The Patent Maps The White Space
Twenty eight or more patent families sit on biological methanation, and one assignee holds eight of them. The foundation strain patent runs to 2032. Five lanes on the same board carry zero filings. Read by assignee, then by expiry, then by lane, and the only question left is whether you licence, design around or file first.
Twenty Eight Families, One Assignee
Read the biological methanation patent record by assignee and one name dominates. Electrochaea GmbH holds eight or more families across EP, US, JP, CN, BR, MX, SG, AU, CA, ZA, IL and TW. Q Power Oy holds two. LIST, SUEZ and TMA Process hold three or more between them. DTU holds one. RAG Austria holds one. Matthias Brunner holds one. That is the field at family level. Three of those holders are industrial. The rest are a university or a single inventor. The map is short and it is legible.
The Foundation Strain Expires In 2032
EP2661511B1 and US8932849B2 are the strain foundation. Priority 5 January 2011. Inventor Laurens Mets, University of Chicago, licensed to Electrochaea. The organism is Methanothermobacter thermautotrophicus UC 120910, deposited as ATCC PTA-11561. The claims are specific and they are the commercial core: a carbon dioxide to methane ratio above 20 to 1 against biomass, a doubling time beyond 72 hours in stationary phase, tolerance of oxygen and carbon monoxide with recovery inside 20 minutes, and a stable continuous culture past 20 days. The EP member runs to 5 January 2032. The US member, filed pre-AIA, runs to 2031. Every commercial stirred tank in this field on that organism sits on this one family.
The Claim That Describes What You Were Going To Build
US10329588B2 is the broad one. Priority 28 June 2013, inventor Matthias Brunner. The claims read on a gas throughput up to 500 to 1, methanogen pellets of 1 to 5 millimetres, and a list of reactor configurations: tube, stirred tank, loop, bubble column, spray tower, trickle bed, and a cascade of reactors in series. Granted in the US. Not granted in EP, DE or WO. That split is the reason to read the record rather than search a database. What is enforceable in one jurisdiction is a published document in another.
Five Zeros On The Board
The white space is countable, which is why it is worth counting. Hyperthermophilic methanogens working above 80 degrees Celsius for biomethanation: zero families. Formate as a hydrogen carrier to bypass gas to liquid mass transfer: zero. Hybrid pressure swing plus biological methanation: zero. Magnetite nanoparticle enhancement of direct interspecies electron transfer: zero. A two stage stirred tank and trickle bed train for syngas: zero. Now the crowded lanes. Stirred tank reactor design carries six or more families. Strain engineering carries three or more. Cell retention and water management carries two, and both are Electrochaea. Membrane biofilm carries two. A zero is not a guarantee. It is a starting position.
The map is short and it is legible.
The Four To One And The Empty Reservoir
Three designs sit outside the stirred tank. RAG Austria filed in 2016 on a two well gas circulation system at a hydrogen to carbon dioxide ratio of 4 to 1 inside a depleted gas reservoir, which makes the geology the vessel. Q Power Oy took US11512272B2 on 21 June 2017 with a porous solid support of at least 20 per cent pore volume and an unsaturated capillary conductivity of at least 0.1 centimetres per hour, no pressure vessel, no mechanical agitation. DTU took EP3555258B1 on 14 December 2016 with a gas permeable membrane bundle and a biofilm grown on the membrane surface, and DTU has licensed it to nobody. Three routes, three physics, three claim sets.
What Actually Blocks A Build
Run the arithmetic per technology. A stirred tank on the Electrochaea strain is blocked to 2032, and the mitigation is a licence or a different organism, since Methanothermobacter marburgensis carries no such restriction. A trickle bed reactor reads low risk in EP. MEC methanation reads medium against US12571008B2. Solid state reads medium against US11512272B2. Membrane biofilm reads medium against EP3555258B1. Syngas integration reads low to medium, because the SUEZ family is still pending, and a pending family is a wall that moves. Filing before it grants is cheaper than designing around it after.
The Probability You Are Pricing At Zero
The register is public and reading it is free. The probability that a build collides with a family nobody read is not zero, and most teams price it at zero until a letter arrives. So read in this order. Who holds the foundation strain, and when does it expire. Which claim describes what you were about to build. Which lane has no filings at all. Then decide: licence, design around, or file first. Three questions. One afternoon. The order is the whole method.
What is enforceable in one jurisdiction is a published document in another.
The map is dead. Nobody told you.
Bali State of Mind is the survival guide for the collapse of everything you were taught to believe.
Beyond this book
Building the same thing somewhere else.
Julien Uhlig is available for advisory work, board seats and media appearances. Write to media@exventure.co.
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