Tesla Battery Swapping Technology

We've been watching the patents in the Green Technology space for quite some time.  One of the more interesting sets of patent grants are the patents awarded to Tesla and Better Place during the USPTO Green Technology Pilot Program.

Tesla received free accelerated examination for an invention that improve the handling of an electric vehicle.  A curious award under the program.  USPTO determined that improving the driving experience of an electric vehicle would make the products more attractive to the driving public.  More electric cars, less air pollution and lower fuel consumptions so it's green.  (Tesla received US Patent  7,741,750, “Induction motor with improved torque density.”)

Better Place received a series of patents on their battery swapping system.  We watch the electric vehicle market and watched as all electric vehicles were rejected by regional taxi authorities because of the risk of passengers being stranded in their taxi if a battery died and the limited driving range of an EV, not to mention the potential for passenger anxiety based on the possibility of either of these happening while you are trying to catch a flight at one of the outside of town airports.  Rapid battery charging seemed like an answer to this problem.  It also seemed like a good "go-to-market" strategy since you could equip all kinds of places where taxi's hang out waiting (airports, bus stations, train stations, hotel parking garages, shopping centers) with the battery swapping locations rather than having to establish a full blown commercial network out of the box.

Better Place adopted the modified propane gas tank business model.  Bring your empty back and we'll swap it out to a full one.  Just pay for the full one.  The Better Place model was that they owned the batteries and you paid a use fee to have them swapped.

(Here are a few of the Better Place Patents:   7993155,  8006793, 8035341.  There are more.)

Now Tesla has adopted the battery swap approach with a slightly different version of the propane tank model - $60-$80 a swap close to the cost of a current tank of gas.  It makes sense.  We surveyed the troops and there was consensus that if you can't hit the road and make it from DC to NYC with only one quick stop for a fill-up and a bathroom break it's a deal breaker.  There are no rest stops on that route that are worth wasting an hour of your life while you wait for your car to recharge.  (We watched the Phil Lebeau redo of the NYTime DC to Boston test and saw his getting stranded anxiety and he had a chase car with camera men.)  The battery swap option solved the NJ Turnpike conundrum.

It will be interesting to see how the battery swapping patent game plays out.  Better Place filed for liquidation.  Their patent portfolio may turn out to be an important part of their liquidation strategy shifting the company from an operating entity to a non-practicing entity by virtue of their liquidation request.  It may be interesting see if one of the other major holders of intellectual property, operating companies like Ford or NPEs like Acacia or IV step in to acquire the patents.  It might depend on their forward looking perspective on where the EV market is heading.

This is an area to watch from a green tech adoption perspective, from a patent perspective, and from a general interest on whether Elon Musk will be able to move Tesla into the mainstream rather than a play car parked in front of five star hotels and The Palm.  Right now there is nothing interesting enough to warrant hanging out at a rest stop/charging station on I-95 for an hour or more waiting for the car to charge.

We'll be adding our new and improved Green Tech analysis.  In the meantime learn more about the USPTO Green Technology Pilot Program and Way Better Patents report at waybetterpatents.com

Dataveillance and Digital Clones

The recent disclosures about NSA have brought to light how our national security agencies use meta data, the electronic trail left by the array of digital devices that have are part of our daily life. Information generated by our phones, the cellphone towers that are used to complete our calls as we drive and talk and create mayhem on the highways. IP addresses from our laptops and digital communications as we sign on in Starbucks, hotel lobbies, and at home. Then there is the vast collection of "dark data", the dark data created by the systems in our cars that are used to help automative technicians diagnose problems with our cars, the commercial use of that data to let our insurance companies get a picture of our driving habits, information from medical devices like radiation machines calibrated across the network, information from our EZ-Pass devices for paying tolls and a host of similar commercial electronics used to track shipments, make sure truck drivers take the mandatory rest periods and the black boxes in airplanes used to reconstruct traffic incidents.

The systematic mapping and analysis of this type of meta data, the individual pieces of information these devices create, is called dataveillance, a linguistic portmanteau of data and surveillance. 

The Latest at Way Better Patents presents a discussion of dataveillance in the patent world as well as how Stephen Carter invented digital clones to travel around the internet on your behalf to throw off those who seek to track your digital presence.  

We added links to articles on initiatives within the Government to created unique IDs for each of us on the internet, an article the presents how the British would have found Paul Revere in 1772 if they had NSA's technology, and some interesting prior art articles on chatbots which let you create a digital persona to protect your identity on the web and as always, links to the patents.

Read The Latest.

Finding the Inventor (and Assignees)

The Obama Administration's goal of making certain owners involved in patent matters before the USPTO  provide the real party in interest was big talk in the patentsphere last week.     The organizations targeted by this new rule making effort are patent trolls.  The Silicon Valley crowd was jubilant.  Then the more gloomy patent guys checked in on all the problems with this approach.  


We thought it might be a good time to revisit the issue of fixing the current address data that is already on patents.  Making patent applicants provide high quality address data would also be helpful in finding the inventors and assignees especially if you think you might need a license.  So we posted an updated version of our Patent Archipelago article complete with a few examples of last week's address boo-boos from USPTO including the unannounced relocation of DuPont from Wilmington, DE to Wilmington, DC (Who knew.)  The Link-O-Matic will also take you to not one but two lists of valid Country codes used for patents.

Business Diplomacy

On another note, the most diplomatic new on the White House patent troll initiatives came from Barrons who reported it the new as follows:

The White House took executive actions to pursue licensing-fee lawsuite. Obama plans to seek legislation to sanction filers of suits that the courts deem "abusive."

Very diplomatic.

Some of the other notable sound bites can be found here.

What's New

Way Better Patents is publishing Weekly Box Scores on each week's patent grants.  We are covering how many patents are granted, the breakdown between Chemical, Electrical, Mechanical and Design patents.  We also look at the Global Indicators - the countries where the first names inventors hail from and the participation by different geographic regions of the worlds.

We are also publishing a business methods watch covering patents in Class 705, USPTO's primary business methods classification and a broader look at business methods covering the classes USPTO identified as alternative places to look for patents with business methods elements.

You can also sign up to have the box scores sent directly to your email box each week.

Please check them out and tell us what you think.

Coming to Terms | Way Better Patents

Coming to Terms | Way Better Patents

There is much discussion on shortening patent terms or creating patent terms by industry.  The dynamics of defining an industry and the boundaries between them would be daunting and take years.

Read our latest at waybetterpatents.com

Google's Latest Search Questions

As anyone working in the world of patents knows, the vast majority of transactions are shrouded in secrecy.  Transactions generally start with non-disclosure agreements and end with agreements with non-disclosure clauses.  From the real person of interest (lawyer speak for the person who really owns the patent) to the address of the owner, to the terms of a license agreement everything happens behind closed doors.

Enter Google, a firm that no doubt has signed its share of non-disclosure agreements while navigating the patentsphere.  The firm makes no secret of its outrage over the activities of patent assertion entities (PAEs).  In their latest comments on patent trolling and privateer business models sent to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) it asks the FTC to investigate how these nefarious privateer business models operate.  Patent privateering is where a company that makes things - an operating company - teams up with a non-practicing entity (or creates an entity for that purpose) and then go after infringers rather than file infringement lawsuits themselves.  Here are the questions buried in the Google FTC comments:

• How prevalent is the outsourcing of patent enforcement by operating companies to PAEs?
• What types of arrangement have PAEs and operating companies consummated?
• What motivates these arrangements?
• What are the likely competitive harms and benefits of patent outsourcing?
• What are the competitive implications of the secrecy with which many PAEs conduct their operations?
• Do the particular terms of outsourcing arrangements indicate that operating companies are employing PAE proxies as competitive weapons?

Most of the questions can be answered with, wait for it, a Google Search.  

Some of the answers to the questions are obvious: What motivates these arrangements? Making money.  Having non-correlated assets turned into cash without having them impact the bottom line.

And some seem kind of disingenuous for a firm that dominates its market space and it behavior as it moves into new markets questions as monopolistic - Do the particular terms of outsourcing arrangements indicate that operating companies are employing PAE proxies as competitive weapons?

And while Washington is awash in sequestration commentary and vitriol on the effectiveness of government employees, it seems a little simple minded that Google and its commenting buddies (Red Hat, Earthlink, and Blackberry) to put forth such simplistic questions before an organization that put on one of the most sophisticated and informed discussion on the subject matter as part of it's December 10th 2012 Patent Assertion Entity Workshop with the Justice Department.  Did Google send anyone?  Its was a veritable who's who of the Patent Bar (and a fashion parade for litigation wear and red ties.)  Blackberry doesn't discuss its purchase of the patents held by the Multimedia Patent Trust or it's pre-Google purchase of the mobile assets of Motorola, of the peace treaty between BBBY and MOTO.  Red Hat and Microsoft engaged in its own not dance on Linux related patents documented in Burning the Ships.  Earthlink has its own NPE stories.

As a very expensive subscription to Intellectual Asset Management and some pretty easy  Google searches reveal, the privateer business model is on the move and other PAE business models are here to stay.  

Business Methods Mash Up

Today we bring you the Business Methods Clean Tech Community Mashup.

A “System and method for building a green community” was patented in mid-January 2013. The business method invention was granted to Nancy Lynne Welsh (Raleigh, NC). Welsh’s invention, protected by US 8,355,995, is for

“a system and method for building a green community construction. The system and method may comprise preparing a site for green community construction, acquiring housing for the site, wherein the housing is acquired below assessed value, moving the housing to the site, and remodeling the housing at the site to form the green community.”

The key features in the patent’s claims are listed below.

1. A computer-implemented method for managing green housing community construction, wherein the method is executed by at least one programmed computer processor which communicates with at least one client via a network, the method comprising:
   • coordinating preparation of a site for green housing community construction
   • processing acquisition of existing housing for the site, wherein the existing housing is acquired below assessed value, and the existing housing is slated for demolition
   • scheduling transfer of the existing housing to the site
   • managing remodeling of the existing housing at the site to form the green housing community
2. receiving one or more permits for site construction
3. receiving funding for site construction
4. performing foundational work for the site
5. searching for housing based on at least one of location, value, type, size, and provider
6. performing at least one of assessments and inspections on the housing
7. determination of acceptable housing for the site
8. determining one or more move routes for transporting the housing from an original site to the site for green housing community construction [Editor’s note: how disruptive will moving enough houses from dispersed locations to create the ‘green community’ be?]
9. acquiring unwanted materials from the original site for reuse, wherein the unwanted materials comprise at least one of brick, asphalt, wood, shrubbery, and recyclable materials
10. remodeling is achieved in at least one of the following: foundational remodeling, exterior remodeling, interior remodeling, and community remodeling
11. using at least one of recyclable materials, energy-efficient materials, and green-building approved materials
12. A computer readable medium encoded with computer executable instructions to perform the acts of the method of claim 1. [Editor’s note: this claim and its phrasing help the inventor meet machine-or-transformation tests necessary for business methods patenting. This is software and the hard-drive it runs on.]
13. A computer-implemented system for green housing community construction … [Editor’s note: similar to claim 1 contents, but this covers the software, server, and client system; again, needed to qualify for business methods status.]
14. A method for transforming a plurality of houses initially situated in different locations and slated for demolition into a green housing development solely formed from the plurality of houses …
    • preparing a development site
    • defining a plurality of criteria for the houses, including the distance and route from a present location of the house to the development site, the maximum width and height of the house, and the cost of the house
    • searching for and identifying existing houses that are slated for demolition and that meet the plurality of criteria
    • effecting the transfer of ownership of the houses
    • transporting each of the houses from its present location to the development site
    • installing each of the houses on a foundation
    • remodeling using green construction methods
15. The method of claim 14, further comprising: hiring at least one disadvantaged person to perform the remodeling, wherein the disadvantaged person is a homeless person, an at risk youth, or a person with a criminal record; training the disadvantaged person to perform the remodeling; and providing a ongoing, customized work mentor program for the disadvantaged person.
16. criterion for cost is that the house is donated [refers to cost in claim 14]
17. installing computers and wireless access in the houses at the development site

The problem Welsh is trying to solve is discussed in the patent’s specification:

"Buildings have a profound effect on the environment. … Although green building in residential sectors is receiving increased attention due to environmental issues such as global warming, rising energy prices, and indoor air quality issues, there continues to be high number of residential tear-downs in or near larger cities across the United States with no environmentally viable replacement strategies currently available. In addition, costs associated with green building are often significantly higher than conventional construction. For example, green construction may be 5% to 20% more expensive than conventional construction. Furthermore, designs and plans for green construction do not typically include a comprehensive and integrated approach for using recycled housing, guidelines for using such materials, and strategies for continued neighborhood development. 

As a result, there are significant problems and shortcomings associated with current building techniques. Therefore, a system and method for constructing a green community using recycled housing, implementing custom guidelines for using such materials, and/or continuing neighborhood development would be highly desirable."

We’ve written about business methods, software patents, and clean tech applied to building construction and housing in past posts. Additional information on business methods patents may be found here.

Time will tell whether or not this approach to community construction has any commercial viability. Perhaps it is a modern-day version of the numerous utopian communities that were attempted in the 1800s?

But another question given how residential real estate works is whether this is novel and whether this is patentable.  We'll see.