GreenShift Files Infringement Lawsuit against GEA Westfalia
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--GreenShift Corporation (OTC Bulletin Board: GERS - News) announced today that its wholly-owned subsidiary, GS CleanTech Corporation, has filed a legal action in the United States District Court (Southern District of New York) against GEA Westfalia Separator, Inc. and others in the industry for infringing on GreenShift’s U.S. patent covering corn oil extraction technology.
The complaint alleges that GEA Westfalia Separator, Inc. (“Westfalia”) and others in the industry infringed U.S. Patent No. 7,601,858, titled "Method of Processing Ethanol Byproducts and Related Subsystems” (the “’858 Patent”). The '858 Patent covers processes for recovering corn oil by evaporating, concentrating and mechanically processing thin stillage, a precursor to the distillers grain co-product of corn ethanol production (“DDGS”).
A typical ethanol plant converts each 56-pound bushel of corn it receives into 18 pounds of ethanol, 18 pounds of carbon emissions, and 18 pounds of DDGS. Every kernel of corn has a fat (corn oil) content of about 3.6%. This corresponds to about 2 pounds of corn oil per bushel of corn.
GreenShift’s Intellectual Property Portfolio provides ethanol production facilities with efficient processes for extracting upwards of 1.4 pounds of corn oil per bushel in a way that also reduces the amount of energy needed to refine ethanol out of corn by as much as 9,000 Btu per gallon of ethanol produced. This energy savings corresponds to a dramatic reduction in the fossil fuel consumption and carbon emissions of the host ethanol facility.
The U.S. ethanol industry produced more than 30 billion gallons of ethanol between 1980 and 2004, the year that GreenShift’s team demonstrated, for the first time, the feasibility of GreenShift’s now patented corn oil extraction technology. During that same period, about 7.4 million tons of corn oil passed untouched through the ethanol industry and was fed to livestock for a fraction of its value bound within 65 million tons of DDGS. Further, by leaving the corn oil in its DDGS, the industry was less energy efficient and consumed more energy than necessary to dewater and dry the DDGS.
For context, the ethanol industry has the capacity to produce about 11.5 billion gallons of ethanol during 2009. With a majority of plants adopting GreenShift’s Intellectual Property Portfolio, the ethanol industry could be saving about 100 million MMBtu per year while producing more than 2.8 million tons of inedible corn oil per year. The result at current market prices is staggering: the ethanol industry could be producing an additional $0.13 per gallon of ethanol produced, or over $1.1 billion, in additional profit today by using GreenShift’s patented and patent-pending corn oil extraction technologies. And, this excludes the impact of premiums paid for defatted DDGS in some markets, and the value of shaving tens of millions of metric tons per year of greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions off of America’s carbon footprint.
“The economic and environmental benefits to the ethanol industry made possible by our portfolio of patented and patent-pending extraction technologies are remarkable,” said Kevin Kreisler, GreenShift’s chairman and chief executive officer. “These benefits laid dormant for the 24 years that preceded GreenShift’s invention of extraction technology. It is GreenShift's opinion, as outlined in the pleadings, that Westfalia, seven years after it started offering equipment to the ethanol industry, and well after we introduced the market to the benefits of corn oil extraction, took to trivializing our innovations as they solicited and induced many in the ethanol industry into using our now patented technology well after our patent applications were published. GreenShift will protect its investment in its intellectual properties. In the meantime, we will continue to offer our technologies to the ethanol industry in fair, win-win arrangements for all interested parties, while working with targeted strategic partners to bring our innovative technologies to the marketplace.”
GreenShift’s technical services staff is available at 888-ETHANOIL or sales@greenshift.com to respond to quotation requests and to answer any questions about GreenShift’s corn oil extraction and other technologies.
Additional information pertaining to GreenShift’s infringement action against Westfalia is available online at www.greenshift.com in GreenShift’s October 14, 2009 Current Report on Form 8K.
About GreenShift Corporation
GreenShift Corporation (OTC Bulletin Board: GERS - News) develops and commercializes clean technologies that facilitate the efficient use of natural resources. GreenShift’s revenue model is based on the use of its proprietary technologies to become a leading producer of biomass-derived products, and to do so at reduced cost and risk by extracting and refining raw materials that other producers cannot access or process. Additional information is available online at www.greenshift.com.
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