Green Patent Blog®

PlascoEnergy Group (Plasco), an Ottawa, Ontario waste conversion and energy generation company, will provide the first waste gasification facility in North America, Matter Network reported recently.  Gasification converts carbonaceous feedstocks, such as municipal waste, biomass or coal into a combustible gas.  The gas can be used to generate electricity or steam or as raw material for chemical or fuel production.

Plasco’s gasification facility, to be built in Ontario, will convert trash to electricity.  Plasco owns a number of patents directed to various components of its waste conversion system, and the complete facility is covered by International Application No. PCT/US2007/06840 (’840 application) (there is a U.S. counterpart to this application, but it hasn’t been published yet).

The ‘840 application describes a more efficient gasification facility that reduces the cost of the generated energy by recovering its own waste heat and using it to drive the gasification process.  The Plasco facility also performs the reactions at cooler temperatures to cut energy consumption.

A quick read of the ’840 application’s claims suggests that a key novel aspect of the technology is the horizontal orientation of the gasifier.  The gasifier includes lateral transfer units for moving the waste or feedstock material through the horizontal gasifier during processing.  A control system allows individual control of the units and enables extraction of volatile by-products at each processing stage to optimize performance and efficiency.

The Plasco Conversion System comprises two major stages - waste conversion and power generation.  In the first stage, waste is fed into the primary chamber of a converter and the material is gasified by recovered waste heat.  In the second stage, the resulting gas product is used to run turbines and generate energy.

Waste is fed into the primary chamber of a converter where it is gasified using waste heat recovered from a downstream refining chamber.  The gasified product, which typically contains carbon monoxide, hydrogen, tars and unreacted carbon, moves on to the refining chamber where it is refined by plasma torches.

Plasma is a partially ionized high temperature luminous gas, and the type of gas used can be varied to provide control over chemical reactions.  The torch heat dissociates the gas molecules to allow their recombination into smaller molecules that are more useful for energy generation.

Solid residue from the primary chamber is melted and rapidly cooled in a water bath.  According to Plasco’s web site, the resulting pellets are inert and non-hazardous, and may be used as construction aggregate for roads, concrete or other building materials.

After exiting the refining chamber, the gas then passes through the heat recovery unit, where waste heat is recovered.  Finally, the gas is cooled and cleaned of particulates, metals and acid components. 

In the power generation stage, the synthetic gas, or syngas, is used to run turbines to produce electricity, and quite a bit of it too:  according to the Matter Network story, the new plant in Ottawa will convert 400 tons of waste per day into power for about 19,000 homes. 

Recently, IPLaw360, an online intellectual property law newsletter, published my article, “Protecting Green Brands in the Eco-Mark Era” (eco-marksarticle.PDF).  The article ties together many of the themes about eco-marks that I’ve discussed in this space.

In particular, the article presents some considerations and strategies for protecting brands that reflect environmentally-friendly products, services or business practices. 

Those include determining whether the green ways are part of the brand owner’s core business (if they are, it may be more difficult to get a U.S. trademark registration and a certification mark may be a better path), artful drafting of the listing of goods and services to omit the green aspect if possible, and adding a non-descriptive element to the mark if the brand includes an environmentally-descriptive term.

The article also explains the concept of the certification mark, which is owned by the certifying organization, not the business using the mark.  Generally, a business contacts a certifying organization and requests evaluation of its goods or services, and if they pass muster, the certifying organization permits the business to use the certification mark on its products.

Finally, the article warns against the temptation of “greenwashing” and provides some examples of the growing number of complaints about deceptive green advertising and increased monitoring and enforcement by both government agencies and the eco-conscious blogosphere.

I hope the article will be of some use to those seeking protection for their green trademarks.

A funny thing happened to Hank Green, the author of Ecogeek.org (Ecogeek), a great web site about technological solutions to global warming.  After developing the logo for his site and applying for a federal trademark registration (applicationserialno77201309.pdf), he recently became aware that Intel stole his logo for their low power consumption WiFi Link 5000 Series Wireless Adapters.

In reality, it appears that they stole only a portion of Ecogeek’s eco-mark.  The full mark (pictured above) consists of a green plant and semi-circle design together with the word “ecogeek” with “eco” in black and “geek” in green.  From the pictures Green showed on his site, it looks like Intel swiped just the plant design component of the mark:

Also, Intel apparently contacted Green within 48 hours of his first article on the infringement and apologized (sort of).  According to their note to Green, they have since taken steps to pull the misappropriated logo from any material on which it was used.

Although I’ve written before about the trademark application process for eco-marks, I haven’t seen much in the way of eco-mark infringement litigation.  It seems inevitable, though, given the explosion of eco-mark applications in the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office.  This episode with Ecogeek may mark the dawn of an era of green trademark infringement litigation.