Paul,
While I don't follow it, a friend sent me Moller's
latest letter to
stockholders or presidents letter...whatever.
Well schzam, it appears that Moller has decided that
he'll use the
latest catch item ethanol fuel. All this isn't any
different from the
usual B.S. The interesting item is Moller's claim
that he plans to use
compounding to improve the mileage of the roto-power
engines! (patent
pending of course) Seems to me that his spies have
been watching the
ACRE newsletter. (as usual)
Bill Jepson

I know who they are and yes they are on here. Paul M
himself
was on here for awhile. The patent won't hold up in
court even
if the patent office is dumb enough to grant it as
turbo
compounding the rotary has been on the ACRE web site
in one form or another from the get go for the last
few years
not to mention a few NASA tech papers on the
subject.
I also discussed  it 30 years ago with David E. Cole
now Chairman
of the Center for Automotive Research U of Mich. and
Don Sherman
was present.

Paul Lamar ...No rotor no motor.

paul,

You are right about the basic idea of a turbo compound
rotary long being in the "prior art" and thus being
un patentable. patent # 4,742,683 by Teledyne covered a
diesel cycle or stratified charge turbo compound
rotary, it is already expired (Filed:August 18,
1986). Of course if you peruse the patents long enough
you find plenty of dubious "improvements" of various
"prior art" which have been patented. so in fact I'm
sure Moller may be able to get some sort of patent
claiming an improvement, say "an exhaust tube length of
1.678 times the diameter of the turbine inlet feeding
the compound turbine to improve resonant frequency"
ha ha. anyway, that's the sort of thing you see in
modern patents all the time, which in effect have no
practical enforcement.

I really enjoy researching patents from the 60's and
70's but the closer you get to modern times the less
they seem to offer any real innovation. Of course the
basis of patent ability is novelty and obviousness to
someone skilled in the art, 95% of these modern
patents hardly seem to me to meet either
qualification. and I'm just an amateur engineer, i
studied financial economics in school, I can only
imagine that a real engineer reads these modern
patents and thinks they are very obvious (and
un patentable)

gary

Hey thanks for finding that Gary. That is REALLY
interesting.

Paul Lamar

Gary,

Yes patents look good when impressing shareholders  It appears like the
engineers are actually making something:)  Marginal patents are a waste of
money and IMHO US patents compared to European ones are very easy to get but
also easy to break.  Defending them requires large resources and litigation
fees.  If Moller wants to research the turbo compound idea before we get
around to doing it that is great news if they share info like they glean it.
In Japan there is a local saying that 'the first company into the market
innovates while  the second company with a similar idea profits.'  This is
Sony verses Panasonic, Toshiba, and Hitachi situation.

Doug Fir

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