ASX Today, page-570

The Tempur Pedic patent application.... is based on a provisional application filed December 2015 and it simply illustrates the type of PCM components that could be used by referring to the Microtek and Encapsys products then available. They are not confined to these two. I don't believe any Alexium products would have been available, or probably even known, at that time but there is no obvious reason why they would not be included if the application were filed now.

Yes, but in that earlier 2015 provisional application, Tempur didn’t refer to Microtek and Encapsys; it named Devan’s Thermic and Outlast PCM products (which it was using).

In one preferred embodiment, the PCM is THERMICTM microcapsules commercially available from Devan Chemicals of Belgium. In other embodiment, the PCM is OUTLASTTM micro capsules, which is commercially available from Outlast Technologies.

Tempur's change to Microtek and Encapsys happened at a later date, but I can’t tell when because the Global Dossier for this patent application isn’t available.

But there’s a WO patent application for the same invention, which was filed by Tempur in May 2018 and published in November 2018. It makes specific reference to an Encapsy’ PCM product, Enfinit.

In the examples above, EnFinit 28 CSSH-1 is commercially available from Encapsys, LLC of Appleton, Wland is a PCM concentrate containing 53% microencapsulated phase change material with a 28 degree C melt point. Before being commercialized, this same product was known experimentally as CP2005 Slurry.

The provisional application, which was filed in May 2017, only refers to the PCM, CP2005. So the reference to PCM was changed to reference Enfinit (the commercialized form of CP2005) for the May 2018 filing.

From this I conclude that Tempur’s preferred PCM, as at May 2018, was Encapsys’ Enfinit. At this time, Alexium had already been supplying Alexicool PCM for use in a leading global mattress brand for 18 months. These patent references suggest to me that Tempur wasn’t using Alexicool in May 2018; therefore, Alexicool was being used by the other mattress major, Serta Simmons.

A further point I note is that in January this year, Alexium launched its new Alexicool FM product for foam applications and in February Serta filed for the trademark “Coolfoam”.

Although, for me, the evidence points to the use of Alexicool in Serta products, I agree with you that the timing and nature of Tempur’s publicity isn’t co-incidental.

Tempur doesn’t disclose in the press release or on their website what testing measure they used to support their cooling claims. However, I suspect that testing might have used an inverted thermal hotplate, a measurement tool described in research which was conducted by Wilson College of Textiles, North Carolina State University and sponsored by Tempur Sealy. A paper outlining how the tool was used to assess thermal differences between mattresses was published (co-incidentally?) the same week that Tempur announced its TEMPURbreeze advanced cooling system.

It seems to me that quantifying cooling superiority and competing measurement tools may be the new mattress marketing battleground and that Tempur has at this point stolen the march on Serta. It will be very interesting to see how Serta responds.