The US Patent and Trademark Office’s newly expanded program aimed at accelerating patents for climate mitigation technology is critical to garnering the funding necessary to advance the clean energy transition, researchers say.
The PTO’s extension of its Climate Change Mitigation Pilot Program comes at a time of striking juxtaposition. While energy alternatives to fossil fuels have become more mainstream than ever—with renewable energy on track to supply 44% of American electricity by 2050—scientists warn that barriers to global adaptation persist, namely insufficient financing.
“Investors like certainty,” said intellectual property attorney Patrick Gattari of McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff. “The sooner a small company can get a patent and have certainty around their patent portfolio, the better situation they can be in with investors.”
Launched last year, the pilot program expedites applications for innovations that reduce, remove, prevent, or monitor greenhouse gas emissions. The office expanded the initiative in June, increasing the maximum number of non-provisional applications an inventor can file under the program and broadening eligibility requirements to encompass more technologies.
“We see our role as promoting and incentivizing innovation, especially in key technology areas like climate, and then working to get that innovation to impact,” PTO Director Kathi Vidal said in an interview with Bloomberg Law about the office’s recent efforts.
As government officials pursue change through legislation and executive actions, Vidal emphasized patents’ vital role. Not only do they establish intellectual property rights for inventors, she said, but they also push ideas forward.
An Incentivizing Tool
The pilot program aims to motivate inventors to patent climate technology by speeding up applications, boosting the incentives patenting provides.
Private investors, unlike the government, aren’t likely to invest in such experimental, oftentimes expensive research and development unless the resulting innovations are protected, Gattari wrote in a 2013 article. He noted that patents perpetuate an “ongoing cycle of innovation” by furthering public sharing of ideas among inventors.
That process can be accelerated by reviewing targeted patent applications more quickly, as under the PTO’s new program, Gattari told Bloomberg Law. He said with many technologies it can take several years before the patent office will pick up and examine patent applications.
“This program, as long as you make the correct certifications, will allow the patent office to put these in front of the line,” he said.
Gattari’s 2013 article emphasized the increased need for financing for alternative, renewable energy sources like solar and wind, which were more expensive than fossil fuels at the time. The sector looks different 10 years later—a United Nations report last year found renewables to be the cheapest form of power. New technologies like hydrogen fuel, however, are still breaking into the market, and private capital is imperative to bring green technology to market, he said.
Technologies that inventors have applied to patent under the PTO’s program harness renewable sources through innovations like wind turbines. Other ideas work to counteract emissions in the atmosphere through carbon sequestration.
Bloom Energy, a California-based electricity producer, has filed more than 30 petitions under the PTO’s program since last year. The company—whose cofounder built the first hydrogen fuel cell for NASA in the 1960s—manufactures solid oxide fuel cells that convert natural gas, biogas, or hydrogen into electricity without combustion. This results in little-to-no carbon emissions, according to Bloom Energy’s website.
The program “helps Bloom protect the significant research and development Bloom has conducted toward its mission of making clean, reliable energy affordable to all,” a Bloom spokesperson said in a statement to Bloomberg Law.
The PTO’s announcement of the program in June 2022 focused on technologies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but the office expanded eligibility last month to also include innovations that remove already-present gases or monitor emissions reductions.
“It’s certainly astonishingly broad in its potential breadth,” said Robert Stoner, interim director at MIT Energy Initiative. “You could make the case that an awful lot of things meet one or more of those criteria.”
As of late July, 460 petitions have been filed under the program, of which 316 have been granted, according to the PTO. The program is slated end in June 2027, or earlier if the program reaches 4,000 grantable petitions.
Even with broad eligibility, challenges remain for inventors and their companies.
“There’s so many technologies, in all industries, that never make it to prime time for a variety of reasons,” Gattari said. “Either the technology doesn’t work, or it has some type of other side effect or other environmental effect that might not be beneficial.”
A Push to Educate
Scientists and academics may not always think to prioritize applying for a patent when developing technology that works to reduce emissions, Vidal said.
“I think there’s generally been a thinking, especially in academia, that if you want to move forward and solve a problem, it’s best to get the information out there and share it with everyone and collaborate that way as opposed to patenting,” she said.
But she said a patent just serves to “put a stake in the ground” and doesn’t prevent spreading ideas.
The PTO announced a work-sharing program with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in February to improve patent processing and encourage more innovation. While the PTO provides training to NOAA’s scientists, NOAA experts will educate patent examiners who review environment-related applications.
AT MIT, Stoner and his colleagues work with the university’s technology licensing office, which says it filed 311 new US patents and generated $82.7 million in total licensing revenue during fiscal 2022.
While academic institutions have these resources, individuals looking to apply for patents on their own or through startups may not have access to that kind of institutional knowledge.
Serial social entrepreneur Olin Kealoha Lagon, who is Native Hawaiian, said significant roadblocks exist for minority communities, including high expenses and limited knowledge about how to get started and what specific terminology to use.
Even he found it difficult to operate the PTO’s online portal, Lagon said, despite his experience in the technology sector. Lagon is the cofounder of Shifted Energy, which is assisting lower-income households in Hawaii’s transition to 100% renewable electricity by 2045.
This year, Lagon said he has a goal of submitting 20 patent applications for innovations that balance the electrical grid. So far, he said he’s filed six applications, none of them through the PTO’s pilot program. But he’s considering changing that for future applications.
“I can then now be a coach to others,” Lagon said about his goal of educating his local community on how to file patent applications. “That’s one step. I’m not going to solve their ability to file a correct patent, but I can solve the ability for them to feel confident that they belong in that space.”
He emphasized that no idea is too small. For example, he said, even a patent regarding native potato production in Hawaii to reduce emissions-producing importation from the continental US could help to address the climate crisis.
“Climate change is going to require a million solutions for a million different communities,” Lagon said. “We have to ensure that the ideas from these communities are brought to bear.”
