Photovoltaic Solar Cells – Patents in Europe

by Rob Harrison on 6 January 2010

There’s an interesting news report over at EE Times Asia on the patent side of photovoltaic panels. Citing a report by Canadian company Semiconductor Insights EE Times notes. The report is US-centric and so I took the opportunity to see if there was any special European angles.  Germany has been very much in the lead in promoting solar energy. The 1990 “Stomeinspeisungsgesetz” (Act on feeding electricity into the grid) was the first to introduce the concept of small-scale producers of electricity from renewable sources having the right to feed in electricity into the web. This was amended slightly in 2000 as the  Renewable Energy Sources Act (a link to an English translation can be found here). The law has become a model around Europe and the world.

The 1990 act stimulated the development of solar technology in Germany and one might have expected German companies to massively profit from the scheme. Indeed Q-Cells, based in Bitterfeld in the former East Germany, benefitted massively and has today become one of the leading suppliers of photvoltaic panels in 2008 (see the Wikipedia article for further information).

Another German company, SiC Processing was listed in the 1998 Guardian/Library House’s CleanTech 100 as one of top 10 companies (see here)

The interesting question for me was to look at the IP protection on the products. Clearly there may be a lot of processing knowledge that companies would chose to protect as trade secrets and not through patents. However, given that the panels can be found on many rooftops and also in do-it-yourself stores, one might expect many innovations to be the subject of patents.

Intriguingly, I was only able to identfy 19 families of published patent applications for Q-Cells. There may be more in the pipline, but that seems a small number for a companies whose balance sheet at the end of December 2008 showed intangible assets with a value of  EUR 48.4 Million

SiC Processing held a single patent – filed initially in Italy in 2005. This was more on recyling than on solar cells itself.

I thought it intriguing to see how this fits into the patent protection of other companies in this technical space. Using the most popular European Classifications from the Q-Cells portfolio, a worldwide search of patent applications showed Japanese companies (Canon, Sanyo, Sharp and Matsushita) dominating the photovoltaic landscape. The first European organisation was the German contract research organisation Fraunhofer Gesellschaft in fifth place. This correlates with the report in EE Times which identified the predominance of Asian companies in the space

The Japanese patent system encourages multiple applications by domestic applicants which tend to be combined when filed outside of Japan. It tends to overemphasise the contributions of Japanese companies when worldwide statistics are used. I therefore limited the search to only patents filed or pending in Europe and identified that Sanyo and Sharp still occupied top spots (first and second with respectively 49 and 47 out of a total 1590). Du Pont came in third place followed by Canonl in fourth pace and Sharp in fifth place. The Fraunhofer Gesellschaft had 26 patents or applications  in total and were in tenth place. Q-Cells only had seven patents or applications using this set of data (which is the most relevant for solar cell photovoltaic panels).

What conclusions can we draw from this? Intriguingly the Japanese companies are putting an increasing amount of research and development work into developing a substantial photovoltaic patent portfolio and clearly in terms of numbers are overtaking German companies in the European marketplace. However, the commercial activities of Japanese companies are much more limited. It is possible that much of the innovation taking place in Europe is on processing matters which is more appropriate to trade secret protection – as you do not want after all to let your competitors know how the silicon is being processed.

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Spinal Tap and listening to your customers…

by JS Hatcher on 17 December 2009

Capturing the feedback and results from your innovation is a crucial part of designing and implementing any good IP strategy . The brilliant webcomic xkcd reminds us that innovation involves directly listening to your customers. Giving them what they want isn’t just about coming up with new ideas and getting patents — sometimes it’s all in how you package existing technology…

Spinal Tap Amps

xkcd is CC-BY-NC by Randall Munroe and at http://xkcd.com/670/

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IPReader links for 15 December

by JS Hatcher on 15 December 2009

New and noteworthy links from around the web:

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Technology Transfer at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory

by Rob Harrison on 18 November 2009

I’m spending at few days at the EIROForum meeting on technology transfer in Heidelberg. The EIROFoum is probably not well-known outside part of the scientific community. It groups together European Intergovernmental Research Organisations, such as CERN and EMBL.

Gabór Lamm from EMBL’s technology transfer arm EMBL-EM has just given a fascinating lecture outlining technology transfer. EMBL’s first patent was filed in 1990 but it was not until 1996 that a formal policy on intellectual property was established. The specialised technology transfer unit was only set up 1999 to commercialise intellectual property coming out of EMBL’s main campus in Heidelberg, as well as its outstations in Grenoble, Hinxton and Hamburg. Since then EMBL has filed over 250 patents and patent applications, protected 71 copyrights, which includes database rights, and set up 12 companies. They currently have an annual revenue of EUR 4,5 Million which more than covers expenses.

One of the most interesting points that came out of the lecture was the motivation of the individual researchers to file patents. The financial reward is attractive (30% of revenue, excluding direct patent costs) but more importantly is the expectation from researchers from outside of Europe for a functioning IP management organisation. This seems to contrast – as one questioner pointed out later in another context – with the attitude of some European researchers that intellectual property rights somehow jeopardize academic freedom.

Gabór noted that part of the mission of EMBL is to transfer technology to improve human health. This requires commercial companies (and EMBL have over 250 licencees). There has in the past been criticism that only 56% of the licencees come from Europe (and 20% from EMBL’s host country, Germany). 33% of the licencees come from the United States.

Interestingly EMBL-EM “broke even” in 2004 at which point the net revenues exceeded the expenses. Gabór Lamm noted that this was helped by the IPO of Lion Bioscience (now Sgnis Pharma AG). However, the annual licensing revenue now exceeds patenting costs.

One of the things that struck me about Gabór Lamm’s presentation was the contined need to invest in technology transfer and train scientists and engineers of the benefits to themselves personally and how technology transfer actually contributes to society. Technology transfer cannot be seen to be “merely” a cost factor – but immediate financial benefits cannot be expected. It took five years for EMBL to obtain a net profit from technology transfer – or 14 from the date of the first patent – and that was helped by the opportunity to commercialise a database in a very favourable investment climate.

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eBay and Skype-settled

by Andrew Watson on 9 November 2009

It is reported overnight on the newswires that the Joltid and eBay dispute has been settled with the two former Skype founders taking a stake in the new Skype vehicle in return for dropping their claims. It seems like a common sense end to the disputes and Skype v2.0 (or is it 3.0) will no doubt benefit from their vision, passion and skills.

I wonder what a telco with 405m users would be worth? That is an awful lot of relationship capital to work with.

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A fourth week in the life – Cracking the IP Value Code

by Andrew Watson on 8 November 2009

(thanks Richard Boulton)

Phew. What a long long week. In fact October end to end has been hard work every step of the way. I’m not by any means saying that I’m pleased to see the back of it, but it’s been full of lots of ups and quite a few downs. I suppose though that I’ve learned through the years that in trying out something new the magic is to look for the upward trend, whilst treating the little downs as correction points to warn against getting ahead of yourself or becoming arrogant.

This week was full on closing out an investment round for one of our clients. We went from carrying out a relatively easy piece of diligence to managing an ownership issue, correcting old documents that did not reflect the parties’ original intentions. And, as usual with ownership issues, what looked relatively simple to fix took a little life all of its own, and close on two full weeks of work.

I spent some time on Monday with David Jones of Exponent IP chewing over the development of the IP market and how boutique organizations that share the same ethos (quality, professionalism, can do mentality, longevity) can help to grow the market by working together. I like David and Ben as they share these principles and are easy people to work with. This catalysing has become a bit of a theme for us at ipVA, particularly as we know that there are so many pretenders out there who talk without having gone out and done it.

This must be one of the challenges of a growing market, picking out the good from the bad. So I’ll end this week’s post as a call to fellow pioneers and to raise a theme that David and I talked about as one of the key steps in developing this market. That is speaking with a common language. We think that without this, it becomes very hard to communicate and understand even each other. Never mind to communicate with the 95% of the market who don’t get IP.

I was explaining to David that, in our view, the IP world fixates itself on those imposters of value, patents. Just because they are publicly viewable and every second advisory firm has a way of rating them, is this really an indicator of corporate value? Is it heck! If one understands where patents typically come from or rather don’t come from, it is bizarre to badge them as any indication of a corporate worth or surefire predictor of value.

We see all the time that the smartest engineers devalue their own ideas, patenting things that should be better maintained as trade secrets, and retaining as know how little implementation nuggets that would be great patents. We see investor pressure to file greater patent numbers driving a behaviour of filing everything whether good or bad. We see large corporates binging (thank you Craig Opperman) on filing huge patent numbers to help cross licensing discussions, whilst some cultures (France is good at this) spurn the system as creating fraudulent indications of the worth of inventions. In short, one cannot rely on the vagaries of human experience and behaviour towards patenting as giving a reliable result. Sorry IV, you will no doubt capture huge amounts of license revenues, but will you really carry the true debate forward? Will you crack the IP value code and start to explain what drives value in the best companies?

As an alternative, to work out the true comparative worth of companies, we need to work hard at obtaining this common language. And, for us at ipVA, this means following the accountants’ language. Intangibles is the word. This message in a bottle is to those out there who follow that same principle. Ignore the imposters that are patents as nothing more than one way that inventions can be properly protected. Not irrelevant, but just because they’re easy to see does not make them any more important that any other part of the intangibles tree. The accountants have actually given us a pretty good guide in the categories of IP assets able to be valued in IFRS3. Examples of intangible assets to be separately recognised and categorised within the purchase cost are set out in the regulations and include:

Marketing related – intangible assets are typically those assets associated with the market or promotion of a company’s products or services (trademarks, brands, trade names, trade dress, internet domain names, newspaper mastheads, non-compete agreements).

Customer related – intangible assets are assets, which are utilised in the development, procurement, management and maintenance of a company’s customers (customer lists, order or production backlog, customer contracts and related relationships, non-contractual customer relationships).

Artistic related – intangible assets relate to artistic products or services which are protected by a contractual or legal right, such as copyrights (plays, operas, ballet, books, magazines, newspapers, musical works, pictures, photographs, videos, films, television programmes).

Contract based – intangible assets represent the value of rights which arise from contractual arrangements (licensing, royalty and standstill agreements, contracts for advertising, construction, management, service or supply, lease agreements, construction permits, franchise agreements, operating and broadcasting rights, use rights such as drilling, water, air, mineral, timber cutting and route authorities, servicing contracts, employment contracts).

Technology based – intangible assets represent the value of technological innovation or advancements, and can be protected through legal or contractual rights (patented technology, computer software, unpatented technology, databases, trade secrets).

As comprehensive as could be….don’t you think? Does anyone want to join in the debate?

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2010 IP hall of fame nominations

by JS Hatcher on 2 November 2009

It’s that time of year again, and nominations are now open for the IP Hall of Fame. The IP Hall of Fame comes from the folks at Intellectual Asset Management magazine.

Don’t just think of someone alive today – hall of fame members include Sir Edward Coke and Thomas Edison, though only the live members get a vote (unlike the apocryphal story of Jeremy Bentham at the University of London):

Via the nomination process, anyone in the global IP community can put forward a name to be considered by the IP Hall of Fame Academy, comprising all living IP Hall of Fame inductees and specially invited international IP thought-leaders.

The deadline is 2 December, with the 2010 inductees announced in February 2010 with a gala dinner at next year’s IP Business Conference in June, in Munich.

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A third week in the life

by Andrew Watson on 1 November 2009

At least one person, ie me, is getting something out of this exercise. It does seem to be adding some traffic to our blog though. I do often wonder who is looking at our stuff on the main site or on the blog. We found out when we registered the ipva domain that the ipva is the Brasilian equivalent of the drivers vehicle licensing authority in the UK…great for traffic, poor for the time they spend on the site though when they’ve worked out that it is not what they were looking for. We seem to get most of our visitors from the UK and USA, Lots of views, not too many comments though. Intriguing—-who are you anonymous lot?

 Week 3 has been a lot of fun. Did I mention that I love what we do?

 We put Rosie™ out into the field a few times in presentations this week. She just doesn’t let us down and this week she made her way into two proposals and three education sessions. I’ll share how her name came about at some stage.

 But most of the week was taken up in closing out the ownership issue we’ve been busy on for the last few weeks. It is a little scary to me that we used to see ownership as an optional diligence area. Post eBay and Skype though, I see it as maybe more critical than reviewing IP assets or risks. Most errors on the assets side can at least often be fixed or aren’t business fatal. Few companies I guess are taken out of the business if they miss a few patent filings, even if they fall foul of a competitor patent. But ownership issues could and should be fatal.

 We’re due to close out two projects this week. Both very pleasing results and we have got some warming compliments. I think with Mike and Luc on board we have gone up a notch or two in the quality of what we do.

 Three more are due to kick off this week and all three excite me. One in particular gets us to apply pretty much all of knowledge and expertise learned in the past 4 years. What more could a man want than a lifetimes’ purpose.

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IPReader links for 30 October

by JS Hatcher on 30 October 2009

New and noteworthy links from around the web:

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A second week in the life of this IP strategist

by Andrew Watson on 26 October 2009

Let’s try the highlights of week 2.

I realised that week 1 was a little ambitious to repeat week on week. If nothing else it could get a little repetitive. As a variation, I thought I’d pick up on the highlights of week 2:

1. A blog post on the Apple and Nokia spat. We have done a fair amount of work in the Standards area in diligence and gained some super knowledge. Opinionated I know but this area is just so damn frustrating for business leaders and creates competitive disadvantages across markets and suppliers. At least it is yet another good business-based IP story, our role in which is to explain it to the lay reader.

2. A new idea. Not going to say much on this for the obvious reason but on Wednesday Stephen and I put ipVA through the same methodology as we put our clients through. With some startling results. And a new path, or at least a ladder to take us a few steps forward.

3. Rosie is born. We’ve been working on a process and method for IP assessment for around 12 months and it was conceived in around May 2008 and has hardened since. Jordan and I went to see a tax partner from a Big4 firm on Monday who described it as “compelling”. And, again, it did not let us down. Time and time and time again we seem to find a way to explain the unexplainable and to decipher intangibles to the non-IP audience. So, on Tuesday, Rosie was born as our product name for our methodology. She’ll grow up and flower over time but she’s very real.

4. Ownership, ownership, ownership. This drum needs to be banged over and over again. The number of times that people simply do not IP own what they think they IP own is amazing. Our small ownership issue of last week has taken the full week to unpick and at least now we have a plan to resolve it. How many times? I see this as akin to the owner of a home who when asked if he owns his house says “of course I do” but then realises that he doesn’t own his garage and only has a 3 year lease on the fourth bedroom. “Oh”, I just hadn’t realised”.

5. Creative ways of making it easy for clients to use us. I guess this is the benefit of our model, that we can speculate at little. This week has seen this hit a peak.

6. The perfect pitch. You know the day when it simply all comes together? Well for me this week it did. Aided by the lovely Rosie we simply in the words of Simon Cowell “nailed it” on one pitch this week. How pleasing is that.

A long week again and time for some downtime this weekend. Maria trounced me 6-2, 6-1, 6-2 last weekend in tennis so I’ve some recovery work on my pride to work on tomorrow.

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