Victor Cardona
Victor Cardona (Heslin Rothenberg Farley & Mesiti P.C.)
Victor A. Cardona is experienced in enforcing, and procuring protection for, all types of Intellectual Property including patents, trademarks and copyrights. Prior to joining the firm in 1999, Victor gained valuable experience as an Environmental Engineer with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation where he spent over six years evaluating the feasibility, effectiveness and implementation of environmental remediation technologies. Victor is a co-chair and co-founder of the firm's Cleantech Practice Group, and is a member of the Mechanical and International Practice groups. He also has extensive experience in procuring overseas Intellectual property protection for the firm's clients, which is enhanced by his fluency in Italian.
Victor graduated with a Juris Doctorate cum laude from Albany Law School and has a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Clarkson University with a concentration in Environmental Engineering. He is admitted to the New York State Bar and is registered to practice before the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Victor is one of the developers and researchers for the Clean Energy Patent Growth Index (CEPGI) an online blog that captures the trends in US cleantech patenting by quarter.
- How was the index built?
- They do a keyword search in each sector and then look at each patent to make sure that it relates to the technologies they are tracking. Rather than using the IPC codes they came up with their own keyword index. They are looking at energy technologies, but not energy efficiency technologies. The searches for patents in energy efficiency and LEED certification were too broad and they weren't finding the information.
- Where do you get your information?
- Using the PTO database. Experimented with other patent databases, but they didn’t stick with them.
- What trends do you see in clean energy patenting?
- 2008 was the biggest year for clean energy patents, the first quarter of 2009 was the biggest quarter. Biofuels patents are climbing. Many small companies will file for a patent regardless of the value of the improvement because VCs want to see the patents as a level of value when they're determining if they will invest money in them. Many of these companies are start-ups.
In terms of licensing trends, there are a lot of big companies buying out little companies to acquire their IP (patents)
- What roles do you see that universities play in patenting?
- Universities are getting patents, but he observes more patents from collaborative research between universities and private companies.
Follow up:
- He has a paper about wind patents he can share with us. He is doing research on the solar industry and what types of technology are being filed for patents (thin vs. poly-silicon)