Reading this makes Iggy sound a little childish. He should focus...

Reading this makes Iggy sound a little childish. He should focus on getting finance back on track and not blind sighting investors with the need for an extra $30m in equity capacity for “just in case” (not it’s for progressing Johor dev so likely they’ll need it given the snail’s pace of finishing off funding). Also the certificate is dated 12 Sept 2018, why has it taken so long to make an announcement out of it other than to scan in the certificate itself (which no one does lol).

Interesting they got the patent, even if just an innovation patent eventually. The release does have one big fib in it in terms of it taking since 2014 to get patent protection. An innovation patent takes only one month and the filed for it in August 2018. After ATC practically failed in getting a proper patent 2 months earlier.

The lack of patent protection under a proper patent is due to ATC’s inability to prove its process is inventive and not something borne from common general knowledge. Remember, ATC always long flagged it plant uses a process used since the 40s/50s, just a tweak in end product generation. Then all of a sudden it was unique and bespoke and needed patent protection in a different breath.

Linked below is the original patent filing in IP Australia. You can see the history of the application by going to the eDossier section. Attached to the post is the last examination report (dated 15 June 2018) and the original 23 claims made by ATC in the filing (dated 2014). The examiners had issues with all 23 claims made under the application believing that nothing ATC does is considered inventive. ATC renewed the application (paid the fee) and has time to address these concerns but not clear how that will be done.

http://pericles.ipaustralia.gov.au/ols/auspat/applicationDetails.do?applicationNo=2014253487

Under an Innovation patent (the kind the productivity commission wants to abolish as they’re not very useful), the claims go through a substantially less rigorous assessment process (claim if being innovate rather than proof of being inventive). As a trade off to it being easier to get an application (takes one month to be accepted), the term of protection is shorter at 8yrs vs 20yrs+. Also worth noting is that a filing under this avenue hasn’t gone through examination, thus I believe it can’t be used to make an international PCT filing (funny how they only get Aussie protection on a process they will use in Malaysia).  The reason why the patent takes 1 month to get because it goes under no examination phase to test the validity of the claims made in the filing. As per the IP Australia website (linked below), it can only be enforced if “it has been examined by us (AusPat) and found to meet the requirements of the Patents Act 1990, and has been certified.”

https://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/patents/understanding-patents/types-patents

Essentially, this means if ATC want to go after someone infringing their IP, it has to go through examination by AusPat, the same examiners that believe none of ATC’s 23 claims in the original filing meet the standards set out in the Patents Act 1990 (i.e. they do nothing unique/inventive worth protecting). As such, ATC can’t protect its IP unless it can pass examination which to date they have been unable to do with flying colours.

IMO, albeit it one some here will called biased (I hold a peer), the patent/IP stuff is just hot air and that ATC should focus on getting the rest of its funding and the project up. What good is all that “IP” if you can’t produce the stuff yourself? Where's the real focus from management?