Nanotechnologies: the race for patents

Nanosciences and nanotechnologies are characterized by the interdisciplinary nature of their research, and by the innovative, complex and highly enabling nature of their technological products. On the research side, a scientist isolated in his or her discipline can be bewildered by the extraordinary variety of effects that matter possesses on the scale of a billionth of a meter. The use of complex instrumentation (tunneling microscopes, atomic force microscopes, molecular jet epitaxy systems, to name but the best-known), which has enabled this field to expand since the 1980s, further accentuates the need for complementary skills. Teams exploring this field are therefore frequently made up of researchers and engineers...