Cleantech & Nano Blog Timely insight on emerging legal and business development

Monthly Archives: August 2010

Learning from LeBron: Pennsylvania’s Latest Efforts in Nanotech & Cleantech

Posted by J. Steven Rutt on Posted in Cleantech

Nanotech and cleantech innovation have important national and international implications. It’s global! However, regional and state interests are also critically important. For example, my impression is that regional and state interests tend to focus more acutely on job creation. They are practical. In these troubled economic times, nanotech and cleantech research funding, whether national or state, will need to demonstrate its connection with job creation, avoiding platitudes. 

Personally, I like to follow Pennsylvania, where I grew up and later went to grad school at Penn State. One great site to follow Pennsylvania’s development is www.keystoneedge.com. This site tracks economic developments within Pennsylvania, many of them linked to nanotech and cleantech innovation. Many also show important links between state funding and the private sector. Examples of recent, exciting developments in the keystone state for cleantech and nanotech include:

1.  Pocono Raceway recently introduced its solar farm, the largest solar farm located at a stadium in the world! Covering over 25 acres, 39,690 solar panels are located outside on (former) parking lot space. This is said – again – to be the largest stadium solar farm in the world, the largest Pennsylvania solar farm, and the 10th largest solar farm in the U.S. Apparently, anyone using an electrical outlet at the site will be using solar power. This was a nice example connecting car racing with clean energy! And innovative use of large seemingly useless tracks of land.

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Nanotech’s First Decade: Celebration, Innovation, and Patent Metrics

Posted by J. Steven Rutt on Posted in General

Nanotech has come a long way just ten years into our new century. A celebration of the ten year mark is being planned for later this year, December 8-10, in the Washington DC area. What provides the starting point for this ten year period? The (formal) starting of the NNI, apparently, as President Clinton left office, not the new millenium per se. Billions have been spent since on nanotech by the federal government. What is the result? 

Nanotech has resulted, primarily, in significant innovation these past years. From 2000-2009, for example, the federal government has granted over 4,000 nanotech patents (4,138 patents classified under the nanotech 977 number, based on patent searching today). From 1990-1999, that number was only 1,603 – less than half. Nanotech stands ready to allow cleantech and biotech to push further into the unknown and provide new products undreamed of but 60 years ago. Nanotech must not lose its focus: innovation.

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Potential Bombshell in the Making Over Patent March-In Rights ?! Give Us Drugs or Give Us…

Posted by J. Steven Rutt on Posted in General; Licensing; Patent

A potential "bombshell" is in the making which could ultimately impact nanotech and cleantech: 

On August 2, 2010, several persons with Fabry disease petitioned the federal government (NIH) to effectively break an exclusive license held by Genzyme for the drug Fabrazyme®. To date, the government has only reviewed three of these march-in petitions and, to date, has not granted any of them.

However, this time, lives are at stake and threatened persons are petitioning their government.

This time, the administration in power may review the petition with greater sympathy to the petitioners. President Bush’s administration reviewed the last march-in petitions. What would Obama do? (Ok, what will the Obama administration do?)

If this petition is granted, important legal and policy implications will flow that influence all technical sectors like nanotech and cleantech which depend on federally funded inventions. At least ten percent of nanotech patents stem from federal funding.

Bayh-Dole "junkies" will follow these developments closely. Bayh-Dole is the legal system which controls the licensing of federally funded inventions to the private sector, and provides the legal context for the potential march-in.

Possible outcomes range from, for example, (i) some sort of settlement approved by the government, (ii) a narrow "breaking of the patent" which would not be too damaging to Genzyme and would be tailored to this fact pattern, (iii) a broad-based "breaking" of the patent with far-reaching implications to other situations, including nanotech and cleantech, or (iv) petition denied. 

How should the NIH rule?

A related NPR story.  

To read the petition to the NIH directly, read below:

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A Greening of Nanotech in Media – What is Needed…

Posted by J. Steven Rutt on Posted in EPA

The EPA has many things on its mind these days related to the Gulf Oil Spill, the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history, many have concluded. Although nanotech does not appear to be at the top of the EPA’s priority list, for now at least, we do note one EPA development:  insideepa.com is reporting that the EPA finally has sent to the White House Office of Management & Budget (OMB) for review a policy regarding providing more information about nanoscale ingredients in pesticides. In case you were wondering, this proposed policy arises out of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide & Rodenticide Act (FIFRA).

Nanotech should – really – do better in presenting to the public its green side. Media. Countless nanotechnologies are promising in cleantech, alternative energy, and environmental monitoring and cleanup. Nanomedicine and nano biotechnology provide the health angle. This provides a spectacular, broad background to approach the more narrow, pedestrian issue of nanomaterials environmental regulation. In developing new materials and markets, companies should work pragmatically with the EPA to develop sensible policies for the public good. 

We can only hope that media headlines in the coming decade will focus on the spectacularly creative developments in nanotech linked to cleantech and life sciences. Pragmatic EPA regulation need not be a primary source of media’s nanotech headlines. Let the facts and the promise about nanotech in our society emerge.

Nanomaterials can improve the environment, promote health and save lives – good message, true message, yes?

New Innovation Prize for “Stuck” Cleantech: Oil Spills (About Time?!)

Posted by J. Steven Rutt on Posted in Cleantech

The X PRIZE Foundation announced this week $1.4M in prize money for developing new ocean oil spill cleanup technology.  http://www.xprize.org/media-center/press-release/x-prize-foundation-announces-wendy-schmidt-oil-cleanup-x-challenge.

Will nanotechnology play a role for any team that elects to pursue the prize?

We applaud this development.  We also note some sense of feeling:  "it is about time."  

The "prize approach" is an important aspect of innovation policy, particularly where a certain sector of technology has been generally ignored and innovation is "stuck" (like oil spill cleanup).

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