As a few of you know I am an attorney with Miller & Barns, a patent law firm specializing in nanotechnology, materials, chemistry and biochemistry.

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Miller & Barns PLLC is a full service intellectual propery law firm. Miller & Barns specializes in chemicals, materials, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, nanotechnology, and medical devices. We provide clients with assistance in preparation and prosecution of patent applications, portfolio management, clearance, validity and non-infringement opinions, licensing, foreign and domestic trademark prosecution, design around assistance and international patent litigation management. Our partners have a combination of inhouse and big firm experience that allows us to provide levels of service that are typically available only to large corporation with dedicated inhouse intellectual property counsel.

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Nano-Modeling

http://www.phys.psu.edu/~crespi/images/twist:01.gif">.

A view from within a flattened twisted carbon nanotube. Modeled by Dr. Vincent Crespi, Professor of Physics and Materials Science & Engineering, Penn State University.
(Published under the terms of the Creative Commons License)

I Hate To Use The Word Luddite

New technology raises hopes for some fears for others. Nanotechnology is no different.

Eric Drexler, nanotech hero and bete-noir brainstormed an industry then launched a meme that others are using to sink it. Some people are drawn to the worst case scenario and Drexler gave them Grey Goo, a feared result of self replicating nanobots run amok. Drexler has since backed away stating “runaway replicators, while theoretically possible according to the laws of physics, cannot be built with today’s nanotechnology toolset.”

"If enough misinformation spreads, I think there's a tremendous potential to generate a social backlash" said Bo Varga, executive director of NanoSIG, a group based at NASA's Ames Research. Right now the voices in the wilderness are out in force to put a the brakes on nanotechnology. Talk to the folks working on GM foods if you don't think it can happen here. If electricity and the internal combustion engine face this kind of coordinated opposition, I would be writing this by candlelight after shoveling out my stable.

The anti-science ETC Group has added nanotechnology to genetic engineering as a second windmill to at which to tilt. "There's a huge regulatory vacuum looking at the potential toxicity of materials at the nanoscale," said Hope Shand, research director of the ETC Group, an advocacy group based in Canada. "If there are studies that have been done, we haven't seen them. We feel at this point there needs to be a mandatory moratorium on synthetic nanomaterials until we can see laboratory protocols to protect workers and protect the environment."

There are risks involved in all new technologies. Nanotechnology is no different. Does our society want 97% efficient lighting and 50 MPG cars that give consumers the size and safety they demand? The answer to this is self evident and the technology is out there. Unless someone takes action the nano-baby might be thrown out with the bath water.

In the words of Gregg Easterbrook "We’re All Gonna Die" but it ain’t going to be nanotechnology that kills us.

Why I'm Here (and a disclaimer)

NanoLaw will consider the intellectual property (IP) and regulatory (RegLaw) issues which those in the Nanotech field may encounter. This site is established to advance the field of nanotechnology and inform those involved in the research, development and commercialization. Your polite comments are always welcomed.

While this Blog is written by a patent lawyer, no reader should assume that an attorney client relationship exists or will be established by your reading this or by posting to this site.

Nano Patents

The Nobel Prize is nice but commercial value is important too. In order to protect an investment in research and development companies, universities and governments patent their inventions and discoveries. A list of early patents on fullerenes is below:
5,227,038 - Electric arc process for making fullerenes
5,300,203 - Process for making fullerenes by the laser evaporation of carbon
5,393,955 - Preparation of fullerenes and apparatus therefor
5,487,831 - Recognition and separation of carbon clusters
5,493,094 - Preparation of fullerenes and apparatus therefor
5,494,558 - Production of fullerenes by sputtering
5,510,098 - CVD method of producing and doping fullerenes
5,538,763 - Method of preparing carbon cluster film having electrical conductivity

The technology stepping stone to the formation of fullerenes is the deposition of diamond coatings Nano Precursors
4,767,608 -Method for synthesizing diamond by using plasma
4,915,977 -Method of forming a diamond film

Foundations of Nanotechnology

The 1996 Nobel Prize for Chemistry was awarded jointly to Robert F. Curl, Jr. , Sir Harold W. Kroto , and Richard E. Smalley for their discovery of fullerenes.

Fullerenes are formed when vaporized carbon condenses in an atmosphere of inert gas. The gaseous carbon is obtained e.g. by directing an intense pulse of laser light at a carbon surface. The released carbon atoms are mixed with a stream of helium gas and combine to form clusters of some few up to hundreds of atoms. The gas is then led into a vacuum chamber where it expands and is cooled to some degrees above absolute zero. The carbon clusters can then be analyzed with mass spectrometry.

Curl, Kroto and Smalley performed this experiment together with graduate students J.R. Heath and S.C. O’Brien during a period of eleven days in 1985. By fine-tuning the experiment they were able in particular to produce clusters with 60 carbon atoms and clusters with 70. Clusters of 60 carbon atoms, C60, were the most abundant. They found high stability in C60, which suggested a molecular structure of great symmetry. It was suggested that C60 could be a "truncated icosahedron cage", a polyhedron with 20 hexagonal (6-angled) surfaces and 12 pentagonal (5-angled) surfaces. The pattern of a European football has exactly this structure, as does the geodetic dome designed by the American architect R. Buckminster Fuller for the 1967 Montreal World Exhibition. The researchers named the newly-discovered structure buckminsterfullerene after him.

Source (http://nobelprize.org/chemistry/laureates/1996/press.html)