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A comment on Graphene: Fast, Strong, Cheap, and Impossible to Use. Parent comment

Re:Graphene: Fast, Strong, Cheap, and Impossible to Use by WalterBright on Monday December 15, 2014 @08:25PM (#8755458)
The US airframe industry was so hamstrung by patents that innovation and progress shifted to Europe. It took the government to force the industry to accept a patent pool and move forward. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers_patent_war#The_...
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Re:Graphene: Fast, Strong, Cheap, and Impossible to Use by throwawaykf05 on Tuesday December 16, 2014 @10:14AM (#8757455)
This is actually a myth that was recently busted. See this paper, which presents compelling empirical evidence of the aircraft industry from that time to show that there was no such hold-up:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2355673

Unfortunately, this is one of those myths, like the one of Watt's patents holding up development of steam, that gets repeated so often that people accept it without question.

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