Ecover Buys Method’s Green Cleaning Tech and Business
September 28th, 2012 by 
Method is a San Francisco company that makes green cleaning products. Recently, the company’s Belgian competitor, Ecover, acquired Method in a deal that would create the world’s largest pure play green home cleaning company (see Greenbiz article here).
Method has a diverse IP portfolio which includes at least seven utility patents and applications, over 40 trademark applications and registrations, and at least 15 design patent applications.
More particularly, Method owns U.S. Patent Application Publication Nos. 2010/0093595 and 2010/0299846, entitled “Liquid cleaning compositions” (Cleaning Compositions Applications) and directed to cleaning compositions comprising a surfactant system, a certain percentage of water, a solvent system, and an enzyme. The cleaning compositions are in a form of continuous phase and provide improved cleaning efficacy with lower active doses of cleaning ingredients.
According to the Cleaning Compositions Applications, the invention can be used in highly concentrated form and thus provides advantages such as the need for less packaging and reduced energy consumption in shipping and lower volume of active ingredients to dispose of:
[E]mbodiments of the cleaning compositions . . . provide several advantages over known compositions, including but not limited to the ability to create an efficacious cleaning composition in a highly concentrated form (e.g., 4x, preferably 5x, more preferably 6x concentrates), thereby minimizing packaging requirements and energy consumption for packaging and shipping; lower quantities of actives are required per washload, reducing the cost of the products, as well as minimizing the amount of cleaning activities added to sewer and septic systems and the environment; less packaging to recycle or add to landfills; etc.
As to green brands, Method owns U.S. Trademark Registration No. 4,078,271 for the mark POWERGREEN for a variety of cleaning preparations in Class 3.
Method’s design patents include D522,372, D541,661, D614,032 and D619,008 (’008 Patent), which protect various bottle designs such as this one of the ’008 Patent:
According to the Greenbiz article, the partnership will provide each company access to new geographic markets and technical information such as Method’s developments in green solvents and Ecover’s biosynthetic surfactants.
Eric Lane is a patent attorney at McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP in San Diego and the author of Green Patent Blog. Mr. Lane can be reached at elane@mckennalong.com
photo: A National Acrobat.
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Tags:  cleaning composition Ecover energy consumption home cleaning Method packaging | [ Permalink ] |
Wow, I had no idea that Ecover had acquired Method. That sounds like quite the company. Im a pretty big fan of the ecover products, but stores that carry them are hard to come by. Thanks for sharing this.