George Whitesides, a Harvard University chemist, is a renowned specialist in nanotechnology, a field built on the behavior of materials as small as one molecule thick. But there is nothing tiny about the patent portfolio that Harvard has amassed over the last 25 years based on work in his lab.
Harvard and Nano-Terra Inc, a company co-founded by Whitesides, planned to announce yesterday the exclusive licensing for more than 50 current and pending Harvard patents to Nano-Terra. The deal could transform the little-known firm into one of nanotechnology's most closely watched startups.
HUGE PORTFOLIO
"It's the largest patent portfolio I remember, and it may be our largest ever," said Isaac Kohlberg, who has overseen the commercialization of Harvard's patent portfolio since 2005.
Nano-Terra, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said the patent filing and maintenance costs alone top US$2 million.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Harvard said it would receive a significant equity stake in Nano-Terra in addition to royalties.
The patents cover methods of manipulating matter at the nanometer and micron scales to create novel surfaces and combinations of materials.
Such technology could lead to products to make better paints and windows, safer and cleaner chemicals and more efficient solar panels.
The patents cover virtually all non-biological applications of work performed by Whitesides and dozens of doctoral students over the last decade.
The biology related research -- mostly in health care -- had previously been licensed to other companies involving Whitesides, including Genzyme, GelTex (sold to Genzyme for US$1.2 billion in 1993), Theravance, and two privately held startups, Surface Logix and WMR Biomedical.
Nano-Terra, though, is selling no products. It is just offering manufacturing and design skills in realms where flexibility and low cost are crucial.
SOFT LITHOGRAPHY
The best known patents cover soft lithography, Whitesides' method of depositing extremely thin layers of material onto a surface in carefully controlled patterns.
It can work over larger surfaces than photolithography, which is widely used to make microchips. Perhaps even more intriguing, soft lithography can work on highly irregular or rounded surfaces where photolithography is all but impossible.
But while nanotechnology's promise remains immense -- the potential advances in energy, medicine and information technology have attracted billions of dollars in government and private investment in recent years -- it is not yet clear which patents will prove valuable.
"You can't just go to market with a huge patent portfolio and a promising pipeline but no revenues," said Stephen Maebius, a patent lawyer in Washington and a nanotechnology expert.
"That was the lesson of Nanosys," he said, referring to the aborted 2004 public offering of a company based in Palo Alto, California, that was the highest-profile nanotechnology start-up backed by venture capital.
Nano-Terra was founded in 2005 with the goal of creating a home for the Whitesides patents.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique