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News & Views item - October 2010 |
Why Haven't You Patented Graphene? (October 9, 2010)
Nature's Geoff Brumfiel chatted with this year's physics Nobel laureate, Andre Geim, shortly after the announcement was made that he and Konstantin Novoselov had shared the physics prize for their discovery of the carbon monolayer graphene.
One question and answer:
You haven't yet patented graphene. Why is that?
We considered patenting; we prepared a patent and it
was nearly filed. Then I had an interaction with a big, multinational
electronics company. I approached a guy at a conference and said, "We've
got this patent coming up, would you be interested in sponsoring it over
the years?" It's quite expensive to keep a patent alive for 20 years.
The guy told me, "We are looking at graphene, and it might have a future
in the long term. If after ten years we find it's really as good as it
promises, we will put a hundred patent lawyers on it to write a hundred
patents a day, and you will spend the rest of your life, and the gross
domestic product of your little island, suing us." That's a direct
quote. |