A heated argument over cold fusion licence payments  

Posted by Big Gav in , , ,

It has been a few years since I last paid any attention to the ECat /LENR cold fusion saga, however Tom Whipple's latest column (The Peak Oil Crisis: A Bizarre Twist) caught my eye this week.

Apparently Andrea Rossi found an American company called Industrial Heat willing to pay him if the technology could be successfully tested over a 350 day period.

The company ended up deciding the test was a success (though there seemed to be some problems with too much energy along the way) and made the initial payments, however there is now a dispute over whether or not the remaining licence payments need to be made, with Whipple speculating this is because Rossi is now claiming he has an even better version of the technology under development.

A cynic might think all this light and noise is being generated to draw investors into the process like moths to a flame, however I guess we can all hold our breaths and wait for another decade or two to see if this really is a viable means of generating power.

3 comments

Good to have you back big gav, my source for all things energy and occasionally more!

Thanks Mark !

The model of upfront license is really a problem.

My conviction on that affair from private and public data I have is that Industrial Heat simply does not have the full IP (know how, recipe...) to make an E-cat, and that is the basic of the agreement.

Rossi as he showed previsously refuse to trust and share. what he gave was insufficient and IH complain that it does not work. (read well their answer - not substanciated : they cannot replicate).
In a way this is normal if you know Rossi's psychology. he clearly want to lock everything and is afraid to be stolen.

I was surprised to hear the good buzz from partners and simply people who met him about darden.

I know well the offer of LENr-cities, and the idea is in the same direction (less far) as what darden say he want to do (remember his talk at ICCF19 Padua).
He already have few scientists working with him, and it seems he is building a patent pool, not by buying but by having cross license... to be confirmed.

this model of ecosystem cross licensing is key to LENR-Cities, but they offer another model to fund research.

instead of scientists asking for a big license for a nearly ready technology, there is a logic of medium business crowdfunding, funding specific research programs, which fund various research teams.
In exchange of funding programs, the companies have access to the IP developed by the teams (who still own it), relative to the programs they funded.
Price of license is free like speech, but not free like beer...

The problem of LENR is that you need money before you have something to buy.
the model of LC is to propose an insurance model to business who don't want to miss the revolution if it happens.
the risk exist as soon as the opportunity exist, so the market of insurance against disruption versus research to implement the disruption exist...

Darden is goodwilling but his VC model is a bit ill-designed for such a disruption and non-existing technology.

The trial will say who fooled who, if any, but in case IH is sincere and Rossi simply refuse to cooperate, I trust more the ant-colony ecosystem of IH than a wannabe Rockefeller genius.

Anyway what a mess...

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