GriffithHack Patents Trademarks IP Law

Water security is of high and increasing importance in Australia. Increasing demand on water supplies due to climate change, drought and population growth means that Australia needs to find new and innovative ways in which to supply, use, manage, recycle and recover its water resources.

For anyone developing these innovations, protecting them using patent applications enables those innovations to be leveraged across the country and the world. Conversely, it is extremely useful for water technology innovators to know what patent applications are being filed in their field so that they can understand what their competitors are doing and identify potential areas for development. In addition, by monitoring patent applications, relevant technology developments can be identified with the view to licensing that technology.

The following is an overview of selected recently filed water treatment patent applications in Australia. They were located by searching for Australian patents which had been classified in water treatment classes of the International Patent Classification (IPC). This includes fields as diverse as desalination, sewage treatment and industrial water treatment.

This is only a snapshot of what we estimate to be about 250 water treatment patents filed in Australia, up from 240 in 2010 and 223 patents in 2009. Water technology patents have been previously reviewed in our 2010 report: Water innovation in Australia: pipeline to profit?

For further information about the rest of these water patents, please come back to us.

Andrew Davey

Patent details	Representative image	Summary
Seawater desalination apparatus Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba Australian Patent Application No. 2012022011 Priority Date: 17 May 2010 Publication Date: 1 December 2011 Status: Pending		A reverse osmosis seawater desalination apparatus having a high-pressure pump configured to feed seawater to the reverse osmosis membrane, a power recovery device which recovers energy from the condensed seawater, a booster pump for boosting the pressure of the seawater discharged from the power recovery device and an exhaust valve for controlling the amount of seawater discharged from the power recovery device. The apparatus also has various pressure and flow sensors and a controller for controlling the number of revolutions of the high-pressure pump and the booster pump and the degree of opening of the exhaust valve.
An apparatus for prevent scaling and/or removing scale Calclear Investments Pty Ltd Australian Patent Application No. 2011201383 Priority Date: 23 March 2010 Publication Date: 13 October 2011 Status: Pending		This patent application describes an apparatus that applies an electro-magnetic field for preventing and/or removing scale, in particular from a metallic pipe that carries a heavily mineralised liquid or solution such as hard water. The apparatus comprises a microcontroller that cooperates with a switching amplifier (or switchmode or Class D amplifier) to form a closed loop for generation of the magnetic field of a pre-determined strength. The switching amplifier is more energy efficient than prior systems and therefore requires less power. It also does not create as much waste heat.
Treatment of water Tshwane University of Technology Australian Patent Application No. 2011201269 Priority Date: 25 March 2010 Publication Date: 13 October 2011 Status: Pending		A method of treating water in particular acid mine drainage water. The method involves adding magnesium hydroxide and/or ammonium hydroxide to precipitate out dissolved metals as metal hydroxides or oxides; adding barium hydroxide to form barium sulphate with the dissolved sulphates which is then removed from the water; and adding carbon dioxide to precipitate out dissolved calcium as calcium carbonate. When ammonium hydroxide is used in the first step, ammonium is stripped from the water.
Desalinization unit Quatripole Ingenieria, S.L. Australian Patent Application No. 2011200734 Priority Date: 22 February 2010 Publication Date: 8 September 2011 Status: Pending		A desalinization unit that is designed to produce drinking water using sea water through a process of inverse osmosis, and for its preferential installation mainly on boats/ships. The unit includes three separate modules, one corresponding to a sea water intake pump, another corresponding to a silex sand filter, and a third as a main module for controlling the operation of the drinking water production process. A multiple cartridge filter  is provided in the third module, through which the water from the silex sand filter passes, before reaching a set of inverse osmosis modules that lead to two outlets, one of brine, and another of drinking water which is collected in a storage tank.
A system and method for controlling multiple sized water softening tanks Culligan International Company Australian Patent Application No. 2011200150 Priority Date: 14 January 2010 Publication Date:  28 July 2011 Status: Pending		A water softening system comprising two treatment tanks, the second tank having a smaller capacity than the first. A flow meter measures the flow of water into the system and a controller directs the water into the first treatment tank when the inflow is above a designated flow rate and to the second treatment tank when the inflow is at or below the designated flow rate.
A transportable water treatment system Essanell Hire Pty Ltd Australian Patent No. 2011101185 Priority Date: 15 September 2011 Publication Date: 13 October 2011 Status: Granted Innovation Patent		A transportable water treatment system that comprises an inlet and an outlet, a filter between the inlet and outlet and a pump for pressurising the tank so that treated water can be released remote from the tank. The inlet feeds into a network of looped diverters which distribute water evenly through the filter.
Distillation Robert Klyne Heavy Industries Australian Patent No. 2010201315 Priority Date: 1 April 2010 Publication Date: 20 October 2011 Status: Pending		A solar powered distillation device for producing fresh water from saline comprising a transparent structure that forms a greenhouse, a support in the form of floats for supporting the transparent structure above the surface of the saline water and a collector in the form of gutters for collecting condensation from the gas space defined by the transparent structure above the surface of the saline water.
Brine discharge assembly Empire Technology Development LLC Australian Patent No. 2010200965 Priority Date: 12 March 2010 Publication Date: 29 September 2011 Status: Pending		A brine discharge assembly for diluting brine before it is discharged. The assembly comprises a pipe through which the brine flows and multiple injectors for injecting diluent at multiple locations along the length of the pipe.
One kind of reclamation and bio-safety disposal method for cyaniding tail slurry China National Gold Group Corporation Technology Centre and Changchun Gold Research Institute Australian Patent No. 2010101479 Priority Date: 11 January 2010 Publication Date: 4 August 2011 Status: Granted Innovation Patent		A method of treating cyanide containing mine tailing slurry from, for example, the gold industry. The method comprises dosing the tailing slurry with hydrogen peroxide at different pH conditions.

Researchers at the University of Southern California have developed a polyethylenimine-based, easy-to-regenerate adsorbent which captures CO2 directly from air. They speculate that the material could be used for direct air capture to remove excess atmospheric CO2 resulting from small-scale sources such as transport and home heating. For more details follow this link.

Robert Wulff

In 2009 the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) launched a Green Technology Pilot Program to accelerate the examination of “green” technology patent applications. This was extended to the end of 2011, and has again been extended through to 30 March 2012 (or until 3,500 applications enter the program). Presumably not enough applicants are availing the program, so if you’re an Australian CleanTech company with a recent US patent filing – get on to it!

Robert Wulff

A proposal for plug-in military vehicles can be found here. If these can go plug-in, it’s hard to see technical problems in any normal passenger vehicle doing so.  I like the reference in the article to the technology trickling down.

In relation to recent concerns about EV battery fires, it seems to me that most reports fail to point out that the ‘problem’ with batteries is much less concerning than the equivalent problem with tanks full of petrol or diesel.  I wonder whether the enhanced safety inherent in carrying more battery and less highly inflammable liquid fossil fuel, was a motivation in developing these military vehicles.

Daniel Rosenthal

From FierceEnergy’s website:

Houston’s Mike Butler, winner of CenterPoint Energy’s Biggest Energy Saver contest, saved a whopping 36 percent on his electricity use over a two-month period this summer with the help of data from his smart meter.

The top 10 percent of the contest’s entrants saved nearly 21 percent more than during the same time in 2010 — and those savings were achieved in record-breaking heat.

“As Texas made history this summer with record-breaking heat, Mike and our other winners significantly reduced their energy consumption,” said Kenny Mercado, CenterPoint Energy senior vice president responsible for smart grid technology. “Their efforts demonstrate how using smart meters and performing simple, energy-saving measures can make an impact.”

Justin Blows

The newspaper The Australian has published a listing of “Australia’s 10 greenest universities” along with a summary of the reasoning behind the selection.  It’s an interesting article, and we congratulate the universities on the list, most of which Griffith Hack has had the privilege of working with.

Daniel Rosenthal

Reuters reports here that Toyota and BMW have agreed to work together on a broad range of advanced environmental car technologies.  This should be of benefit to the car-buying public and the environment, and it may also be interesting to see how the IP issues are handled.

Daniel Rosenthal

The new Automotive Australia 2020 CRC has been awarded $26 million in the Australian Government’s CRC (Cooperative Research Centre) initiative to undertake research programs and build human capital in areas of vehicle electrification, gaseous fuels and production of greener vehicles and components. The government announcement can be viewed here  , and this article  provides some useful background.  More information can be found at www.autocrc.com.

Daniel Rosenthal

Another significant jurisdiction, Brazil, is to fast track green and clean technology patent applications.

The Brazilian Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) has announced this as a pilot programme. The programme is expected to start in June 2012, coinciding with the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development at Rio de Janeiro, and will run for an initial period of one year.

Robert Wulff

I was delighted to see that after many years of focusing on recovery of kinetic energy, there’s now serious consideration of recovery of waste heat to help power vehicles, as summarized in this article.

There’s a patent application here which may be related (with the inventor given as Schmeltz Sterling, which seems delightfully appropriate).

Daniel Rosenthal