Stoel Rives attorney Jay Rafter was quoted by EnergyBiz in an article titled “Clean-energy patent suits on the rise.” The article discusses the growth in the number of the clean-energy patents since 2009, when the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was enacted, and the corresponding increase in patent lawsuits. The number of U.S. patents issued for clean-energy technologies in 2014 was 3,609, up from 1,125 in 2009.
Rafter said he doesn’t expect the patent wars that occurred in the IT industry during the dot-com era to replicate in clean energy. Many dot-com businesses were able to garner lots of patents quickly but were then unable to make their businesses succeed. That made their patents easy to acquire for patent trolls. By contrast, many clean energy patents are held by large companies unlikely to go out of business in the near future.
Read “Clean-energy patent suits on the rise,” published August 27, 2015.