How much money does NASA make off of their "inventions?" Ex: tempurpedic foam?

Question

NASA makes inventions and discoveries each year and I was wondering how much money they make off of them.

Answer 1

Hi there.

This isn't exactly recent data, but NASA made about $652,000 in patent royalty income between 1981 and 1990. See page 16 of source (1.) below.

This link also has other tidbits of interest: apparently NASA retains the service of a federal patent attorney to manage its patents. If you want more recent data, you might want to locate this attorney's office at NASA - who knows, they might have something at nasa.gov. Then again it may be buried at http://www.gao.gov/ and I just didn't see it.

Obviously, $645K over ten-odd years is less than pocket change for an agency like NASA. On the other hand, this may not include patents granted to universities and other groups that make inventions using money obtained *through* NASA.

The Feds have apparently made it easier for such groups to patent inventions made with government money. Check out sources (2.) and (3.) below for more info on this topic... it may be that there's more money than the above table implies, it's just going to groups whose research NASA has sponsored.

Hope this satisfies your curiosity!

Answer 2

NASA has a patent licensing program. http://techtran.msfc.nasa.gov/working/patent.html

I don't know how much money the US Gov't makes (I suspect revenue from any government held or shared patent goes to the general fund, not the agency that "holds" the patent.)

http://techtran.msfc.nasa.gov/at_home.html

Answer 3

they don't make nothing they get it from u and me and charge us to make it