@squarepantsMaybe the company you are thinking of is MHM Metals (asx - MHM) name changed to Vysarn Ltd (asx-VYS) December 2017 and now a vertically integrated water service provider. The tech was to process the salt slag from aluminium recycling into an aluminium oxide and salt and potassium chloride product, in order to reduce disposal in managed landfills. I didn't follow this closely but wasn't it more of a case that Alcoa closed its Yennora facility (along with Port Henry Smelter and the rolling mills) without warning devastating MHM (similarly to Alcoa pulling the pin with FYI on its demo plant)?
While PWN has limited patent protection, it doesn't necessarily raise a red flag (although that's not to say there is no potential red-flags). A surprisingly substantial amount of oilfield tech is protected by trade secrets rather than the patent protection route because:
a. trade secret has no time limit - patent protection is only valid for 20years after filing.
b. the "secret sauce" does not need to be disclosed publicly, thereby maintaining a competitive edge
c. substantially lower costs (legal and patent fees)
d. potentially commercially valuable IP does not meet the legal thresholds
Trade secrets have served companies like coke and kfc very well for their highly guarded recipes and together with their thousands of patents, trademarks and copyrights to form a multi-layered IP protection.
So a brief look at the PWN patents (below):
1 - Is the k-max process for processing glauconite ( we have already signed away the lithium processing tech, L-Max, to LPD for only a "couple" shares years ago. The sale of the miniscule amount of shares was not the issue, the original deal was.)
2 - Is the iBC tech (causticization process) acquired from John,
3. & 4 - presumably, forms part of the MD stage of the aMES platform
Trademarks
I though that we had trademarked BPaaS (brine processing as a solution) but this seems to have been dropped.
@FenetreI would think QBS as the dedicated commercialization vehicle for CSG brines processing, is being set up as a JV vehicle rather than an IPO spin-off.
Senior management and directors of PWN are composed almost exclusively of lawyers and accountants, so this structure has been chosen to nicely silo issues of:
- Insurance and liability,
- funding and equity participation,
- new technology development (made in co-operation with client(s) and other partners).
Not to mention separate and protect the highly valuable IP (patents, trademarks, know-how) of PPT and PPS and facilitate the charging of G&A, royalties and other inter-co agreements to an operation, I think, that will not be 100% owned.
Looking at the operational and technical complexity not to mention the financial (capex) commitments, I think it is a given PWN will only have a limited equity stake in the plants and infrastructure.
(20min delay)