Green Patent Blog®

Meeting Strategies Worldwide (MSW), a Portland, Oregon event management company, has launched a web site that helps meeting planners and conference organizers find green venues for their events (see the Matter Network story here).

The MeetGreen site provides two resources:  the MeetGreen Scorecard, which ranks cities based on green tourism and convention center programs, and the MeetGreen Calculator, which allows event planners to estimate the emissions footprints for potential destinations.

MSW’s backs up its tools with the MeetGreen Certification program, which evaluates the environmental meeting management practices of conference hosts to assure that they minimize the environmental impact of events in their venues.

MSW owns U.S. Service Mark Registration No. 3,387,871 for the MEETGREEN word mark and U.S. Certification Mark Registration No. 3,408,122 (’122 registration) for the CERTIFIED MEETGREEN design mark pictured above.

According to the ‘122 registration (meetgreen_reg.pdf), MSW’s CERTIFIED MEETGREEN mark certifies that:

a conference, meeting, or exhibition complies with established environmental policies and practices in conference, meetings and exhibitions such as those regarding creation and communication of policies and measures designed to minimize waste and resource use, recycling, offset and donation programs, and the purchase and use of environmentally friendly materials and products

I, for one, will certainly check to see if the next conference I attend is MeetGreen Certified.

When most of us think of green patents, it is technology such as fuel cells, solar panels and wind turbines that first comes to mind.  But there was an interesting article in IP Review Online about a study which found that patents directed to methods of carbon trading are also driving the green patent surge.

The study (which I could not find online) is called “Carbon Trading:  Patently Set for Growth” and, according to the article, identifies a link between funding from the World Bank Carbon Finance Unit and increased patent filings for business method patents relating to carbon trading tools and forms of carbon administration.

The report’s findings are particularly interesting coming now, when the patent law world is digesting a very significant decision regarding business method patents. 

In an en banc opinion decided on October 30, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (the court that hears all patent appeals from federal courts and the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (PTO)) held that a process is patentable only if (1) it is tied to a particular machine or apparatus, or (2) it transforms a particular article into a different state or thing.  (see the Patently-O discussion of the decision here)

The In re Bilski decision affirmed a PTO ruling that a claimed method of hedging risks in commodities trading does not satisfy the patentable subject matter requirements of section 101 of U.S. patent law.  Bilski’s claims did not pass the “machine or transformation” test because:

[T]he process as claimed encompasses the exchange of only options, which are simply legal rights to purchase some commodity at a given price in a given time period. The claim only refers to “transactions” involving the exchange of these legal rights at a “fixed rate corresponding to a risk position.” Thus, claim 1 does not involve the transformation of any physical object or substance, or an electronic signal representative of any physical object or substance.

Though business method patents are not dead - patent practitioners will undoubtedly find new ways to draft and argue them - the effects of In re Bilski will certainly be felt in the growing field of carbon trading.

In a previous post I wrote about parties to a biodiesel processor dispute battling over home court advantage.  There, Agri-Process Innovations (API) succeeded in getting its case against Greenline Industries heard in API’s home state of Arkansas.

The most common litigation tool for getting a case heard on your home turf is the declaratory judgment action (DJ).  In the patent infringement context, this means the accused infringer (or DJ plaintiff) beats the patent holder (or DJ defendant) to the punch by filing suit first and asking the court for a judgment of no infringement or patent invalidity.

The DJ plaintiff in a patent case must show that an actual controversy exists between the parties having adverse legal interests and that the DJ plaintiff is engaging in infringement or concrete steps with the intent to engage in infringement.

As in all lawsuits, the DJ plaintiff also has to establish personal jurisdiction (PJ) over the DJ Defendants.  Personal jurisdiction can be either general (i.e., the defendant has sufficient contacts in the forum state generally to justify PJ regardless of whether there was a connection between the acts leading to the lawsuit and the state) or specific (there was a connection between the specific acts leading to the lawsuit and the forum state).

Idaho Energy LP, dba Energy Products of Idaho (EPI) is an Idaho company that designs, manufactures and sells fluidized bed energy systems.  Harris Contracting Company (Harris), Alliant Energy Corporate Services and Von Roll, Inc. (collectively DJ Defendants) are co-holders of U.S. Patent No. 7,263,934 (’934 patent), entitled “Methods for generating energy using agricultural biofuel.” 

The ‘934 patent is directed to a process for producing steam from ethanol byproducts such as grain stillage syrup by combusting the byproducts in a fluidized bed reactor.

After several communications and license offers between Harris and EPI and one alleged instance of Harris threatening one of EPI’s potential customers about the ‘934 patent, EPI filed a DJ action in federal court in Boise, Idaho seeking a declaratory judgment of patent invalidity and making other claims including business defamation, unfair competition, trade libel and interference with prospective economic advantage.

The DJ Defendants moved to dismiss the case for lack of DJ jurisdiction and lack of PJ.  Recently, Judge Edward J. Lodge issued an order (epi_order.pdf) in which he found that there was DJ jurisdiction, but EPI had failed to establish PJ over the DJ defendants.  

The court found that none of the DJ Defendants did business in Idaho or had any other continuous presence in the state, so there was no general jurisidiction over them. 

As to specific jurisdiction, the court held that none of the alleged actions leading to the lawsuit had a connection to Idaho.  The alleged improper statement made to EPI’s potential customer did not involve Idaho customers and was not directed to the state.

The court also noted that letters threatening infringement litigation or the need for a license are insufficient to confer personal jurisdiction without other actions directed to the forum state.  So EPI’s DJ was dismissed for lack of PJ.