Here are the players. As a disclaimer, let me say that I am a
“short seller” here. I look for scams
and “misrepresentations’, and then bet that increased exposure will eventually
lead to a lower price. In this game
there are also the “retail investors” -- those who, for the most part, are betting
the price will rise. They usually do not
have time for in-depth research and depend upon analysts and the media for
their information. (This is where you guys come in.) But the average investors are not really on
the other side of the table from me; they only think they are. They are
often a resource for stock promoters
-- ping pong balls caught between stock promoters and short sellers.
Someone explain this to me. Here are the two virtually identical titles from your two
supposedly different journals.
Scientific American
|
|
MIT Technology Review
|
Dr. Thomas Hartwick – He recently signed up to validate and
interpret a “green” technology for Sustainable Power Corp (SSTP), which ran a
technology scam whose CEO was recently convicted in federal court for a pump
and dump scheme. (Evidence)
David Goodson is said to have collaborated with Nobel Prize
winners, Crick and Watson, under circumstances so extremely unlikely that it is
safe to say that someone has lied. Patents claimed for him in SEC filings were
faked. The commercialization of various technologies
were claimed – while in reality they failed and investors were burned. (Evidence)
Richard Rutkowski is the CEO. He has a history of financial
management and stock promotion -- “investor relations” -- not combustion
technology – and yet here he is as one of the “inventors” of Clearsign’s
technology. Rutkowski independently partnered
with -- and Clearsign also hired -- an Investor Relations rep named John C.
McFarland, who has been permanently
barred from the securities industry.
(Evidence
for Rutkowski, McFarland, and Osler)
Geoffrey Osler is the Chief Marketing Officer. He also has a
history with financial management and stock promotion and has partnered in the
past with Rutkowski.
Chris Wiklof is a patent agent for Clearsign and has also
been associated
with Intellectual Ventures, often
referred to as a “patent troll.” Intellectual Ventures is currently in the
crosshairs of President Obama’s executive orders: are these companies
protecting real inventors or just putting together patent portfolios for legal
“shake downs”? (Wiklofwith Intellectual Ventures and Intellectual
Ventures itself)
CNN reports:
“The Obama administration wants to crack down on abusive
court cases brought patent trolls, such as Intellectual Ventures.” …. “They
don't actually produce anything themselves," Obama said. "They're
just trying to essentially leverage and hijack somebody else's idea and see if
they can extort some money out of them."
“Intellectual Ventures is a notorious example of a
"patent troll" company. The research firm, based around the corner
from Microsoft's headquarters in the Seattle area, acquires thousands of patents
and has a research lab to develop its own. Yet it has no products to speak of.
The company engages in constant patent litigation, and many tech companies have
accused Intellectual Ventures of stifling innovation." ‘ ~ CNN Money -
In early 2013, I published Clearsign's
Lies, Omissions, And One 'Bad Actor'
The 2012 essay, “A
Serious Problem With ClearSign's Story,” sums up the critical failure here.
I could have titled it, “The case of the missing inventors.” In a nutshell, Clearsign
declared its technology in its 2009 patent application. The 5 “inventors” have all been discredited.
You can’t have a real invention without an inventor, but if one skips over the
history and surrenders all questions, one can be made to believe the newest
story. It’s patent application has
received a non-final rejection from the patent office. The USPTO has said that the technology has
largely been anticipated by others – but more of this later.
Originally, David Goodson had been singled out as the
original inventor of Clearsign’s technology. That didn’t work out too well, as you can see
from my reports. So perhaps we can
understand why Clearsign no longer mentions the original inventor of the
“revolutionary technology” … but it is difficult to understand how Scientific American and MIT Technology Review can write about Clearsign’s
technology-- and yet not a word about the
man who not too long ago was supposed to be the “original inventor” behind
Clearsign: David Goodson. Dr. Thomas
Hartwick was the top listed inventor on Clearsign’s first declaration of
its technology: the 2009 patent application at the USPTO. Why was there not a word about Clearsign’s
original inventors?
Needless to say, Scientific American has scored a big one for
stock promoters. On the official website, Clearsign Combustion now has the following
text and link: “Clearsign Combustion featured in Scientific American.” How can this be? The answer might be found in other highly
improbable coincidences: it appears as if the articles were cut-and-paste PR
material from Clearsign itself. Here’s
what I mean:
Scientific American
|
Much of the air pollution produced by today’s fossil-fuel power plants
is the result of imperfect combustion. Hot spots in a flame increase the
reactions between fuel and air molecules and lead to formation of common air
pollutants like nitrogen oxides (or NOx, a precursor to smog), carbon
monoxide (CO) and particulate matter.
|
MIT Technology Review
|
Much of the pollution from a power plant is the result of problems
with combustion. If parts of a flame get too hot, it can lead to the
formation of nitrogen oxides, which contribute to smog. Similarly, incomplete
burning, which can result from the poor mixing of fuel and air, can form
soot.
|
On the other hand, it is highly probable that the reporters
were just saving time by working with management-prepared material. The “articles” read like promotional material
designed by and for Clearsign, and not at all like independent research focused on the underlying technology and the
original innovators. It very much
appears that Clearsign – the company --
has been validated, since Scientific American is a prestigious institution and
has amassed a degree of credibility (at least among the general public).
Investors have just jumped onto what looks very much like a
coordinated promotional effort to pump up the stock price. See, Clearsign has
recently been set up to offer pieces of itself to the public for as much as $30
million dollars. The stock price has just soared about 100% in the last few
weeks. How convenient. Had the writers
done fifteen minutes of research into this technology
and its 200 year history they would have
easily found the true deserving
inventors and scientists -- who have
now been effectively neglected and ignored. It would not have been difficult to locate
them. Currently, Clearsign has no
patents, but of the three applications
mentioned in Clearsign’s last SEC annual filing, two have received non-final
rejections from the US Patent Office, saying
that the technology has been largely anticipated by others. The status of
these applications is now hanging in the balance. (The third application has not yet received
judgment.)
Link to http://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair,
input the following application numbers from Clearsign, and click on the tab
“Image File Wrapper.” We can read the
reasons for the USPTO rejections and the dialogue currently taking place. From Clearsign’s
last annual report with the SEC ….
US
|
12/753,047
|
System
and Apparatus for Applying an Electric Field to a Combustion Volume
|
ClearSign
Combustion Corporation
|
|||
US
|
13/006,344
|
Method
and Apparatus for Electrical Control of Heat Transfer
|
ClearSign
Combustion Corporation
|
|||
US
|
13/370,183
|
Electric
Field Control of Two or More Responses in a Combustion System
|
ClearSign
Combustion Corporation
|
Looking into the reasons
for these rejections we see a larger history
of innovation and the major innovators preceding
Clearsign’s claims. It is easy to
peruse these rejections and look up some of these patents:
2005 Michael Jayne: US2005/0208446
“An apparatus and method for the creation, placement and
control of an area of electrical ionization within an internal combustion
engine combustion chamber or a fuel burner for a furnace is disclosed.”
“The system of claim 2 in which the detector consists of
three cylindrical electrodes arranged concentrically around a burner, said
burner being arranged to burn the gas discharged from a chromatograph, said
burner in addition forming the fourth electrode.”
“An electrical device is used for guiding and/or altering a
flame. The flame is subjected to the action of an electric field.”
“The mixing zone, the combustion zone,
and/or the outlet comprises an electro-dynamic swirler configured to swirl
ionized gas. The electro-dynamic swirler comprises a plurality of electrodes in
electrical communication with a power source.”
“The invention relates to a fuel combustion
device (1) for the combustion of
fuels in an exothermic chemical reaction, comprising a device (2) for supplying the fuels, a
combustion chamber for combustion of the supplied fuels in a flame (10) and at least two electrodes (5, 9) through which an electrical
field (E) is applied to the flame (10)
with the purpose of producing a reaction plasma in said flame (10), wherein the reaction plasma
produced has a high degree of ionization.”
“The DC electric
field effect on the nonpremixed swirling flame dynamics, flame temperature and
composition profiles is studied experimentally with the aim of establishing the
feasibility of electric control of swirling combustion and formation of
polluting emissions.”
“An apparatus and process for controlling
the operation of a gas burner, by monitoring and controlling the stoichiometry
of the air and fuel gas during the burning process.”
Other inventions in this field, patented, but not mentioned
in the rejection are those by William and Frank Kaehni – 1952 -- (2604936)
and Franklin Wright – 1968 (3416870).
The basic knowledge behind this technology, as mentioned earlier, is two
hundred years old – 1814 -- “TheBakerian Lecture: On some new electro- Chemical Phenomena,” William Brande.
At this point we have to ask Scientific American and MIT
Technology Review: why wasn’t David
Branston mentioned in your articles?
Upon what basis can we believe
that you were more concerned with the technology itself than with presenting
rote PR material from Clearsign?
There is little excuse for not knowing who Branston is, or what his
contribution was, since a simple patent search on Google would have turned him
up. (All of this presumes of course that one’s aim is to research the
technology itself and not merely take the company’s own guided tour.) Branston
was even featured in my first report, exposing Clearsign’s misrepresentations
and published online over a year ago – a report syndicated through online news
feeds such as Yahoo!’s and Google’s. (“Clearsign:
The Reinvention of Fire or …?”) A responsible Google search would have turned
this up.
This is hard to grasp.
As we can see in the rejection documents, Branston, Jayne, Younsi and
others have real patents – which largely anticipate Clearsign’s patent
applications. Clearsign, at this point,
has no patents. Two of the three applications
claimed in its last annual filing have received non-final rejections. So we
have to ask Scientific American and MIT Technology Review:
What unique technology has Clearsign Combustion presented to
third-party review that others have not already claimed as their own
intellectual property? None? Then how do these articles qualify as science
and not as company promotion?
"Our technology has not been tested or verified by any
independent third party."
Why present Clearsign – the company – and not material that
has undergone the discipline of peer-review? Such discipline would have precluded mention
of Clearsign. Why not present the
accomplished and deserving innovators behind this fascinating technology? Why was Clearsign
singled out as if it just popped into existence as a “revolutionary”
technology – without a history? Where is the technology unique to Clearsign which has been verified
by a third party? I believe that the answer lies with
Clearsign’s having a promotional team so effective it has gamed, not just the stock
market, but the network of science and
technology journals as well. Evidently,
either a good PR team behind a publicly traded stock has more influence than the
research performed by a scientific journal … or responsible, independent research was not performed
here. That is to say, Scientific
American and MIT Technology Review have been gamed by a PR team with superior
talents.
What is the scientific method? That, you already know. What’s a technology scam? Perhaps we should go into this briefly. It’s not phony technology, as one would
think. It’s usually real technology
presented in a way that leads investors to believe that they can get outrageously
rich. It misrepresents the commercial
prospects of the device, the true ownership, or the competition. It takes advantage of the population’s
general ignorance of the history and science involved. It then gains credibility by forging mental associations
within investors … by simply getting
close to credible people, institutions, and periodicals … etc. This is the
“game” I am talking about. So the
influence of electrical fields on flames is
real. It does prevent pollutants from forming. It does shape flames. The
question is, Who owns the fundamental
technology? Who really developed it? Who really deserves the credit? David Goodson? Thomas Hartwick? No – that was
the old 2009 story. It’s now 2014 and Clearsign has assembled a new, more
credible team. They only need to be
presented front and center in PR material. No one will look below the surface.
No one will care that there are no credible
inventors to account for Clearsign’s original 2009 declaration of its
technology. No one will care that Clearsign
has already suffered a critical failure in their technology story. Click on the preceding link. If you read the essay you will see how
Clearsign's present claims exist downstream
from serious misrepresentations, leaving the present story implausible.
If a science or technology journal merely takes the PR
material without independent examination, Clearsign can emerge as the “leader”
of this technology – without having
demonstrated its “revolutionary” technology to a responsible third party! So Clearsign, the company, appears to
have been validated by Scientific American and MIT Technology Review. Its
attempt to skip over its original inventors, recruit new engineers and
professors, and get investors focused on this new team has received an unwitting “assist.” This is where you
guys came in.
Let me try to take up a defense for Scientific American: perhaps
the writer in question is really “just” a blogger in your network. But that is certainly not how it appears to a reader.
Here is the article as it appears in the Yahoo!
News feed
.
Note that an official looking “Scientific American” logo accompanies the title and article -- without sufficient qualification or disclaimer. It certaintly appears that Clearsign is “featured in” Scientific American and that Scientific American has performed some sort of due diligence here. (But then, I shouldn’t presume. Let’s just ask: Has Clearsign received any sort of thumbs up from Scientific American? Could you guys “add some color” to this? Do you stand behind this reporting? Can you even tell the reader what unique and revolutionary technology Clearsign has that can be publicly verified? None? Then what is the basis for the article?)
The standard procedure for sketchy situations would be to say that the company’s technology is top secret and they
don’t want to give an edge to their competitors. That’s why they don’t reveal
the technology to a third party, they say. But this is an angle for business to take,
not science. In a remotely related
case, SSTP claimed a “top secret” catalyst for its energy scam; the federal
government showed that it was flushed out in the initial operation of the
machine inspected and could not have even been used in the process. The same scientist who “interepreted” the
data for SSTP investors is the very same Dr. Hartwick who appears on Clearsign’s
patent applications. So any “top secret” technology here must be regarded with
some serious skepticism. I presented a slideshow
of evidence, which I also submitted to the SEC whistleblower program.
As an aside, I believe that Clearsign will eventually
succeed in developing a patent portfolio, after all CEO Rutkowski’s old acquaintance,
Mr. Wiklof, is astute at this business, and has experience with Intellectual
Ventures – a “patent troll.” Clearsign
has another member on its team who also has ties with Intellectual Ventures, Ms.
Swapna Hiray. So after the back and
forth, Clearsign will certainly end up with some
patents. They have added many more applications over this last year. But the question is, after Clearsign is
forced by prior patents and established technology to water down their claims, how much
real market power will exist?
It had been suggested to me that the intention behind
Clearsign and the deeply involved MDB
Capital Group LLC was to create a “patent troll.” The more I researched the company the more I
began to agree with this, while simultaneously coming to the conclusion that the
prospects are dwindling for the patent troll business model, given the recent
shift in the legal system – namely, losers may now have to pay the other’s
attorney fees. This will be a game
changer for patent trolls. Also given
President Obama’s executive orders, part of which involves increased scrutiny
at the US Patent Office, it is unclear to me how this is affecting/will affect
the prosecution of Clearsign’s patent applications, two of which were rejected
shortly after this order.
“The [Obama]
administration also told the patent office to tighten scrutiny of overly broad
patent claims and said it would aim to curb patent-infringement lawsuits
against consumers and small-business owners who are simply using off-the-shelf
technology.” ~ New
York Times (See news on President
Obama’s Executive orders:)
Let’s get back to the players in this game. In the stock market we are motivated by money;
in science, by prestige, a place in history perhaps … or even a genuine concern
for nature or health (we hold out such hope for human nature) … but sometimes
it’s still just money again. Journals
and the media also have financial motives, usually linked to increasing
readership. It is easy in this game to
be confused about what is right and what is wrong. Many investors even believe
that “motives” change a forensic conclusion, as if being paid to say that 2 + 2 = 4 would somehow lend credibility to the
alternative answer “5” when spoken by someone without financial reward. With the crowd it’s all up in the air, and
that’s why we need science. At some
point we need to look for the reality underlying the claim and assign a value to the most accurate
expression of that reality. That demand shouldn’t be too far off from the
aim of science: to sift through the myriad incentives that bias our views and
formulate an accurate view of our reality. I encourage Scientific American and MIT
technology Review to look beyond all of the motives in this situation and
investigate Clearsign within the scientific discipline. Should we take
Clearsign’s original inventors’ word for it? David Goodson and Dr. Thomas
Hartwick? Why should we skip over the first
story, and not let those misrepresentations by Clearsign to at least raise a
few questions for the newest story?
What verified and “revolutionary” technology has Clearsign
subjected to peer review?
Upon what scientific basis
is there a story here that involves Clearsign, the company?
But the problem here isn’t just about accuracy, nor is it
about doing even the most minimal research; it is also about giving credit
where credit is due … especially when it comes to scientists and their
technology.
Who deserves the credit for the technological breakthroughs
in this space?
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.