Post by williamplayer on Jan 27, 2014 12:08:13 GMT
Graphene: The UK Perspective
A Brief Analysis of Worldwide Patent Filings Relating to Graphene
Introduction Graphene is considered a nanomaterial as it consists of sheets of carbon atoms a single layer thick in a hexagonal arrangement [1]. The media refer to graphene as the “miracle material of the 21st Century” [2] and its public profile was boosted when the Nobel Prize in Physics 2010 was awarded to Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov of Manchester University “for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene.”
On 3 October 2011, a year after Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov won the Nobel Prize in Physics, the UK government pledged £50m towards developing spin-off technologies from graphene [4]. The money will “give researchers more bench space to explore the material’s commercial potential”and “take this Nobel Prize-winning discovery
from the British laboratory to the British factory floor”. This brief analysis gives an overview of the worldwide patent filings relating to graphene by UK resident applicants and inventors.
General Patenting Trends Searching in the EPODOC and WPI patent databases in July 2011 yielded 3018 published patent documents relating to graphene; 46 of these documents (<2%) belong to UK-based applicants, and 75 belong to UK resident inventors (<2.5%). Figure 1 shows the top applicant countries and suggests that the UK is falling behind other high-tech nations such as the USA, Japan, Korea and Germany when it comes to research into graphene and its potential commercial applications.
85% of the 46 documents by UK-based applicants have named UK resident inventors on the patent applications, but 58% of the 75 documents with named UK resident inventors are filed by international applicants. This suggests that many international research organisations are employing UK resident researchers to undertake their research into graphene, taking innovation and subsequent economic benefits away from the UK. This is backed-up by a speech by the Chancellor, George Osborne, in October 2011 where he said that “Countries like Singapore, Korea and America are luring researchers with lucrative offers to move their research overseas” [4]. The historical profile of patent publications worldwide (Figure 2) shows that there has been a rapid take-off of patenting related to graphene since 2000, but that the UK impacton this growth, in terms of UK-based applicants and UK resident inventors, is negligible.
Read Full Document (6 pages): www.ipo.gov.uk/informatic-graphene-uk.pdf
A Brief Analysis of Worldwide Patent Filings Relating to Graphene
Introduction Graphene is considered a nanomaterial as it consists of sheets of carbon atoms a single layer thick in a hexagonal arrangement [1]. The media refer to graphene as the “miracle material of the 21st Century” [2] and its public profile was boosted when the Nobel Prize in Physics 2010 was awarded to Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov of Manchester University “for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene.”
On 3 October 2011, a year after Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov won the Nobel Prize in Physics, the UK government pledged £50m towards developing spin-off technologies from graphene [4]. The money will “give researchers more bench space to explore the material’s commercial potential”and “take this Nobel Prize-winning discovery
from the British laboratory to the British factory floor”. This brief analysis gives an overview of the worldwide patent filings relating to graphene by UK resident applicants and inventors.
General Patenting Trends Searching in the EPODOC and WPI patent databases in July 2011 yielded 3018 published patent documents relating to graphene; 46 of these documents (<2%) belong to UK-based applicants, and 75 belong to UK resident inventors (<2.5%). Figure 1 shows the top applicant countries and suggests that the UK is falling behind other high-tech nations such as the USA, Japan, Korea and Germany when it comes to research into graphene and its potential commercial applications.
85% of the 46 documents by UK-based applicants have named UK resident inventors on the patent applications, but 58% of the 75 documents with named UK resident inventors are filed by international applicants. This suggests that many international research organisations are employing UK resident researchers to undertake their research into graphene, taking innovation and subsequent economic benefits away from the UK. This is backed-up by a speech by the Chancellor, George Osborne, in October 2011 where he said that “Countries like Singapore, Korea and America are luring researchers with lucrative offers to move their research overseas” [4]. The historical profile of patent publications worldwide (Figure 2) shows that there has been a rapid take-off of patenting related to graphene since 2000, but that the UK impacton this growth, in terms of UK-based applicants and UK resident inventors, is negligible.
Read Full Document (6 pages): www.ipo.gov.uk/informatic-graphene-uk.pdf