The patent was only issued last week, they have wasted no time enforcing it.
This is a win win situation for RGI. Now notice is served, this puts a big question mark over RQB. Every one of their potential JV partners, their shareholders, in fact anyone proposing to do business with them - will have to reassess their involvement.
We don't have to take this to court, we can sit back, drag this out if we want, knowing it will be very hard for them to progress their business. In the interim they might keep using the machines they've manufactured, very much doubt the board would approve funds to manufacture more until this is cleared up. These Orbital Gardens have been the central theme to their business plan. This halts that plan, they need a settlement ASAP. It has no affect on us at all. RQB have done a lot of publicity on Orbital Gardens, great for us - any one who wants them now knows there is only one place you can legally buy them. Buy them from RQB you take the almost certain risk you could be forced to destroy them unless RQB come to a settlement with us. (not that they were selling them commercially, - so far only for themselves & JV partners)
Our case is rock solid. What George Robinson claimed about prior art in the recording Dknow kindly posted is Rubbish. Note Robinson didn't try to say their machine is not affected because it is different - which it is not, but because of prior art - a red herring (see my previous post on this). Our 1st US patent was applied for in 2001 - anything designed since then is subject to our patent in all jurisdictions where our patents are valid (US Canada). When our patent is awarded in Europe/Australia it will also date back to 2001.
We did have an unsigned deal with them so they could manufacture their own machines but they reneged on the deal & took the risk. I assume we'd accept a licensing fee, no doubt a higher fee than before, but that's not a given, we could just require they destroy their machines. I have no idea what they'll do, We certainly are in a good position.
