Jed Rothwell wrote:
At LENR Forum a mysterious person calling himself "me356" claims that he replicated Rossi... the other day he said he is no longer using nickel because of "patent considerations." That is absurd. There are no viable patents relating to Ni-H cold fusion, and even if there were there is plenty of leeway to improve on them.
Well that's not exactly true... there is an overlooked detail here which should be clarified, although I agree that nickel alone as a catalyst cannot be protected by patent. The original Thermacore patent has expired, and that was that ground-breaking IP which protected the use of nickel with potassium hydroxide in a Mills-type reaction, not LENR.
In the years after the basic IP for NiH expired - an improvement based on the two heavy isotopes of nickel 62Ni and 64Ni -- as enriched in a specialty catalyst, were claimed in a granted patent to Rossi... which is involved in the pending lawsuit but ostensibly is now owned by IH.
As we have observed before, there is the possibility that only the heavier isotopes of nickel work reliably. Since the total concentration of those heavy isotopes of natural nickel is in the range of 5% - there would be a large improvement by going to an enriched specialty metal. The cost for using heavy isotopes - in the range of $20 k/gm is too high to be commercialized, without a breakthrough in the cost of enrichment.
Or - the patent that me356 is wanting to protect could be one relating to his own catalyst, thus he wants to make it clear that nickel of any kind is absent. IOW he may have a yet unpublished patent application in the works.
The problems with the proposed testing is HUGE and must be changed- as of now, this is looking like the oldest scam in the book - wet-steam/dry-steam. Rossi has been successful in making the wet-steam scam into an art form. To have any credibility - this test must not involve steam at all. There are good options which do not involve steam.
