Clean Energy Patents Have Skyrocketed with Obama's Brains Upgrade

   

By Cleantechnica at Cleantechnica

Tue Dec 7, 2010 11:49am EST

by Susan Kraemer

"When the Obama administration Nobel prizewinner Steven Chu took over from Bush/Cheney oil man Bodman at the Department of Energy, he prioritized clean energy innovation. By December last year, to speed the development of clean energy solutions to prevent climate change, he had overhauled the patent review process, hiring experts so he could put clean energy patents on a fast track.

Inventors had long suffered a shortage of the skilled reviewers that had the technical expertize to evaluate the science. Patent decisions were taking 40 months. But the new and improved DOE added enough scientific experts to review more ideas faster. Among patents already in the queue, the next 3,000 patent petitions and about 25,000 more that had been gummed up in the works were eligible for the new sped-up review program.

Looks like that investment in patent-reviewing brains is paying off. An upward trend is clear by the beginning of 2010, according to the data from the Clean Energy Patent Growth Index.

And this quarter, a record number of clean energy patents have been granted."