Green Patent Blog

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.

Restaurant Technologies owns a patent for a waste cooking oil removal system.  The invention disclosed in U.S. Patent No. 5,249,511 can distribute and meter fresh oil, filter and recirculate used oil, and remove and store waste oil.  The system eliminates the need for manual handling of hot oil and the need to filter and dispose of the oil at selected intervals.  The system includes a filter station, a fryer station with a pair of valves, a supply station with a storage tank and an entrance and exit valve, and a waste station comprising a receptacle and an entrance and exit valve.  The stations are connected by piping, and a valve controller selects the pipe path among the stations.  The system can be operated electronically or manually; the operator either uses a microprocessor or a manual network of push-pull knobs to open and shut the appropriate valves and effect the desired operation.

Restaurant Technologies sued Jersey Shore Chicken and Klee’s Bar & Grill in U.S. District Court in New Jersey for using an allegedly infringing oil supply system.  The accused equipment was provided by Oilmatic, which came to the defense of its customers and sued Restaurant Technologies for unfair competition, antitrust violations and a declaratory judgment that its system did not infringe the ‘511 patent.  The Oilmatic system consists of a fresh oil tank, a waste oil tank, piping connected to pumps, a waste pipe nozzle and a dipstick nozzle to fill or remove cooking oil from a fryer vat.  The user controls operations by turning a switch on the dipstick nozzle to “fill”, “off” or “drain” and pressing a pump start/stop button.

The claims of the patent include the terms “control means” for operating the valves and selecting a pipe path and “means for metering oil” to the fryer.  These terms are written in accordance with the  “means-plus-function” provision of U.S. patent law, which permits a patentee to draft claims that recite a function to be performed without also reciting in the claims the structure needed to perform the function.  The patentee must disclose corresponding structure elsewhere in the patent.  A “means-plus-function” claim term is interpreted by determining which structure disclosed in the written description of the patent corresponds to the function recited in the patent claims.

The court determined that the corresponding structure for the “control means” includes microprocessor controls and the manual push-pull knob network.  The court held the Oilmatic system does not satisfy this claim element because it has no microprocessor controls and the dipstick switch and button is substantially different from Restaurant Technologies’ knob network.  The court found that the corresponding structure for the “means for metering oil” is a trigger valve with a nozzle which opens when the valve is squeezed.  Although the Oilmatic system uses a nozzle, it does not employ a squeezable valve.  Instead, oil is supplied to the fryer by pushing the start button on the dipstick to turn on the fresh oil pump, which operates by shaft rotation, not squeezing.  Therefore, the court found that the Oilmatic system does not infringe the ‘511 patent.   

Systems like those provided by Restaurant Technologies and Oilmatic could work synergistically with the business model of companies like New Leaf Biofuel, which collects waste cooking oil from restaurants and uses it as raw material for biodiesel production.  Waste oil recovery technology could help to increase the supply of raw materials for biodiesel and improve the pathway from the frying pan to the gas tank.