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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..."
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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.
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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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?
"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.
I guess it's possible, but still, that's a million miles away from the plant based technologies "biofuels" of today and even theoretical algae biofuel technology is still likely to be less efficient land-wise than other solar powered derived electric vehicle techniques.
http://fatknowledge.blogspot.com/2008/06/algae-biodiesel-vs-solar-panels.html
Provides a comparison of required land use of algae biodiesel production to a PV solar-energy powered electric car. The PV -> electric car method requires around 1/5 the land use. The real efficiency killer is simply the internal combustion engine. Also, that's based on theoretical algae biodiesel production, commercial-scale production would probably be less efficient. Meanwhile, both solar-power and electric car technologies are getting more efficient all the time.
...the patents will expire, and the technology will become available for anyone to use.
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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.
Oh, there's no question that a large corporation, with the resources of a Du Pont or a British Petroleum, can do both. Matter of fact, it's the companies that have large R&D investments that are most into the "suppression" business. Why do you think they file for so many patents? It's to suppress anyone and anything that might want to compete with them. Now, the patent system is intended to permit just that, but because the patent system is so broken, and because it permits so much patent abuse, more and more companies are using overbroad patents to suppress legitimate competition.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Wrong answer...
Much of what you're hearing about biofuels are from things like Ethanol or the current diesel production from things like oil-feedstock crops like corn, etc.
What happens when you place a bunch of the left-overs from the crop, stuff you can't feed to the livestock, into first a high pressure (600psi) steam environment at 482 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 minutes followed by flash boiling and thermal cracking at about 932 degrees Fahrenheit for about a couple of hours? You end up with a barrel of API 40+ crude oil and a batch of stuff that can be used like coal or for activated charcoal. This process is at about the level of energy that it takes to pull what we're pulling out of the ground already- and doesn't require all the "land and resources" you refer to. More to the point you can do this same sort of conversion process with Oil Algae and you don't even need the waste products to do it with... Better yet, you can feed things that're generally not all that recyclable in the way of plastic or rubber tires and get similar or better results.
Oh, and by the way...you've got it QUITE backwards. Plants are actually vastly more efficient than any solar process we've got right now for collecting solar energy- the trick is in unlocking the stored energy efficiently. We just haven't figured out until recently how to do that.
In truth, we've got several processes that will leverage what we've got in hand (biowaste from the agriculture and other industries, coal (yes...doing what we're doing with it is inefficient...), and the like...) that will pretty efficiently extract the energy locked up in them in a manner can be carbon neutral or less damaging overall- and enable plastics production, fuel production, etc. We've just not been doing it because it was cheaper, up-front, to do the things we're currently doing.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
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
Posting propaganda from the websites of the companies in question is not a great way to further an argument on Slashdot. I don't disagree with you statement that TFA is trollish, however BPs token investment in renewable energy is minuscule in comparison to it enormous revenue stream. a ratio of about 4:1000 or 0.4% To call BP an "alternative energy company" is disingenuous and really just green-washing; which is especially irritating given BPs history of environmental transgressions (illegal dumping on Alaska's North Slope, Prudhoe Bay oil leak, Texas City chemical spill, and the recent deep water horizon catastrophe)
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.
Oh, there's no question that a large corporation, with the resources of a Du Pont or a British Petroleum, can do both. Matter of fact, it's the companies that have large R&D investments that are most into the "suppression" business.
I see. This explains why we are still using DuPont black powder in our muskets.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
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.
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).