Suit against Flottweg! - Flottweg Patent Ruled Obvious

If you get a chance take a look at the timeline on the Right Column of this blog.  You can see here that GERS published their patent for Corn Oil Extraction on 23 Feb 2006*.  They make you publish your patent at a certain point - not so others can copy your idea - on the contrary - it is supposed to let others know what is patent pending so you DO NOT waste everyone's time trying to file on the same thing and/or to let you know if you are infringing on a future patent. 

Apparently in November of 2006 Flottweg decided to submit a patent for Corn Oil Extraction.  This is some 10 months after GreenShift published the process for Corn Oil Extraction.  The Patent Office has rejected this Flottweg patent due to it being obvious - (seemingly after you read the published GreenShift patent - Corn Oil Extraction becomes obvious.)  Remember that Flottweg (and their rejected patent) is the outfit that supplied the three phase decanter to ICM.  ICM took that 'piece of equipment' and tried to convince others in the Ethanol Industry that it protected them against a GreenShift 'process' patent. (IMHO: Infringing Ethanol Plants will eventually have to admit ICM achieved "A regrettable degree of success")  But also remember ICM is the one that says that corn oil extraction is unpatentable at the very time Flottweg - their supplier - was attempting to get a patent. 

The SkunK is a self-proclaimed biased observer.  As an investor here I am pulling for the GreenShift Team and my investment.  Yet I cannot think how someone - even on the other side of this equation - is not drawing the same conclusion:  GreenShift's position here is strong, and has just been made even stronger.

*(Provisional patent 17Aug2004; Non-Provisional Patent 5May2005; 23Feb2006 Patent Published; 6May2009 Patent Allowance announced; 13Oct2009 1st Patent Issued; 27Oct2009 2nd Patent Issued)

Today's Partial Presser Below:
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The PTO has rejected the pending claims in the Flottweg Application on the basis that GreenShift’s pre-existing patent application directed to its corn oil extraction process, in combination with other prior art, renders Flottweg’s claims obvious. In an office action rejecting all of Flottweg’s pending claims, the PTO underscored the distinction between GreenShift’s corn oil extraction process itself and the equipment used in GreenShift’s corn oil extraction process, and the PTO stated the following in connection with the cited pre-existing GreenShift patent application:

“The means or device for recovering oil [taught by GreenShift in its patent application] … may comprise any suitable device for separating oil from a mixture, such as a gravity separator (which advantageously requires no additional energy input to effect separation and, thus, further enhances efficiency), a centrifuge, a disk-stack centrifuge, a centrifugal decanter, or an evaporator. … Moreover, in addition to a self-cleaning bowl type centrifuge as the means for recovering oil from the thin stillage, a nozzle bowl disk stack centrifuge would work, as could a horizontal centrifugal three phase decanter.”

“Any claim that use of Flottweg’s horizontal decanters or ICM’s repackaged ‘corn oil Tricanter system’ will avoid liability for infringing our patents is false,” said Kevin Kreisler, GreenShift’s Chief Executive Officer. “Flottweg and any other equipment suppliers, service providers or other parties that knowingly subsidize, contribute to or induce infringement of our patents will be held accountable.”

Hindsight is 20/20, and Completely Irrelevant

David Winsness, GreenShift’s Chief Technology Officer, added: “ICM and others have stated their view that our corn oil extraction patents were issued in error and should be declared invalid as obvious and unpatentable. It is significant that Flottweg’s Application and correspondence with the PTO demonstrates that Flottweg and its former CEO clearly disagree with ICM’s view and believe instead that corn oil extraction from stillage is a novel and patentable process.”

Kreisler continued: “ICM designed and/or built about 105 ethanol facilities, each without the ability to extract corn oil from stillage at start-up. The entire industry produced ethanol at reduced efficiency and sacrificed billions in lost profits by not recovering the 40 billion pounds of corn oil that passed through the fleet without extraction between 1980 and 2004, the year our patents were filed. There is a common sense reason for Flottweg’s November 2006 ‘awakening’ and the total absence of backend corn oil production prior to 2004: extracting corn oil from stillage was not obvious to those skilled in the art at the time of filing of our patent application in 2004.”

“Thousands of skilled engineers, operators, plant managers, and owners designed, built and operated billions of gallons of ethanol production facilities without backend corn oil extraction for decades before GreenShift showed up. The fundamental process steps we developed to extract corn oil from stillage may be clear to many in hindsight, but any argument that our patents should be declared invalid because corn oil extraction is obvious today is a distortion of the law and can only fail.”

SEE HERE
and
SEE HERE
SkunK

Thanks to a reader for the first link at 1:46 today.  I missed it, we were off to get our flu shots and the Casino for the early Fish Fry - noooothing ever happens on a Friday afternoon - lol