I guess I didn&#x27;t explain my scenario well enough.<p>NASA has some idea. People that work in the market see the idea and think &quot;Oh, gee, that would make our products better, but it would take $10 million to figure it out&quot;. With no patent they then think &quot;too bad it isn&#x27;t worth developing&quot;.<p>Maybe that&#x27;s an overly constructed scenario, but tech transfer isn&#x27;t just about getting people to use great ideas (a better welding technique is an example of a great idea), it&#x27;s also about commercializing ideas that would not necessarily get commercialized in the absence of the patent.