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Oil Companies Patent Trolling Biofuel Production
Whatsmynickname writes "Thought oil companies were done patent trolling to try to shut down any efforts to wean us off of crude oil (e.g. Chevron and NiMH batteries)? Think again. BP and DuPont (Butamax) have taken an advanced biofuel company to court over infringement of newly awarded patents for developing biobutanol. When an oil company advertises it is looking for alternative fuels, it's not necessarily because they want to be socially responsible..."
Fight the disease, not the symptom.
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when getting money now matters more than the survival of the humanity in the long term.
Oil companies look for alternative fuels because they want to make money, and because there's a lot of money to be had in alternative fuels. Yes, there's a patent dispute here, and yes, patents are lame; but to imply that the only reason for the dispute is because the oil company wants to shut down alternative fuel production is absurd.
BP and DuPont have a lot invested in this field, probably more than the entire opposing company is worth. I can totally understand their view that an upstart is attempting to profit from from their hard work.
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Energy is a hugely capital intensive sector, and investors rightly expect return on investment. Exxon and Shell spent more money developing natural gas reserves on Sakhalin island than the US spent developing the space shuttle. If BP is expected to pump billions into developing advanced biofuels, I would expect them to protect their patents. Don't forget that BP was the oil company that helped support the radical new solar cells announced last year at CalTech. Protecting a properly granted patent is not technology suppression. And no, I don't work for BP.
This is such BS. In the next few decades, this kind of technology will be critical to maintaining the old infrastructure as the known to be over-stated Middle-Eastern oil reserves begin to dry up. These guys are messing with the long term survival of their countries and we should absolutely drive our feet up their ass.
How do you kill that which has no life?
Perhaps BP et al got patents on producing biobutanol because THEY want to produce biobutanol.
You'll be buying BP biobutanol at some point.
So what?
These companies are investing ridiculous amounts of money into alternative fuel research and those wacky conspiracy theorists think it's just to prevent alternative fuels from hitting the market.
Do you really think these *energy* companies care whether they get your money through BP oil or BP biobutanol? All they care is that BP is on the label and they're fueling your vehicle one way or another.
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Considering the insane amount of land and resources biofuels would require to replace fossil fuels I'd say these oil companies are being (unintentionally) socially responsible by patent trolling biofuel production.
Biofuel is nothing more than an absurdly inefficient kind of solar power.
The company suing is a JV funded by BP and DuPont in order to commercialize the technology described in the Patent. How is that an effort to shut down efforts to wean us off crude oil?
http://www.butamax.com/_assets/pdf/butamax_advanced_biofuels_llc_fact_sheet.pdf
BP is actually the largest alternative energy company in the world with investments in solar, wind, hydrogen, and a variety of biofuels.
http://www.bp.com/modularhome.do?categoryId=7040&contentId=7051376
Slashdot for the lose..
doing research on alternate fuels, just so they can patent them and then bury the technology?
This has got to be the WORST way possible to abuse the patent system, whose core tenant is to encourage innovation. I've heard of companies buying and then burying things, but to actually R&D them and THEN bury them? wow.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Every oil company I've seen seems to acknowledge oil is finite. Their estimates of when production will peak differ from environmentalists, but other than OPEC (who says it will never peak) they all seem to understand the concept.
So, that being the case, what do you think they are going to do? Just wait until oil becomes extremely expensive and difficult to get, humans transition to a new power source, and then go out of business because they have to product to sell? Or do you think maybe they'll look in to other energy sources they can sell, be it biofuels, thorium, solar, whatever.
Remember that companies aren't evil, they are just amoral. They don't really care one way or the other, they just want to make money. So no, oil companies aren't interested in the damage they cause, except to the extent the law requires them to be and to the extent the public cares. However that doesn't mean they just want to destroy the world to be evil. Likewise they'll happily sell a limited resource for tons of money today, but that doesn't mean they aren't thinking about what to sell tomorrow.
The higher the price of traditional fuels, the more interest there'll be in biofuels. After all if I invent a process that can deliver a BioOil(tm) at $150/barrel with the potential to scale to $100/barrel in 10 years there is no interest when oil was back down in the $30/barrel range. Now that it is up in the $80 range, it is maybe something to look at, though it is still cheaper just to extract oil. If it went up to $200/barrel, there'd be tons of interest as it'd be cheaper right now.
So, Dupont and BP have a joint venture that is developing biofuels. Said joint venture has patented a method of producing butanol using fermentation. This jont venture is suing another company for using a technique similar to the one they patented. How is this trying to "shut down efforts to wean us off of crude oil"? This looks like an attempt to profit from weaning us off of crude oil. There is certainly an argument to be made that the fact that the current patent system allows them to do this is contrary to the public interest. This is not Ford buying up the Los Angeles public transport company in order to shut it down and increase the demand for cars.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
BP has been buying up solar patents for years.
Seriously, isn't this the wrong time, for multiple reasons, for the U.S. to put all our research eggs in one big corporate basket?
DuPont is not an oil company. They are a chemical company. They have lots of patents and lots of lawyers, but DuPont has always been good at making money by advancing science and technology, not suppressing it.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
"We've looked into biobutanol, but it wasn't economically feasible to produce". Wanna bet? Know why? They are in the business of pumping oil from the ground and delivering it to your car. The infrastructure is already bought and paid for. All these alternative energy sources will NEVER be economically feasible to the big oil companies for this reason. That's precisely why you cannot leave ALL biofuel research to the oil companies.
They are in the business of pumping oil from the ground and delivering it to your car.
What if that refined gas has 11.5% butanol in it? Then BP gets to be environmentally responsible and sell people gasoline at the same time.
The patent system is fucked up.
This depends if the margins are right or the PR gain offsets the losses in the margins. If neither is in place, I can heartily assure you that BP won't be doing it.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
They will not be releasing ANYTHING related to biobutanol until after they cannot meet demand with regular fuel. It is about maximizing profit, not about selling anything. By controlling biobutanol, they basically start to control the supply and thus the price. Very nice position to be in - well, if you are a supplier not the consumer.
And with patents, you get 100% monopoly. How can it be bad when there is no free market??
They just want to make money and don't care how it happens. If we found out tomorrow that we could get electricity by plugging 13 ampere taps into the butts of angels, Shell would simply proceed to purchase the catholic church. Biofuels look potentially profitable? Buy the patents for a trivial sum and perhaps on day, skim the profits of those companies and individuals who do the actual work of development.
Corporate feudalism is alive and well.
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A patent troll is someone who owns patents and sues for infringement, but doesn't develop or market their own products.
BP and Dupont do make and sell biofuels.
BP most certainly don't want to hinder biofuel technology, it is their vested interest to promote them, as they require much of the same infrastructure that selling fossil fuels does.
Long story short, there is not enough arable land on earth to feed 10 billion people and 10 billion internal combustion engines that run on biomass fuels. We need a radically different alternative; one I am sure big energy companies would try to squash as well
The article just repeats a bunch of silly leftist conspiracy theories. These theories crop up over and over again, and tbey're refuted over and over again, but they never seem to die.
First, with regard to NIMH batteries. GM did not kill the electric car, nor did they buy nimh patents in order to bury them. GM discovered that electric cars costed $40k for a subcompact which was uncompetitive when gas costed $2 per gal.
Second, companies never buy or develop patents in order to bury them. The reason some patents never show up in products is because most patents turn out to be non-viable or difficult to commercialize at current prices. Thus the company drops the patent. Just ebcause a patent languishes doesn't mean it's a conspiracy! Any company which had monopoly rights (through patent) to some revolutionary energy source would MARKET IT. Burying the patent would be throwing away something worth hundreds of billions to them. They could ALWAYS make more from the revolutionary patent than they could from selling gasoline because they don't have a monopoly on gasoline. Of course, genuine revolutionary breakthroughs in energy are VERY RARE, which is why we still use gasoline (not conspiracy!).
With regard to the "patent trolling" allegation. The linked article says that this is the first patent lawsuit over biofuels from big oil EVER. That is not patent trolling. Also, the patent appears to be very narrow, precise, and un-obvious. Maybe it's a valid patent that was a product of their research. The orig poster provided no evidence for his claim that it was trolling.
It is unlikely that any big oil company will produce a good alternative fuel. So using patents like this will likely have exactly the effect of suppressing change. In all likelihood.
Aside from the rather meager investments by big oil, the real problem is exposed in the famous book "The Innovator's Dilemma": workers for big oil necessarily are neither hungry enough nor focused enough to overcome all the obstacles in a reasonable timeframe.
Only an independent small focused company whose people desperately need to succeed will get the job done. And big oil will necessarily try to protect big oil's efforts and suppress independents. No need to attribute actions to the NIMH effect here, it is just normal corporate CYA behavior. Unfortunately the results of CYA (such as patent suits) hurt all of us.
Arguably the company finding a good solution is probably going to need the help of big oil or someone really big to get to the necessary scale. So the oil companies should arrange to get out of the way for now and then help grow the resulting business.
The Chinese will take it from here, they don't care about your silly patents. /Europe
Wha ???
Did you think anyone is going to spend millions to billions doing the research for a pat on the head and a thanks well done ?
Yes, they will. The process that the patent covers is based on research from 1984 and includes work from Boston University and the University of Illinois. It was BP/Dupont who patented the process even though they didn't do the research. As it turns out, the original work was done by grad students (so they got to pay to do the research instead of being paid to do it).
Also biofuel is at best carbon neutral, in reality a carbon source. Also the given efficiencies per acre are wildly optimistic. Also the need for flat land, clay soil, CO2 source and extraction equipment are costs that put algae in the realms of the implausible. The future is Wind Wave Sun and Nuke.
I wonder what the octane rating of biobutanol is. I'd love a high octane replacement for leaded gasoline that has the same energy per gallon. Would really be curious how it compares so far as jetting and timing curve in an engine built to run on 94 octane straight gas, or heaven forbid that ethanol laced junk they try to pass off as pump gas these days.
First, oil companies are, like other energy companies, big corporation with a lot of influence. And they tend to be not involved in developing a sustainable world. Obviously they try to stop any movement away from them. However, in the case of bio fuel, this might even be helpful. As bio fuels are largely produced out of food products (e.g. corn or wheat for ethanol) these bio fuels tend to rise the prices on the food market. Some time ago this resulted in increased corn prices for Mexicans. Also the US used wheat last year to produce ethanol which would have fed 380 mio people for a year. So there might be even some good thing in this patent trolling, even if that has nothing to do with good intentions on the side of the oil companies.
As bio fuel is not a sustainable energy source due to its use of farm land which should be used to feed the 7 billion people on this planet. Instead of bio fuel it is better to use wind, water and sunlight (e.g. in desserts, roofs etc.) which are not using fertile land for energy production. If driven a car or heating a house means someone else has nothing to eat than this is not a preferable solution. So by blocking research on bio fuels might even result in the right development after all. Even if that is not the intention of these oil companies.
As it is not responsible to use bio fuels, any percentage of butanol in gasoline will not make them environment friendly. Bio fuel is
a) not environment friendly, as monocultures are used to produce the grain/corn/wheat/what ever with all their negative effects (e.g. pesticides, genetically modified crop)
b) fertile land is used to produce fuel instead of feeding people
And what will they sell when the oil is gone? I'm not a fan of them using patents to shut down innovation, but don't doubt for a minute that they are serious about developing alternative fuels... so they can sell them, obviously. The oil companies know oil is running out.
What part of humanity profits by allowing the oil companies to capture the alternative fuel technologies into their monopolistic SENMACE
establishments?
Seems to me this kind of activity shows clearly mankind is better off without patents.
What if the the crop is one that grows on land that isn't suitable for farming?
I do agree that bio-fuels seem to be a bad solution, but that doesn't mean it can't work for some of our needs without starving people.
The recent Intellectual Ventures suits present just one example showing that the NPE (“patent troll”) business model is fast becoming dominant in the world of IP. Thomas Edison held over 1,000 patents, but practiced none of them. He invented, which is what he did best, and let others manufacture products from his inventions. If an inventor cannot sue for patent infringement and recover damages, they why should anyone invent anything? Only vigorous patent enforcement rewards inventors for their inventions and incentivizes others to invent.