Regular readers with long memories may recall that way back when in November 2017 we here at V2G UK announced the launch of our Static and Mobile Distributed Energy Storage project? Those readers can no doubt imagine my surprise when I recently discovered an article by Sebastian Blanco in Forbes magazine announcing that:
There’s the grid, the evolving smart grid and then there’s no grid at all. That’s the paradigm that Tesla is exploring in a new patent application, Number 16/186390, which calls for controlling energy generation interactions (solar roofs, anyone? ) that bypass the electric grid.
Here’s the monochrome graphic that Sebastian extracted from Tesla’s recent microgrid patent application:
To my way of thinking that’s remarkably similar to the left and central portions of the much more colourful “prior art” in the banner that’s been proudly displayed at the top of every page on this web site for many years now. Do you suppose that Elon Musk is an avid reader of the V2G UK web site? If so perhaps he first arrived here way back in 2014 when I took Tesla’s marketing mavens to task over their propensity to be “economical with the truth” concerning open source electric vehicles.
Tesla’s recent US patent application includes the following paragraph:
This application is a continuation application of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/153,037 entitled “ENERGY GENERATION INTERACTIONS BYPASSING THE GRID,” filed on May 12, 2016, which is herein incorporated by reference in its entirety for all purposes.
That seems to refer to this 2018 patent assigned to “SolarCity Corporation, San Mateo, CA”. Does the US patent office by any chance have a number to call to advise them of occurrences of “patenting the bleedin’ obvious”?
Exhibit 1: https://web.archive.org/web/20140606031404/https://v2g.co.uk/blog/
America First !! (= Everybody else last).
I expect the patent will be granted and you will have to go a a USS Federal Court to stop it.
Once upon a time a US company patented the genes of an indigenous tribe from Papua New Guinea. The tribe had to go to the USA to stop it.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/06/supreme-court-blocks-patenting-of-genomic-dna/
The US Supreme Court, in a nearly unanimous ruling (Scalia joined the majority for most of the decision; more on that below), has held that a piece of DNA that occurs naturally is not eligible for patenting. This means that any sequences that are normally present in the human genome—or that of any other organism—cannot be the subject of patent infringement.
The case grew out of patents held by Myriad Genetics, a company that has had a monopoly on testing for genetic defects in genes associated with breast and ovarian cancer. The genes in question, BRCA1 and BRCA2, were first isolated by scientists from the University of Utah who then patented their sequences. The university later transferred the patents to Myriad, which developed further patents to cover more detailed aspects of the testing process.b
Quite so Matthew. Make America great again! Patenting the human genome. Whatever next?
Here is the Wikipedia article on the concept of a microgrid:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microgrid
Here too is clause 5 from Tesla’s recent patent application:
Perhaps Elon Musk will proudly announce at some point in the not too distant future that Tesla have “open sourced” their microgrid patents? Here’s how their allegedly “open source EV” worked out:
“A Closer Look at Tesla’s Open-Source Patent Pledge”