TheIncomer

Interesting, I didn't know that. Thanks But I guess g(1) covers this. Rossi's alleged invention makes steam, he needs a turbogenset to turn that into electricity. It's materially changed by the process. So no infringement.

Would the world be a better place without patents? Possibly. But they've been around since 1331 and they ain't going anywhere in our lifetime. Back to Rossi:- he needs to play the cards he's dealt, which means he needs patents, or he'll get his butt kicked. It may not be nice, but that's the cold commercial reality. Anything else is just utopian dreaming. That's why he invited the EPO examiner to his trial. But the EPO ain't interested unless he can prove it works, or explain how it works. Both would be nice!

First patent granted in 1331, so basically end of the Dark Ages. I guess the wheel hadn't been patented, but everything after that Patenting was well understood by Newton's time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_patent_law

Wrong. His invention & patent is the means of production (E-Cat) not the end product (electricity). I can import E-Cat electricity into Italy no problem. Unless, of course, he claims to have patented electricity as well....

Not true. He had a claimed 200 million Euro investment from Defkalion in Greece, including "three factories located in Xanthi, " ready to manufacture "The 1MW Hyperion will be inaugurated in Q4 of 2011 with its production phase to commence in Q1 of 2012". http://www.hepogreektrade.com/finance/defkalion-green-technologies-e-cat-investing-in-cold-fusion http://www.defkalion-energy.com/products Oops, then the whole thing fell apart just days before the Q4 2011 inauguration. What a surprise. And from that 200 million Euros, what came out? Nothing whatsoever. What a surprise.

+10^99

You probably want to talk to Apple, or Google, or RIM, or Pfizer, or AstraZeneca, or Dyson, or Samsung, or Microsoft, or InterDigital, or Nortel, or well, you get the idea, about that. edit: I forgot, Apple et al just paid $4.5 billion for Nortel's patents. I'd say someone thinks patents have something to do with the free market

Easy. I just set up a set of humongous low cost Chinese copies along the border and pump the energy into the Italian electricity grid. Email everyone thinking of buying a Rossi machine, offer them hugely discounted electricity for the next x years if they agree not to buy one. That'll sort him.

How? Would you buy the $200 a watt Rossi system, or the $180 a watt Chinese system? Only a nutter would buy the former, he'd be out of business in months.

There are so many reasons it's impossible I don't even know where to begin.

I read that the EPO has specifically stated that they will not grant a patent based on their scientific advice, In some circumstances I agree you can make money without a patent, particularly if you're in the services business. But with a widget like this which is easy to reverse engineer and copy, launching without patent coverage would be instant commercial suicide. He's not even a good trickster!!! "Pay no attention to the 500 kW genset running in the background.... trust me it's cold fusion!" Derren Brown would have done it a hell of a lot better.

Yes it does. it has to be "useful":- "The patent law specifies that the subject matter must be "useful." The term "useful" in this connection refers to the condition that the subject matter has a useful purpose and also includes operativeness, that is, a machine which will not operate to perform the intended purpose would not be called useful, and therefore would not be granted a patent." http://www.uspto.gov/patents/resources/general_info_concerning_patents.jsp Since Rossi's machine does not operate to perform the intended purpose, ie make energy out of thin air, it wouldn't in principle be granted. Of course the USPTO famously lets the odd perpetual motion patent through, but that's because they're so overworked. Regardless, Rossi needs cast-iron worldwide patent coverage, else the Chinese will just sell it in jurisdictions where his patent isn't granted. And nail him anyway.

The European Patent Office has refused to grant him a patent for two reasons 1. science says it can't work 2. science says it can't work Yes, I know that's technically just one reason, blah blah blah. So he's toast. He can't sell the product to anyone until he has a cast iron patent, because any product he ships will immediately be reverse engineered by the Chinese who will put him out of business within months. The only way he can get a patent is to prove that science is wrong and it really works. The only way he can do that is to get other scientists to replicate it in a fully open way. His patent application would still hold retrospectively so he's quite safe to do this. No replication means no patent means no product means no money for Rossi. Ergo it doesn't work.

The trouble is, the cost of installation is almost entirely fixed, since it depends on man-hours and truck rolls and it cannot easily be automated. The cost of modules could in principle be driven down by such pump priming, but the problem is you are pouring money into another nation's intellectual property base to do it. So you weaken your own economy in two ways:- you impose a regressive tax and most of that tax revenue goes strengthen competitor economies. Like all great government ideas, fundamentally flawed from the get-go. Basically we have poured, what, a few billion pounds of Joe Billpayer's money into foreign intellectual property which provides precisely zero future return to UK Plc. Instead we could have directly subsidised some smart intellectual ventures with export potential and at least had a chance of some return on investment. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

"Power for start-up (resistive coils that provided heat to the reaction chambers) was provided by the large and loud genset (was making all the noise) you see that is nearly as large as the small shipping container in which the 1 MW E-Cat plant was arranged. Once the reaction chambers got up to temperature, they were maintained by the heat produced by the reaction. I'm not sure why they kept the generator running after that" "Probably the biggest opening for skeptics will be the continually running genset that is probably rated for 500 kW (my guess), and appears to have been connected by cables to the E-Cat. "Where's the mystery?" So knock yourselves out, skeptics. It's the customer who has to be happy, and apparently this one was satisfied that those cables were not contributing to the 470 kW output during self-sustaining mode." I'm pretty sure I know why they kept the generator running after that. Jeez, it doesn't get much funnier than that Rossi keeps on tryin'. After the Defkalion fiasco, I guess he's looking hard for investment.

The current low installed prices seem to be the result of other European countries cutting their subsidies. So there's a huge glut of panels in the market and manufacturers are slashing prices to accommodate this. I expect prices will start to rise again next year as the inventory reduces. IMHO the whole thing's dead in the water. It was a daft idea anyway: a regressive tax; which was never going to materially improve our bargaining position with those pesky Russians and Qataris; where most of the subsidy went into bolstering the intellectual capital of foreign nations.

This programme is a bear-fest. IMHO a must see for any HPCer. Most of the participants are staring down the barrel of a gun and the programme doesn't beat about the bush. Repossession threatening, negative equity, etc etc. Most of the participants are flippers and "property developers" so no sympathy needed. I think they are deliberately making a car crash programme to get the ratings up. I also think Phil is realigning himself into Martin Lewis / Alvin Hall mode ie friend of the feckless poor. Definitely worth taping IMHO.

Good post. You CAN be self sufficient if you have sufficient dedication and capital. But if you're lacking in either, buying off someone else is so much more convenient. We worked out how much it would cost us to be self-sufficient in veg. Way more than buying it from Mr Tesco. And who needs 200 kg of potatoes all at the same time?

Hi Peter, you need to quote some of the text from around that graph. As I understand it the reason wholesale prices are low is because the bottom has dropped out of the market, and that's what the text seems to say:- "This is a function of continued module over-supply as manufacturers struggle to make sufficient cuts in production to respond to the new market conditions". Basically the panel vendors have had to slash prices and are selling below cost. Not good. Just the other week Solyndra went bust despite $500 million funding from Obama . Solyndra said they went bust due in part to "... a global oversupply of solar panels and a severe compression of prices that in part resulted from uncertainty in governmental incentive programs in Europe and the decline in credit markets that finance solar systems." So the low cost of panels is not the sign of a healthy market. As the old saying goes "we'll lose money on each unit, but we'll make it up on the volume" It's always been the same with volume semiconductors, particularly DRAM and flash. You have to commit so far in advance to factory capacity, if the bottom falls out of the market all you can do is keep manufacturing, dump the product at the smallest loss you can, and hope you can outlast your competitors, or the cycle turns again. A horrible business. I expect more panel vendors will go bust soon.

Exactly. You're no good to the monster, not enough meat. The monster wants Incomers with three quarters of a mill in their back pocket who say "oooh look at the pretty house nice Cornish builder man says he'll make us"

Disagree (take that, underpants!). Locals have been priced out since the M5 was built. But during the bubble the whole Cornish economy realigned itself into fleecing incomers and 2nd homers. The locals have done very, very well out of the boom. Example: Andy Chilcott of Lillicrap Chilcott bought a £2.7 million house last year. The problem comes now:- only retirees are coming, and they are much, much more careful with their money. As I said on another thread, the whole Cornish economy is a monster that eats incomers and 2nd homers, and spits the carcasses back over the Tamar when it's sucked them dry. But the juicy meat's stopped coming. Retirees buying £400k houses and doing their own DIY won't feed it. The monster is dying. IMHO next few years will be like Mad Max only with more rain and pasties. I am upgrading the defences of Chez Incomer even as I write this.

Savills' marketing team is pushing this line hard. There was another thread on it a couple of weeks back. The message seems to be... you're not alone in dropping your price, and it will bring results. Lillicrap Chilcott is pushing out the same message albeit using more convoluted language. Not much sign of 2nd homers selling up around here. Which surprises me. The second home owners I know are middle management types or doctors, not millionaires. They spent 500k to 800k on a second home a few years back. They must be haemorrhaging money into these properties now. The only homes I see moving are the sub 500k ones. I think they are selling to "real people"* who need to move for more space, nearer schools or work. Just like old times. The 700k plus market is dead as a doornail from what I can see. The next leg down will be in the spring when the amateur developers who are hitting a cashflow crunch try to sell. There are loads of them living in half finished projects funded by 100% interest only self cert mortgages. Many of them are itinerant "builders" "plumbers" and "gardeners". The point has come where inflation and declining work means they simply can't cover the mortgage, diesel and food. Then they'll have to sell up, or turn to crime (both quite likely IMHO). Local news this week:- amateur developer has been charged with torching his home for the insurance after failing to sell it for 4 years. First I've seen. Also burglaries up 33%. Just like the last recession eh old timers?? * by "real people" I mean public sector workers, mostly GPs, the only people in Cornwall with half decent wages. I am staggered by the number of quacks in Cornwall.

I don't think many people think about that before they come down. We didn't, and the thought of being treated at the rat infested hellhole which is Treliske now makes me shudder. Maybe if I paid loads for BUPA they would chopper me to the John Radcliffe at the first sign of trouble?

The problem is, it doesn't help "ordinary" buyers that much. I think prices are fairly sticky at that 500k and below level, because there are so many retirees in no hurry to sell. Certainly I've seen 20% drops at the high end, but only 5% or so at the low end. I think the big drops for "ordinary" houses will start in the spring. Why? Because everyone and their dog in Cornwall is an amateur property developer. Loads of people I know & loads of houses I drive past frequently have the classic signs:- transit or pickup in the drive; enormous extension "nearly" finished ie watertight but not rendered or interior fitted out, piles of building materials in the drive, etc etc. I know people who are getting desperate for cash flow and will have to shift these in the spring, finished or not. I expect a flood of motivated sellers in the spring, and a serious leg down in prices, particularly of this "nearly finished" stuff. IMHO the problem is, these "nearly finished" places are more or less worthless. Buyers of them would need a bunch of cash, say 50k, to finish them off. And what ordinary buyer has got 50k cash in addition to a big deposit? So my predictions for the Cornish spring are:- - estate agent bankruptcies or massive downsizing, particularly the high end agents because the premium business model doesn't work any more; - a flood of "nearly finished" development initially at crazy high prices, as the amateur properdeeee developers try to cash out - but very rapid drops in these as the summer progresses and desperation for cash gets overwhelming We shall see....

I watch Lillicrap pretty closely (various reasons) and it's a bloodbath at the high end. For example They've got about 50 houses on their books at £1 million-plus. They are selling something like 1 every 2 months, so they have about 10 years' supply. Some have been discounted 10 or 20%, they're still not shifting Take eg Restronguet Point. There are probably only 30 houses on the Point, 7 are for sale all at £1 million plus. Not one has sold since March 2010 despite some being discounted nearly 20%. L-C are leaving the million pound "solds" on the website for months and months to make it look like they are shifting. (Jackson Stops doing the same thing). But when you dig down to it all the activity is at £500k and below. Why? I guess because the incomers and second homers and "investors" have stopped coming with silly money. Only "ordinary" people (OK wealthy ones like GPs) are buying. Savills seem to be sending a very clear message to their high end customers that you have to cut by a large amount:- "However, properties that have been reduced by 20 per cent have attracted the most interest and most frequently led to a sale". I wonder what "most frequently" means? "Not very frequently" I expect. Interesting stuff