Clean Energy Patents Have Skyrocketed Due to Obama Administration Brains Upgrade

December 3rd, 2010 by Susan Kraemer

When the Obama administration Nobel prizewinning Steven Chu took over from Bush/Cheney oil man Bodman at the Department of Energy, he prioritized clean energy innovation. By December last year, to speed the development of clean energy solutions to prevent climate change, he had overhauled the patent review process, hiring experts so he could put clean energy patents on a fast track.

Inventors had long suffered a shortage of the skilled reviewers that had the technical expertize to evaluate the science. Patent decisions were taking 40 months. But the new and improved DOE added enough scientific experts to review more ideas faster. Among patents already in the queue, the next 3,000 patent petitions and about 25,000 more that had been gummed up in the works were eligible for the new sped-up review program.

Looks like that investment in patent-reviewing brains is paying off. An upward trend is clear by the beginning of 2010, according to the data from the Clean Energy Patent Growth Index.

And this quarter, a record number of clean energy patents have been granted.

Overall, among technologies, solar led clean tech with 88 solar patents, followed by wind with 71. Auto companies filed mostly fuel cell patents. GM filed 9 hybrid-electric vehicle patents and 30 for fuel cells. Samsung also went heavily into fuel cells with 21 patents, and a couple for solar technologies. GE filed 19 wind patents (and 3 for fuel cells).

Japan was far and away the world leader in non-US patents with 124, Korea was next with 35, Germany had 28, France and Taiwan had 9. China had just 6 and Denmark (where they already have plenty of clean energy) merely added 5.

Among states, Michigan for the first time beat California, with 54 clean energy patents to California’s 46. But regardless of who is inventing the solutions, all of these new patents are much needed for tomorrow’s world.

A big hand to all the new hires working for the Nobel prizewinning Steven Chu’s Department of Energy on a job very well done!

Image: Eddie Gehman Cohan
Susan Kraemer@Twitter

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Tags: patent office, Steven Chu

About the Author

Susan Kraemer writes at CleanTechnica, CSP-Today, PV-Insider , SmartGridUpdate, and GreenProphet. She has also been published at Ecoseed, NRDC OnEarth, MatterNetwork, Celsius, EnergyNow, and Scientific American. As a former serial entrepreneur in product design, Susan brings an innovator's perspective on inventing a carbon-constrained civilization: If necessity is the mother of invention, solving climate change is the mother of all necessities! As a lover of history and sci-fi, she enjoys chronicling the strange future we are creating in these interesting times. Follow Susan on Twitter @dotcommodity.

FYI…let’s get the facts straight

The Patent & Trademark Office is a division of the Dept. of Commerce, not the Dept. of Energy as this article suggests. Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, David Kappos (appointed by Obama), is the person actually responsible for the creation of the “Green Tech” program at the USPTO of which this article is referring too. While this article is correct in indicating that the Obama administration has put in place the people which have led to positive results in getting green energy technologies through the patent process quicker in order to stimulate more rapid business growth in these industries, let’s make the proper people get credit for this.
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