On October 15, 2015, Appleton, Wisconsin’s Paper Industry International Hall of Fame will be inducting six people into the Hall of Fame. One of them is an innovator and leader from ancient China who can be considered as China’s answer to Gutenberg. Gutenberg is frequently honored in the West as one of the most important …
My latest post here at Innovation Fatigue lamented the actions of the USPTO in their apparent war on patents involving natural products. New information makes the story even more troubling than before, indicating that more than just judicial error and bureaucratic blindness was involved. The steps taken appear much more deliberate and political than that, …
America’s Anti-Patent Revolution: Stoking the Engines of Innovation Fatigue Read More »
The federal government has set bold and challenging goals for future increases in the production of energy from non-fossil fuel sources. Seeking to curb our dependence on foreign oil as well as fossil fuels in general, our nation is encouraging the development of fuels from biological sources. Biofuels, diesel and gasoline made from renewable sources …
The Future of Biofuels: Environmental Innovation Fatigue for Environmental Advances? Read More »
I’m back from the week-long Annual Meeting of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) in Salt Lake City, Utah, where over 4,200 engineers from around the country and many other nations were gathered. Hundreds of technical papers were presented from researchers and leaders pursuing advanced in energy, biotech, materials, nanotechnology, chemicals, and related fields. …
Ethanol as a biofuel may soon reach practical limits in the US and frankly is clouded with questions about its economic and environmental utility. However, the fermentation systems for producing ethanol can be adapted to produce much more valuable products using special microbes developed at some of the most promising green energy and biotech companies. …
In my ongoing work on analyzing the intellectual property landscape in biofuels, one of the most impressive companies I’ve run across is Amyris, a renewable products company whose clever use of synthetic biology goes far beyond biofuels. Amyris was founded by Kinkead Reiling, Neil Renninger, and Jack D. Newman who met at Berkeley and founded …
Amyris: Great Story of Open Innovation and Renewable Products Read More »