Most patents are on the vague side while trying to claim as much as possible. This is especially true when catalysts are being patented.
And I'm sure you
can't will provide evidence for this assertion. How many patents or patent applications have you read? I'd bet good money it's a lot fewer than me.
It is also common for companies to file multiple variations on a patent, hence "Joe Blow has 42 patents" may mean that Joe had three ideas and possibly one was patented as a red herring to lead competitors astray, which is another way for the patent system to actually do the job it is supposed to do.
Next verse, same as the first.
Your claim that he is attempting to "put one over on the patent office" is mere opinion as putting one over would not serve his purpose in the long run. I believe that he will refine the application, as required, in an attempt to get his patent.
Two things: 1) It only "would not serve his purpose" if you assume his purpose is to be perfectly open and honest. We have no reason to assume that, even though you do assume that.
2) You believe he will "refine the application"; again, without any basis, because he's literally had years to respond to these criticisms, and yet, has not amended the application.
Interestingly, I note that you also allow that Rossi may actually have something and that means you think he may not be a fraud. Is this change of tone due to your acceptance of the possibility due to the many LENR related patents that have recently been filed?
No, that's just the Standard Skeptic Disclaimer, that admits I don't know absolutely everything. There's always the possibility that I'm wrong, but that's not the way I'd bet in this particular case.
Thank you, Ben, for explaining Horatius' words. I'm sure he will agree with you.
I had concluded that he was starting to weasel, just in case Rossi really had something.
Yeah, you keep thinking that if it's what you have to do to keep avoiding the evidence of Rossi being a fraud.
Correction. A true win for us would be if LENR actually existed, and if someone revealed it in any way whatsoever.
A real "win" would have been: if LENR had been real; if Pons and Fleischmann, or Hagelman, or similar academics, had discovered it and released it publicly; and the "commercialization" had been done by GE/Siemens/Hyundai competing with each other to sell more / better / cheaper units than the other.
Here's the thing about Cold Fusion:
If there does exist some mechanism by which some atoms can be made to fuse, and produce useful amounts of energy, at temperatures less than the millions of degrees needed in Hot Fusion, that mechanism almost certainly will not involve any of the mechanisms we've commonly seen, such as electrolysis with palladium electrodes, adsorption onto nickel, and all that. Why? Because if those things did work, one of these guys would have shown some useful results by now. 25 years of failure should have taught us that much, but some people are resistant to learning.
Uh, no.
The information I can find on the first quoted patent application is 10 years old and is too brief to draw any conclusions from. Looks a bit like a variation on a fuel cell, maybe.
The second (Naval Research Labs) is nothing to do with LENR - it's to do with an improved method for creation of metallic membranes for hydrogen purification.
You can see the first two applications at these links:
http://www.google.com/patents/US20090290674
http://www.google.com/patents/US20020080903
They do pretty much deal with Cold Fusion, but, if you check on them at the
USPTO PAIR site, you'll see they're both abandoned, having been rejected by the examiner for a lack of utility, and insufficient description.
"Claim 14. A method of generating energy comprising the steps of: providing the electrode of claim 13, connecting the electrode to a cathode, immersing the electrode and the cathode in water containing deuterium, and applying a current to the electrode and the cathode.
"Preferably the alloy composition of the present invention can be formed into a membrane for use in the purification of hydrogen, or can be made into an electrode useful for numerous purposes, including the loading of the electrode with deuterium for the generation of heat energy, or other standard electrochemical purposes."
I've looked into the prosecution history of this patent, and it's a bit Wonky. I've sent an e-mail to a colleague to see what he can tell me about it, and will report back.