Chemical boom

US chemical companies are enjoying a powerful and unheralded boom in sales and profits, an industry-wide survey has found. The top 50 producers in the United States saw their total combined sales grow by 23% to $253.9 billion during 2004, according to an annual survey by Chemical and Engineering News. Profits surged dramatically, from $11 billion to $18.3 billion. Strong overall demand and high oil prices — reflected in the prices of petrochemical products — are fuelling the boom; petrochemical suppliers such as ExxonMobil Chemicals saw sales growth of almost 40%.

Going soft on software patents

The European Parliament is set to consider a range of amendments that could narrowly confine software patents on the continent. Software-industry representatives fear that the amendments — to a patent directive proposed by the European Commission and agreed by member states — would not adequately protect companies' software innovations. But socialist and green members of parliament who back the proposals — led by Michel Rocard, the former French prime minister — say that less patenting will make it easier for small companies to innovate.

Time to measure up

The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is asking businesses and scientists to chip in with ideas for the kinds of measurement standards it should establish over the next decade. The agency has appealed for input on the standards that will be needed to measure everything from nanotechnology equipment to broadband communications, in preparation for a strategy it plans to draw up by 2007. “We need to be certain that the US measurement system is robust,” says Hratch Semerjian, acting director of NIST.