Gen 3 Solar changes name to OptiSolar

Trademark conflict with DayStar Technologies

If you check the Gen 3 Solar website, as of January 1, 2007, they changed the name of their company to OptiSolar, Inc. I heard about the reason behind the name change last week from an acquaintance.

At the United States Patent and Trademark Office website, www.uspto.gov, you can find this information using the Trademark Electronic Search System (Tess). I could not link to the specific trademark pages because the sessions time out.

DayStar Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:DSTI) trademarked “Gen-III” (or “GEN-III”) back on September 28, 2005. Gen 3 Solar filed for the OPTISOLAR trademark on October 6, 2006, so this must have been brewing last year.

OptiSolar, located in Hayward, California USA, is developing solar thin films made with 500 times less silicon than mainstream silicon wafer based approaches. Judging by their impressive Management Team bios, OptiSolar appears to be focused on amorphous silicon (a-Si) technologies using “a novel, low cost, deposition technique” developed by Co-CEO Dr. Marv Keshner and Chief Scientist Paul McClelland. A few members of OptiSolar’s Management Team and Board of Directors have links to OPTI Canada Inc. (TSE:OPC), an alternative energy company making crude oil from Canadian oil sands using its proprietary OrCrude™ process.

Although OptiSolar (or Gen 3 Solar) is not mentioned, I uncovered a German article reprint, Aufbruch aus der Nische (literal translation: Departure from the Niche or my translation: Going Mainstream) by Johannes Bernreuter from Sonne Wind & Wärme 12/2006 with a comprehensive survey of thin film solar technologies and companies including compact summary tables. If your first, second, and third language is English, the tables should be usable, but I don’t know of a .pdf file language translator. My tip is to select the text and paste it into Google Translate.

One tip to the OptiSolar folks, you missed a GEN3 on the new OptiSolar website here.