June 4, 2007 — nCoat Inc. of Whitsett, N.C., has landed a private investment deal worth almost $12 million. The company will net about $11 million in net proceeds after existing debt is converted into the new offering, nCoat said.

The new financing is in the form of convertible notes that will pay the investors an interest rate of 6 percent per year. The notes may later be converted into equity.

The company may sell up to $17.8 million in additional notes under the terms of the private placement, and the company said it expects to have more closings between now and June 18. The funding will be used to acquisitions, repayment of debt, working capital and general corporate purposes.

June 4, 2007 — Akustica, Inc. says it has developed the world’s smallest microphone. At 1mm x 1mm, Akustica’s microphone, which integrates the transducer and electronics into a single silicon die, is more than 70% smaller in silicon area than competing products.

Akustica says its technology, in which both the transducer and the electronics are fabricated using standard, baseline CMOS, has enabled the miniaturization. The company reports that this tight integration offers such performance advantages as reduced parasitic capacitance effects – which, in turn, enables smaller mechanical components.

Competitive MEMS microphone products use two separate die — a sensor interface die that contains the circuitry, and a MEMS microphone die that contains the mechanical microphone structure.

The form factor simplifies packaging. And, while performance will vary depending on the package, the microphone promises a typical signal to noise ratio (SNR) of 58dB, a power supply rejection ratio (PSRR) of 40dB, and less than 200µA current consumption.

“There are no other MEMS fabrication technologies that can scale the way we can in terms of manufacturing capacity and decreasing die size,” said Dr. Ken Gabriel, Akustica’s CTO and co-founder.

June 4, 2007 — The New York Times is reporting substantial news in nanotechnology IP today: Harvard University plans to license more than 50 current and pending patents — based on work in chemistry professor George Whitesides’ Harvard lab — to Nano-Terra of Cambridge, Mass., a company Whitesides cofounded.

“The deal could transform the little-known Nano-Terra into one of nanotechnology’s most closely watched start-ups,” reports the Times. The story quotes Isaac T. Kohlberg, who has overseen the commercialization of Harvard’s patent portfolio since 2005, as saying, “It’s the largest patent portfolio I remember, and it may be our largest ever.” According to the Times, Nano-Terra has spent more than $2 million to file the patents.

June 4, 2007 — The Department of Defense (DoD) has issued its 2007 annual report on the National Nanotechnology Initiative. High level findings of the report include:

+ Based upon an analysis of the planned research and development activities and the progress reported for the past year, the funding levels for DoD nanotechnology are found to be adequate to support the defense agency program activities.

+ Substantial progress has been demonstrated toward each of the long term DoD program goals, and no deficiencies or oversights were identified within the current funded program.

+ In the future, additional investment from DoD is recommended in the area of nanomanufacturing via the Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR)/Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) and Manufacturing Technology (MANTECH) programs in order to facilitate transitioning and a sustained supply of nanotechnology-based products for defense technologies.

Examples of NNI-supported research include a blood test for prostate cancer screening, analysis of nanoparticle levels in blood, and a new electrode material for high-capacity lithium batteries.

By Rich Acello, Small Times contributing editor

June 1, 2007 — A case about a relatively simple gas pedal may have an enduring impact on nanotechnologists’ ability to obtain and defend patents crucial to innovation and commercialization — and may potentially serve to drive down the valuations of emerging technology firms.

The Supreme Court recently overturned doctrine developed by the Federal Circuit — the appellate court specializing in patent law — by making it easier to find that an invention is “obvious,” and therefore not worthy of patent protection, in KSR International Co. vs. Teleflex Inc.

“Granting patent protection to advances that would occur in the ordinary course without real innovation retards progress and may, in the case of patents combining previously known elements, deprive prior inventions of their value or utility,” wrote Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote on behalf of the unanimous court.

In the case, plaintiff KSR challenged the patent of Teleflex for an adjustable gas pedal that contained a pedal and an electronic sensor. Under prior law, the Federal Circuit had established a standard that asked whether a “teaching, suggestion or motivation” anticipated the invention in determining whether the invention was obvious.

In its decision, the Supreme Court found the Federal Circuit’s analysis “narrow and rigid” and suggested a more expansive and flexible approach that intellectual property attorneys say marks a significant change in patent law.

“It’s a decision with wide-ranging impact,” says Matthew Kreeger, a partner at Morrison Foerster in San Francisco. “The court applied a common sense rationale which focuses on how predictable it was when these elements as combined would work this way. If the ideas were predictable when put together in this way that heightens the case for obviousness.”

In applying for patents, innovators will have to consider more fully whether their invention is truly novel or a mere variation of an existing product. Or as Kennedy put it, “When a work is available in one field of endeavor, design incentives and other market forces can prompt variations of it, either in the same field or a different one. If a person of ordinary skill can implement a predictable variation, [the statute] likely bars its patentability . . . a court must ask if the improvement is more than the predictable use of prior art elements . . . “

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) will also need to take the Supreme Court’s decision into account in considering future patent applications, says Kreeger. “In the past, it’s been a persuasion argument, back and forth at the patent office,” Kreeger explains. “Now they’ll have to react to the ruling.”

The KSR-Teleflex case is being viewed as part of a tendency to limit the impact of patents and potentially make patents less valuable.

“This case is part of a larger trend in the Supreme Court over the last five to 10 years,” Kreeger says. “The Supreme Court is taking a lot more patent cases and when they do the result is they’re reversing the Federal Circuit in a way that limits patents, makes it harder to get a patent, to defend a patent, and that reduces the value of patents. There’s been a series of cases with that flavor.”

Over that time, the Supreme Court has focused on patent quality over value. “The concern on the Court is that innovation actually being retarded by patents that never should have issued in the first place,” Kreeger adds.

If patents are seen as easier to attack, manufacturers who are sued by patent holders may less motivated to license intellectual property which could reduce valuations placed on emerging technology firms.

Some observers, however, caution against reading too much into the Court’s decision. “When the Supreme Court takes a case like this, there are a lot of amicus briefs (filed by “friends of the court” who are not parties to the suit) and it looks like they are all set to write a sweeping opinion,” says David McGowan, a law professor at the University of San Diego. “In this instance, the Supreme Court is saying courts should be flexible and use common sense in determining whether an invention is obvious.”

June 1, 2007 — Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC), the world’s leading university-research consortium for semiconductors and related technologies, has joined with the National Science Foundation (NSF) to announce funding of $2M in grants for nanoelectronics research at six major NSF centers across ten U.S. universities. The results of the effort are expected to significantly advance the search for the replacement of the basic semiconductor logic structure that has served the world for more than 30 years.

“Without a breakthrough, the phenomenal advances in semiconductor capabilities will slow drastically as we reach the fundamental limits of current technology in the next decade or so,” said Dr. Jeff Welser, director of the Nanoelectronics Research Initiative (NRI), a research entity of SRC. “The IT economy has enjoyed unprecedented growth during the microelectronics era of the past half-century. The government and universities have quickly supported the NRI program in order to pursue discovery of the next logic switch and continued leadership in the new nanoelectronics era.”

The joint NSF-NRI supplemental grants were awarded to teams at six NSF centers in nanoelectronics research, along with their research leaders:

+ Center for Nanoscale Systems in Information Technologies, a Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center, directed by Dr. Robert Buhrman at Cornell University, with project team led by Dr. Edwin Kan

+ Network for Computational Nanotechnology, directed by Dr. Mark Lundstrom at Purdue University, working with Dr. Supriyo Datta, Dr. M. Ashraf Alam, Dr. Kaushik Roy, and Dr. Gerhard Klimeck

+ Center for Nanoscopic Materials Design, a Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, directed by Dr. Robert Hull at the University of Virginia, working with Dr. Stuart Wolf and Dr. Jerry Floro at the University of Virgina, and Dr. David Awschalom at the University of California at Santa Barbara

+ Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, directed by Dr. Ellen Williams at the University of Maryland, with project team led by Dr. Sankar DasSarma at the University of Maryland and Dr. Allan MacDonald at the University of Texas at Austin

+ Center for Research on Interface Structures and Phenomena, a Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, directed by Dr. John Tully at Yale University, with project team led by Dr. Charles Ahn

+ Quantum and Spin Phenomena in Nanomagnetic Structures, a Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, directed by Dr. David Sellmyer at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, working with Dr. Evgeny Tsymbal and Dr. Kirill Belashchenko at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, and Dr. Renat Sabirianov at the University of Nebraska at Omaha

The centers will contribute directly to a primary goal of NRI, the development of an information element that can replace the Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor (CMOS FET) in the year 2020 or beyond, as well as the necessary technology to integrate the new information element with CMOS.

The NSF-NRI grants are for three years duration and are in addition to the six grants made to NSF centers in 2006.

June 1, 2007 — Arandar Ltd. of Oxford, England has been granted a patent from the U.K. government covering its design of 3D Measure, a device that uses MEMS technology to capture movement in six degrees of motion. The patent covers the device’s design, and the way it captures and displays the measurements and overcomes challenges associated with using this type of sensor to determine distance, level, and angle between two or more points.

Arandar director Angus Rock says the 3D measure “can replace the tape measure, spirit level, angle finder, plumb line, and set square” with one easy-to-use device.

Arandar uses the tagline, “It is rocket science,” for its product because the calculations 3D Measure makes to produce accurate measurements are similar to those used to guide rockets. “Luckily the user never gets to see this, and just gets a straightforward measurement readout on the LCD display,” says Rock.

Arandar is seeking partnerships with multinational companies that wish to license and commercialize the technology.