Nanoparticle Flow Processing Consortium Files Notifications with DOJ and FTC

On August 27, 2007, the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ) published a notice in the Federal Register announcing that, pursuant to Section 6(a) of the National Cooperative Research and Production Act of 1993, 15 U.S.C. Sections 4301 et seq., the Nanoparticle Flow Processing Consortium has filed written notifications simultaneously with the Attorney General and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) disclosing (1) the identities of the parties to the venture and (2) the nature and objectives of the venture. The notice states that the Consortium filed the notifications for the purpose of invoking the Act’s provisions limiting the recovery of antitrust plaintiffs to actual damages under specified circumstances. Pursuant to Section 6(b) of the Act, the identities of the parties to the venture are: 3M Company, St. Paul, Minnesota; The Proctor & Gamble Company, Cincinnati, Ohio; Corning Incorporated, Corning, New York; BASF Aktiengesellschaft, Ludwigshafen, Germany; and Imperial Chemical Industries PLC, London, United Kingdom. The general area of the Consortium’s planned activity is to: (1) develop, test, and validate computer-simulation technologies of near-term application that can improve the quality and reduce the cost of nanoparticle suspension/dispersion manufacture (including suspension stability and processibility); (2) transfer the technology developed under the Research and Development Program in a manner that offers the Consortium members opportunities for commercial advantage; and (3) develop methodologies and aptitude for modeling and simulation of multiscale phenomena intrinsic to the stability and dynamics of dense, nanoparticle suspensions.