Want proof that global warming will receive more attention from the United States in the next four years? Presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama has the more impressive cleantech agenda, but even his rival, Senator John McCain, last year introduced a bill that would bring to the U.S. a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gas emissions. Spurred by public concern about rising gasoline prices and the danger of reliance on foreign oil, politicians have hopped on board the Cleantech Express. So have venture capital investors. But corporate researchers and their lawyers have the hard job of laying the track. They know that protecting IP in the cleantech sector-with its focus on such technologies as renewable energy, carbon sequestering, and biofuels-can be anything but clean and neat.
One problem in moving toward commercialization is prior art-wind has been harnessed as a source of power for centuries, after all, and solar saw a big patenting surge in the 1970s linked to an earlier oil crisis. “I see two basic IP challenges in clean technologies,” says Steven Weihrouch, a partner at Oblon, Spivak, McClelland, Maier & Neustadt, which does significant patent work for Toyota Motor Corporation, including prosecuting patents on hybrid technology, fuel cells, batteries, and technologies for improved fuel efficiency. “One is that you really don’t know what is going to be the one or two best technologies five to ten years from now. You really do have to pursue different options. Some things might not turn out technically as good as you hope, or they might not turn out commercially as good as you hope. The other thing is what some people might consider green, other people don’t.” Then there’s the issue that a governmental whim can radically change the market and, with it, raze corporate strategy.
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