Tag: Quiet Breakouts
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The patent record shows a hidden federal bet: instead of opening new mines, the US is engineering rare-earth supply out of coal ash, acid mine drainage, and other industrial waste.
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The world’s largest industrial heat battery is solar-powered, made of Hittite-era firebricks, and its first big job is making more crude. Tesla and CATL aren’t in the patent landscape at all.
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A Nobel laureate’s 2020 idea has touched off a four-way patent race over molecules that trick the liver into shredding proteins floating in the bloodstream. Novartis just joined.
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Verily holds 48 US patents on industrial mosquito production. Alphabet killed the project in January 2023. A new cohort is now executing the blueprint.
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The three most-valuable US humanoid startups together hold eight issued US patents. Hyundai’s Boston Dynamics holds 131. UBTech holds 193. The map of who’s filing looks nothing like the map of who’s funded.
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Schlumberger filed nine U.S. lithium patents in 2025. Exxon just produced its first battery-grade lithium. The oilfield is becoming the lithium field, and the patent docket has been telling the story since 2022.
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Apple killed its decade-long microLED display project in 2024. The same year, a Sunnyvale startup hit 200 femtojoules per bit shooting data between AI chips with the same physics — and now holds 84% of US patents in the niche.
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Two dozen US patents in five years describe how to break the C-F bond. The trash company, a Battelle spinoff, and a Northwestern lab are all attacking it differently.
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Rondo Energy has 44 US patents on bricks heated to 1,000°C by solar, aimed at the steam crackers, smelters, and refineries that batteries can’t touch.
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UCF’s research foundation holds five US patents on extracting water and building bricks from lunar regolith. Blue Origin holds one. NASA, two.