Mar 5 2010
Reportlinker.com announces that a new market research report is available in its catalogue: Carbon Nanotubes Patent Landscape 2008 http://www.reportlinker.com/p0180102/Carbon-Nanotubes-Patent-Landscape-2008.html
IP Overview presents a patent landscape analysis of the Carbon Nanotubes field.
After 15 years of development, the first signs of technological maturity of the Carbon Nanotubes sector are only just becoming apparent: emergence of industrial applications, toughening of grant conditions by patent offices, stabilization in the number of players. Either by internal R&D or by the in-licensing of academic know-how, several industrial players have marked out their position in each of the application areas (SAMSUNG, HON HAI PRECISION, HITACHI and LG GROUP in the display field, NISSIN KOGYO in the field of composites or IBM and FUJITSU in transistors and memories).
Since 2002, China, South Korea and Taiwan are catching up with the Japanese (NEC) and American (IBM, RICE UNIVERSITY) pioneers and are now becoming major research players. Furthermore, the long time-to-market and delay in market growth compared to initial forecasts limits the protection offered by the first application patents (filed as early as 1992). The next five years will therefore see the expiry of several families of patents that, in some cases, act as blocks to the development of the sector. Several pioneers could therefore face new entrants that are blocking their application domains by massive patenting.
If some domains (Synthesis/production and display) are locked by well implanted industrial players, several new emerging topics are still offering a range of opportunities, in particular biosensors and photoreceptors, composites, touch screens and contrast agents for medical imaging. In parallel of a still very intensive academic research, the next five years will therefore see new industrial players emerge on these topics.
Source: http://www.reportlinker.com/