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    • Is Energy Conversion Devices Ready for a Comeback? [view article]
      I've not yet seen much attention drawn to what may be the most exciting aspect of ENER (and I am long the stock). Two weeks ago the company filed a patent application the likes of which I've never seen before. My experience with patents--while not vast--is that the patent attorneys are usually very cautious and conservative in their claims. If you invented an antigravity machine that was powered by rubber bands, the inclination of the attorney would be to say something like the "instant invention may have some utility in the transportation sector." He would certainly not say, even if he privately believed it, that the device would change the nature of life as we know it. The broader and more grandiose the claims, the more scrutiny they get from the patent examiner, so the best course is to appear modest. But it is just such language that we find in US Patent Application 20080090022 filed by Stanford Ovshinsky on April 17, 2008, and assigned to ENER. (The application can be examined at
      www.uspto.gov/patft/ )

      Some background: Mr. Ovshinsky has been called by some the "Thomas Edison of our time," and has more than 300 patents to his credit. ENER essentially was formed as a company to commercialize his inventions, and hopes to achieve sustained profitability this summer, a goal that seems plausible given the recent earnings report. You'll see for yourself if you care to glance through the application, but in essence it claims a new way to achieve true mass production of thin film solar panels. We're talking about miles and miles of the stuff. Given the feasibility of mass production on this scale, energy becomes virtually free. Take a couple of miles of this stuff and float it in the ocean. If you want, you can harvest the electricity directly. Or pass the current through the water and now you have an almost inexhaustible suppy of hydrogen, which can be used for vehicular transportation. And as a side benefit you can recondense some of the gases back to pure water. Fresh water from seawater--goodbye drought. The claim is that this device will effect a global change from a carbon to a hydrogen economy. Incidentally, war will end, as war is at root a competition for natural resources, and now we will have the technology available to magnify beyond all precedent the most fundamental of resources--energy and water.

      Large claims! Normally, I'd be tempted to dismiss such as the ravings of a lunatic, but the guy does have 300 patents to his credit. Needless to say, if only 1% of his claim is accurate, imagine what the stock of a company owning a patent on such a device would be worth.
      May 09 10:21 AM
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