Green Patent Blog

Two companies recently qualified to use a couple of different certification marks to further their green branding efforts.  Hewlett-Packard (HP) just announced that all of its business PC, printing and server products shipped in the U.S. and Canada have qualified for the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) SmartWay certification. 

In a previous post I discussed the SmartWay program, which certifies low environmental impact vehicles.  Earlier this year, all of HP’s consumer products were also SmartWay certified.  This means that now both HP’s consumer products and business products are shipped by SmartWay-certified surface transportation carriers, and the SmartWay logo will appear on HP’s product packaging.

Massachusetts packaging company Be Green Packaging (BGP) has qualified for the Cradle to Cradle certification, which signifies that a product meets certain sustainability criteria, including being wholly recyclable.  

Environmental and sustainability consulting firm McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MBDC) owns several certification mark applications for the Cradle to Cradle logo (shown above) and the word marks CRADLE TO CRADLE CERTIFIED and CERTIFIED CRADLE TO CRADLE.  MBDC also owns a trademark application for CRADLE TO CRADLE for paper and packaging goods.

Interestingly, MBDC’s attempts to protect similar marks as both certification marks and ordinary trademarks has created a dilemma for the company.  Under U.S. trademark law, an applicant can’t get a certification mark registration if the applicant produces or markets any of the goods or services to which the certification mark is applied. 

Accordingly, in an office action on MBDC’s application for the CRADLE TO CRADLE CERTIFIED certification mark, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (PTO) required that MBDC abandon its CRADLE TO CRADLE trademark application before the certification mark can be registered (cradleofficeaction.pdf).  So MBDC has to make a business decision whether federal protection is more important for its certification program or its paper and packaging brand.

In addition to using MBDC’s certification mark, BGP has filed an application to register its own BE GREEN PACKAGING trademark, and the application seems to be sailing through the PTO without a hitch.  In view of the problems faced by PNC Bank’s GREEN BRANCH application and my own GREEN PATENT BLOG application, one might have expected a rejection on the ground that the mark is merely descriptive of environmentally friendly packaging services.

Instead, although the trademark examiner stated that “green packaging” is descriptive wording, she only required that BGP disclaim any rights to those words apart from the whole mark (begreenofficeaction.pdf).  Apparently, like ”APPLE” in GREEN APPLE CLEANERS, the non-descriptive element ”BE” in BE GREEN PACKAGING allowed the mark as a whole to clear the descriptiveness hurdle.

Solar Hydrogen Energy Corporation (SHEC) Labs, a renewable energy research and development company, has the distinction of creating the most efficient solar thermal technology in the world, jumping ahead of a group at MIT also working on boosting solar thermal efficiency. 

Concentrating solar power (CSP), or solar thermal, technology magnifies sunlight with mirrors or lenses and uses tracking systems to focus the light.  The concentrated light can be used as a heat source for any number of applications, including conventional power plants.  Typically, this entails heating a working fluid such as steam or a hydraulic fluid.

First, a couple of staggering stats:  SHEC’s solar concentrator can concentrate solar energy up to 5,000 times the ordinary intensity of sunlight as it reaches the earth (the MIT technology concentrates by a factor of 1,000).  The heat can reach a temperature of 11,000 degrees Fahrenheit and can instantly melt metal if the concentrated sunlight is focused on it.

A CSP system has two major components.  The first is the solar concentrator (the mirror or lens), which often takes the form of a parabolic or trough-shaped reflector. 

The second is the receiver, typically a tube with an aperture and a reflective coating.  The concentrator directs the concentrated sunlight through the aperture, the sunlight bounces around within the receiver, and the energy is eventually absorbed.

SHEC has filed two patent applications, one for its solar concentrator and one for the receiver.  U.S. Patent Application Pub. No. 2008/0060636 (’636 application) is directed to a solar concentrator having a shutter apparatus with a plurality of movable shutter plates (10) arranged around a central aperture (14). 

A shutter drive moves the plates between the open and closed positions.  When a shutter plate is in the closed position, it blocks only a portion of the aperture. 

By controlling how many and which plates close, varying portions of the solar beam can be blocked and prevented from entering the receiver.  In additon to traveling through the center aperture, the sunlight can pass between the edges of the shutter plates.

The concentrator also has a cooling circuit which circulates cooling fluid to prevent potential damage to the shutter plates from the heat of sun.

According to the ‘636 application, this design allows finer control over the amount of heat energy directed to the receiver.  This is important because many existing solar receivers include boilers or thermal reactors that have no throttle-type control to assure that the energy supplied corresponds to the load of the engine. 

Thus, if the load drops and the solar energy supplied remains constant, the engine overheats and sustains damage.  Prior solutions included movable mirror segments with many complex moving parts, and shutter plates which were often fragile and subject to damage from the elements.  The ‘636 application provides a more elegant solution.

U.S. Patent Applicaton Pub. No. 2008/0184990 (’990 application) covers an apparatus for collecting heat from a solar concentrator.  The receiver has an isothermal (i.e., maintaining a constant temperature) body and an elongated cavity.  

A key feature of SHEC’s receiver is that the circular aperture has a diameter equal to the diameter of the focused sunlight reflected by the solar concentrator and is located at the focus point of the concentrator.  This minimizes parasitic losses of sunlight and substantially boosts efficiency.

Not surprisingly, according to this Ecogeek piece, SHEC’s super efficient CSP system already has a couple of buyers.  From an IP perspective, SHEC’s duo of complementary patent applications offers a good illustration of how to divide a new system into its key components and pursue patent protection for each.

Pratt & Whitney’s new Geared Turbofan engine could reduce jet fuel use by up to 15% and emissions by as much as 20%.  (see the Matter Network piece and the more detailed Machine Design write up)  The technology is covered at least in part by U.S. Patent Nos. 7,021,042 and 6,964,155.

In a turbofan engine, a fan powered by a turbine directs incoming air into and around the combustion chamber.  Generally, a big, powerful fan is required because a large volume of air needs to be directed into the combustion chamber.  The power comes from rotating turbine blades, which turns a shaft that drives the fan. 

The problem is that turbines are most efficient at high speeds, but spinning the large fan quickly generates more noise and increases the torque requirements.  So the goals of reducing noise (by lowering fan speed) and increasing efficiency (by increasing turbine speed) are in direct conflict.

To achieve the desired low fan speed and turbine efficiency, Pratt & Whitney’s Geared Turbofan integrates a gear box between the fan and the turbine.  This arrangement keeps the turbine and fan on the same driveshaft while allowing both to operate closer to their optimal speeds.

The Geared Turbofan comes just as airlines are looking for ways to combat the astronomical costs of jet fuel, and Pratt & Whitney’s new engine will be a part of the solution.  According to the company’s web site, aircraft manufacturer Bombardier will use the Geared Turbofan for its CSeries jets, and Mitsubishi will be using the new engine for its regional jets. 

(Thanks to Franco Serafini - a blog reader, colleague and IP attorney with aerospace industry experience - who provided invaluable editorial assistance for this post).

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.