Materials firm Umicore and chemicals company BASF have entered into a non-exclusive patent cross-license agreement covering a range of lithium-ion cathode materials and their precursors.
The patent agreement allows both companies to combine IP-protected technologies related to features such as chemical composition, powder morphology and chemical stability.
The agreement covers more than 100 patent families filed in Europe, US, China, Korea and Japan.
The battery chemistries include: nickel manganese cobalt (NMC), nickel cobalt aluminium (NCA), nickel manganese cobalt aluminium (NMCA) and high manganese (HLM).
The agreement allows the customisation of the companies’ materials to meet customer requirements at the cell and application level.
Umicore and BASF have invested in product innovation for low, medium and high nickel precursors and cathode materials resulting in each company owning sizeable, and largely complementary, patent portfolios.
Both parties retain the right to enforce their own IP-rights against third parties in the future.
Marc Grynberg, CEO of Umicore, said the agreement strengthened its technology positioning and further increased its ability to develop bespoke solutions to meet performance and quality standards.
