--- On Wed, 4/13/11, Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Rossi wrote: > > > 2- a patent like this can request up to 6 years of > processing > > I do not know what that means. Rossi told me he hopes to > "have the patent" by the time of the 1 MW reactor. I took > that to mean the application will be filed, not granted. I > believe that nowadays, European patents are revealed soon > after they are filed, not when they are granted. > > Anyway, if they start to sell the machines, they will be > reverse-engineered in no time. I'll bet that a working > machine is a better guide than the patent will be. That > might not be true of a complex object such as a CPU chip, > but the E-Cat is simple, with few components. Once you > replicate the powder you are 98% home free. > > - Jed The same is true of U.S. patents. They are published as soon as they are filed. I'm not sure I like that idea, but it was put in place to discourage so-called "submarine patents" where the applicant continually amends his application to extend patent protection until someone else files for the same invention. Reverse engineering may be more difficult than you think. It may be that it's not just the composition of the powder that's the secret. It might be there is a procedure in treating the nickel before the reaction "ignites". For example, there might be a pretreatment with another gas before the hydrogen is introduced, ammonia maybe. Since nickel, when used as a chemical catalyst, must be subjected to an elevated pH before adsorption takes place, any number of pretreatments is possible. Companies that sell specialty nickel powders as catalysts offer all sorts of variations that have had rather subtle treatments to make them useful for the reaction desired. It might be that Rossi has simply chosen one of these and that's the undisclosed secret. Think how you would feel if you made a discovery like that. The world requires a clean inexpensive source of energy and the big secret to making a nickel-hydrogen LENR take place is buying the right brand of nickel powder. I think I might display the same type of nutty behavior as Mr. Rossi. I'm not saying that's what has happened. I'm just saying it's a possibility. M.
