Xerox creates a new image: Copier giant looks to cash in on its electronics technology

Electronic News, June 17, 2002 by Bernard Levine

Copier and printer giant Xerox Corp. is launching a major new drive to license its IP to the electronic component and system industry.

The initiative surfaced at last week's Nepcon East/Electro trade show in Boston, where a Xerox exhibit booth solely extolled the virtues of its CarbonConX carbon fiber technology for connectors and sought out potential licensees among show attendees.

Company officials manning the booth said Xerox hopes to license the fiber technology to makers of connectors, interconnects, sensors and switches as well as consumer electronic, medical equipment, aerospace, automotive and other manufacturers. The Stamford, Conn.-based company hopes to license other in-house technology to electronics industry players as well.

CarbonConX is a way to make carbon fiber into connectors that can conduct electricity just like a traditional metal connector can, but Xerox claims it is more reliable, costs less to produce and can withstand the harshest of environments.

The Xerox licensing effort comes with a large dose of irony. The company holds the dubious distinction of committing one of the greatest blunders in business history. It developed the graphical user interface for the PC at its Palo Alto Research Center years ago but failed to capitalize on it by neither producing its own PC nor licensing the technology to companies such as Apple or Microsoft.

Xerox clearly doesn't want to repeat that mistake and now is going all-out to turn costly in-house R&D efforts into cash. "We've had some one-on-one dialogs in the past to license our CarbonConX technology, but we decided to really launch a much more substantial marketing effort, and this is the first of many such efforts aimed at the electronics industry," said Paul C. Wilson, licensing executive at Xerox Innovation Business Development group, who is spearheading the effort.

Active negotiations to license the CarbonConX know-how to others are currently ongoing, but no deals have been finalized, he added. "We are talking to several companies in the connector and other areas," he said, but declined to name them.

"It is a change of focus at Xerox," said Joe Swift, a Xerox project manager. Swift, along with another Xerox scientist, Stanley Wallace, led development of the CarbonConX technology at Xerox's Wilson Center for Research and Technology in Webster, N.Y. "We are now actively marketing our technology. If you can generate revenues from licensing your technology, that's a benefit. We have a history of inventing but not benefiting from the commercialization of our inventions. We're here to change that."

Xerox notes the technology can replace metal electrical connectors used in a variety of industries and environments. CarbonConX uses a process called "pultrusion" to bundle thousands of thin carbon fibers into one coated, rigid element-like packing thousands of straws together into a solid block or rod, Xerox said. It takes about 1,000 fibers to make a rod 0.3mm in diameter.

Compared to metal, carbon connectors are less susceptible to corrosion and contamination with elements such as saltwater, heat and dust. In addition, carbon connectors can be produced with about 90 percent fewer manufacturing steps than metal connectors. And CarbonConX can be made into various shapes, configurations and sizes, Xerox said.

CarbonConX technology, also known as "distributed filament contacts," is protected by more than 30 patents, Xerox added. The company said it originally invented CarbonConX to efficiently bleed static electricity away from electrical components inside printers and copiers, as fast-moving paper generates static charges that need to be channeled to the ground. CarbonConX has since proven to be the preferred technology to improve contact reliability in a printer's internal "dirty" environment, the company added.