This looks very interesting, in particular that it can be made gas-tight:
> "Another key feature of 2DPA-1 is that it is impermeable to gases. While other polymers are made from coiled chains with gaps that allow gases to seep through, the new material is made from monomers that lock together like LEGOs, and molecules cannot get between them."
However, this is yet another example of how excessive corporatization of academia can block the adoption and spread of new technologies created with taxpayer funds:
> "The research was funded by the Center for Enhanced Nanofluidic Transport (CENT) an Energy Frontier Research Center sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, and the Army Research Laboratory."
> "The researchers have filed for two patents on the process they used to generate the material..."
So, who gets access to these patents? It should be the case that MIT be required to license these patents to any American citizen who is interested, non-exclusively, for free, as it was American taxpayers who financed this project.
Similarly, the actual paper is hidden behind a paywall at Nature, so independent researchers without an institutional affiliation have no access to the details without paying ridiculous fees; the paper wasn't uploaded to arxiv and isn't yet on sci-hub, and why not? So some publishers can extract fees for their decrepit business model?
Sci-hub_se does at least have copies of some of the references cited in the paper, if you search for this one you'll get the background (2009):
"Two-Dimensional Polymers: Just a Dream of Synthetic Chemists?"
> "The fact that one can now isolate and investigate the
natural 2D polymer graphene begs the question as to whether
such intriguing structures could also be synthesized. [5] This
question is not limited to whether one can synthesize
graphene—this would be just one target of the entire family
of 2D polymers, although admittedly an especially compli-
cated and challenging one. It is meant much more general in
the sense: Can one provide reliable and broadly applicable
concepts to tackle the synthetic and analytical issues associ-
ated with the creation of polymers which meet the structural
characteristics of graphene (that is, one repeating unit thick,
covalently bonded, and long-range order). Clearly, this would
constitute a substantial advance for chemistry in particular,
and the molecular sciences in general"
Bahy-Dole Act and DoD Federal Acquisition Regs. are the answer to your question about "who gets access to these patents" and should be the focus of reform if you find them inadequate. Outside my area of the law, but my understanding is prior to Bahy-Dole, it was common for the Gov. to take title to patents arising from Gov. funded research, and that this was seen as a disincentive to commercializing the technology. So Bahy-Dole adjusted the balance, with certain lesser rights (like march in rights and a license) going to the government to try to drive more commercialization of the technology that was invented under Gov. contracts.
> for free, as it was American taxpayers who financed this project.
Just because something was financed by taxpayer money does not mean it should be free. It is definitely not a rule or how things work. Although I am curious what are the disadvantages of making it free, I bet there are some, even if lightweight.
If not entirely free, certainly a non-exclusive commercial licensing model with low fees makes more sense. This was how the system worked before Bayh-Dole Act was passed in the 1980s (one result was that corporations wanting to do strictly proprietary research were then incentivized to finance large private research institutions like Bell Labs).
From a nationalist standpoint. A country sets the playground right for this kind of development to happen though funding, freedom, support, whatever. I imagine that the people putting in this effort want to harvest the benefits within their own economy, and not just gift it away. Some roadblocks might be associated with this.
Speculating, but would a 1-2% sales tax that was offset from other taxes on products that used a govt patented TCP/IP have hampered development? It wouldn't have hurt FOSS because a 1% sales or import/export sales tax on old unix install media wouldn't have been significant, and once we had FOSS, we could have included the patented tech in free versions, where it was only when you sold media the sales tax was applied.
Not sure how many patents are held in limbo by govt, but well crafted rules about just a sales tax on products that include govt patented techs could be a plausibly fair way to recoup research investments while making them free to innovation. It's somewhere between the way the (pernicious) RIAA/FACTOR collects royalties on music via surcharges on broadcast and streaming, old "shareware" licenses, and the viral aspect of the GPL, but instead it's via a sales tax.
It could be a unique case for opening up patent archives but then adding a niche licensing and import/export tax on products that use the govt patented materials or technology. Even though I think the idea of using taxes as incentives is fundamentally broken, and there is someting dystopian about universities effectively collecting private taxes through the patent system, in a case like technology transfer, it opens up the tech for innovation and doesn't collect until revenue and profit are realized. It's tax revenue a govt has actually earned by investing, so there is even a plausible libertarian case for it.
> "Another key feature of 2DPA-1 is that it is impermeable to gases. While other polymers are made from coiled chains with gaps that allow gases to seep through, the new material is made from monomers that lock together like LEGOs, and molecules cannot get between them."
However, this is yet another example of how excessive corporatization of academia can block the adoption and spread of new technologies created with taxpayer funds:
> "The research was funded by the Center for Enhanced Nanofluidic Transport (CENT) an Energy Frontier Research Center sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, and the Army Research Laboratory."
> "The researchers have filed for two patents on the process they used to generate the material..."
So, who gets access to these patents? It should be the case that MIT be required to license these patents to any American citizen who is interested, non-exclusively, for free, as it was American taxpayers who financed this project.
Similarly, the actual paper is hidden behind a paywall at Nature, so independent researchers without an institutional affiliation have no access to the details without paying ridiculous fees; the paper wasn't uploaded to arxiv and isn't yet on sci-hub, and why not? So some publishers can extract fees for their decrepit business model?
Sci-hub_se does at least have copies of some of the references cited in the paper, if you search for this one you'll get the background (2009): "Two-Dimensional Polymers: Just a Dream of Synthetic Chemists?"
> "The fact that one can now isolate and investigate the natural 2D polymer graphene begs the question as to whether such intriguing structures could also be synthesized. [5] This question is not limited to whether one can synthesize graphene—this would be just one target of the entire family of 2D polymers, although admittedly an especially compli- cated and challenging one. It is meant much more general in the sense: Can one provide reliable and broadly applicable concepts to tackle the synthetic and analytical issues associ- ated with the creation of polymers which meet the structural characteristics of graphene (that is, one repeating unit thick, covalently bonded, and long-range order). Clearly, this would constitute a substantial advance for chemistry in particular, and the molecular sciences in general"