Energy Conversion Devices Inc. (ECD, Rochester Hills, MI) announced that it has been granted a patent on its Ovonic™ Instant Startup Fuel Cell technology by the US Patent and Trademark Office. The patent (No. 6,447,942) covers a new, non-noble, metal-catalyst-based, fuel cell technology.
Stanford Ovshinsky, ECD president and CEO and the principal inventor of the patent, said, "ECD's fuel cell technology is a fundamentally new approach that rectifies the problems that have plagued this field for so many decades and plays an important role in our total hydrogen systems approach that makes the hydrogen economy a realistic one."