Green Patent Blog

Green Energy Resources (GER) provides wood fiber fuels, including wood chips, sawdust and biomass for various applications, including power production and for raw materials for cellulosic ethanol production.  GER’s wood products comply with the Kyoto Protocol and meet all European Union regulatory requirements, so they can be used in the EU as well as the U.S.

GER made news recently when it began offering carbon offset credits to its customers.  These allow companies that operate in markets that have carbon caps to offset any shortfalls in their carbon emissions.

According to the company’s web site, GER’s products are certified with the UTCS eco-mark.  UTCS is an acronym for Urban Tree Certification System.  A recent Reuters article states that GER developed the UTCS certification and describes it this way:

UTCS (urban tree certification system) is a NYS and internationally recognized urban forest management plan developed by GER CEO Joseph Murray.  UTCS certification system is a socially responsible and environmentally friendly methodology to recycle government approved forestry and non-forest industry generated waste wood.  UTCS includes chain of custody documentation (a tracking system from origin to end user) and 3rd party verifications of sourcing.

So GER certifies its own products, which is quite unusual.  I haven’t been able to find any independent verification of the UTCS certification mark, and the description from the Reuters article quoted above is from the “About Green Energy Resources” text which was probably taken from GER’s marketing materials.

A search of the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office’s trademark database reveals that GER has not filed a trademark or certification mark application for UTCS.  Indeed, UTCS wouldn’t be eligible for federal certification mark registration because a certification mark is used not by its owner, but by others whose products or services are certified by the owner of the mark.

California startup BioSolar, Inc. (BioSolar) has a different focus than most companies in the solar industry.  Instead of building better ways to absorb the sun’s rays and convert the light into energy, BioSolar develops cheaper and more environmentally-friendly protective backing for solar cells.

Currently, the vast majority of protective backsheets for solar cells are made by DuPont from a petroleum-based film called Tedlar.  BioSolar’s backing is made from bio-based materials.

BioSolar has a patent application directed to a process for building solar cells using a bio-based plastic substrate.  U.S. Application Pub. No. 2007/0295394 (’394 application) seeks to overcome the primary problems associated with bio-based materials in solar applications - their relatively low melting points and de-gasing temperature points.

The keys to the process disclosed in the ‘394 application are de-gasing the substrate material at a temperature of 120 degrees so the material maintains its shape without bubbling or cracking and applying a silicon oxide barrier layer to seal the potential micro-cracks and stabilize the substrate for its journey through the remainder of the solar cell production process.

According to this green tech media piece, BioSolar has not disclosed which bio-materials are used to make the substrate.  BioSolar’s CEO was coy when asked about it, only saying that the substrate layers are made from plant-based materials “not coming from a food source.”

However, the ‘394 application states that the bio-based substrate “is made from Poly Lactic Acid (PLA); a material generated from corn dextrose…”  Last time I checked, corn was a food source.  Perhaps BioSolar is also looking at other raw materials for this promising technology.

Greenline Industries (Greenline), based in Larkspur, California, designs 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. 

In 2006, Greenline and Arkansas engineering firm Agri-Process Innovations (API) created a venture, now called AP Fabrications (APF), for the purpose of installing Greenline biodiesel plants.  In 2007, Greenline gave up its ownership rights in the venture, and API became the sole owner of APF.

Last month Greenline sued API and APF in federal court in Oakland, California for anticipatory breach of contract, misappropriation of trade secrets, false advertising and a declaratory judgment that Greenline owns the copyrights in its processor designs.  Greenline alleges that its vendor agreement with APF provided that Greenline would be exclusively responsible for the design of biodiesel processing units while APF’s role was limited to installation of the units.  Greenline also contends that the agreement allowed API to sell the processors but required that they be marketed as “Greenline Industries” plants.

The trigger for the lawsuit was a May 5, 2008 letter in which API and APF told Greenline they were terminating the vendor agreement and demanded compensation for (unspecified) intellectual property rights created by API and used by Greenline.  Greenline alleges this repudiation of the agreement constitutes anticipatory breach of contract.  

According to the complaint, API also claims rights to Greenline’s technology through statements on its web site that API designs the processing units.  These and other statements implying ownership of the processing techniques, as well as claims of responsibility for the design of specific processing plants, form the basis for Greenline’s claims of false advertising.

While the anticipatory breach and false advertising claims seem reasonably well-founded, it’s hard to see how API/APF’s actions constitute misappropriation of trade secrets, considering that the only allegations of theft of intellectual property in the complaint are the May 5 letter and the statements on API’s web site. 

The Uniform Trade Secrets Act (upon which many state trade secrets laws are modeled) defines misappropriation as acquisition of a trade secret by someone who knows or should know it was acquired by improper means or disclosure of a trade secret that was improperly acquired.  The facts of the complaint suggest that any acquisition or disclosure of Greenline’s proprietary information by API or APF occurred pursuant to the vendor agreement, which was in force until last month.  Simply making misrepresentions of ownership of a particular proprietary technology to third parties would not seem to rise to the level of misappropriation.

The other striking thing about this dispute is the extremely short time period between API/APF’s letter to Greenline terminating the agreement (May 5, 2008) and the date Greenline filed the lawsuit (the complaint is dated May 12, 2008).  This rapid turnaround suggests either that tensions were brewing for a while or the two sides made little attempt to resolve the dispute before resorting to litigation.

Allegro Biodiesel recently acquired a minority stake in Littleton, Colorado bioenergy company Community Power Corporation (CPC).  Allegro is interested in CPC because of its technology for converting biomass to clean energy.

Gasification technology converts carbon-based biomass feedstocks, such as wood chips, to gas or other usable fuel, which can then be used to generate electricity.   CPC has developed a gasification system that can produce heat and power from a wide variety of biomass feedstocks.   CPC’s gasifier is called the BioMax Power System biomax.pdf, and the company has filed a patent application for the technology. 

U.S. Application No. 2007/0006528 covers a modular, portable gasifier that provides better control and monitoring of operations, more effective gas cooling, and less pollution (typically tar) than prior gasifying techniques.  The gasifier eliminates the tar from the raw material by pyrolysis (heating without oxygen or other reagents).   According to CPC’s patent application, a significant innovation is the gasifier’s multi-layer air injection system, which senses temperature at each layer and adjusts the temperature accordingly at each layer to achieve consistently high gas quality and ultra-low tar levels.  The system has multiple nozzles to inject oxidizing gas in the prescribed amounts at different locations to create optimal conditions.  After the tar is released, the remaining carbonaceous material (called char) is ignited and thereby converted to a low tar fuel gas.

Swedish clean energy group Morphic Technologies has made a string of acquisitions recently, gobbling up the Greek energy company Helbio last June, Italian fuel cell maker Arcotronics in November and the Swiss energy storage company AccaGen last month.  Morphic includes a parent company and six subsidiaries engaged in the manufacture of fuel cells and wind turbines and servicing and maintenance of hydroelectric power plants.  The deals provide Morphic with new fuel cell technology and various processes for storing energy from renewable sources. 

The acquisition of Arcotronics provides Morphic with a variety of different fuel cell designs to incorporate into its energy systems.  Most of Arcotronics’ patented technology relates to equipment and techniques for manufacturing batteries and capacitors.  For example, U.S. Patent No. 7,215,532 claims a machine with a rotating frame, a polygonal support structure, spacers and rolls for storing plastic film raw material.  The rotation of the frame winds the film onto the support, creating multiple film layers of uniform shape and thickness.  The spacers are arranged at the first film layer at locations corresponding to the corners of the polygon and serve to maintain the structure of the resulting capacitor.  This technique provides more uniformity among different regions of the wound film, and thus more uniform electrical characteristics, and also permits production of capacitors of different shapes by substituting different support structures.

Helbio’s technology relates to hydrogen production from biofuel raw materials.  Helbio holds one U.S. patent on a method of producing hydrogen from ethanol by oxidation.  U.S. Patent No. 6,605,376 covers a process of mixing ethanol with oxygen in the presence of a catalyst to produce hydrogen gas and carbon dioxide.  The patent also covers a method including the additional steps of fermenting biomass to produce the ethanol starting material and directing the resulting hydrogen gas to a fuel cell.

The AccaGen deal also provides Morphic with hydrogen production capability.  AccaGen makes electrolyzers for separating water into hydrogen and oxygen.