"What value do you assign and why? Explain"
Welp, here's how I see it:
If for no other reason, the x-ray patent application gave investors the belief that Loch/CDEx really did have top-secret revolutionary technology which had been rescued from the Boyz. There is no doubt in my mind that that is the reason CDEx allowed the patent application to be broadcasted all over the message boards.
Investors were reassured that there was a viable XRF technology as touted by Boone, Baker, and Philips which used x-rays to detect trace explosives at two meters in real time AND THAT IT HAD VALUE.
It helped solidify the bad cop, good cop portrait.
It prevented criminal prosecutuion IMO.
It prevented numerous civil law suits being slapped on eveyone involved in the Loch scam by showing the disgruntle investors that there really was a tech worth protecting and it wasn't blatantly false and misleading advertisement after all.
And last but not least, the patent has given CDEx protection if they ever decide to build a XRF that can detect and discriminate molecules of interest from a stand-off distance of at least about one meter as specified in ALL PATENT CLAIMS.
Let's stop and rethink this for a minute... if CDEx ever decides to build a detection device where the incident x-rays and return signal travel through a stand-off distance (not necessarily open air, but that would afford the most viable applications) of about one meter they have patent protection. That is the novel factor in ever one of their claims and without meeting that criterion, there is no protection IMO.
Do I ever foresee a product being manufactured based on this patent? NO! And I stated that opinion both before the patent app was ever filed, and now, after it as been granted.
So what did this cost CDEx? Don't know, but I think even $30-40K would have been a deal
