Patent Sales Agreement between BayPAT and Evonik
Dec 5, 2022
Munich, Germany, December 5th, 2022 – BayPAT, service provider offering services in the area of technology transfer, IP management and commercialization, today announced that it has entered into a patent purchase agreement with Evonik Operations GmbH. The contractual items are several patent applications for technologies developed at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg which are relevant for expanding the range of materials in 3D printing.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the British physicist and science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke had the first idea for a 3D printer, and in the comic "Tintin and the Shark Lake" Professor Calculus invents a 3D photocopier. Half a century later, these visions of the future have grown into a bustling 3D printing industry with annual growth rates of 30 percent. Digital construction plans become immediate reality. The path from digital design to finished product has never been as short as it is today. With three-dimensional printing processes, the production requires less material, labor, and energy. Goods can be produced in smaller quantities according to each customer’s individual needs.[1]
At present, there is a variety of additive manufacturing processes that are used for metals, polymers and also biomaterials. Many plastic objects that are currently produced by 3D printers were previously fabricated using injection molding processes. Therefore, there is a demand for the wide range of materials used in injection molding to become available for additive manufacturing as well. However, the problem is that there are special requirements for 3D printing materials to be met for high-quality products. For example, the powder-based selective laser sintering (SLS) process requires flowable polymer powders that exhibit a narrow size distribution. For a long time, only polyamide (PA) was available for this application, while a large number of polymers could be processed in injection molding. The inventions from Franconia can help to fill this gap, since these technologies can be used to produce high-quality polymer powders made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polybutylene terephthalate (PBT) and polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF).
The team of inventors at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU) has many years of experience in the field of new materials and processes and in the field of particle technology. New projects in this area are planned for the future.
BayPAT negotiated the patent purchase agreement with a selected team of experts and thus set the course for the successful transfer of the innovation into industrial applications. "The range of materials for additive manufacturing can be expanded thanks to the new technologies from the FAU. We are very pleased that by signing an agreement with one of the largest players in the field of 3D printing materials, we have been able to make these materials available to many users in the future. The excellent cooperation with the FAU team was one key element of this success," said Dr. Robert Phelps, Managing Director of BayPAT.
[1] https://3faktur.com/eine-visio...
About BayPAT
Bayerische Patentallianz GmbH (BayPAT) was founded in 2007 by the Universities of Bavaria e.V. and the Bavarian Universities of Applied Sciences e.V. as central patent and marketing agency to foster technology transfer of the Bavarian research landscape and cares for 33 research institutes. Under the umbrella of the Bavarian Research and Innovation Agency (BayFIA), BayPAT is a full-service technology management provider offering services in the area of technology transfer, intellectual property (IP) management and commercialization. Key clients are the Bavarian Universities, University Hospitals and Universities of Applied Sciences and its over 25.000 associated scientists, as well as non-university research institutes, industry, and independent inventors worldwide. Main focus in assessing and exploiting IP are the areas of biotechnology, chemistry, medical engineering, physics, automotive industry, energy and environmental engineering, information and communication technology as well as mechanical engineering.
Contact
Dr. Robert Phelps, Managing Director
Bayerische Patentallianz GmbH
Prinzregentenstr. 52
80538 München
Tel. +49 (0)89 54801770
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