The article is comprehensive. I will not excerpt.
What is interesting, SarTec is not alone, see the Google Patents search, here.
There are SarTec patents, here.
While not a perfect patent search engine, Google Patents does not show any pending application for a search = SarTec, biodiesel, algae; nor for a search = SarTec, algae.
As an example, one pending application was filed by the Faegre firm in Minneapolis, Aug. 2006, for an inventor "James T. Sears," see, here. It could be legit, it could be a patent troll.
In any event, if SarTec is not well capitalized it can end up pushed around by a deep pocket, with SarTec working capital diverted into litigation costs; or with pressure to cross-license, etc. It is one way the little guy with a fine idea can end up dragged over the rocks and left empty, while a fat cat gets away with the goods.
Having the great idea, and defending it and getting it to market usually means alliances need to be struck and there's the King and I showtune, "If allies are strong with power to protect me, might they not protect me out of what I own?"
Good luck, SarTec folks. I hope it gets you each to comfortable wealth without mishap.
________UPDATE________
I reread the Paul Levy July 14 article, and two paragraphs stood out starkly:
Scientist Clayton McNeff says algae-based biodiesel fuel can be sold for $2 a gallon. Mark Rasmussen, a microbiologist who works for McNeff's SarTec Corp. in Anoka, says algae's potential is vast. Using just 3 percent of our current crop land, algae could be used to produce 63 billion gallons of the diesel fuel currently used annually in the United States, he said.
Because it isn't a food-producing crop, algae generally wins high praise, particularly from critics of corn- and soy-based fuels. And while an acre of soybeans will produce only 70 gallons of biodiesel fuel, an acre of algae can produce up to 1,200 gallons, said McNeff. Other reports say as many as 9,000 gallons can be produced.
That's a small part of things, please read the entire item.
However, $2 per gallon is what the Michele Bachmann hype has focused upon, and the discredited Newt Gingrich only says "Pay Less" without a shred of detail of the how, why and amounts and time frame over which he says his "thinking" will make things better.
Algal biodiesel would not take food crop off the market as does corn distillation and it can be focused on using largely vertical [small footprint] bioreactors as well as ponding in rural areas where capital intensiveness vs. space trade-offs would favor use of ponds. What I have seen as most interesting is work on combining sewage treatment and algae for biodiesel and clean wastewater as paired desirable output streams with the algal nutrient input from the wastewater (see, e.g., here and here).
I envision smaller municipal STP sites or feedlot STP processing with algal bioreactors as part of the processing machinery and on a scale differing greatly from the very costly centralized wastewater planning approach of Metropolitan Council, so that we might also achieve collateral benefit, getting them out of planning abuses as they've in the past produced [e.g. their abusive but successful "Lake Elmo" litigation] and lessening their heavy handedness regarding their current statutory wastewater and sewage treatment hegemony. Best outcome imaginable, let them focus on running buses on time and frequently, and advancing commuter light rail and NorthStar types of trains. Shrink the beast, that way. To the part that is best.
In closing, three final thoughts, first any work would be subject to the precautionary principle [which should apply to taconite tailings use in pavement] namely that where full cause and effect understanding is lacking the scaling up and deployment should be done with precaution, and with the burden on the advocates of the process to definitively prove the procedures are without distant but real downside risks or social costs. We can recall the algal problems with earlier widespread phosphate use, both from agricultural overuse and detergent phosphate additives, and as with feedlot and other animal agriculture, odor and other neighborhood nuisance worry would have to be addressed.
Second, the patent activity and ability of deep pocketing of new venturers with little capital should be legislatively forestalled to avoid the existing energy oligopoly from tying up and then shelving promising green technologies to keep their bottom lines most prosperous. Otherwise, if they can, they will, as they have tied up drilling leases at present, without any drilling nor any indications of intent to drill any time soon.
Finally, some government work on algae was done as far back as 1998, see here, which might explain the range of work being done now, catalyzed by that earlier inquiry.
That final point needs some expansion: Government funding of research is crucial, and that would include basic research. While an undergraduate after high school graduation in 1962, nuclear magnetic resonance research was leading edge physical chemistry, commercial-size units were becoming available for organic chemistry analytical spectra work; but the medical scanners presently making medicine more expensive but reliable were not even envisioned while the basic science behind them was being done, in large part via government funding. Such funding is absolutely critical to the future national economy and while undergraduate tuition shock is under debate and relief is sought, we should not lose sight of facts such as the outstanding excellence of the Twin Cities U. of Minn. as a leading-edge research and technology institution at the postgraduate level, and how such status is easily lost by penny-wise pound-foolish short-term budget mongering, whereas it takes much later time and effort to rebuild excellence.