Your Hidden Stake in Federal Patent Success
It is no secret that securing patent protection for promising inventions remains an important strategic and tactical consideration in today’s fast-paced, innovation-driven global economy.
From the perspective of a lowly taxpayer, however, what possible good could come from the apparently futile act of shuffling taxpayer dollars between federal agencies – the United States Patent Office and an inventing agency acting as patent applicant – so that the latter can ultimately bar others from making, using, offering to sell, or selling the patented, taxpayer-funded invention?
The situation is somewhat clearer in a purely corporate context, where domestic and foreign patents can have so-called “scarecrow value” as a deterrent from multi-million dollar (or multi-billion dollar) infringement claims while possibly increasing a company’s valuation. Moreover, patents are often monetized into potentially lucrative income streams in the form of licensing royalties or outright sale of the patent.
Unlike corporations and businesses, however, federal agencies are largely funded by our tax dollars. Because of this, a thoughtful taxpayer may be left to wonder whether benefits of federal innovation somehow extend to them personally in their dual roles as a taxpayer and citizen. The manner in which such benefits arise and flow to the funding public therefore warrants closer scrutiny.
How Federal Patents Deliver Lasting Public Benefits
Federal patent ownership provides the public with several important advantages. Even in the face of budget cuts and constrained federal funding, federal agencies tend to have well established research and development (R&D) resources, as well as an innate ability to navigate often daunting regulatory hurdles.
Upon securing a patent, an agency may elect, usually via their Technology Transfer Office (TTO), to negotiate licensing agreements with entities possessing the requisite manufacturing and sales expertise that a federal agency typically lacks. Collected royalties can fund additional R&D efforts, thereby spawning additional invention disclosure records for possible patent protection.
By incentivizing and monetizing innovation at the federal level, and by facilitating technology transfer to commercial entities that are perhaps better suited to manufacturing tasks, patenting by a federal agency allows agencies to maximize the impact of taxpayer-funded technological advancements for the greater benefit of the public.
Although beyond the scope of this article, additional benefits may stem directly or indirectly from the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, codified in 35 USC §200-212, which purports to provide incentives for promoting commercialization of federally funded inventions.
Your Tax Dollars at Work: Example Technologies
The TTOs of the various federal agencies allow agencies to better manage their patent portfolios and facilitate licensing. Licensing opportunities for inventions of several types may be published by the owner agency. For example, the Technology Transfer Portal of the National Aeronautics and Science Administration (NASA), which can be viewed at https:/technology.nasa.gov/patents, currently lists an assortment of interesting licensable terrestrial and space-based technologies. Other agencies such as the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) similarly list potentially licensable technologies ranging from tick-targeted livestock vaccines to antimicrobial cotton fibers. See https://www.ars.usda.gov/ott/available-technologies/.
Similarly, the Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) conveniently lists its available technologies in separate categories, e.g., manufacturing, physics. See, https://nist.gov/patents/. The patented technologies presented on these and other agency sites are reflective of the many fascinating ways in which our collective tax dollars have been deployed.
Federally funded research and development also benefits the public in ways that are not always measurable in pure dollars and cents. Although the original nexus to federal innovation is often forgotten for many of these older technologies, intelligent deployment of tax dollars resulted in now-commonplace devices such as cordless power tools (originally developed to extract lunar core samples during the Apollo missions) and memory foam mattresses and pillows (originally developed by NASA as “temper foam” for crash protection and astronaut comfort), as well as modern smoke detectors and scratch-resistant coatings (originally developed to protect astronauts from smoke inhalation and their gear from the abrasive lunar soil, respectively).
Likewise, critical life-saving medical technologies such as insulin pumps and portable dialysis machines owe their existence to earlier systems used to monitor the vital functions of astronauts in space.
Need more?
We can all thank the Department of Defense (DoD) for the development of the Global Positioning System (GPS) constellation of satellites and its universal use in modern smart devices. One might ponder a day in the life of a frazzled pizza delivery driver before GPS-based navigation, with the driver wrestling with a paper map and handwritten directions while attempting deliver a rapidly cooling pizza (in 30 minutes or less). How many hikers, backwoods skiers, and snowmobilers owe their lives to their GPS enabled receivers?
And imagine the life of a modern parent without the aid of infrared thermometers or super-absorbent diapers.
The underlying technologies for both of these products was originally developed by NASA and the venerable USDA, respectively. As for the latter agency, we might also tip our collective hats to the USDA for our wrinkle-free clothing and the once ubiquitous blob of canned syrupy goo affectionately known, to kids aged 50 and older, as frozen concentrated orange juice. While it remains true that federal expenditures can appear wasteful at times, and that our hard earned tax dollars are not always deployed to our liking, it is useful to keep in mind the myriad ways in which the taxpaying public continues to benefit from federally funded innovation.