[ale] [ot] Was Monitoring

[JD]

On 10/10/2013 02:59 PM, Ron Frazier (ALE) wrote:
> As far as I know, there are a huge number of patents on research paid for by tax money from national labs, universities, and maybe even NASA.  Average people like us cannot use the research without paying huge licensing fees.

When I worked at NASA-JSC, inside the Software Technology Lab, we knew that
patenting our work was not allowed. Basically, anyone who asked who was a US
citizen could have access to the source code.  Freedom of information act -
unless it was classified work, then different rules applied. Some of the work we
did is used constantly today for military AND non-military applications.  You've
probably never heard of ISP - information sharing protocol. It is how MMOGS work
to share data with millions of players concurrently.  Invented at NASA.

I looked for links, but with the Fed gvmt shutdown, none worked. ;)  BTW, I was
working there during the 1995 shutdown. As contractors, we had been pre-paid a
few months and continued working, but all the "NASA sponsors" were sent home.

If NASA pays a contractor to create something, then that contractor **can**
copyright and patent it. There is a difference that wasn't/isn't clear to me as
to when that happens. I'd guess it was something to do with NASA expertise being
involved or not, but I really don't know. The US Government buys Hummers from GM
(or used to), does that mean that any technology inside a Hummer cannot be patented?