Hawks, I appreciate your posts because your interest and approach strike as sincere and earnest and your knowledge of research practices, as someone in the science field, is a bonus.
I think the questions you pose are logical and important. But -- and this is of course speculation...you seem to leave possible politics outside of your discussion. As a businessperson, and admittedly as a non-scientist, I would add that while I don't begin to claim any certainty of understanding of the possible politics of the matter, it does strike me as a possibility that things may be a little more complicated than meets the eye, politically speaking.
I mean, hasn't GEA been after the same, or very similar patent award as Sigma -- having filed their application one day later? Were the patent applications indeed for the very same technology? Perhaps you can confirm this?
Total speculation here, admittedly, but maybe when Mark cites the earlier version that was tested within America Makes, what he really could mean is that, yes, improvements have been made, but also maybe he is saying, wait a minute, GE... here's another chance to reconsider your grading of our technology, under the cover of the updates that we have made.
If you think that there is a political dynamic here...And I'm not saying that there is -- I'm merely saying that it seems possible that there could be...but if there is...then you have to figure that a big part of the political dynamic would be David and Goliath-esque in nature and that the last thing that Sigma would do, practically speaking, would be to start making allegations against GE.
Maybe the companies' interests divided that day that GEA filed their patent application and Cola hasn't felt exactly able to speak candidly about things re GE and has harbored hopes all along that by not acting adversarially his giant partner might come around.
Either he knows, on some level, that the testing and report were fair and his technology didn't measure up fully, or he knows that it wasn't fair and that he's trapped from candor in saying so in complicated circumstances, with a partner a thousandfold in size.
Strictly my theoretical speculation. I don't claim to know the answer, but I do think there could be political complexities.
