Patent timing

There seems to be a misconception (in my view) that we need to wait until the patent is (hopefully) granted before being able to utilise / monetise it in any way.

Unless the Australian patent system is completely different to most others (unlikely), this simply isn't true - we can deploy / monetise the process (including licensing it to others) immediately.

I say this as someone with several patents to their name (UK and other geographies), who sold the products as "patent pending" until the patents were granted.

Basically we'd proceed assuming that the patent will be granted, but if it isn't then other companies will be free to utilise the process without licensing it from us (so we won't make any money from licensing the process). The process should still greatly benefit our own project, however.

If you're a potential licensee of the process / patent, with whom we're hopefully in discussions with right now, you could choose to work with us on the assumption that the patent will be granted, in which case you'd contract with us and pay a royalty, or you might assume that the patent won't be granted and choose to deploy the process without contracting with us / paying us a royalty. The latter is fine unless the patent is granted, in which case we'd presumably sue you.

On the basis that the process is compelling enough for you to pay us a royalty and still save money, I think the vast majority would choose to contract with us rather than run the risk of legal proceedings down the road.

As far as I'm concerned, the patent is just icing on the cake for us. We have what most would consider to be the best project dynamics in the space, so are best placed for long-term success whether or not the patent is granted (if others benefit from it without having to pay us a royalty they wouldn't gain an advantage over us). But if the patent is granted, and compelling enough to be widely licensed, we'll have a very low risk annuity income on top of anything we make from our own projects.

I think the plan now is to license the process (which doesn't require a patent to be granted) to a more advanced player asap so that it can hopefully be proven at commercial scale. This should a) provide a compelling reason for others to license it and b) significantly derisk our own project, making it much easier to raise finance for it.

But if you're the first potential licensee, you probably wouldn't want to take any financial risk on it upfront, so I suspect that at least a reasonable chunk of the current fundraise could be to finance the first commercial scale trial.

If anyone disagrees with my position about the patent not needing to be granted for us to commercialise it, I'd love to see the evidence supporting that stance.