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United States Patent Patent Number: 5264794 Date of Patent: 23 Nov 1993

Method of measuring magnetic fields on magnetically recorded media using a scanning tunneling microscope and magnetic probe

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techology isn't much different from what's publicly available), in this case all they were doing was protecting their investment (just like the various PKC patents originally assigned to universities).

I'm sure there's going to be a REALLY marketable device out of this to get royalties off of.

No, the market for the more mainstream MFM's is small (a few K devices), for MFSTM's it's even smaller (a few dozen?). MFSTM's are usually built by universities for research purposes, which means the patent won't affect them. As I said before, it's purely a "we paid for the research, we want some paper to wave around to justify the cost" thing.

Question: if we pay taxes, then we pay for the research. if we pay for the research, we should be able to see the results, just like shareholders in a company.

You can see the results, just read the Journal of Applied Physics or IEEE Transactions on Magnetics. I know people like to come up with conspiracy theories about the NSA, but this patent won't work as the basis for one. Peter.