Hello from FedInvent,
In today’s newsletter, we look at the 1,077 patents granted in 2024 that were funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Then, we look at the age of the NSF grants on these patents —the citation vintage. The citation vintage lets us answer a simple question: How old are the NSF grants that led to the 2024 patents?
What Is A Citation Vintage?
Fedinvent pulls its data from patents—the government interest statements, the assignees, and the elusive certificates of correction—instead of from the siloed lists of patents published by federal agencies that only show their patents and contracts. We want all the grants on a patent so that we can also see who is collaborating with whom.
Over the last year or so, we’ve been digging through all the taxpayer-funded patents to build a complete corpus of the patents and the contracts that funded them. (Hence the shortage of newsletters.) We find and fix the format and characters in the contract numbers so we can find them over time.
One step in this endeavor has been to create citation vintages for the contracts and grants cited on the patent. The citation vintage is the year the government issued a grant or contract cited on a taxpayer-funded patent. This indicates when the inventor started working on the project, which resulted in a patent. For inventors working on a government contract or grant, this is the date when the work that led to the invention began.
The citation vintage indicates how long it took to get the patent. It also lets us look at the longevity of a grant—how long after its award does a grant or contract show up on patents? NSF is an excellent organization for this analysis.
FedInvent’s NSF corpus includes 17,240 patents that cite NSF as a funding source. These patents have 9,957 unique grants and 21,940 individual grant citations appearing on them since 2005. If the patent cites a discoverable NSF grant, we have the citation vintage. Today, we’ll explore NSF 2024 patents and see what insight into the innovation ecosphere the citation vintage provides.
National Science Foundation 2024
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is cited as a funding source for 1,077 patents issued in 2024. These patents have 1,350 NSF grant citations, 1,094 unique citations, and 1,080 unique NSF grants that are findable and have a citation vintage. Seventeen of the grant citations are unfindable.
In 2024, there are 702 patents (65%) where NSF is the exclusive funding source cited by the inventors. Of these patents, 566 (80%) cite a single NSF grant, and 136 cite two or more. The other 375 were funded by a combination of federal agencies. One hundred fifty-nine (163) patents cite funding from both NSF and NIH, with 113 citing a single NIH institute and 49 citing multiple NIH institutes. The Department of Defense (DOD) is cited as one of the inventor’s funding sources for 151 patents. Ten patents with DOD and NSF funding cite grants from the United States Army Medical Research and Development Command, and 25 were funded by DARPA. Fifty-four of the NSF patents cite contracts or grants from the Department of Energy (DOE), and four cited funding from a DOE National Lab.
Patents with both NSF and intel community funding include two patents for quantum computing funded by ODNI, a patent for radar technology funded by the CIA, and a patent funded by NSF and NGA for the use of imaging technology.
The technology in the 2024 patents breaks down as follows:
This chart covers 1,064 NSF-funded patents. The chart does not include four design patents, four re-examination patents, and five patents that were examined by the mysterious RD00 Art Unit, the USPTO’s internal R&D panel of examiners.
The table below shows the type of research performer receiving NSF-funded patents in 2024. It was a good year for the HERD.
Two NSF-funded patents cite grants issued to the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) for operating the National Center for Atmospheric Research. The US National Center for Atmospheric Research is a US federally funded research and development center managed by the nonprofit University Corporation for Atmospheric Research and funded by the National Science Foundation. UCAR is funded by the NSF Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences.
The NSF Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program funded 101 patents (9%). Sixteen patents were the result of cooperative research agreements. There is one USDA/NSF intramural patent, 12065658. This patent has two inventors; one is an employee of the USDA Agricultural Research Service. The patent cites two NSF grants—0721192 and 1322796—awarded to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
How Old Are the Grants on These Patents?
Citation Vintage & Longevity
FedInvent looked at patents granted in 2024 that cite an NSF grant as a funding source to see the age of the grants that funded the research.
The first chart shows the vintage of the grants that inventors cite on patents granted in 2024. The chart has the number of unique grants for each year, and when the same grant appeared more than once on patents granted in 2024, the duplicate patents.
The second chart shows the number of patents that cite an NSF patent organized by the citation vintage and the number of NSF grants cited by vintage.
Ten Grants, 185 Patents
The far left bar on both charts, shows the count of NSF grants cited on 2024 patents that NSF awarded before 2005. This includes ten unique grants of pre-2005 vintage that appear on 13 patents.
Here is the list of the oldest grants cited on patents granted in 2024. Ten NSF grants issued before 2005 were cited on 13 patents in 2024. The oldest grant was awarded in 1997. Six of the grants are cooperative research agreements.
1997
ERC: Engineering Research Center for Computer-Integrated Surgical Systems and Technology (9731748) awarded to Johns Hopkins University in 1997. (CRADA) is cited on patent 12108998. (Total patents: 37 — 2009-2024)
1998
Center for Environmentally Responsible Solvents and Processes (9876674) awarded to the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. (CRADA), patent 12029816. (Total patents: 19 — 2008-2024)
2001:
Bimetallic Cooperativity in Homogeneous Catalysis (0111117) awarded to the Louisiana State University is cited on patent 11911751. (Total patents: 1)
2002:
Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) (0213805) awarded to Harvard. (CRADA) is cited on patent 12043922. (Total patents: 37 — 2010-2024)
Arabidopsis 2010: Functional Genomics of Arabidopsis Starch Granule Metabolism (0209789) awarded to Iowa State University by the NSF Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences (BIO/MCB) is cited on patent 12037594. (Total patents: 7 — 2015-2024)
ITR/AP: Simulation-Based Medical Planning for Cardiovascular Disease (0205741) awarded to Stanford University is cited on patent 12176094. (Total patents: 4 — 2012-2024)
Angiogenic Hydrogel Biomaterials to Promote Nerve Regeneration (0201744) is a continuing grant awarded to the University of Texas at Austin. This grant is cited on three patents issued in 2024 — 11857701, 11890344, and 12031008. (Total patents: 14 — 2016-2024)
2003
NNIN: National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network (0335765) awarded to Cornell University. (CRADA) is cited on patent 12144716. (Total patents: 33 — 2008-2024)
2004
Team for Research in Ubiquitous Secure Technology (TRUST) (0424422) awarded in 2004 to the University of California-Berkeley. (CRADA) is cited on patent 12001867. (Total patents: 7 — 2015-2024)
NSF Center for Layered Polymeric Systems (0423914) awarded to Case Western Reserve University (CRADA). Two 2024 patents cited this grant — 12011868, 12059830. (Total patents: 26 — 2013-2024)
(The links will take you to the grant information at NSF and the patent at USPTO.)
The Harvard grant 0213805 is cited on 37 patents. The Johns Hopkins 1997 grant 9731748 also appears on 37 patents. Cornell’s NNIN: National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network grant, 0335765, appears on 33 patents. The University of Texas at Austin grant 0201744 appears on 14 patents starting in 2016.
Except for one grant awarded to Louisiana State University in 2001, the pre-2005 citations are not one-hit wonders. The ten NSF grants awarded before 2005 that appear on patents issued in 2024 are cited on 185 patents granted since 2008.
Meanwhile, A Mile Away…
On September 1, 2002, the same day Harvard was awarded its Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) grant, NSF also awarded the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) an MRSEC cooperative agreement NSF grant 0213282. So far, MIT has racked up 93 patents from 2006-2023 that cite this grant.
The first MIT patent citing its MRSEC grant is 7058242, Polarization-independent optical networks in 3D photonic crystals. The provisional patent application was filed on June 24, 2003, and the patent was awarded in 2006. The most recent patent that cites this NSF grant is 11685271, Wireless Non-Radiative Energy Transfer, it was issued in 2023.
According to both NSF and USASPENDING, the MIT grant was completed on February 28, 2009. Twenty-one years after the grant was issued and 14 years after the grant was completed, inventors at MIT cited the grant as a source of federal funding.
A Work In Progress
In addition to NSF citation vintage data, FedInvent has created the citation vintage data for patents citing DOE, DARPA, and the Military Health Complex — the Army Research and Development Command and Defense Health Agency among others. We are also working on patents that cite Other Transaction Authority contracts. Another elusive collection of patents and contracts.
Creating citation vintages is easier for some agencies than others. We’re working through the nuances of federal contracting. For example, if a contract was granted on October 1, 2016, odds are the contract number will have a 17 in the date spot because the contract or grant was awarded in the government fiscal year 2017. (We use 2017 as the citation vintage to make it easier for users.) NSF is easy because of its discipline in the numbering of its grants. DOE has obstacles but we’re on top of it. NIH is almost impossible. This is a work in progress. Please stay tuned.
Important Innovation Insights
Taxpayer-funded research tells the story of inventions that other patents don’t. Unlike patents without federal funding, FedInvent patents let you find information about the origins of the research and development projects that led inventors to discoveries that led to a patent. The contract information required by the Bayh-Dole Act points you to the specific grants funded by the federal government. For the most part, those grants are publicly available with details on the objectives and the length of the research project. If you are really ambitious, the grant or contract number will let you find the original funding opportunity announcement (FOA) or, in the case of NSF, the Dear Colleague letters that outline the R&D that the government seeks to fund. In many cases, these FOAs provide critical insight into the state of the art, the problem that the government seeks to solve, and what the government views as a successful outcome of the project.
These patents and citations provide important innovation insight into the trajectory of federally funded R&D. Take the case of Nvidia. The first federally funded patent owned by Nvidia was issued on October 7, 2014. The citation vintage of Nvidia’s first taxpayer-funded patent is 2010. Most of NVIDIA’s patents are funded by DOD — DARPA and NSA, and DOE — Lawrence Livermore National Lab. NVIDIA also partnered with Oak Ridge National Laboratory on its early grants. If you follow Nvidia’s taxpayer-funded patents, you can see the evolution of the government’s high-performance computing and exascale computing programs. But, perhaps more importantly, there is a rich collection of papers and public information about the DARPA and DOE programs, the collaborations, and the contracts that supported NVIDIA and others working on this project.
The closing price for NVIDIA (NVDA) in 2014 was $0.48 on December 31, 2014. If you had invested $1,000 in NVDA 11 years ago, you would have around $255,398 today.
And A Trove of Prior Art
The FedInvent team cut their teeth working for clients in the midst of patent infringement cases where we hunted down prior art no one else could find. If you are a prior art hunter, taxpayer-funded patents are a goldmine.
Let Us Know What You Think
If you have questions or comments on our NSF notes and the citation vintage, please send them to us at info@wayfinder.digital.
A Few Unrelated Items
The Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs award search database has been offline since Wednesday, February 12, 2025. No information on when it will return is available. It’s stopped our Military Health Complex research in its tracks.
Inventors funded by US AID have a small but consequential collection of 44 patents focused on malaria vaccines, mosquito surveillance devices, drought-resistant farming and improved crop yield, HIV, portable medical devices, including an invention for the diagnosis of ocular disease, and disinfectants that change color to indicate their work is done. We suspect the reporting on these patents will cease now that US AID has disappeared.
We’re working on the FedInvent DARPA collection and hope to include the new analysis in the newsletter soon.
Thank you for reading the FedInvent newsletter. We’ll be back soon!!