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Watts Watt

12/07/12 7:37 PM

#21826 RE: LQMTHOPE #21825

Excellent questions.

Glad to respond. To me, this is very cut and dry.

The research at Yale, when patented, will be licensed to those who want to pay the price for the license. Apple, for example, would have no problem obtaining the technology for fuel cells from Yale, as long as no other company outbids them. Making the fuel cell components as described here will be much more efficiently blow-molded than injection molded. Unless LQMT and its manufacturer VPC agree to get into this business, LQMT will not be involved in this, other than if Apple buys the IP from Yale and then allows LQMT to sub-license for non-CE business.


This is in the purview of Yales IP Department. It is no secret that Ted Andy Waniuk has worked with Jan Schroers for years, both at Cal Tech and their over-lapping time at Liquidmetal as employees.

In the case of blowmolding, Liquidmetal has no process patents involving blowmolding per se. If LQMT wants to get into the blow-molding business, they will have to negotiate with Yale to be assigned the rights to blow-mold. In addition, VPC would have to make huge capital outlays to get into the blow-molding side of things.

From talks with Bill Johnson and Tom Steipp, Steipp is limiting his current planning to injection molding.

For blow-molding, I would look to another company to invest in.

Liquidmetal can barely juggle one ball at a time; asking them to do more is suicide and way beyond the competence of current management.
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jpaige17

12/07/12 10:33 PM

#21830 RE: LQMTHOPE #21825

I don't know any of the details, but my guess is that Apple will be purchasing any valuable patents in this area for its own use in consumer electronics. And Liquidmetal will then get the rights to those patents outside of consumer electronics. This relationship seems to be materializing a number of patents for Liquidmetal, as we now have 55 granted patents and another 55 pending. We didn't have nearly that many pending patents a year ago and I'm pretty sure Liquidmetal hasn't been paying for them themselves.