The growth of intellectual property ownership in the private-sector fusion industry

The filing and granting of patents, not to mention their litigation, are key to global economic development through encouraging and protecting entrepreneurial and inventive economic activity. However, surprisingly little investigation has been conducted of the filing of patents in the nuclear fusion industry in recent years, and even less of the patent filing activity of nuclear fusion's private sector. We analyse the patents filed by members of the US-based Fusion Industry Association (FIA), by company, year, and patent classification codes, in a way that will be of interest to academics, fusion companies and the overall fusion industry, public sector policy makers, and political decision makers. We find that the FIA now represents a considerable and varied body of intellectual property, with some FIA members beginning to demonstrate extensive patenting, especially in the case of spherical tokamak technology, including with patents for shielding materials and the tritium fuel cycle. These findings adds weight to the notion of a public-private partnership and cost-sharing approach to Fusion Pilot Plants, presently being advocated by the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the US Department of Energy, and the FIA itself.