David Muchow, the President and CEO of SkyBuilt Power, shared an article of his with me in which he lays out his vision of how the U.S. can foster green innovation.

Entitled “How to Bake the Green Technology Cake:  The Missing Key to Technology Innovation,” the article analogizes the process of getting an invention from conception to marketplace to that of baking a cake (see a modified version of the article here).

For small inventors, in particular, Muchow observes that the necessary ingredients are scattered, the cook takes too long, and oftentimes there’s no oven.  So he lays out three steps for baking the “innovation cake.”

The Ingredients:  According to the article, the necessary ingredients - funding, legal advice, business advice, industry knowledge, customers – have to be collected from many different sources. 

The proposed solution is an on-line one-stop virtual information meeting place for inventors, grantors, buyers, sellers, VCs and patent lawyers.  Muchow calls this a technology eBay or “t-Bay” and suggests creating one for each technology or product subject area.

The Cooking Time:  Here, the problem is the length and cost of the patent process.   The article suggests a guaranteed time frame for granting or rejecting green patent applications.

The Missing Oven:  The article notes the lack of a central, physical meeting place for all stakeholders and proposes creating Local Technology Centers (LTC) in each state where inventors, business firms, law firms, investors, government representatives and engineers could meet.

These would act as both “supermarkets” for the ingredients and the “ovens” in which to bake them as inventors could present their inventions to panels of experts, with winners receiving grants to spend on across-the-board support at the LTCs.

Muchow says his plan would ultimately pay for itself as the LTCs could take equity interests in the startups being formed and get paid back in full with interest if the companies become profitable.

Apparently, somebody in the U.S. government has been listening because a group of federal agencies recently announced they would partner to launch a green entrepreneurial initiative promoting “Proof of Concept” Centers, which bear a striking resemblance to Muchow’s LTCs.

Called the i6 Green Challenge, the plan to accelerate high-growth entrepreneurship in green technologies will provide $12 million to establish or expand the Centers, whose function is to:

support all aspects of the entrepreneurship process, from assisting with technology feasibility and business plan development, to providing access to early-stage capital and mentors to offer critical guidance to innovators.  Centers allow emerging technologies to mature and demonstrate their market potential, making them more attractive to investors and helping entrepreneurs turn their idea or technology into a business.

Pre-heat your oven to 375º F and get out those measuring cups.

I will be speaking at the Intellectual Property Congress for Green Energy Technologies (Green IP Congress) in San Francisco next week as part of a panel on green patent fast track programs.

The panel is called “Capitalizing on Accelerated Review for Green Innovation,” and my co-panelists are James McEwen, co-author of a tome on IP in government contracts, and Richard Ogawa, Chief IP Officer for several companies, including Stion and PVT Solar.  Michael Tschupp, of the Sustainable Marks blog, will moderate.

My presentation is called “Global Green Patenting:  Risks and Opportunities from the Fast Track to the Highway,” and will review the anti-patent policies proposed by the UN and developing countries in the recent international climate change treaty talks.  Such policies seek to weaken or eliminate green patents due to a belief that patents act as a barrier to international transfer of clean technologies.

My talk will highlight significant instances of clean tech transfer that belie the notion that green patents are acting as such a barrier. 

I will also provide an overview of some of the exciting opportunities in international green patenting such as the fast track programs offered by the United States, the UK, Korea, and others, which expedite processing and examination of clean tech patent applications.

Aside from academic symposia at law schools, the Green IP Congress is the first conference I know of in the U.S. that is focused entirely on green IP issues. 

It’s a two-day affair and includes presentations and panel discussions on green IP licensing models, international joint ventures using green IP, IP issues in smart grid, green IP litigation, and green branding and green marketing.

Philip Totaro, who has written insightful pieces about wind patents in this space, will speak on “Current and Future Trends in Wind Turbine Technology.”

Other featured presentations include John Lucas of DOE on government assistance for green technologies and Kathryn Atchison and Kathleen McCowin, of UCLA and Berkeley, respectively, on the role of the university in developing and commercializing green energy technologies.

Robert Bahr, the Acting Associate Commissioner for Patent Examination Policy at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, will deliver the keynote address.

The Green IP Congress will be held at the Hilton San Francisco Financial District on April 27-28, 2011.  More information can be found here, and the brochure is here (Green IP Congress Brochure).  Feel free to use my speaker discount code - HAB374 – to save $400 off the registration fee.

 In previous posts (most recently here), I’ve written about the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) green technology pilot program to expedite examination of green patent applications.

The latest USPTO green technology pilot program statistical report (green_report_summary) indicates that there have now been more than 3,000 petitions filed, so the program is getting fairly close to maxed out. 

However, the number of filed petitions is not dispositive; the program is scheduled to end when 3,000 petitions are accepted into the program, or at the end of this year, whichever comes first.

There are currently about 1,300 petitions that are still pending, including about 1,000 that have been dismissed (i.e., initially turned away but could be appealed), and about 300 awaiting initial decision. 

So the number of remaining slots for the program depends on how these 1,300 or so pending petitions break for acceptance or final denial.

Over the nearly year and a half period the program has been running, 1,595 petitions have been granted, 195 petitions have been finally denied, and 250 patents granted in the program.

It’s hard to say exactly how much time applicants have left to file their fast track petitions, but unless the USPTO extends the program again or makes it permanent, the window may close fairly soon.

In a previous post, I wrote about the Canadian Intellectual Property Office’s (CIPO) proposal to implement an expedited examination program for green tech patent applications.

Last month CIPO launched the program.  Now applicants can have their green patent applications advanced out of turn for examination with a simple written request and declaration that the application relates to clean technology:

An applicant wishing to take advantage of the expedied examination process must do the following:

1.  Request expedited examination by submitting a written request to the Patent Office.

2.  Submit a declaration that states the application relates to technology the commercialization of which would help to resolve or mitigate environmental impacts or conserve the natural environment and resources.

Under the fast track program, the applicant will receive a first office action within two months instead of about 2-3 years in the ordinary course.  More information on the CIPO fast track program can be found here.

Canada joins several other national IP offices around the world in offering a green tech fast track program, including the UK, the US, Australia, Korea, Japan and Israel.

I’ll be speaking at the Licensing Executives Society Silicon Valley Chapter meeting next week as part of a panel on green IP.

Entitled “People Driving Cleantech:  IP Trends in the Renewable Energy Generation, Storage, Efficiency, Transportation, and Recycling Markets,” the meeting will explore the role of IP in the technological development and commercialization of some key clean tech subsectors.

Joining me on the panel will be Matt Rappaport, co-founder and managing director of patent analytics firm IP Checkups, Efrat Kasznik, president of IP consulting firm Foresight Valuation Group, and Aaron Enz, a partner at Watershed Capital, a corporate financial advisory firm.  Eric Wesoff of Greentech Media will be the moderator.

My presentation is called “Global Green Patenting:  Risks and Opportunities from the Fast Track to the Highway,” and will review the anti-patent policies proposed by the UN and developing countries in the recent international climate change treaty talks.  Such policies seek to weaken or eliminate green patents due to a belief that patents act as a barrier to international transfer of clean technologies.

My talk will highlight significant instances of clean tech transfer that belie the notion that green patents are acting as such a barrier. 

I will also provide an overview of some of the exciting opportunities in international green patenting such as the fast track programs offered by the United States, the UK, Korea, and others, which expedite processing and examination of clean tech patent applications.

The meeting will be held next Wednesday, March 23, 2011, from 11:30AM – 2:00PM at Santa Clara University.  More information about the event and registration info can be found here.

International cooperation in clean tech innovation and diffusion is increasingly common.  One of the trends in this regard is a country’s trade officials organizing an international tour of home grown clean tech companies, in many cases to the U.S., to promote their wares and explore business opportunities.

A recent case in point was the G’Day USA Australia Biofuels event last month. 

The latest example of this is the delegation of UK clean tech companies visiting San Diego. 

The UK Trade & Investment Roundtable, being hosted by DPR Construction, Inc. at 5010 Shoreham Place in San Diego on February 18th, will showcase several UK companies operating in and around the clean tech space.

For obvious reasons, one of the hottest clean tech sectors in the UK is wave and tidal power, including such players as Tidal Energy Limited, Pelamis, and Marine Current Turbines.

But the mini British Invasion of San Diego later this month represents a wide range of technologies from advanced batteries to green buildings. 

According to James Cummings of the British Consulate in Los Angeles, the visiting companies include B&M Longworth (ultrasonic cleaning of industrial equipment), Breathing Buildings (green building ventilation systems), Ionotec (conductive ceramics for advanced batteries), Nanoflex (coating material for lighting), Securistyle (windows and doors), and the Carbon Trust (sustainable business and emissions reductions advisory services).

In some ways the UK has been at the forefront of green innovation policy.  The UK Intellectual Property Office was one of the first national IP offices to initiate a fast track program for green patent applications.

So these and other UK clean tech companies were among the first to enjoy the opportunity of expedited examination of their patent applications.  I hope they have taken advantage of it.

To RSVP or find out more information about this event, contact Mr. Cummings at james.cummings@fconet.fco.gov.uk.

With the close of another round of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) treaty talks, this one held in Cancun from November 29 – December 10, it is important to look at how green patents fared in the negotiations and the final agreement. 

But first, some background.

Last year, when I became aware during the run up to the Copenhagen meeting that intellectual property rights were being debated, the first question that popped into my mind was:  why are IP rights even on the agenda in the climate change treaty discussions?

To me, IP seemed tangential at best to the problems of shaping policies to mitigate climate change, taking a back seat to a maximum temperature rise target, greenhouse gas emissions targets, carbon taxes, cap and trade, etc.

Turns out neither the original UNFCCC treaty nor the current Kyoto Protocol expressly mentions intellectual property.  However, the treaty text contains the following reference to technology transfer and access:

Parties “shall take all practicable steps to promote, facilitate and finance, as appropriate, the transfer of, or access to, environmentally sound technologies and know-how to other Parties, particularly developing country Parties . . .”

This passage, at Article 4, paragraph 5 of the UNFCCC treaty, establishes an obligation on the part of the signatories to ensure that developing countries have access to clean technologies.  As part of the implementation of this provision, the UNFCCC has encouraged developing country parties to undertake technology needs assessments, and in particular, to “identify the barriers to technology transfer and measures to address these barriers . . .”

Over the years, various meetings of the parties to the treaty produced additional statements, goals, and actions, which consistently framed the debate about how best to mitigate climate change in terms of barriers and obstacles to technology transfer.

The Bali Action Plan of 2007 is a notable example.  The Bali plan directed the parties to consider ways to accelerate transfer of clean technologies.  One express element of such transfer was the “removal of obstacles to . . . scaling up the development and transfer of technology to developing country Parties in order to promote access to affordable environmentally sound technologies . . .”

This barrier argument gained momentum and clarity in the run up to the Copenhagen meeting in December 2009 as the UN and developing country parties focused on IP rights as the chief barrier to the clean tech transfer.  As the preparations for Copenhagen heated up over the course of 2009, proposals were continually put forth to weaken or even eliminate patent rights in clean technologies.

In May 2009, the UNFCCC Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA) published its proposed negotiating text that would serve as the foundation document for developing the next round of treaty discussions to replace the Kyoto Protocol after 2012.  The AWG-LCA’s text included proposals to weaken or evade patent rights such as compulsory licensing of clean technologies, preferential pricing for such technologies, exempting certain countries from patent protection, and pooling or sharing of publicly funded clean technologies.

The developing country parties followed suit in their proposed negotiating texts, which contained more extreme measures, such as the following:

mandatorily exclude from patenting climate-friendly technologies held by developed country parties (proposed by the G77 + China)

revoke in developing countries all existing patents on “essential/urgent environmentally sound technologies” (proposed by Bolivia)

guarantee access to IP on royalty-free terms for developing countries (proposed by the Philippines)

Proposals such as these perpetuated the notion that IP serves as a barrier to transfer of clean technologies to developing countries (though there is evidence to the contrary, which I’ve discussed here and here).

Despite this push to weaken or eliminate IP rights, the deal signed at Copenhagen made no mention of IP.  The only piece of the Copenhagen Accord relating to technology transfer was a vague commitment to establish a “Technology Mechanism” in order to “accelerate technology development and transfer in support of action on adaptation and mitigation.”

Now, back to Cancun.  An Intellectual Property Watch article noted that IP rights were being discussed in the run up to Cancun, and that the references to IP rights in the official negotiating text for the meeting appeared mostly in brackets to reflect the disagreement by the parties over these provisions.

This bracketed material included Point 13 of Chapter IV, entitled “Intellectual Property Rights,” which proposed a list of measures “to remove barriers to the development and transfer of technologies arising from intellectual property rights protection.”  These included creating a global IP rights pool for climate change, sharing publicly funded technologies, excluding clean technologies from IP protections, and revoking IP protections on clean technologies.

As in Copenhagen, the agreement that came out of Cancun contained no reference to IP.  Section IV.B on technology development and transfer fleshed out the objectives, functions and structure of the Technology Mechanism.

Fortunately, the Cancun Accord did not mention any specific IP-related proposals.

In view of the continuing rhetoric about IP rights as a barrier to clean tech transfer and the repeated calls for weakening or eliminating clean tech IP rights, a climate change agreement that ignores IP is good news for green patents.

Last week the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) formally announced its plan to extend and expand the Green Technology Pilot Program, which provides accelerated examination for patent applications relating to green technologies.

According to the Notice, the program will be extended to December 31, 2011; it was previously scheduled to end December 8, 2010. 

The USPTO has also made a significant eligibility change, expanding the program to include green patent applications filed on or after the December 8, 2009 program launch date; previously, only applications filed before that date were eligible.

So, as of the November 10, 2010 effective date, any green patent application that has not yet begun examination is eligible for the fast tracking program.

The Notice states:

Initially, participation was limited to applications filed before December 8, 2009. The USPTO is hereby expanding the eligibility for the pilot program to include applications filed on or after December 8, 2009. The program is also being extended until December 31, 2011. These changes will permit more applications to qualify for the program, thereby allowing more inventions related to green technologies to be advanced out of turn for examination and reviewed earlier.

With this change, the eligibility requirements are as follows:

the application is any non-reissue, non-provisional utility application for which a first office action has not been issued;

the application has three or fewer independent claims, 20 or fewer total claims and no multiple dependent claims (the applicant can file a preliminary amendment to bring the application in compliance with this requirement);

the application claims a single invention directed to environmental quality, conserving energy, developing renewable energy resources or reducing greenhouse gas emissions; and

the applicant must request early publication of the application.