At 05:21 PM 2/3/2012, Randy Wuller wrote:
IAAL, does that stand for "I am a lawyer", anyway, I am not a patent lawyer but I do know that the patent application can protect your intellectual property if written correctly. So I think the issue with Rossi is was his application sufficiently clear to protect his intellectual property? And frankly, no matter the answer to that question, lawyers will likely have a field day litigating that question if he starts selling a product.
This has not been adequately explained. The USPTO position is based on an assumption that cold fusion is considered impossible. So a patent that claims cold fusion is rejected in the same way that patents for perpetual motion machines are impossible.
However, a working model could overturn this. The problem with many failed cold fusion patents was that working models weren't available.
My opinion is that a properly written patent on a device that appears to be using LENR could be approved, even without a working model, but if there is a working model, it gets easier. LENR or cold fusion should not be claimed, the theoretical mechanism actually is not important, if the device clearly has the major claimed use.
It's certainly possible that the USPTO would claim it's still impossible, but the conditions would have been set up for a legal challenge to the USPTO position, in the courts. Patents have been granted for electrodes used in cold fusion experiments, in fact, where the primary claim did not mention excess energy. But subsidiary claims did.
It's complicated and I'd defer to expert opinion. INAL means "I'm not a lawyer." But I do have some idea of the legal issues.
The real issue is whether or not a patent is defensible in court. The USPTO decision merely establishes some kind of presumption or protection. If the USPTO denies a patent, and someone imitates the technology, the inventor may still be able to claim the protection of patent law, in court.
But no patent, no protection. Rossi has been depending on secrecy, which is very, very risky. I'm sure he's heard this advice many times. Maybe he thinks he's able to pull it off, maybe he's a fraud, maybe, maybe.
I've read a lot about this, and I don't know. Some people may well know things I don't know. Lots of writers, though, have opinions based on less knowledge....
