When I saw the announcement about Hipo’s 35% involvement with Next Batterys new technology in yesterday’s announcement I got very excited about it all as, if they pull it off it could be an absolute game-changer for Hipo as the lithium battery sector is so huge.
However, my excitement waned significantly when I saw radx’s comments about the accusations of fraud, lying to investors and patent infringement on the websites http://firebentonwilcoxon.com and http://ctcgloballitigation.com. These were clearly attack sites with a personal element to them but it dod not mean that what they were saying could not be true.
I perked up again when I saw JamieMac’s note that said that it was all fake news – but then realised that his quote came directly off Benton Wilcoxon’s personal website and he was hardly going to admit to being a liar, fraudster and patent infringer even if it were true.
This left me a bit stuck. I wanted to trust that Hipo had done their due diligence properly but they would not be the first ASX company to come unstuck by investing in a conman - LWC Technologies were screwed over by a battery technology scam and they claimed to have done proper DD too. However, I soon realised that the two sides of the story were so completely conflicting that only one of them could be true.
I have trust issues. I tend to believe that most people are lazy and lie a lot. Consequently I only tend to believe in facts that are date stamped. Normally this information is almost impossible to get but I realised that in this case the accusations were so serious that there ought to be a legal and electronic trail that would definitely be traceable with a bit of work. I din’t have to trust the attack sites, I didn’t have to trust Wilcoxon and I didn’t have to trust Hipo – If I could find out the truth myself I would know who was lying and I would also know if Hipo had made a good investment or been sold a con.
I spent a good 5-6 hours investigating these issues last night. I only relied on sources that were facts (ie they were registered with courts, or registration organisations) and I ignored all opinions.
My Conclusion
The short version is that it is good news for Hipo. Benton Wilcoxon is telling the truth and the attack sites are lying. Although this does not mean that the technology that Next Battery are talking about will 100% work it does mean that Benton Wilcoxon is the real deal and has already made these kind of industry changing innovations before. In my opinion Hipo have made a sensible investment that could be insanely lucrative if it comes off. It is certainly worth the risk of being placed as one of what Maurice Feilch called the “three growth pillars – lithium assets, cobalt assets and a technology division – to capitalise on the fast growing lithium-ion battery market.”
The long answer is below – it contains all the links I found to lead me to my conclusion – plus some speculative thoughts of my own – Enjoy…
My Research
1. We know for a fact that Benton Wilcoxon founded The Composite Technology Corporation in 2001 and that he “provided the initial vision of the Company's primary ACCC conductor product. He negotiated the initial organization and funding of the Company up to and through initial product commercialization”. http://people.equilar.com/bio/benton-wilcoxon-composite-technology/salary/85136
5. We know for a fact that the patent claim against infringement made by CTC against Mercury Cable & Energy (a firm founded by three former consultants to CTC) was first filed on March 3rd 2003 when Wilcoxon was still CEO (see page 18 of the claim document filed with the Court of California- https://insight.rpxcorp.com/litigation_documents/12332317)
6. We also know for a fact from the Whois Registry that the domain name firebentonwilcoxon.com was first registered after the patent claim against Mercury was mde on 2009-12-29 (https://www.whois.com/whois/firebentonwilcoxon.com) . This website was publicly used to discredit Benton Wilcoxon in any way possible and appears to have never been updated after it was initially launched.
7. We do not know if there was any connection between the beginning of the lawsuit and the online campaign to fire Benton Wilcoxon, but if they were not linked then let’s just say it would be a hell of a coincidence – especially after CTC went into chapter 11 and their assets were sold to new owners.
8. We know for a fact that this case rumbled on for years. We know for a fact on 25th September 2013 a website called ctggloballitigation.com was first registered with Whois by an anonymous entity registered in Nasau (https://www.whois.com/whois/ctcgloballitigation.com). This website was based solely on accusing CTC of patent fraud and unfair competition with Mercury Cable & Energy Ltd. Although CTC had new owners by this stage the, new owners were continuing the original legal case against Mercury and so the accusations in the website were focused largely on the years that Benton Wilcoxon was running CTC. They made very serious claims of patent fraud and you can see why they kept the site ownership hidden as, the claims made were very defamatory.
The www.ctggloballitigation.com website took a defensive stand on behalf of Mercury Cable & Energy Ltd - the entity being sued by CTC for patent infringement. From looking at google records available about this we know that the last update made to it was on the 10th July 2017 – just 5 days before Mercury Cable & Energy Ltd issued a countersuit to CTC accusing them of patent fraud and unfair competition (http://ctcgloballitigation.com/docs/Mercurys-Complaint-for Walker-Process Fraud-etc-C1-C3-C1.pdf). Again, this is not proof that Mercury were behind this site – but yet again it is another very significant “coincidence”.
The interesting thing about the www.ctggloballitigation.com website is that amongst all of the accusations that it made against CTC was the fact that via the technology it had patented while under Benton Wilcoxon’s leadership it had “sold in excess of $150,000,000 in ACCC conductors and related material” (http://ctcgloballitigation.com/). This does not take into account any sales by Mercury of conductors or related material based on the same protected technology.
It is not much of stretch to realise why it would be worth agents of Mercury Cable & Energy Ltd carrying out a campaign against CTC and Benton Wilcoxon as the stakes involved were so high.
Clearly, there were no winners in this battle though. Benton Wilcoxon lost ownership of CTC due to the legal conflict and 14 years later Mercury were prevented from infringing CTCs ownership. The only winners were CTC’s new owners.
The important point about the conflict is not who won or lost though but the fact that the 14 year war was about an entirely new technology that was worth a 14 year legal battle due to it’s ability to generate hundreds of millions of dollars worth of revenue to it’s true owner. The original developer of this technology was ultimately found to be CTC under Benton Wilcoxon’s stewardship.
The importance of this to Hipo
The point of all of the above to Hipo investors is that Benton Wilcoxon, the owner of Next Batteries, has a publicly verifiable track record of taking a very small company and using it to develop valuable new technology that can generate hundreds of millions worth of revenue while starting from nothing.
Next Battery is not a fly by night operation that has come out of nowhere. Rather it is the latest venture of a man who has already “been there and done that” and there is no reason why he cannot repeat the success in a new entity – especially in a market that is hundreds of times bigger than the market in which he was originally successful.
This is the history of the founder of the company in which Hipo have just done a deal to earn a 35% stake and this is why this history is important.
Will Next Battery develop a product that will generate them hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars in revenue? Who knows.
Have they got a decent chance with Benton Wilcoxon on board? Hell yeah…
