Cross-licensing technology

Toray Industries Inc., Tokyo, Japan—the world s largest producer of PAN based carbon fibers and the undisputed leader in modem carbon fiber technology. Production of Torayca T300 carbon fiber started in 1978. Cross licensed technology to Union Carbide in the USA in 1978, and carbon fiber production in 1984. Formed a joint company (Soficar) with Elf Acquitaine Pechiney in France and assumed marginal control (70%) in 1989, producing fiber at Abidos. 

Meanwhile, DuPont succeeded in producing nylon 6/6 on an industrial scale by Carothers route. Today, the two technologies are cross-licensed and producers use both routes. 

The sheer size and value of the polyethylene industry ensure that there is continued research, progress, and development in catalysis, for their potential commercial impact. Although this whole subject is not within the scope of this chapter, we mention a couple of aspects of the progress, which offer the potential to impact this industry. In 1995, DuPont introduced work, carried out with them at the University of North Carolina—via the largest patent applicafion ever in the USA. They disclosed what are described as post-metallocene catalysts. These are transition and late transition metal complexes with di-imine ligands, which form part of the DuPont Versipol technology. Such catalysts create highly branched to exceptionally linear ethylene homopolymers and linear alpha-olefins. Late transition metals offer not only the potential for the incorporation of polar comonomers, which until now has only been possible in LDPE reactors, but also their controlled sequence distribution, compared to the random composition of free radical LDPE copolymers. Such copolymers account for over 1 million tons per annum [20]. Versipol has so far only been cross-licensed and used commercially by DuPont Dow Elastomers (a former joint venture, now dissolved) in an EPDM plant. 

In 1978, UCC obtained a cross license from Toray and marketed in the USA, the Toray range of PAN based carbon fibers and ultimately, in 1984, produced their own PAN based fiber using the Toray precursor and technology. 

Because the Department intends to rely on this technology for regulatory purposes, the antibodies must be well characterized with respect to specificity, cross reactivity and other parameters. However, some individuals, wishing to protect their ability to patent, license or market antibodies and related chemicals, are reluctant to share information about the antibodies they have developed, because they are unsure about how the information might be used. 

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