The fullerene patent landscape in Europe

Nanotechnology Law and Business

Volumn 5, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 85-94

  Michalitsch, Richard ^a   Kallinger, Christian ^a   Verbandt, Yves ^a   Veefkind, Victor ^a   Huebner, Stefan Rolf ^b  

^a EUROPEAN PATENT OFFICE   (Germany)

^b NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

DRUG PRODUCTS; INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH; NANOTECHNOLOGY; PATENTS AND INVENTIONS; SOLAR CELLS;

FULLERENE PATENTING; PATENT HOLDERS; THERAPEUTICS;

FULLERENES;

EID: 43949093789     PISSN: 15462080     EISSN: 15462080     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (12)

1. 60: Buckminsterfullerene, 318 NATURE 162 (1985).
2. 60: A New Form of Carbon, 347 Nature 354 (1990).
3. The data presented here has been extracted from the databases of the European Patent Office and the World Patent Index (WPI). The majority of documents that contain keywords related to fullerenes are concerned with other inventions, only touching fullerenes as one possibility amongst many alternative constituent materials for a product. In order to narrow the results down to those patents and patent applications in which fullerenes are indeed essential to the invention, the search for relevant keywords has been confined to the abstracts of the documents. Surprisingly, restricting the search had little impact on the relative distribution of applications with respect to technical fields, time of filing, etc. This suggests that the conclusions presented in this article are relatively robust and independent of the exact definition of a "fullerene invention."
4. J.C. Miller and D.L. Harris, The Carbon Nanotube Patent Landscape, 3 NANOTECH. LAW & BUS. 427 (2006).
5. A patent family is a set of patents referring to the same priority application.
6. T. Braun, et al., Growth and Trends of Fullerene Research As Reflected In Its Journal Literature, 100 CHEM. REV. 23 (2000), (providing data for the year from 1985 to 1996).
7. Classes C01B31, B01J19, fullerenes per se subtracted.
8. Classes H01L and H01M.
9. P. Gerhardt, et al., Polyhedral Carbon Ions In Hydrocarbon Flames, 137 CHEM. PHYS. LETT. 306 (1987).
10. Konarka has been included in this list despite it being a U.S. company, because most of its fullerene-related applications were filed in the name of its Austrian research centres or in the name of Quantum Solar Energy Linz (QSEL), which has been acquired by Konarka in 2004.
11. Formerly Hoechst AG.
12. Formerly Blue Membranes GmbH.