The report from Lux research gives a classification of the three thousand odd patents that were submitted in Nanotech.

* Dendrimers pose the biggest question mark, scoring low on white space and freedom from entanglement for all commercially significant applications. A large number of relevant claims have been assigned from pioneer Dow to one start-up company, Dendritic Nanotechnologies.

* Quantum dots have particularly knotty entanglement for general claims that cover the materials themselves and not any specific application. This fact casts doubt on the commercial value of quantum dot IP.

* Carbon nanotube patents look messy in electronics, but promising in energy and healthcare and cosmetics. The common assumption that carbon nanotube patents are both numerous and overlapping across all important application categories is incorrect.

* Fullerenes look relatively unentangled, but crowded with abandoned patents. The good news: Fullerenes show less entanglement than the previous three categories. The bad news: Many patents issued may be useless – inventors have given up on a third of them by failing to pay patent maintenance fees.

* Nanowire patents number few and seem distinct – but Nanosys looms large. Nanowire patents offer a good opportunity to license the most important ones on an exclusive basis without worrying about IP entanglement – so good that start-up Nanosys has already attempted to do it.

Links:
Nanotechnology Gold Rush Yields Crowded, Entangled Patents
Nanotech patents proliferate