Leonardo Patent Report Publication Scheduled for Nov 21? [UPDATED — EU Examiner Dissatisfied]

Thanks to E-Cat World reader Torbjörn for bringing attention to the European Patent Register report on Leonardo Corporation’s “Method and Apparatus for Carrying Out Nickel and Hydrogen Exothermal Reactions” patent application.

I am not familiar with how this patent application process works, but there are entries in the status report that indicate recent activity in connection with this patent. On October 19th of this year there is an entry stating, ” Despatch of a communication from the examining division”, and the “First Examination Report” is listed as taking place on November 21, 2012.

I am not sure how to interpret these entries. It seems to me that a despatch of a communication would indicate a report sent to Leonardo Corp., and that an “examination report” would be a public disclosure, but I don’t really know if that’s the case. If there are any people here experienced with how this whole process works, it would be interesting to hear your comments.

UPDATE:

It seems I did not dig deep enough.

There are documents associated with this patent application published on October 19th which show that the patent examiner are not satisfied with the amount of information provided by Leonardo.

In this Communication document the examiner states that the application “does not meet the requirements of the European Patent Convention” and gives Leonardo for months to correct deficiencies. If these corrections are not provided the application will be considered withdrawn.

The deficiencies are outlined in this document, the Annex. Here it states that among other things:

The description does not disclose in a manner sufficiently clear the invention . . . In the description it is claimed that the reaction of hydrogen and nickel produces copper and is generating energy. However, there is no explicit evidence of copper and energy as a result of a nuclear reaction . . . At present cold fusion, which is the basic explanation given in the description is not accepted as mainstream science and technology . . . In the present case, the invention does not provide evidence which would enable the skilled person to assess the viability of the invention . . . it is reported that the process takes place ‘in the presence of unknown catalysts’. No information on the catalyst material from the tube is provided in the description as filed.

Rossi has been very secretive about the inner workings of the E-Cat, and the lack of detail in the patent application has been seen by many observers to be a danger for Leonardo and Rossi in terms of getting patent approval — it seems these concerns are echoed by the patent examiners.