NASA and Ocean Tomo Federal Services, LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ocean Tomo, LLC, today announced the first ever sale of a government patent license through a public auction of intellectual property. The live auction, Ocean Tomo’s eighth, took place on October 30, 2008, in Chicago. The auction was their largest to date, with over 500 in attendance.

The NASA lot licensed at the auction is comprised of a portfolio of ten U.S. patents and one domestic patent application for a method and system used to analyze nonlinear, non-stationary signals, known as the Hilbert-Huang Transform (HHT).

“This has been a great day for NASA,” said Nona Cheeks, the Chief of the Innovative Partnership Programs (IPP) Office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. which administers these NASA patents. “Today we demonstrated that the Federal Government can be innovative in how it commercializes federally-funded technology for the benefit of the American public.”

“By being the first federal agency to participate in a live, public auction of exclusive patent licenses and demonstrating success, NASA has blazed a trail for others,” said Connie Chang, Director, Ocean Tomo Federal Services. “We are thrilled with this outcome and look forward to helping others in the government accelerate innovation and contribute to our nation’s economic prosperity.” Established in 2003, Ocean Tomo, LLC, headquartered in Chicago, and with offices in Calif. and Washington, D.C., is the leading Intellectual Capital Merchant Banc(R) firm. The company provides financial products and services related to Intellectual Property financial & survey expert testimony, valuations, investments, risk management and transactions.

For more information, please contact Connie Chang at 240-482-8204 or cchang@oceantomo.com or Darryl Mitchell at 301-286-5169 or Darryl.R.Mitchell@nasa.gov.

For more information, see the press release: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2008/ocean_tomo.html

For more information about Ocean Tomo, LLC, please visit: www.OceanTomo.com

For information on NASA Goddard’s Technology Transfer Program, visit: http://ipp.gsfc.nasa.gov/