Just nine months after the launch of the Eco-Patents Commons, it has more than doubled in size.

In January, IBM, Sony, Nokia and Pitney Boxes contributed 31 patents to the Eco-Patents Commons, allowing anyone to use the patents to improve sustainability options. This week, Xerox, DuPont and Bosch added another 53 patents to the commons.

The patents now included in the Eco-Patents Commons provide a list of opportunities for businesses to improve their sustainability without facing the normal bureaucracy and expense of licensing a patented technology from one of the six participating companies. Among those patents now available are a technique from DuPont that converts non-recyclable plastics into fertilizers, several technologies from Bosch that lower vehicle fuel consumption and emissions and a technology from Xerox that makes removing hazardous wastes from water and soil faster and cheaper.

Because there are no requirements for disclosing use of a patent listed in the Eco-Patents Commons, it's difficult to tell how widely these patents have been used. The omission of a disclosure requirement was intentional, according to Wayne Balta, the vice president of environmental affairs at IBM and one of the launchers of the Commons.

Balta said, in an interview with GreenBiz.com, "We thought that when we're already launching a project as different as this is, we didn't want to do anything that would hold it back. We didn't want to say, 'here's a patent, but before you use it you have to call us.' Is it like a hall pass to go to the bathroom? If [the process] is not adding any value, then it's only going to slow down a project that's too new for that."

You can access the full list of patents through the World Business Council for Sustainable Development's website. The WBCSD is acting as the central organizer of the Eco-Patents Commons. The site provides only an abstract and a link to the paperwork for the patent in question at the U.S. Patent Office. From there, it's up to you to decide how to use a patent. For any patent they list in the Eco-Patents Commons, companies agree to allow anyone to make, use and sell components that infringe on their patents without royalties or other payments.

The Eco-Patent Commons provides businesses with the opportunity to take advantage of some very expensive research companies like IBM and DuPont have already done. Not all are techniques that companies might want to build on — Xerox's 2-Phase technology, for instance, makes cleaning up volatile organic compounds much easier. Anyone who wishes to build on a site that previously held a gas station or dry cleaners could take advantage of that sort of technology.

Image — WBCSD