Patent Law Insights : Software Patent Lawyer & Attorney : Perkins Coie Law Firm : Intellectual Property & Technology Law

Just in time for Earth Day 2011:

General Motors announced last week in a press release that it "received more clean-energy patents last year than any other organization, according to the Clean Energy Patent Growth Index of U.S. patents. GM’s 135 patents represent nearly 14 percent of the total 1,881 received by 700 entities."  Among these 135 patents are several that are directed to electrically operated vehicles.  That's no surprise because, according to the press release, "GM believes electrically driven vehicles offer the most long-term benefits to customers around the world."

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The USPTO today announced an expansion and extension to the "Green Technology Pilot Program."  Under the program, patent applications pertaining to environmental quality, energy conservation, development of renewable energy resources, and greenhouse gas emission reduction can be accorded special status and prosecuted more quickly than other applications.

This pilot program will run until December 31, 2011, but the USPTO will accept only the first 3,000 grantable petitions to make special under the Green Technology Pilot Program.  

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Law360 reports that "Sipco LLC, a Georgia-based developer of wireless mesh technology, has filed a suit accusing Florida Power & Light Co. of infringing three patents for smart grid technology."

The relevant patents are U.S. Patent Nos. 6,437,692; 7,053,767; and 7,468,661.

The '692 patent is directed to "monitoring a variety of environmental and/or other conditions within a defined remotely located region."  Its first claim recites:

1. A system for remote data collection, assembly, and storage comprising:

• a computer configured to execute at least one computer program that formats and stores select information for retrieval upon demand from a remotely located device, said computer integrated with a wide area network (WAN);
• at least one wireless transmitter configured to transmit select information and transmitter identification information;
• a plurality of relatively low-power radio-frequency (RF) transceivers dispersed geographically at defined locations configured to receive select information transmitted from at least one nearby wireless transmitter and further configured to transmit the select information, the transmitter identification information and transceiver identification information;and
• at least one gateway connected to the wide area network configured to receive and translate the select information, the transmitter identification information, and transceiver identification information, said gateway further configured to farther transmit the translated information to the computer over the WAN.

The '767 patent is directed to the same area.  Its first claim recites:

1. A method for controlling a system comprising:

• remotely collecting data from at least one originating transmitter coupled to a sensor;
• processing the data into a RF signal;
• transmitting the RF signal to another nearby transmitter coupled to a sensor;
• retransmitting the RF signal to a gateway, wherein the RF signal may be further retransmitted by additional transmitters coupled to a sensor prior to being transmitted to the gateway;
• translating the data in the RF signal into a network transfer protocol;
• sending the translated data to a computer, wherein the computer is configured to appropriately respond to the data generated by the at least one sensor by generating an appropriate control signal; sending the control signal via the network to the gateway;
• translating the control signal from a network transfer protocol into a RF control signal; transmitting the RF control signal to one or more of another nearby transmitters coupled to a sensor;
• retransmitting the RF control signal, wherein the RF control signal may be further retransmitted by the additional transmitters coupled to a sensor;
• receiving the RF control signal; translating the received RF control signal into an analog signal; and
• applying the analog signal to an actuator to effect the desired system response.

The '661 patent is directed to the same area.  Its first claim recites:

1. A system for remote data collection, assembly, storage, and event detection and reporting, comprising:

• a computer configured to execute at least one computer program that formats and stores select information for retrieval upon demand from a remotely located device, said computer integrated with a wide area network (WAN);
• a plurality of transceivers dispersed geographically at defined locations, each transceiver electrically interfaced with a sensor and configured to receive select information and identification information transmitted from another nearby wireless transceiver electrically interfaced with a sensor in a predetermined signal type and further configured to wirelessly retransmit in the predetermined signal type the select information, the identification information associated with the nearby wireless transceiver, and transceiver identification information associated with the transceiver making retransmission; and
• at least one gateway connected to the wide area network configured to receive and translate the select information, the identification information associated with the nearby wireless transceiver, and transceiver identification information associated with one or more retransmitting transceivers, said gateway further configured to further transmit the translated information to the computer over the WAN.

There appear to be other patents in the patent family that are (at least presently) not being asserted.

(See earlier blog posting about smart grid patent landscape.)

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Green energy and smart grid technology continue to provide green pasture for patent applicants. Southern California Edison, which is a large power utility, filed a patent application in 2008.  The application published as Patent Pub. No. 20080177678 and claims:

A method for communicating between a utility and individual customer locations comprising the steps of:

• (a) communicating between the utility and customers and between the utility and customer equipment located at each individual customer location via the Internet or via an advanced utility meter;
• (b) providing each individual customer location with an advanced utility meter; and
• (c) using each individual utility meter to communicate between the utility and the advanced utility meter, to communicate between the advanced utility meter and individual customers and to communicate between the advanced utility meter and equipment located at each individual customer location;
• wherein the utility is an electrical utility and wherein electrical usage data from individual pieces of equipment located at each individual customer location is communicated to the advanced utility meter.

In a first Office Action, the USPTO rejected all claims as not being a novel invention in view of a patent application that was filed three years earlier that published as Patent Pub. No. 20060031180 and is assigned to USCL Corp. One of SCE's claims was rejected as being obvious in view of both the USCL Corp. patent publication and a patent owned by a family trust: Patent No. 7,069,161.  The USCL patent publication is directed to a system for informing subscribers of utility commodity costs and usage, and for controlling the utility commodity usage.  The '161 patent is directed to monitoring and managing the resource consumption and infrastructure of a building in real time.  

As most patent applicants know, Office Actions having rejections are fairly common.  They are communications from the patent examiner in a sometimes protracted negotiation of appropriate claim scope.  SCE can respond to the Office Action by either (1) amending its claims so that they do not cover the USCL patent application's disclosure as far as the USPTO is concerned; or (2) explaining to the patent examiner why SCE's claims are patentable despite USCL's disclosure.

SCE and USCL are not the only patent applicants in smart grid technology.  For example, Tendril Networks filed a patent application in 2005 directed to network-aware power management, which published as Patent Pub. No. 20060200542.

I worked for four years for a very large power utility in the early 1990's.  The company -- which no longer exists in the form it was in when I was there -- was Ontario Hydro, which generated and distributed power across the province of Ontario, Canada.  Back then, Ontario Hydro provided some industrial customers preferential rates based on the time of consumption and the right to shut off consumption.  I remember asking my manager why the company did not provide preferential rates to residential customers as well (which it had very few of because it worked with regional transmission companies in metropolitan areas and only distributed power to residential customers in remote areas).  I don't remember the answer, but it was probably because the technology would have been prohibitively expensive to install and monitor back then.

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"Green energy" is a hot topic in the energy sector and many companies in that sector are filing patent applications to stake claims to their piece of that green pasture.  Google recently received a patent of its own. 

U.S. Patent No. 7,525,207 issued on April 28, 2009.  It is directed to "[a] system [that] includes a floating platform-mounted computer data center comprising a plurality of computing units, a sea-based electrical generator in electrical connection with the plurality of computing units, and one or more sea-water cooling units for providing cooling to the plurality of computing units," and issued with a couple of quite broad claims:

1. A system, comprising:

• a computer data center proximate to a body of water comprising a plurality of computing units;
• a sea-based electrical generator in electrical connection with the plurality of computing units; and
• one or more sea-water cooling units for providing cooling to the plurality of computing units

16. A method of maintaining a computer data center, comprising:

• generating electrical power using the wave, tidal, or current motion of water adjacent a data center;
• providing the generated electrical power to the data center; and
• circulating the water adjacent the data center through a heat exchanger to produce cooling for the data center equipment.

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