"The federal government has one of the largest collections of innovation being kept in a warehouse essentially, and they also have a mandate to commercialise it," said Jim Malackowski, president and CEO of Ocean Tomo.

Malackowski added that, although the market has historically proven too inefficient to facilitate such commercialisation, the unique atmosphere of the patent auction ultimately proved successful.

NASA's lot 56, the Hilbert-Huang transform and its applications, consisted of 10 US patents and one domestic application for a method and system for analysing signals, specifically non-linear physical signals.

Several federal government representatives attended Thursday's auction to see whether the NASA patent would sell, in hopes of structuring similar deals.

One representative of a US navy lab said that she would likely work with Ocean Tomo in the future to market the navy's store of unused research.

"The three NASA lots were stressful," said Malackowski. "They were very complicated to structure. Going forward we hope to work with NASA to modernise the deal to meet the demands of the market."

Thursday's highest lot sold for just over $1.8 million. The auction brought in a total of $12.8 million, making it Ocean Tomo's second most profitable event in the past three years.

Malackowski said that Ocean Tomo auctions grossed a total of $45.1 million in 2008, representing a 45% increase over 2007.