{"id":154,"date":"2018-12-18T13:52:02","date_gmt":"2018-12-18T17:52:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/greenip\/?p=154"},"modified":"2019-02-28T16:56:41","modified_gmt":"2019-02-28T20:56:41","slug":"vestas-challenge-to-invalidate-ge-wind-tech-patent-is-denied","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/greenip\/2018\/12\/18\/vestas-challenge-to-invalidate-ge-wind-tech-patent-is-denied\/","title":{"rendered":"Vestas Challenge to Invalidate GE Wind Tech Patent is Denied"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>The Patent Trial and Appeal Board denied a challenge brought by Vestas Wind Systems A\/S against a General Electric patent directed to technology for connecting wind turbines to the electric grid.<\/li>\n<li>GE and Vestas remain locked in a long-running patent battle over \u201cZero Voltage Ride Through\u201d or \u201cZVRT\u201d technology. Each party has brought challenges against the validity of the other party\u2019s patents to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, which is expected to hear those challenges over roughly the next 12 months.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The Patent Trial and Appeal Board denied a challenge brought by Vestas Wind Systems A\/S in the year-long patent feud with General Electric.\u00a0 The Board, an adjudicatory body within the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, determined that the challenge brought by Vestas against GE\u2019s U.S. Patent No. 6,921,985 was nearly identical to an earlier challenge heard by the Patent Office.\u00a0 Since re-hearing similar challenges is considered an inefficient use of the limited resources of the Patent Office, the Board decided to deny the Vestas challenge.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The parties began their patent dispute in July 2017 when GE sued Vestas in federal court for allegedly infringing a pair of GE patents directed to technology for safely connecting wind turbines to the electrical grid.\u00a0 Later that year, Vestas countersued, alleging that GE infringed two Vestas patents in the same technological field.\u00a0 The parties then challenged the validity of each other\u2019s patents at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, and the federal court litigation was stayed pending the outcome of these challenges.\u00a0 To date, GE has seen both of its challenges to a Vestas patent \u201cinstituted,\u201d or accepted for trial before the Board.\u00a0 In contrast, Vestas has had only one of its two challenges instituted, with a third challenge to be decided in the coming months.<\/p>\n<p>For the Vestas challenge against the 985 Patent, Vestas argued that the claimed invention of the patent was obvious \u2013 and thus unpatentable \u2013 when compared against what was already known in the wind turbine industry circa 2003 (when GE filed a patent application that became the 985 Patent).\u00a0 The 985 Patent is directed to technology that allows a wind turbine to stay connected to the electrical grid during a low voltage transient; GE has named this technology \u201cZero Voltage Ride Through\u201d or ZVRT.<\/p>\n<p>To demonstrate the state of wind turbine technology in 2003, Vestas used a requirements document made by E.ON in 2001 called the <em>Supplemental Network Connection Rules for Wind Energy Systems<\/em>.\u00a0 Vestas argued that this E.ON document, when considered with additional documents and knowledge available at the time, would have rendered the claimed ZVRT technology obvious to a typical wind turbine designer.\u00a0 If that was true, then the 985 Patent should not have been issued by the Patent Office and would be subject to cancellation.<\/p>\n<p>GE fought back against the Vestas challenge by noting to the Board that the E.ON document had already been extensively reviewed and considered by the Patent Office during a previous challenge to the 985 Patent by another party.\u00a0 The Board has rules that allow it to end any challenge that is based on \u201cthe same or substantially the same\u201d documents and arguments that were already considered by the Patent Office.\u00a0 The E.ON document was considered by the Patent Office years ago during a challenge brought by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries while Mitsubishi and GE were engaged in patent litigation.\u00a0 The 985 Patent survived that earlier challenge that was based in part on the E.ON document.<\/p>\n<p>In its decision issued in late October, the Board ultimately agreed with GE that the Vestas challenge to the 985 Patent was too similar to Mitsubishi\u2019s earlier challenge.\u00a0 Due to the similarity between the documents and arguments presented, the Board determined that moving forward with the Vestas challenge by instituting a trial would be a waste of Board resources.\u00a0 As a result, the Board denied Vestas\u2019s challenge to the 985 Patent.<\/p>\n<p>Although denial of this challenge is a negative development for Vestas, it has another challenge against the 985 Patent that remains pending at the Board.\u00a0 That second challenge was filed a few months after the recently-denied first challenge, and provides alternatives to the E.ON document as a basis for unpatentability.\u00a0 A decision on whether to institute that case is expected by the end of February.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Patent Trial and Appeal Board denied a challenge brought by Vestas Wind Systems A\/S against a General Electric patent directed to technology for connecting wind turbines to the electric grid. GE and Vestas remain locked in a long-running patent battle over \u201cZero Voltage Ride Through\u201d or \u201cZVRT\u201d technology. Each party has brought challenges against &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/greenip\/2018\/12\/18\/vestas-challenge-to-invalidate-ge-wind-tech-patent-is-denied\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Vestas Challenge to Invalidate GE Wind Tech Patent is Denied&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":226,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[25,13,22,6,7,16,24,17],"ppma_author":[122],"class_list":["post-154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-general-electric","tag-inter-partes-review","tag-justus-getty","tag-patent","tag-patent-infringement","tag-patent-trial-and-appeal-board","tag-vestas","tag-wind"],"authors":[{"term_id":122,"user_id":226,"is_guest":0,"slug":"jlgetty","display_name":"Justus Getty","avatar_url":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/greenip\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2017\/11\/gettyjustus-125x150.jpg","author_category":"","last_name":"Getty","first_name":"Justus","job_title":"","user_url":"http:\/\/www.duanemorris.com\/attorneys\/justuslgetty.html","description":"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.duanemorris.com\/attorneys\/justuslgetty.html\">Read Justus's bio.<\/a>"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/greenip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/greenip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/greenip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/greenip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/226"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/greenip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/greenip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/greenip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/greenip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/greenip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/greenip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}