IIRC, an Ovshinsky NiMH battery patent is what's behind the idea in "Who Killed the Electric Car?", that various companies bought up a key technology of Electric Cars to run them into the ground. Although I'm not clear on whether the story is true. At least, by the time the patent had expired, it seemed to have lost its pre-eminence, as there didn't seem to be any particular explosion in NiMH technology afterwards.