an unpatented invention (that is disclosed)
becomes prior art, which protects the invention from being patented by someone
else._

If an unpatented invention is disclosed publically (not through a patent
application), then it becomes public domain and nobody can patent it.

Also, the US is no longer "first to invent", but rather "first to file". You
could have a claim that you invented it first, but if someone files before
you, you are SOL.

------
AstralStorm
Are these parents as useful as all other patents, where you require a lawyer
to English translator to get a gist, and almost reinvention to get it to
actually work from the description?

------
fixermark
Someone let Walt Kerman run with his strategy again. :)

[http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Strategies#Open-
Sour...](http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Strategies#Open-
Source_Tech_Program)

------
serge2k
Misread as Dozens of Planets.

I was confused.

------
AceyMan
At risk of a downvote, I have to ask: am I the only one who read the headline
thusly,

"NASA Releases Dozens of _Planets_ into the Public Domain"

"Wow," I'm thinking, "that's way cool of them..."

Whereas the _correct_ title is probably just as cool, if not cooler.

------
coin
> Nasa

NASA is an acronym and not a word

~~~
Xophmeister
Some style guides recommend that word-like acronyms (i.e., pronounced as a
word, rather than its individual letters) be capitalised as though they were
normal words (cf. BBC vs. laser).

