Thixotropic/semi-solid casting patent suppression at MIT

The rheocast / thixocast / thixomolding family of processes, developed by Flemings' student in 1970, licensed by MIT to a company that sat on it 10–15 years to suppress competition. Used to teach (a) the physical principle (extracting half the heat of fusion before injection) and (b) the institutional consequence — MIT's march-in-rights patent reform.

Back in 1970, Professor Flemings here had a student trying to do a fundamental study of solidification. The student wrote up his doctoral thesis, then went off for a couple of weeks of Army Reserve summer camp, and turned in his thesis thinking — back then you didn't have word processors — that Professor Flemings wouldn't have the heart to change very many things, and he'd come back and graduate. Well, Flemings looked at it and said, this isn't a doctoral thesis, and threw it back in his face. Start all over again. At that point they changed the experiment, and a year later he ended up with what's called rheo casting — from rheology, the study of fluids.