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NEC Demands License Fees For Carbon Nanotubes
apirkle writes "As reported in this article on EEtimes.com, NEC has claimed today that they own 'essential patents' on carbon nanotubes, and that all companies who make or sell nanotubes must purchase a license. NEC has a press release stating that they have already sold a license."
If they patented the structures they show in the images on their website (I can't read Japanese so I'm not sure) then they may have a point (and the world may have a big problem). On the other hand, carbon nanotubes are things that are easily formed in nature (it's the purification process that's complicated, and of course the processes involved in making carbon nanotubes with specified properties). Therefore patenting carbon nanotubes is like patenting iron, or silicon oxide. And I'm not sure if such a patent will hold in court.
-- Cheers!
Item d on your list is well-known as a completely fake urban legend. See this Snopes page:
http://www.snopes.com/legal/lawsuits.asp
None of the lawsuits in that story have any truth to them.
Comment of the year
1 6,331,690 Process for producing single-wall carbon nanotubes uniform in diameter and laser ablation apparatus used therein
2 6,157,043 Solenoid comprising a compound nanotube and magnetic generating apparatus using the compound nanotube
3 5,698,175 Process for purifying, uncapping and chemically modifying carbon nanotubes
4 5,641,466 Method of purifying carbon nanotubes
5 5,627,140 Enhanced flux pinning in superconductors by embedding carbon nanotubes with BSCCO materials
None of these patents cover the existence of nanotubes -- but the patents do cover various methods of creating nanotubes. I found 118 US patents which mention carbon nanotubes in the abstract to the patent at the US Patent and Trademark Office.
There are other patents which concern creation of carbon nanotubes which predate NEC's patents. For example: 5,482,601 Method and device for the production of carbon nanotubes.
Accordingly, I doubt that NEC has a patent on carbon nanotubes themselves. Instead, it appears that NEC has some patents on methods for manufacturing carbon nanotubes. If these methods are more efficient than other methods, I do not have any problem with NEC selling licenses to use their processes.
Example: Daimler-Benz (before they became Daimler-Chrysler) developed and patented the airbag. They have never enforced the patent.
I am working in a nanotube lab, too. There are lots of patents out there, describing specific methods of nanotube production. The oldest nanotube patent so far goes back to 1985. It was a US patent of a company sitting in Massachusetts. No joke, this is 6 years before the "invention" of nanotubes by NEC. They simply called it carbon nanofibrils but not carbon nanotubes. But essentially, it is the same material. So, even if it might be possible to patent nanotubes as such (maybe in Japan only) their patent is at least questionable. CNI is another company which owns nanotube synthesis patents and do not need to rely on those patents by NEC.
I ain't no patent laywer.... but...
:-)
As I understand patents [which isn't saying much] you have to infringe on the patent as a whole not in part. Obviously there is wiggle room about the steps [e.g. change a 6ml of water to 6.0001ml won't make your process different enough].
So all another company has todo is find a significantly different way to make the tubes and voila. Or just duke it out by the monkey bars after school with the NEC staff
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
http://www.firstgov.gov/fgsearch/index.jsp?dep=t&n r=20&de=detailed&mw0=carbon%20nanotubes&mt0=phrase &ms0=must&in0=domain&dom0=www.uspto.gov&db=www&rn= 1&parsed=true
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
You can patent substance if it is new invented material
As I was saying: you can now. You didn't use to be able to. Patents used to be on processes, methods, or applications, not on substances.
The reason for the change was exactly (2): manufacturers were crying "foul". But the cure is apparently worse than the disease, since the new rules clearly stifle innovation.
I used to work for a small biotech company which claimed to have key patents for generation and using combinatorial libraries of small drug-like chemicals for pharma research. Everybody is now using the technology, and our company got nothing out of it
That sounds reasonable to me. The idea itself is very old and nobody within the last three decades should have been able to get "key" patents in that area. At best, a company might have gotten a patent on a specific, useful tweak. Your management and your investors should have known, too. Maybe the patent system does work sometimes...