Nickelblock: an element's love-hate relationship with battery electrodes

[hunter]

1. Our screwy patent system is inhibiting battery development as much as anything else.

Companies don't fund battery research unless they can achieve solid patents, and when they do this often inhibits commercial production or further research along similar lines.

What we need is government funding of this research and the release of promising results to the public domain.

But, oh no, that would be some kind of socialism. If the big corporations can't make money off of research, it's wrong...