Harvard licenses over 50 nanotech patents to start-up Nano-Terra

Mumbai: Harvard has announced exclusive licensing for more than 50 current and pending patents to Nano-Terra, a company co-founded by Whitesides,. In a deal that could transform the little-known start-up into one of nanotechnology''s most closely watched companies.

George M. Whitesides, a Harvard University chemist and a renowned specialist in nanotechnology - a new technology being built on the behavior of materials as small as one molecule thick.

Whitesides and his team amassed the huge patent portfolio at Harvard over the last 25 years based on work in his lab.

"It''s the largest patent portfolio I remember, and it may be our largest ever," said Isaac T. Kohlberg, who has overseen the commercialisation of Harvard''s patent portfolio since 2005.

Nano-Terra, based in Cambridge, Massachusets., said the patent filing and maintenance costs alone top $2 million.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Harvard said it would receive a significant equity stake in Nano-Terra in addition to royalties.

The patents cover methods of manipulating matter at the nanometer and micron scales to create novel surfaces and combinations of materials. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter; a micron is 1,000 times larger (pollen and many single-cell animals are measured in microns).