Yes, good point.
I personally think both arguments are somewhat valid.
It is true that the device which SFIO has created is unique but not yet popular because it takes vast amounts of cash to market a device worldwide, and SFIO does not have such cash to market on such a scale as to shepherd the herd of consumers into buying the device hand over fist. This I think is already known by most shareholders. We must remember though that the company is a MANUFACTURER. All they really need to do is work to improve the device over time and keep looking to land large distributor contracts. It is that simple.
To the argument that there will come someday a totally new ecig design made and marketed by big tobacco, I think that is obvious and should already be known. I cannot imagine that big tobacco would just stand by idle and watch as small ecig startups gain market share and grow to become big competitors in the space. This is known. The emerging ecig industry though in my opinion is going to be large and diverse enough to allow many economies of scale and ample room for many types of devices and products.
To claim definitively though that any small startup ecig manufacturer is doomed to fade into history immediately after big tobacco comes out with their own nicotine delivery devices is short-sighted IMO.
Lastly, the challenge to the patent should be discussed. It is true that in order for this company to keep a foothold in this new industry, their patents must hold up in court. I think that the argument making the point that another company can simply create a cube or a sphere or any other totally new non-cylindric nicotine delivery device (which does not have the look and feel of a normal tar cig) is totally valid, they can and they will. However, implementing such unorthodox design ideas has no bearing on the patent because with whatever design is used, there still exists a basic fundamental process in that device in order to deliver the nicotine (the delivery mechanism or process). What we know currently, based on the physics and chemistry associated with atomizing nicotine to be subsequently ingested, is that there are only a few possible ways to provide such functionality and methodology.
Such methods of delivery are already patented or are already on the fast track to becoming officially patented, therefore these avenues of delivery are blocked by a kind of toll road. Big tobacco will either have to pay these patent owners royalties to use the patented methodologies or buyout those companies or patent their own radically new delivery method; but the only possible delivery methods are already patented. If there is some new radical innovative way to get nicotine into the users bloodstream other than inhalation of vapor or vapor less nicotine then by all means let us hear the ideas, we would all be millionaires but I think all possible approaches have been patented (gum, patch, vapor ecig, vapor less ecig, etc); I mean, what are talking about here, nicotine eye drops?? Ok, whatever. They are already producing nicotine water, does that delivery method necessarily mean that it will put all other approaches out of business and make them irrelevant? I think not.
The USA vapor less patent will be granted after the company re-words a few sections in the application and along with product revisions, this manufacturer will wind up having a good quality patented device on the ecig market. I think the future is bright for this company.
GLTA
$SFIO!
