This is both disappointing and par for the course:
A suite of 25 patents for technology developed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center will be put up for sale at a live intellectual property auction being held in October by Ocean Tomo Auctions LLC in Chicago.
The sale, which will include rights to signal processing, GPS for spacecraft and sensor technologies, is the first auction under a partnership announced earlier this month between Goddard’s Innovative Partnerships Program (IPP) and Ocean Tomo Federal Services LLC. Ocean Tomo provides a marketplace for intellectual property, which NASA wants to leverage in commercializing its technology.
Patented, taxpayer funded research, sold to private industry. It's meant to be innovative, but instead will just sell off the fruits of public work so that private companies can exploit them or use them as weapons in lawsuits against one another.
Obama campaign - if you're looking to attract some of the geek vote/make up for your cave on FISA, come out forcefully against this. Given the general crappiness of our patent system, this is a lousy thing to do.