Tom Richardson will not be nominated for the I F Stone Award. For those who haven't looked up his tertiary qualifications, it's a
certificate in Investment Management. On his profile it also states his is a member of the CFA Society of the UK as an IMC graduate. I took this up with the CFA Society of UK. While it is not permissible to join a CFA society in Australia without the CFA charter, you can in the UK with a certificate qualification. However, his qualifications may explain his poor ability to conduct critical analysis.
On the 19th August he had the scoop of "Archer Materials didn't disclose Australian patent body's objections". I don't know how much he read of the 'Examination report No 1 for standard patent application" dated the 11th February. However, the basis of his article is on the following extracts
Novelty/inventive step YesNONENo1-16
Patentable subject matter Yes1-16NoNONE
Detailed objections on issues that have been identified
Section 40 (support, disclosure, clarity, lack of unity)
1 The invention defined by 1, 6, 7 and 16 lacks support under subsection 40(3) for the reasons outlined in sections 1.1-1.5 of the EP Exam Report on EP3383792 dated 09/10/2019.
While not raised under Australian law, I agree with the reasons given in that report and consider that the same reasons provide the basis for a corresponding objection against the claims of the Australian application.
Further, claims 4 and 5 lack support as they appear to claim a desired result without providing details on how a qubit is operated at these temperatures, when cryogenic conditions are generally required.
Novelty and inventive step
Independent Claims 1, 6, 7 and 16 are not novel and lack an inventive step in light of the prior art documents discussed in section 2.3 of the EP Exam Report on EP3383792 dated 09/10/2019.
While the objection regarding these documents was not made under Australian law, I agree with the reasons given in that report and consider that they support a corresponding objection against the Australian claims.
Furthermore, dependent claims 2-5 and 8-15 are either disclosed in the cited prior art or are considered obvious to a person skilled in the art. For example the dimensions in claims 2 and 3 are obvious design choices for qubits.
If Tom Richardson took a minute to look up the EP3383793 patent, which the Australian objections are predicated on, he would have found the communication with the examiner on the 1st July disclosed:"The examiner pointed out that the addition of those features and other minor fixes (i.e. dependency of claim 9 on claim 8 rather than 5 and fixes to the description as pointed out in a previous communication from the examining division) would allow the examiner to issue an intent to grant (Rule 71(3)EPC)."Those changes were made verbatim on the 16th July or a month before his article.
If Tom Richardson really wanted to set the alarm bells off, ASX compliance you were asleep when these bells were ringing by your standards, he could spent another minute and looked at the US patent application number 15781011 on the 19th January when AXE was emailed a Non Final Rejection. Patent Number 11126925 is to be issued on the 21st September! This wasn't disclosed but Australian objections, that appear ex-ante, are queried?
Realistically a lot of damage has been done to the confidence of this stock given the high volume at higher prices.
(20min delay)