The CO2Rail IP story begins not in 2021, but in 2007, when railroad executive and current CEO of CO2Rail, Eric Bachman, first demonstrated the insight that would define his career: trains are kinetic energy machines, and that energy can be recovered, stored, and redirected. US Patent 7,891,302, filed March 13, 2007, and US Patent 8,196,518, filed January 24, 2011 established Bachman's foundational priority in rail-based regenerative braking energy recovery for passenger train applications. A near 20-year invention trajectory that eventually led to the development of CO2Rail's technology in deploying that same recovered energy for gigaton-scale atmospheric carbon removal. An investor reviewing this portfolio is not looking at a first-time inventor. They are looking at a serial patent holder in rail energy technology with an unbroken chain of innovation from 2007 to 2026.
The primary CO2Rail patent family anchors the entire portfolio. The provisional application filed May 5, 2021 — Priority Date US202163201591P — established the worldwide priority date for the core invention. The non-provisional application US2022/027944, filed exactly one year later on May 5, 2022, claims systems and methods for direct air capture and removal of CO₂ from ambient environmental air at the gigaton scale, powered by renewable energy sources utilizing rail transportation equipment — and additionally claims systems and methods for the removal of emissions from locomotives and the removal of localized air pollution from urban areas. This is not a narrow claim. It is a broad, multi-application claim structure that covers DAC, locomotive emissions mitigation, and urban air quality remediation in a single patent family — three distinct commercial revenue streams protected under one priority date.*
The international prosecution pipeline covers the world's most strategically important rail markets with disciplined geographic precision. The European Union (EP4334589), Canada (CA3216703), Australia (AU2022269658), Mexico (MX2023013030), India (IN202317080747), and China (CN117730202) are all active PCT applications sharing the May 5, 2021 priority date — meaning that regardless of when these applications ultimately grant, the company's priority in each jurisdiction is established from that original filing. India and China together represent the two largest rail networks on Earth by route-miles and annual passenger traffic. Australia represents a critical freight rail market with among the highest regenerative braking energy potential per train-mile anywhere in the world. Mexico represents the North American freight corridor opportunity. No major rail market on any inhabited continent is unprotected.*
To date, the European grant is the most significant near-term IP milestone in the portfolio. EP4334589, granted January 20, 2026 by the European Patent Office, extends protection across 39 member countries — covering the vast majority of European rail network capacity, including Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, and Poland, among others. A European patent grant is not a formality. The EPO applies rigorous prior art examination and novelty standards. The grant is an independent, institutional confirmation that CO2Rail's core invention is novel, non-obvious, and patentable — an endorsement that carries significant weight in investor diligence, partnership negotiations, and any future licensing discussions with European rail operators.*
The EPO Divisional application EP26152494.6, filed January 17, 2026, opens a critical second prosecution track in Europe. Covering the energy-integrated, rail-based carbon dioxide capture system for diesel locomotive emissions specifically — the LEM application — this divisional protects the locomotive exhaust capture architecture as a standalone invention, independent of the DAC-car claims. The system is elegantly designed: a self-contained capture railcar physically separate from the locomotive, coupled within the train consist, receiving exhaust gases via a transfer interface without any substantial modification to the locomotive itself. This independence from locomotive modification is not just operationally important — it is commercially critical, as it means the technology can be deployed across any locomotive type without requiring railroad engineering approval for locomotive alterations. The divisional application protects this architecture in Europe as a distinct and separately enforceable right.*
The microdroplet provisional filed March 11, 2026 — US64/002,749, "System and Method for Carbon Dioxide Capture Using Dispersed Liquid Microdroplets in Moving Air Streams" — represents the most technically advanced and commercially differentiated layer of the current portfolio. This application protects the dispersed-phase liquid microdroplet contactor architecture: a capture system in which an atomization subsystem disperses microdroplets of reactive solvent into a moving air stream within the capture chamber, creating high gas-liquid interfacial area and enabling rapid CO₂ absorption within short residence times. Droplet recovery is achieved through multi-modal mechanisms — magnetic, inertial, coalescent, and electrostatic — providing redundant recovery pathways and eliminating single-point failure risk. The system accommodates reactive, switchable, ionic liquid, and magnetically responsive solvents, and explicitly covers both mobile and stationary platforms — with rail vehicles specifically identified as the primary embodiment. This is the patent that protects the core technical innovation that makes CO2Rail's liquid capture architecture superior to solid sorbent approaches: the dispersed-phase configuration eliminates viscosity penalties, enables continuous operation without bed saturation, and allows solvent regeneration without the thermal mass penalties that dominate solid DAC energy budgets.
The Railroad Ties provisional — US63/845,447, filed July 17, 2025, co-invented by Timothy Brake and Eric Bachman — extends the portfolio into an adjacent but strategically coherent direction: the integrated thermal and chemical conversion of creosote-treated railroad ties into activated carbon, biochar, and combustible gases. This is not a tangential invention. It connects the CO2Rail platform to the railroad infrastructure maintenance supply chain, creates a potential feedstock for activated carbon sorbent applications, and generates additional carbon-negative byproducts from waste material that railroads currently dispose of at significant cost and regulatory burden. As a co-invention with Tim Brake, it also demonstrates the company's capacity for collaborative invention and the depth of technical engagement within the core team.*
Taken as a whole, the CO2Rail IP portfolio reflects a deliberately layered prosecution strategy: a broad foundational claim covering the system concept across all applications, a granted European patent providing immediate enforceable rights in the world's most active carbon market, an active US non-provisional in prosecution with allowed claims, a divisional covering the LEM application as a standalone European right, a cutting-edge microdroplet provisional establishing priority on the most technically advanced capture architecture in the field, and a PCT pipeline covering every major rail jurisdiction on Earth. The priority date of May 5, 2021 sits behind all of it, predating every competing development in rail-based DAC by every other entity in the world. No competitor can approach this space without navigating a portfolio that was built first, filed first, and granted first.
