https://www.yahoo.com/news/nasa-patented-faster-cheaper-route-122800550.html"NASA patented a faster, cheaper route to the moon...
It may seem odd to patent lunar travel, but Burns said it is really no different from any other invention. "It's a creation that was the result of doing numerical modeling of planetary trajectories, he said. "So it is intellectual property."
NASA patents and licenses inventions to achieve the "widest distribution" of a technology, Dan Lockney, a NASA executive, told IPWatchdog in 2018."
So I thought for a moment maybe they are patenting this so nobody else can try to do it and this way they can keep it in the public domain for anyone to use, but that's not it. They are charging for it.
"The agency charges as much as $50,000 to license its patents but typically asks for $5,000 to $10,000, plus royalties. "It is through the upfront fees that NASA seeks to recover some of its investment in the patent filing and maintenance costs," the agency's licensing website says."
Don't get me wrong here. I think it's great work that they are doing. That's a fantastic trajectory and I can appreciate all the time and effort and money and brain power put into it. Nobel Prize consideration is certainly due. I'm just not seeing how it's something that should be patentable, like if you found a way to get across the ocean in a hot air balloon using the most efficient wind currents and different altitudes and locations during your journey, or tried to patent an efficient route across the ocean on your sailboat, or a time saving way to drive through a city or state or country. I'm not seeing in the story that this is a patent they applied for and it's under consideration and might still be rejected. Apparently, it got approved.
Is that how this should work? Any other examples of patent abuse, either upheld or denied, whether or not you agree with this one?