Uh, you are "pretty sure he supplies the ingots to Swatch," but you are 100% WRONG. Even while he had the deal with LQMT as their Exclusive Manufacturer, he did not pay them, and neither did Materion pay LQMT on any sales they made to Visser for ingots. That was the deal LQMT made with the two of the in the contracts which mention all three parties. Materion has been clear in all of their public communications about their LiquidMetal arrangement. Some have inferred that Materion was not happy with the obstacle Visser presented to development of LQMT commercial scalee development. That barrier is lifted now that Visser's exclusivity has been dissolved.
Now Visser has fully paid-for rights to use LQMT processing methods to supply his own customers and buy Vitreloy (same as LM alloys available) directly from Materion. Swatch and Visser never have had any relationship around LQMT. There isn't anything he could have or can do for Swatch. He doesn't have to pay any fees to LQMT, though it appears LQMT is getting at least a pittance from Swatch.
Visser does not produce ingots. He gets them from Materion, which he will do for the handful of protypes he may still (allegedly according to LQMT) need to make for those "promising" applications.
Swatch does not need to go through to Visser for them to buy ingots from Materion. They merely heat the ingots they buy from Materion, (or buy them from some capable European alloy company) and fill some cavities on the front part of the rim of some of their watch cases using an "exotic advanced space-age high performance decorative material" for decoration. LQMT cannot limit where Swatch gets its ingots. They do not have to approve the material Swatch uses. Swatch just has to pay them to use the patents for the final application process.
