He could at least have mentioned which "big, multinational electronics company" he spoke with.

This is as fine example as any about how patents help the small business and/or lone inventor.

Y'know, just asking. If this isn't a demand with menaces, it sure the hell ain't kippers.

The interesting part of this is the use of the patent system to prevent an inventor patenting their invention. (You know damn well that the company WILL file patents in ten years anyway and will make gob-loads of money, prior-art not withstanding.) The sole value of a patent system is to ALLOW the inventor to patent their invention. It serves no other function. (The other theoretical value of properly documenting an inv

If a Nobel prize doesn't count as prior art, the system is even more broken that it seems

Well, they don't have to patent graphene itself -- they can just patent every possible application of it that they can think of.

That's really the way things seem to work -- if you patent something really awesome, somebody with a lot more lawyers will surround your invention with patents so it can't be used, even by you, without infringing on one of their patents. In general, these patents tend to be "obvious to the layperson" and therefore should be thrown out, but that requires lots of money, and it's eas