Provisional Patent lapsed?

LIT has currently 2 provisional patents registered with AusPat.

From AusPat:
A provisional application is an inexpensive way of signalling your intention to file full patent application later on. Think of it as a placeholder. A priority date establishes the fact that you are the first person to file a new invention with us. While a provisional application doesn’t provide you with the protection of a full patent, it does give you up to 12 months to consider your options before deciding to proceed with a patent application.

This is one of the patents, not sure what it applies to:

Caustic digestion process

and has a publication date of 2016-08-18

This is the second one and is probably Sileach:

PROCESS FOR RECOVERING LITHIUM VALUES FROM LITHIUM BEARING MATERIALS

This provisional patent has a publication date of 2016-02-25 which means it has actually lapsed by now (12 month period) and they have lost the priority date. No technical documents have been filed, none whatsoever as the provisional patent is just an intent (with no actual content).

It makes me think that this is the reason AG is so touchy when asked about the Sileach details because it is not protected at all. When a patent is filed IP is protected starting from the priority date and technicals details are released in the public domain.


As a shareholder of LIT (I'm not!) I would be very concerned about this and would demand answers as to why there was no patent filed.

Probably also a big reason for the Lepidico TO attempt.