ANN ARBOR ? AutoHarvest, a non-profit website that connects the auto industry with entrepreneurs and inventors, wants to become in the words of its CEO the Amazon of Innovation.

AutoHarvest Foundation took another step towards that goal this week when it announced a Memorandum of Understanding with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to help entrepreneurs and corporate executives will have direct access to a centralized online collection of databases, information resources, software and analytical tools designed to help inventors better understand the process of obtaining, maintaining and commercializing their intellectual property.

CEO Jayson Pankin sees the MOU as a validation of AutoHarvest?s Innovation Hub concept. The federal government has joined Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors as AutoHarvest collaborators to help accelerate the adoption of innovations in the advanced manufacturing space, Pankin said.

?Our mission is to help advanced manufacturing,? he said. ?AutoHarvest is a place for inventors and commercializers to seek and find each other. Amazon is very popular on the Internet for retail and beyond because they realized they had to morph from the world?s biggest book seller to Sears. ?

Like Amazon, the Innovation Hub has created store fronts where the academic institutions like the University of Michigan can share the site with automakers like GM to displays opportunities to buy, sell or collaborate on Intellectual Property. AutoHarvest, then, can serve as the catalyst that could help create new technologies that could be used in manufacturing.

Besides the beta test of this new ?Amazon-drive? business model, where some 1000 members are tweaking the system that is expected to go live in 2014, AutoHarvest also has launched its Innovation Hub. In the hub, AutoHarvest curates databases that include SBIR and STTG grants, published articles, and other tools to help inventors and commercializers get their products to market faster.

?Whether you are the next 20-year old Steve Jobs in a garage or a retired auto engineer you can respond over this innovation system,? Pankin said. ?We?re doing some speed dating at AutoHarvest – that?s the new world. We?re connecting people from all over the world with a wide net, getting them to digitally connect and getting to a point of transacting business. Amazon represents that to us.?

The Innovation Hub allows users to create a secure profile, where they can post video demonstrations of their technology in hopes of marketing and commercializing it. Also available are templates for licensing agreements and non-disclosure forms.

As a first step to working with AutoHarvest, the Patent office opened its first-ever satellite office in Detroit in July 2012, and the MOU is part of the agency?s outreach into the community.

?This partnership will help advanced manufacturing businesses and individual inventors in Detroit and the surrounding region obtain patent protection and commercialize their inventions,? said Acting Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Acting Director of the USPTO, Teresa Stanek Rea.

Added AutoHarvest Chairman David E. Cole: ?The importance of the Midwest as a global engineering center is reinforced by this alliance.?

For more information, click on AutoHarvest.Org