Green Patent Blog®

Dutch Electronics giant Koninklijke Philips Electronics NV (Philips) opened a new front against Lighting Science Group Corp. (LSG), accusing the Dallas-based lighting products maker of infringing two patents covering LED technology. 

Philips’ bare bones complaint (philips_complaint.pdf), filed last month in federal district court in Massachusetts, asserts U.S. Patent Nos. 6,967,448 (’448 patent) and 6,250,774 (’774 patent) and names no specific LSG products.

The ‘448 patent, entitled “Method and apparatus for controlling illumination,” relates to LED lighting systems that can generate variable color radiation without the use of color filters.  The patented technology is designed for underwater lighting such as in pools or spas.

According to the ‘448 patent, liquids significantly absorb and scatter certain colors such that the colors look different under water than they do when projected in air.  The patent discloses a method for generating ”liquid hues” that adjust for this effect so that the appearance of LED colors in water approximates similar colors in air.

The system of the ‘448 patent uses a controller that adjusts the individual intensity of each differently colored LED to control the overall radiation output of the lighting system.

One interesting point about the ‘448 patent is that it is part of an extremely long chain of continuation and continuation-in-part parent applications, dating back to 1997 (the ‘448 patent issued in 2005).  I counted about 18 parent applications listed on the face of the ‘448 patent.  This lengthy history should provide LSG’s lawyers with plenty of ammunition for the company’s defense.

The ‘774 patent is entitled ”Luminaire” and is directed to an LED package for street lighting that uses the generated light more efficiently.  According to the patent, a major disadvantage of some existing luminaires is that the light doesn’t concentrate well into a beam and therefore a substantial percentage of the light projects outside the area or object to be illuminated.

The patented technology solves this problem and reduces energy use by focusing the individual beams of multiple LED lighting units such that each narrow beam only hits a portion of the area or object.  The claimed luminaire (1) (shown above) has a housing (10), a light emission window (11) and a set of lighting units (20), each having at least one LED chip (30) and an optical system (40), with the lighting units illuminating respective portions of an object.

Philips and LSG are engaged in other LED technology battles:  Philips filed another patent infringement suit against LSG in Massachusetts in February involving five other LED patents, and in March LSG accused Philips of misappropriating proprietary technology in a case pending in state court in California.  It looks like tensions may be brewing between these two for a while.

Matter Network recently reported that the first coal-fired power plant constructed to incorporate carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology went online last month in Germany.  Vattenfall, a Swedish power company, built the plant and will operate it as a pilot.

The system captures carbon dioxide from the plant’s flue gas, compresses it into a liquid and stores it underground.  According to Vattenfall’s web site, most of the carbon dioxide will dissolve in reservoir water and slowly mineralize (see the project description here).

Vattenfall owns over 50 international patents and published applications directed to power generation technology.  Much of the older technology relates to nuclear power, including cooling systems for nuclear power plants.

The company’s recent patents cover removal and separation of chemicals from water or flue gas, including WO 2004/112943 (Boron separation and recovery), WO 2004/026486 (Assembly for operating hydrocyclones, in particular for flue-gas desulphurisation plants), WO 2003/074430 (Nitrate removal), WO 2002/040406 (Process and apparatus for removal and destruction of dissolved nitrate), and WO 2001/027593 (A method and device for measuring, by photo-spectrometry, the concentration of harmful gases in the fumes through a heat-producing plant).

While the Vattenfall plant and CCS process produces almost zero carbon emissions, the Matter story points out that compressing and transporting carbon dioxide requires a lot of energy. 

CCS may be an important transition technology, particularly in countries that get most of their power from coal plants, but processes that chemically transform carbon into innocuous materials are probably better long-term solutions than systems that require compression and transport of CO2.

When the Eco-Patent Commons launched, I wrote a post about this initiative to share environmentally-friendly patented technology.  The Commons is administered by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), a Geneva-based organization that promotes sustainability in business.

The Commons started out with 31 patents, most of which were donated by IBM.  The WBCSD hosts a web site with a searchable database of the patents, which are available for anyone to exploit.  The goal is to allow easy access to environmentally-friendly innovation so it gets into the hands of those best positioned to implement it.

The Commons recently welcomed three new members.  Last month the Bosch Group (Bosch), which develops, among other things, automotive and industrial technology, joined the Commons, along with Xerox and chemical giant DuPont.  The three companies agreed to share 50 patents.

Bosch donated 24 German patents that relate to automotive technology, including filter devices and methods for reducing emissions, energy efficiency and fuel-saving technology, and a fuel tank that allows a vehicle to use multiple fuels.

The Xerox contribution includes 22 U.S., European, German and Japanese patents that relate to removal of environmental contaminants from water and soil. 

Some of the donated U.S. patents include U.S. Patent Nos. 5,441,365 (Apparatus and process for treating contaminated soil gases and liquids), 5,197,541 (Apparatus for two phase vacuum extraction of soil contaminants), 5,358,357 (Process and apparatus for high vacuum groundwater extraction) and 5,979,554 (Vacuum application method and apparatus for removing liquid contaminants from groundwater).

DuPont donated four U.S. Patents relating to various chemical processes including a method of breaking down plastics (U.S. Patent No. 7,053,130, entitled “Method to accelerate biodegradation of aliphatic-aromatic co-polyesters by enzymatic treatment”) and a method of detecting contaminants via a biological test system that gauges environmental stress levels (U.S. Patent No. 5,683,868, entitled “Highly sensitive method for detecting environmental insults”).

It will be interesting to see which, if any, patents prove valuable and which donated technologies will be useful to whom.   There has been at least one suggestion to expand the scope of the Commons to include enabling disclosures.  We’ll be keeping tabs on the Commons and hoping for some success stories.

Solazyme is a South San Francisco biotech company that makes oil from algae.  While most algal oil makers harness the ability of algae to use energy from sunlight, Solazyme uses algae that grow in the dark and feed on sugar.

The company has identified natural strains of algae that thrive in the dark and is developing its own strains through genetic engineering.

Currently the company is operating in the cosmetics market where its oil will be used in anti-wrinkle products.

Solazyme recently announced that it will enter the jet fuel market (see the greentechmedia article here).  Its oil has been tested for viability as jet fuel by an independent lab, the Southwest Research Institute (SRI).

SRI tested many elements of Solazyme’s algal oil, including density, thickness and freezing point, and determined that the oil meets the ASTM D1655 standard for aviation turbine fuel.

Solazyme owns one issued patent and eleven published patent applications relating to genetic engineering methods, gene sequences and protein sequences that cause microbes to perform various biochemical functions.

Those functions include generating hydrogen (U.S. Patent No. 7,135,290) and boosting photosynthetic energy production by increasing a microorganism’s ability to harvest photons of light (U.S. Patent Application Pub No. 2008/124756).

Biofuel for air travel has the potential to be a huge market, and commercial airlines are looking to algae and other renewables to reduce their reliance on traditional jet fuel.

I’ve written in this space before about the lawsuits between California biofuel processor designer Greenline Industries (Greenline) and Agri-Process Innovations (API), an Arkansas engineering firm, involving processor design copyrights and allegations of breach of contract, misappropriation of trade secrets and false advertising.

The technology relates to processors that convert feedstocks such as seed oils and animal fats into biodiesel fuels.

Greenline’s proprietary technology provides waterless systems to clean the fuel, allowing producers to avoid the time and money associated with introducing water into the process and later separating it out. 

Greenline also enjoys an exclusive worldwide license to continuous flow technology, which greatly increases its processors’ production capacity. 

A recent post discussed the companies’ tussle over venue, with Greenline trying to move a suit API initially filed in Arkansas to federal court in California and API fighting to transfer Greenline’s subsequent northern California case to Arkansas. 

In July the federal court in Oakland, California, where Greenline had filed suit, decided to defer to the Arkansas court to decide where the cases should go forward.

In an order signed last month (greenline_arkansas_order.pdf), Judge Brian S. Miller of the Eastern District of Arkansas in Little Rock ruled that Arkansas is the proper venue for the case. 

In the event that two lawsuits involving the same parties and same issues are filed in different jurisdictions, federal courts apply a first-to-file rule, subject to certain limited exceptions, to determine where the suit will proceed. 

Judge Miller held that none of the exceptions, which include inequitable conduct, bad faith, anticipatory suit and forum shopping, applied in this case, and so the case will proceed in API’s home state of Arkansas because API beat its opponent to the punch, filing suit there before Greenline sued in California.

There is a third lawsuit pending between Greenline and API in federal court in Los Angeles, which also may be transferred to Arkansas.  API has moved to dismiss that case, and in the alternative, to transfer the case to Arkansas to be tried together with the other suits (api_motion_transfer.pdf).