Jones, I believe this is wrong on a couple of counts. First, there is no "non-publication rule", there is the "publication rule" which says that 18 months after the priority date (usually the date of application), the patent application is published by the USPTO. Once filed, there is nothing to prevent the applicant from publishing.
Second, Rossi's Italian patent only grants him patent rights in Italy. He has a priority date for that invention from the date of filing in Italy, but no patent rights in another country unless a patent is also granted in the other country. So, he basically has no patent protection in the US, or the rest of the world, just Italy. Everyone thinks that they could make better business decisions than Rossi - the reality is that it is much more complicated than most realize. As I said in a previous post, protecting a business with a single patent, even a good one, is an unlikely prospect. Rossi does not know enough about how his reaction works to be able to write a patent with sufficiently broad claims to block a wide range of work-arounds - no one knows enough today. Aside from that, there is the rule that the application must be filed within 1 year of the first public disclosure or offer for sale. This meant that Rossi was under the gun to file his patent - whatever he could muster. To make matters worse, the US would publish his application 18 months after filing (to protect against "submarine" patents) whether the patent office was going to issue his patent or not. In fact, the publication would likely occur before first office action on the patent. If Rossi had truly disclosed everything in his application which is needed to make LENR work (required to get the patent), he ran the risk that the patent would be rejected and his secret would be published and become part of prior art - what a catch-22! Also, the USPTO has a reputation of blanket rejection of "cold fusion" class patents, so the likelihood of realizing a useful patent was near nil. Still, investors don't really want to invest in a product that doesn't have some form of IP protection. The more they will consider investing the more IP protection they will require. Otherwise, they pay to develop the product and someone else (perhaps in China) will copy it and make all of the profit from the market. For most products this is true, but there is so much money to be made in LENR that this may not be AS true if Rossi can get out ahead in making product. The normal way to make a business of something like this is to resist the urge to talk about your invention except to investors under non-disclosure agreement. Get your IP filed (as many applications as you can with good advice of patent attorney) and proceed to seek investment to make your product. Rossi's mistake, if he made one, was to talk about his invention. What we don't see is the other forces at play. LENR has clear military potential. Patent applications that have military potential frequently get suppressed as secret - look what happened to the patent for the laser. We don't see the forces that Rossi was against. Perhaps his public disclosures were to help circumvent military suppression - we will not know unless he tells us. I give Rossi credit for navigation as far as he has come in such difficult waters. He still holds his secret (but with a tenuous grasp). Bob Higgins On Fri, Apr 4, 2014 at 10:01 AM, Jones Beene <jone...@pacbell.net> wrote: > > > > Well, he did not understand how his device operated, first-off, and > secondly there was already a ton of prior art, including Piantelli and > Mills. Plus, some would say that much of his business experience has been > skirting the Law, where he did not fare well. > > > > The curious thing is that Rossi has managed to have the same patent > granted in Italy. That would probably be of some value for much of Europe. > As French says, the most likely scenario is that there are presently one or > more filings which are in progress at USPTO and subject to the 18 months > non-publication rule. > > > > The PCT - aka the World International Patent System - WIPO > > (www.wipo.int/pct/en/) ... has been signed by the US and most other > countries. This creates an International problem for anyone wanting to > willfully infringe since Rossi has a granted patent in Italy. > > > > > > > > >
