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- Green patent sandles – for reduced environmental footprints
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- Green peas – friends of the Earth
In Circular M. N. 76, the Israel Commissioner of Patents, Dr. Meir Noam has announced a new class for classifying patents: the environmentally friendly class, to include technologies that counter global warming, reduce pollution of water or air, promote environmentally friendly agriculture and the like (sic).
Applicants may submit a letter when filing their application to explain why the technology should be so considered, and such applications, if accepted as being suitably green and eco-friendly, will be examined immediately, instead of having to wait their turn.
Furthermore, previously filed applications whose examination has not yet started, can be classified as green and accelerated by supplying such a letter. There is no cost for this service. It is offered free of charge.
Comment
As far as I am aware, this is the first time that the Israel Patent Office has offered accelerated examination for a type of technology. (Previously, accelerated examination has been allowed at Commissioner’s discretion, if a claim of due cause is made and submitted by an affidavit, and a fee is paid. Usually, this required showing that there was infringement or a danger of infringement, but no formal list of reasons has published, and in practice, every time I’ve requested accelerated examination in Israel for a client, I’ve been successful).
As a firm, we support this initiative. Back in July this year, we hosted a seminar on clean-tech patents, with guest speaker US Attorney, Jeffery Rothenberg of the Cleantech Group – Heslin Rothenberg Farley & Mesiti P.C., a US IP firm http://www.hrfmlaw.com/ that publishes a quarterly Clean Energy Patent Growth Index that is widely quoted by the main newspapers. See http://blog.ipfactor.co.il/2009/07/07/jmb-factor-co-s-cleantech-seminar-in-ono-a-success/ .
Furthermore, as part of our commitment to the community, to the environment and to education, JMB, Factor & Co. subsidized the travel costs for a delegation of students to participate in a WIPO conference in Geneva on IP and the Environment.
Nevertheless, this new open-ended classification is a little worrying. There is a trend for inventors to keep reinventing the same old wheels, and when something like green patenting becomes trendy, there is a real danger of more than one applicant coming up with the same or at least very similar ideas.
The new class presumably will attract more than its fair share of perpetual motion machines and other systems of dubious scientific basis that are energy-saving. More problematic, there are hardy perennials like improved solar heating panels and drip irrigation that I see variations of maybe 4 or 5 times a year, and suspect that other Israeli patent attorneys do as well. Some appear to be patentable, and are certainly aimed at saving energy and conserving fossil fuels.
In Israel, under the current classification system with examination of the first filed application, interferences are avoided by suspending examination until the examination of earlier filed applications with overlapping claims is completed and the application publishes. With the new classification being both optional and not necessarily including earlier filed applications, I fear a very real risk of later filed applications issuing before earlier filed applications for the same invention.
Incidentally, I don’t think that solar water heating systems in Israel generally recoup their installation costs from the electricity saved during their lifetime. Nor do they save more energy in their implementation than is consumed in their fabrication. then again, I am not convinced that global warming is fairly attributed to industrial pollution, although it clearly has an adverse affect on some ecosystems.
