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Trends in nanotechnology patents

An analysis of 30 years of data on patent publications from the US Patent and Trademark Office, the European Patent Office and the Japan Patent Office confirms the dominance of companies and selected academic institutions from the US, Europe and Japan in the commercialization of nanotechnology.

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Figure 1: Number of nanotechnology patents published by the USPTO, EPO and JPO according to publication date.

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Acknowledgements

This research is supported by the US National Science Foundation (IIS-0311652, CMMI-0533749 and CMMI-0654232). M.C.R. was partially supported by the Directorate for Engineering, NSF. The authors thank the USPTO, EPO and JPO for making their databases available for research.

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Chen, H., Roco, M., Li, X. et al. Trends in nanotechnology patents. Nature Nanotech 3, 123–125 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2008.51

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