The US Patent Office is working through 25,000 green tech patents. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
It takes time for green technology
to develop. The US Patent office
has one idea to speed things up,
but Shawn Allee reports
that probably won’t solve the problem:
Transcript
It takes time for green technology
to develop. The US Patent office
has one idea to speed things up,
but Shawn Allee reports
that probably won’t solve the problem:
The US Patent Office is working through 25,000 green tech patents for things like better solar panels.
The office wants to give preferential treatment to 3,000 green tech patent applications. That could save a year of waiting time for approval.
But not everyone thinks a Patent Office backlog is the problem.
Stuart Soffer is a patent analyst in Silicon Valley. He says green tech just takes time and money.
“It really takes an investment, infrastructure and R and D. We can make a little wind mill that will generate power in your back yard, but scaling that to power cities is a different problem.”
Soffer says sometimes, patent delays are companies’ fault, not the government’s. So, speeding things up at the Patent Office might not get green tech in the marketplace any faster.
For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.