Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
We have been assuming that Nanoco will receive ongoing royalties, which would likely be the most important element of any potential award. Not only did Samsung jilt Nanoco at the alter and not buy Nanoco's QDs; there is a long chain of circumstantial evidence that they persistently hampered Nanoco success vis-a-vis other prospects. What if Samsung has found an alternative to CFQDs. How should this influence the award amount if Nanoco wins? Had Samsung followed through with Nanoco, Nanoco's platform technology would have dominated the quantum dot market for many industries.
I found the following comments regarding Apple's IPhone 14 and Samsung's Galaxy. Looks like Samsung is experiencing problems with their new phones.
"Then there’s this year’s Galaxy S22 performance scandal. Even if you don’t want to buy the iPhone 14, you should avoid the Galaxy S22 at all costs. Samsung’s innovations turned the Galaxy S22 into an overheating mess early this year. And then there were additional misleading claims about the handset’s capabilities that should keep you away from it."
"With all that in mind, Samsung better buckle up. The massive iPhone 14 sales that will follow in the coming year will obliterate all the 2022 and 2023 flagship Galaxies."
1) Denigrating the Innovate award offends me. Show some gratitude.
2) Nanoco have absolutely reduced R&D expenditures in recent years.
3) Pickett is nearing retirement. Who replaces him?
4) Who believes that Pickett would stick with a moribund company offering no challenge?
"£500k is a drop in the ocean ".
The Picketts of the world don't apply for a grant to do 'stuff'. Rather, they research , plan, budget, and propose interesting projects. Samsung's IP theft and subsequent actions have prevented Nanoco from doing research recently. Given solid direction and goals, Nanoco could benefit significantly from even this relatively small amount. I have no idea what the project involves, but if Pickett's hypothesis proves out, it could lead to additional funding. Time is of the essence in a rapidly changing world. Nanoco might even be able to fund this further in the near future, but starting sooner must be important.
I refer to Dr Nigel Picket who collaborated with Novoselov for 10 years. Googling Picket and Novoselov led to the following quotes. Picket does not have a Nobel prize but is certainly a valuable collaborator at that level.
'Dr Nigel Pickett, CTO and co-founder of Nanoco, said: "By combining Nanoco’s expertise with the knowledge base from Professor Novoselov’s lab we have been able to push the boundaries of material science to come up with a new generation of versatile 2D nano-particles and are now utilising Nanoco’s 15 years of scale-up expertise on methods to produce them at commercial scale.
nted " '
"For the past year the revered scientist [Sir Kostya Novoselov] has been collaborating with Manchester-based Nanoco Group PLC, a world leader in the development and manufacture of cadmium-free quantum dots and other types of nano-materials."
"In a bid to develop and commercialise nano-materials, [Manchester] university and Nanoco have now launched a business called 2D Materials."
Let's not trivialize the Innovate and other loans from the British government, as Nanoco might not have survived without them. Failure to benefit from them to date has more to do with Nanoco facing competition from their own IP.
Nanoco will receive an extra .5M pounds over the next two years--not to be scoffed at. Anyone paying attention would notice that one of the awards, for 'Quantum Technology Applications", opens important new avenues for Nanoco. Quantum Technology promises giant leaps in understanding our universe. Much of it has to do with electronics and computing, but also includes concepts such as 'squeezed light' which was first proven in 2015 and is currently used to track gravity waves? I have read that gravity waves can modify distances in the universe. Today, squeezed light requires huge and expensive optical equipment. Just as quantum dots reduce SWIR costs and size thousands of times, why wouldn't they do the same for squeezed light.
https://www.venable.com/-/media/patent-claim-construction-wong_dillon.pdf
The above site is interesting. I sometimes forget that Nanoco achieved a huge victory in the Markman trial, in which the judge approved all of Nanoco's Claim Constructions. The principal concern had to do with the definition of MCC because Nanoco did not place quotes around the phrase and specifically define it. The Markman judge ruled that Nanoco used the term in its ordinary and customary sense and that quotes were thus not necessary.
"...the Federal Circuit has stated that the inventor must clearly indicate in the specification or file history the desired definition to overcome the presumption that the term’s ordinary and customary meaning applies. The
inventor may provide this indication by, for example, using
quotation marks around the terms in question. "
This is huge for Nanoco since the Markman judge must understand the patent specification and interpret terminology in context. Nanoco lawyers must certainly have verified that a POSITA could perform the procedure successfully using this terminology. It is probably why BT is so confidant.
Thanks, Picador for the link to a belated Samsung patent. It will be interesting to identify any additional steps that Samsung might have added.
I would think that Nanoco could present a video illustrating the process and following the steps described in the patent. The jury could then decide if any missing steps are relevant to a POSITA. The question is "Was Samsung seeking to understand or torpedo the patent?".
I do not understand how Nanoco's CEO can claim that the PTAB IPR validated the patent if it did not consider sufficiency. The IPR included a lot of very bright judges with heavy chemistry backgrounds.
Nor do I understand how novelty and absence of prior art can be validated without indirectly validating sufficiency. When the lawsuit was first filed, I remember Sufficiency discussions in which Samsung claimed a missing step in Nanoco's description. Supposedly, Nanoco failed to describe a by-product of the procedure. Nanoco maintained that this by-product was automatic (something that just happens) and did not require description. Perhaps it had something to do with the MCC definition which was heavily debated. Since Nanoco won on this issue, they perhaps feel this was enough to prove sufficiency. I do recognize that Samsung is desperate and filling the air kitchen sinks.
You have never been a bad guy, Steak. Your posts are always reasonable and insightful, the result of having real legal knowledge. However, I don't understand the point you addressed to me. What were you referencing?
To my knowledge, Samsung has never applied for a cadmium freed QD patent. One must ask why Samsung, which claimed a breakthrough discovery, would not protect its discovery unless they knew that a valid patent already existed. Seems a bit of a smoking gun!
Samsung requested real-time transcripts, while Nanoco did not. I understand that they will use real-time transcripts for both parties if one requests it. These transcripts will be instantly available off-site as well and thus enable legal support from outside the courtroom.