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“The metal alloys owned by Liquidmetal Technologies were developed by a research team at the California Institute of Technology, and their amorphous, non-crystalline structure makes them harder than alloys of titanium or aluminum,” Hughes reports.
Hughes reports, “In a Form 8-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last week, Liquidmetal Technologies indicated that it had granted all of its intellectual property assets to Apple. According to the terms of the deal, Apple was awarded ‘a perpetual, worldwide, fully-paid, exclusive license to commercial such intellectual property in the field of electronic products in exchange for a license fee.'”
Read more in the full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: Unobtainium. For the rest of the world, that is.
Hey Dell, Motorola, Samsung, and the others:
How is that plastic shit working out for you?
Isn’t unobtainium from Avatar?
20 million akilo?
Rearden Metal? <shrug>
Apple’s approach to intellectual property deals:
ink Different
Iphone T-1000
@ Cody
No, “unobtainium” is a poetic device and a generic term that should have been a placeholder in the Avatar script until they could think of something better. Leaving it in was stupid and lazy.
Oh, and speaking of Avatar… Did anyone ever think of maybe just digging a tunnel?
Os X will power future T-1000’s and will become self-aware.
Nobody else except the defense department gets to use it.
Unobtanium…no no no….its adamantium…ya’ know Wolverine’s metal bones…….lol
@ChrissyOne,
My sense was that Avatar used unobtainium as a nod and a wink. It was paying respect. What would the point have been to have given it some other name?
But is it recyclable?
Unobtanium was first discovered in the David Brin novel, Star Tide Rising.
Since Wolverine was nowhere to be found, they will inject this stuff into Jobs bones in the first step to keep him alive forever.
Either that, or the terminators that will be used to do battle for cloud supremacy.
@ macslut
There were so many nods and winks in Avatar I felt like I was being chatted up by Eric Idle. I guess it fit right in with all the flat cartoon characters.. but you know, Star Trek could have called Dilithium ‘unobtainium’. Wolverine would have ‘unobtainium’ claws.
But that would have been lazy.
@C1…the government was secretly backing the mining of unobtainium. Therefore it comes as no surprise (I am a government scientist) that they would choose the most difficult and costly solution and ignore all logical suggestions.
I’m developing my own metal, and I’m going to call it Reallystrongandshinyum.
Exclusive? Perpetual?
I like Apple’s strategy. I like it a lot.
@ Buster
That’s an excellent point. Maybe the military vehicles in Avatar should have an Haliburton logos to drive it home.
Apple originally was going to use Administratium as the metal but the government stepped in, formed a committee which examined the case which was sent to en external consultant who sent options back to the government committee who then said no.
….go figure
LiquidMetal?!? Steve Jobs is obviously turning himself into the T-1000 and on a mission to Terminate M$, Dull, et all…
…Hasta la Vista, baby!
@ChrissyOne
Or how about firing up the ‘ole neutron collider and making some here?
It’s T-1000!!!
Check out the advantages here: http://www.liquidmetal.com/applications/dsp.casings.asp
@ HMCIV
Funny you should ask… I just built one in my basement. This year for Halloween I’ll be giving all the kids black holes.