Patent Policy and Sustainable Cellulosic Biofuels Development

Ethanol Producer Magazine
June 2008
By Steve Suppan

National patents and international rules on patents will be instrumental in the development of biofuels markets—defining how fast that development takes place and who controls and benefits from the next wave of biofuels. Patents granted by governments to applicants confer commercial (often monopoly) privileges in exchange for a product or process that meets three main patent criteria. The patented product or process, in the words of Article 27.1 of the World Trade Organization agreement on intellectual property, must be “new, involve an inventive step and [be] capable of industrial application.” In U.S. law, these criteria are usually characterized as novelty, non-obviousness and utility.

Investment plans for biofuels component products, such as in joint ventures, include patent portfolios as a key element. Yet the patent policy debate from which changes in patent law and regulations emerge goes unmentioned in global biofuels market planning. This article outlines some of that general debate and its application to the synthetic biology (sometimes called nano-genomics) patents that will be instrumental in the development of cellulosic biofuels.

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