Ze-gen Hit by Patent Suit

Wade Roush9/4/08

Fall River, MA-based Quantum Catalytics and an affiliated Houston company called Texas Syngas have filed a patent infringement suit against Boston-based waste gasification startup Ze-gen in federal district court in Boston, the Patriot Ledger in Quincy, MA, first reported on Tuesday. The suit alleges that Ze-gen’s gasification technology is based on trade secrets obtained through former employees and consultants of Molten Metal Technology—the original assignee for gasification patents now owned by Quantum Catalytics—who later went to work for Ze-gen. Bill Davis, CEO of Ze-gen, told the Patriot Ledger that the lawsuit is frivolous and was “brought by ‘patent trolls’ whose motives are to extort money from the company.” We profiled Ze-gen, which is building a pilot syngas plant in New Bedford, MA, in August 2007.

Wade Roush is Xconomy's chief correspondent and editor of Xconomy San Francisco. You can e-mail him at wroush@xconomy.com or follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/wroush.