Peter Mansfield, the jam jar genius of MRI | Letters

There was an omission from your excellent obituary of Sir Peter Mansfield (21 February), the inventor of magnetic resonance imaging: the role played by the British Technology Group (BTG) in protecting his work. The commercial value of Peter Mansfield's MRI invention was identified early on by an executive in BTG (previously the National Research Development Corporation), which at that time was entitled to all the intellectual property of university and government research in the UK funded by the public purse.

BTG filed patents to protect the work and then found them being infringed by a major US company which was manufacturing MRI equipment. BTG spent several million pounds on litigation to defend the intellectual property. It was successful in doing so and subsequently licensed the company concerned that company and other international companies who were using the invention, achieving significant income as a result, which it shared with the inventor and his university.