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Tag Archives: Wind

2010: Investment and Licensing Opportunities May Arise in New Areas – Cleantech Energy Patent Landscape Report

Posted by John M. Lazarus on Posted in Licensing

The 2010 Cleantech Energy Patent Landscape Report Executive Summary recently released by Foley & Lardner LLP highlights key findings from a review of nearly 825 granted U.S. patents specific to clean energy production, efficiency, and conservation technologies within 11 focal categories:

  • Solar
  • Wind
  • Hydro
  • Geothermal
  • Biomass
  • Nuclear
  • Hybrid vehicles
  • Fuel cells for vehicles
  • Utility metering
  • Smart grid technologies
  • CO2 storage or sequestration

To aid industry executives, start-ups, individual inventors, and investors in identifying and leveraging market opportunities in this continually changing landscape, this annual analysis offers insight on regional cleantech activity, the specific technologies for which patent protection is being granted and who is obtaining these patents, focal points for venture capital investments, areas of patentable white space, and potential licensing availability for corporate entities.

For a copy of our full Cleantech Energy Patent Landscape Report, please contact John Lazarus at jlazarus@foley.com.

Smart Grid

Posted by Bruce Wu on Posted in Cleantech

With a growing number of ways to harvest electrical energy from cleaner sources, which can highly depend on the geographical locations, we now face the problem of how to distribute these different types of energies while minimizing waste. In other words, when our southwest neighbors have excess electricity generated from wind or solar power, it would be a waste not to transmit the excess to another region that could use that power. Hence the term "smart grid."

The development of smart grids has faced several challenges, but many research teams have attempted to overcome these challenges. A recent article in The Technology Review provides a report on some recent development at this front. 

Wind Energy Patents Sail Through the USPTO in 2008

Posted by Bruce Wu on Posted in Cleantech

 - By John Lazarus

Research provided via Foley’s Cleantech Patent Landscape Report reflects that the percentage of patents for wind energy inventions that were granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) in 2008 without any initial rejection in view of “prior art” patents was higher for wind energy inventions than any other field in the cleantech patent landscape. More than 25 percent (37 of 144 total) of all wind energy patents were granted by the PTO in 2008 as “first action allowances,” i.e., with no initial rejection by the PTO examiners based upon their search of preceding patents and other prior art documents. 

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