Patents

The United States Patent and Trademark Office defines a patent as, “…a property right granted by the Government of the United States of America to an inventor to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling the invention throughout the United States…”. NIST’s priority on commercialization supports the President’s Management Agenda (PMA) which identifies, as a priority, the transition of federally funded innovations from the laboratory to the marketplace as well as increasing private sector investment in later-stage research and development.

NIST has licensed numerous technologies for multiple industry sectors (e.g., healthcare, homeland security and cybersecurity) and seeks government, industry, and academia to partner and license NIST technologies. Visit the NIST Technology Partnerships Office section to explore the most effective partnering models and technology transfer mechanisms for your organization.

Take a moment now and explore NIST patented technologies and envision what could take your enterprise to the next level. Use “Patent Database” to search for patents issued starting fiscal year 2018 or see what technologies were patented in fiscal years 2018, 2019, and 2020 by accessing their individual links. View all of NIST patented technologies prior to FY20 by visiting the Federal Laboratory Consortium website.

Explore Patents by Topic

Recent Patents

Metasurface Optical Pulse Shaper for Shaping an Optical Pulse in a Temporal Domain

Inventors

Henri J. Lezec, Amit Agrawal, Wenqi Zhu, Cheng Zhang, Shawn Divitt

Patent Description Ultrafast laser pulse shaping is a well-developed field with available commercial products. Typically, the amplitude, phase or polarization of the light is controlled by placing a spatial light modulator (SLM) at the focus of the first mirror, in a technique known as Fourier

Method of Thermal Expansion Compensation by Resistance Measurement

Inventors

Matthew S. Hoehler, Christopher Smith

Patent Description The invention is a method of estimating thermal expansion in a "wire" (a long thin flexible element that may be metallic or nonmetallic) by measuring changes in its electrical resistance. In some materials, the electrical resistance and thermal expansion are both almost linearly

Differential compensator to reduce uncertainty in determination of movement of a structural member

Inventors

Matthew S. Hoehler, Christopher Smith

Patent Description This invention is a method for estimating thermal expansion in a wire attached to a moving target. In typical tests it is important to measure the motion of a specimen (target) with respect to a fixed reference point, and this is often accomplished by attaching a wire or thread

Optical Parametric Oscillator

Inventors

Keith R. Lykke, Steven W. Brown, John T. Woodward

Patent Description This invention is a light source that provides high-power (1W to 5W), narrow line-width (<1 nm), quasi-continuous wave (80 MHz) light that can be tuned in wavelength from 340 nm to 2300 nm. See figure below. The light source is fully automated, solid state, and fits on a

Hub and Spoke System for Detecting and Locating Gas Leaks

Inventors

Gregory B Rieker, Ian Coddington, Nathan R. Newbury, Kuldeep Prasad, Anna Karion

Patent Description The current practice for detecting methane leaks is still in its infancy. There are several environmental regulations that have driven the development of Forward-looking Infrared (FLIR) cameras, thermographic cameras that senses infrared radiation, for detection of Volatile

Massively parallel wafer-level reliability system and process for massively parallel wafer-level reliability testing

Inventors

Kin Cheung

Patent Description The massively parallel reliability (MPR) system is a measurement platform where thousands of semiconductor devices are tested for long term reliability. The system is designed to perform some of the standard reliability tests for certain degradation mechanisms in semiconductor

A method and process for imposing fine-grained next generation access controls over RDBMS SQL Queries and database objects

Inventors

Joshua Roberts, Gopi Katwala, David Ferraiolo, Serban Gavrila

Patent Description The Policy Machine is an access control framework that served as the basis for the development of an American National Standards Institute (ANSI)/ the International Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS – the central U.S. forum dedicated to creating technology

Broadband Microwave Phase Shift Detector

Inventors

Kin P. Cheung, Jason T Ryan, Jason Campbell

Patent Description The new NIST detector senses very small phase shifts in a highly balanced microwave bridge. An electric field optimized microwave probe, in close proximity to a sample, serves to perturb the degree of bridge balance due to a change in effective dielectric constant of the sample

Noncontact Resonameter, Process for making and use of same

Inventors

Jan Obrzut, Nathan D. Orloff, Christian J. Long

Patent Description A noncontact resonameter includes: a resonator to: produce an excitation signal including a field; subject a sample to the excitation signal; produce a first resonator signal in a presence of the sample and the excitation signal, the first resonator signal including: a first

Anti-Counterfeiting Article, Process for Making and Using Same

Inventors

Yaw S. Obeng, Joseph J. Kopanski, Jung-Joon Ahn

Patent Description This invention provides for a new and useful metrology to enable counterfeit detection system capable of uniquely marking items by encoding information in their physical structure at the nanoscale. The system depends on rapidly encoding information in the physical structure of an

View All Patents