How to win by losing: give up and declare victory!

And that’s what Rossi did, in spite of the insanity proclaimed on LENR Forum and elsewhere, and his followers lap it up, even though, like much buzz on Planet Rossi, it is utterly preposterous.

For a year, on his blog, Rossi had been proclaiming that he was going to demolish IH in the lawsuit, that he had proof, etc. Out of eight counts alleged, four were dismissing from a motion (and a count must be really poor to be dismissed at that stage — and what remained was hanging on a thread. Maybe Rossi could come up with some killer proof in discovery. That never happened, all that Rossi found were some ambiguous statements that, if one squinted, could look a little like what he was claiming, whereas the other side was heavily supported.

Rossi was going to lose, and, as pointed out (as if this meant something nasty about IH), if Rossi somehow did win, IH would go into Chapter 11 and Rossi would get nothing for all those legal expenses, and maybe not his IP and license back; rather, the license would go up for auction; it might be tied up for years.

All this would have been obvious before filing the suit. This is the excuse given. On LENR Forum, Sifferkoll, that very paradigm of accurate and sober reporting (even Mats Lewan told him it was too much) wrote:

maryyugo wrote:

When Rossi enthusiasts claim he won Rossi vs IH vs Rossi, it illustrates clearly how bizarre their thought process truly is. Rossi sued for $89M plus triple punitive damages. IH countersued for 11.5M plus or minus. In the settlement, Rossi got NOTHING (nada, zip, zilch) on his almost $400 MILLION complaint and paid his own legal bills in the millions. So this was a win for Rossi? In which alternative universe?

Mary is right more often than a stopped clock. In an ordinary discussion, Sifferkoll being a real person (he has openly disclosed his name), and Mary Yugo being a pseudonymous troll, repeating the same message over and over and yet again, Siffer would have the advantage in my book. But Mary, as is often the case, is pointing out the obvious, and Siffer is denying it and instead believing a quite implausible story that Rossi invented, perhaps with the assistance of his attorney (this might have come from Lukacs, who engineered the settlement.

I guess you could interpret it in that non rational way when your Rossi-hate reaches a local peak…

Mary Yugo is a pseudoskeptic debunker, that’s a long-term identity. I don’t know if he hates, he may simply be more in love with his own thinking, proud of how, if IH had only listened to him, they’d have saved over $20 million.

(That is not actually so. Because IH took that risk with Rossi, they had credibility with Woodford, which then kicked loose $50 million for real LENR research. LENR is a very risky business. Right now, the smartest money is being very cautious, just going for core science, not commercial opportunities. It is not clear that any really exist. The closest possibility is Brillouin, but I find that shaky. With deeper and stronger core scientific confirmation of a nuclear effect, other funding possibilities will open up.)

When you calm down again you could read the Mats Lewan interview to understand it was not about the money but all about getting the license and IP back… To Rossi it is worth a lot more than what he might have got from IH (they would probably only have filed chapter11, and it would have taken forever)

https://animpossibleinvention.com/2017/07/18/heres-the-settlement-getting-the-license-back-was-rossis-top-priority/

Sifferkoll is an Aspie blogger, not a journalist. Mats was a journalist, and I’m working as a blogger/journalist, and journalists attribute opinions, we do not report them as fact. Siffer, here, states Rossi Says as if it were fact, which is very common on Planet Rossi (and that is the alternate universe that MY mentioned).

Lewan’s headline was a bit incautious, but he is correct in his first lines:

In the settlement between Rossi and his US licensee IH, Rossi got the license back together with all E-Cat equipment and materials, while none of the parties will have to pay damages to the other. Getting the license back was his top priority all the time, Rossi explains in this interview.

Mats reports:

The settlement was drafted on July 5, 2017, on the fourth day of the trial regarding a lawsuit that Rossi filed in Florida, mainly against his US based licensee Industrial Heat, IH, early in April 2016, for not having paid the final amount of USD 89M according to the license agreement, after one year of operation of a 1MW heat plant based on Rossi’s E-Cat technology, apparently successful according to a supposedly independent report made by nuclear engineer Fabio Penon.

The settlement was almost certainly not drafted that day, unless it had previously been written by Lukacs and was submitted. July 5, the parties were prepared to begin the evidentiary phase of the trial, having given their opening statements the previous day in court (before the holidays). Rossi counsel was setting up supporting material, a timeline. Lukacs requested a little time to talk to the lead IH attorney, and the judge — rather impatiently, perhaps — granted it. Again, unless it was already drafted, by Rossi’s new attorney, there was no time for details and drafting.

This was last-minute, not a sign of a long-term plan, i.e., “all the time.” That makes no sense except on Planet Rossi, where reality is retroactive based on Rossi Says, and anything else is “hate.” For that comment on the date, Lewan cites … coldfusioncommunity.net. (I was the only journalist there at the time.)

Lewan adds “supposedly” to the comment about the Penon report. Lewan has never shown any sign of understanding the issues in the trial. Legally, the Penon report was irrelevant, because the evidence was clear that Doral was not a “Guaranteed Performance Test.” While lawyers will say that predictions of a jury decision are hazardous, from the opening statements and my knowledge of the attested evidence that was revealed from the various motions in the trial, Rossi was going to see a strongly adverse jury verdict. The extent of the damage to him would be unclear. The payments of $11.5 million total were probably not reversible, due to estoppel. However, the Doral “test” was fraudulently created — whether or not the Penon report was valid — and IH might have been able to collect some damages from that, as much as a few million dollars, perhaps. Not enough to justify the legal expenses.

I and many others were disappointed that the matter wasn’t going to be adjudicated in court, but, at the same time, everyone in the courtroom — including me — was jubilant. This lawsuit was a mistake from the beginning, completely unnecessary for what Rossi claims was his goal “all the time.” Those goals, as explained to Lewan, were paranoid reactivity, fantasy, and excuse, and Lewan does not seriously question the story.

Lewan loses his objectivity almost immediately, presenting the Rossi argument as if fact:

The defense, on the other hand, accused Rossi of having produced false results in conspiracy with Penon and others. Eventually, however, none of these accusations could be confirmed by proof, which I will comment on below.

This is Rossi’s version of the IH claims, not an objective assessment. Lewan is here a blogger, not a journalist. (I hope that when I’m giving my opinion, I’m clear; blogs are essentially editorial in nature, and “editorial” is opinion. We also build content here, and some pages are intended to be neutral. Most of the Rossi v. Darden case pages are neutral; a few have some additional commentary, set off.)

Lewan does not understand what IH claimed, so he misrepresents it, and imagines that it would have been necessary for IH to “prove” that the Penon results were “false.” What the evidence and attested testimony  actually did was show that some of these results were highly questionable, and these points have been argued ad nauseum on LF and elsewhere, including here, but that was not core to their case.

I was there, in court, and my goal was accurate and fair reporting, not some agenda with regard to one party or another. What was clear to me was that, unless Rossi managed to pull a rabbit out of a hat — and he had only a wig, not a hat — , and after a year of legal maneuvering, the jury was going to reject all of Rossi’s claims. What they would have decided on the IH claims of fraudulent inducement is a more difficult call, but not much more. There had been fraudulent inducement in setting up the Doral demonstration or power sale, and that was plain and clear.

In the conversation with Rossi, Lewan addresses a few issues, but only from Rossi’s point of view, he does not seem to have a knowledge of the actual claims and evidence. However, today, my focus is the plausibility of the story that the settlement was a victory because Rossi got what he wanted all along. Lewan quotes Rossi:

“There were two clauses in the license agreement that were extremely dangerous to us—the right of first choice [if you plan to make any agreement outside of the licensee’s territory, you first have to offer the licensee the possibility to make an agreement for that new territory] and the rights also to all subsequent inventions. These clauses would have made any further development very complex.

This is not accurately stated. It is called the “right of first refusal.” One can negotiate with a third party, but cannot enter into a binding agreement with the third party  without first offering the same agreement with the holder of the right of first refusal. I am not sure why (or even if) IH insisted on that right. They might easily have given it up; half a trillion dollar market is still worth far more than they paid. If it’s real.

The question I have is why this would be such an obstacle for Rossi. He was still in line for many billions in profits, and this would not stop him from expanding sales or licenses in the Rossi territory. It was all essentially moot if there were no products, and if Rossi needed to raise more money, he could simply offer a specific territory to IH under the same conditions he would accept from someone else. The problem is not this, it is what Rossi comes to, he had already decided that he did not want to deal with IH at all, because ….

“The perspective for the continued trial was that we could win or we could lose. You always have to examine these possibilities and investigate the consequences. A victory for us risked becoming a pyrrhic victory. Even though we were convinced of having a very strong case, eventually the jury would decide. And the problem was that in the case of a victory, the jury would probably say that it would be fair for Leonardo Corporation [Rossi’s company] to receive the claimed funds, but it would also be fair for IH to keep the license. For us to also get the license back was beyond the horizon.

Right. All this was obvious in April 2016 when Rossi filed the lawsuit.

“So my lawyers asked me before the trial which my priorities were if the trial would lead to any transactions—those indispensable and those negotiable.

When before the trial? The time for questions like that would be before filing the lawsuit itself! Some of the pre-suit negotiations between Rossi and IH came out. It was all Rossi demand — and refusal to allow the visits clearly allowed by the Term Sheet agreement Rossi had signed, and while the Term Sheet did not mention “test,” the ability of IH to fully observe any testing was crucial. When Rossi rejected that Murray visit, in July 2015, he was deliberately and clearly terminating the friendly relationship with IH. Why did he do this?

Rossi actually gives the reason in a pleading. He claims that he believed that Murray was a spy. Sure. He was an engineer, working for IH, who would report to them what he found. And Rossi could not tolerate that. But how did it arise that he even thought of IH as adverse?

That also comes out. It was the Woodford Investment, being spent on other than Rossi. It seems to have never occurred to Rossi that IH might also work with others, investigating the whole LENR field. By that point, IH had found that they could not get the Rossi technology to work. (Rossi, of course, claims they were lying, but there is no indication of any lying in the various IH-related depositions and documents, all that Rossi found was some optimistic statements, early on. On the other hand, there were Rossi claims, under oath, that even if Rossi might have thought, in his delusional world, were “true,” would have been seen by the jury as clearly deceptive. And that might later happen again in a perjury prosecution, and my idea of what Lukacs did, July 5, was to act bolbdly to protect his client from that possibility. He did a magnificent job, actually, better than I could have imagined.

My answer was that the indispensable condition was to get the license back because I didn’t want to collaborate with IH anymore. As for the financial aspects, I told them which my expectations were, from a lower level to a higher one.”

What Rossi actually got was a walk-away, which is not significantly different, as to practical realities, from what he’d have had if he did not file the lawsuit. There is a difference, to be sure: if his technology is real, he has gotten all his beans back. He did not have to file this enormously complex litigation in order to be free of Industrial Heat, he could merely ignore them. If they filed a lawsuit — which I consider would have been very unlikely, for all the reasons why they accepted the settlement — he would not have lost anything, but he went ahead and filed immediately and incurred, probably, millions of dollars in legal costs, well before there is any revenue.

He was spending present money to prevent an imaginary difficulty in the future, one that could be handled if it arose. In reality, he wanted out of the agreement for very personal reasons. IH had become unwilling to accept any more Rossi Says, and that was intolerable. Rossi Does Not Deal With Snakes. And anyone who wants to verify what Rossi Says is a Snake.

Had he wanted out of the Agreement, he’d have asked for that in the Complaint. He did not. What he wanted was money, lots of it, $89 million tripled for fraud. The “fraud” was based on an allegation that they never intended to pay him, but that was his own invention, he had no evidence for it other than nonpayment itself, under conditions where there was actually no payment due, per the Agreement.

6. ROSSI and LEONARDO are filing this suit to enforce the terms of the License Agreement and to put an end to IH and IPH’s continued wrongful infringement upon ROSSI and LEONARDO’s valuable intellectual property.

(The “infringement” claims were dumped by the judge. IH walking away, at the end, is an extremely strong indication that they considered the “intellectual property” worthless. Rossi often says “let the market be the judge.” Here was a market, and it judged. His “technology” was not considered worth the few million dollars that it would cost to keep the license. Of course, maybe Rossi can find another buyer. A buyer that would look at the record in Rossi v. Darden and still go ahead deserves to lose every penny.)

Rossi’s “Prayer for Relief,” an essential part of a Complaint, has nothing but requests for money damages for alleged violations of the Agreement and Rossi’s IP rights. There is no clue in any of the early documents that Rossi wanted the license back.

No, this was almost certainly invented the morning of July 5 (or possibly in some prior conversation between Rossi and Lukacs). It was very obvious in all the case filings, and what he wrote on JONP, that Rossi intended to fight this all the way, and he was heavily committed. What changed?

I think it was Lukacs. He was new to the case, but highly experienced. I think he looked at the evidence, watched the opening statements, and saw what I saw, only with much more experience than I, the freight train coming down the track. He could not just tell Rossi, “You lied!” Rossi would have tossed him out!

So that is not what he’d have said, regardless of what he thought. He’d have said, “Dr. Rossi, I know it seems unfair, but, with my decades of experience, this is how this case will look to a jury. They will almost certainly not accept your arguments, and they will accept those of the defendant. As well, your friends, Johnson and Fabiani and Bass, may incur some liability. Further, again, it may seem unfair, but some of your testimony is going to look like it was perjury, so a perjury prosecution might succeed, so I must advise you to accept a reasonable settlement.

I think I can propose one, and I think they will accept. You will get your license back (because they have pretended i was worthless) and you will get to keep what they paid you already. May I propose this?

And than, as well, Rossi may have realized that he could then keep on claiming that he’d have won, but “really, all he wanted was the IP back.” And people like Mats Lewan will continue to support him. And, of course, Sifferkoll.

I’ll say that how it appeared to me in Doral was that Rossi’s team had no idea this was coming down until it happened. It is not impossible that Lukacs simply cut the Gordian knot with Pace, the IH lead attorney, and then presented it to Rossi. That is how it looked!

Discussion on LF continued. Many get the facts wrong. LF then becomes a compendium of error, with no way to know if a post has later been corrected, unless by reading a massive pile of posts. A user can correct their own post, but many don’t bother, even with blatant errors.

Mary Yugo is quoted above with:

Rossi sued for $89M plus triple punitive damages.

This seems to be a common misunderstanding. Triple damages is a tripling of actual damages, not an additional penalty. The basis for requesting it would be alleged fraud in the original Agreement, very very unlikely, the claim held on by a thread. There were other alleged damages, most of which would not have any actual value, most of which were dismissed entirely.

So Mary several times refers to Rossi suing for $400 million, which is doubly exaggerated. It would have been maybe $356 million plus costs, even under the erroneous understanding. Instead, it was basically $267 million. Mary’s point, however, does stand, that Rossi got nothing remotely like what he claimed.

Sifferkoll wrote:

maryyugo wrote:

I am certain if Rossi had simply asked IH to give him back the IP, they would have. IH desperately wanted to get rid of this unpleasant man and his worthless claims.

Well, he did. He even offered to pay for getting the license back, but they denied. IH did not want to get rid of Rossi. On the contrary they absolutely wanted to keep him in tight leash silenced by NDA for as long as possible.

All this will be obvious to you when your tantrums ebb out.

The reasons why IH would have accepted the offer are the same as the reasons why they accepted the settlement. There could have been sound reasons for refusing, but they require IH not anticipating the problems of the lawsuit, and IH already had Jones Day as counsel in negotiating with Rossi before the lawsuit. There is no evidence or sign, other than Rossi’s own claim (after the lawsuit was filed) that he had made such an offer. Given how Rossi distorts what he has said to others, this was shown again and again by court documents, and given that Rossi might have made some casual mention to someone connected with IH which Rossi translated to an “offer,” the report simply is of little clear meaning.

This seems fairly clear: the Rossi case did not get stronger over the year, but weaker. If there had been a formal offer, Jones Day would have been aware of it, and would very likely have insisted on something based on it, more than the walk-away. Say the return of all the devices and the license for $11.5 million, minus some allowance for Rossi’s expenses. Rossi, as I recall, implied that the “offer” was for $11.5 million. Then, if he didn’t have it, some alternate agreement could have been made that left some residual interest for IH, but no operational control. So if Rossi becomes a trillionaire, they would still get some cut, which would not hinder or stop him.

That is how real lawyers and real business-people would negotiate (they attempt to create a win-win). No, I think that offer did not exist or was not serious or taken seriously. Lukacs, I suspect, presented to Jones Day that it had to be a walkaway with return of license in order to get Rossi to agree, which might have been true — the existence of a formal offer for return for payment would have demolished this.

There was no NDA preventing Rossi from negotiating in his own territory. Rather, what was prohibited was disclosing the agreement with IH (which Rossi violated). IH clearly did not care about the Rossi QX bloviations.

The story that Rossi was hamstrung by the Agreement is pure Rossifiction. Rossi, as well, could have sold power in Sweden, as he purported to do in Doral. The License Agreement did not prevent that, at all.

Sifferkoll wrote:

Nigel Appleton wrote:

As I remember it, the Rossi (and/or his supporters) CLAIMED there was a cash offer to get the IP back; but IH denied having had any such offer. I don’t recall any evidence either way, but I don’t remember the Rossi claiming this in any sworn deposition.

I believe it originated on Mats Lewan blog. (and not in any deposition either way). And I guess it is not in the interest of IH to admit it happened…

That’s crazy. It would have been very much in their interest to use that offer in negotiating the settlement. There was no court-ordered settlement, it was not legally stipulated. There appears to simply have been an agreement to walk with no judicial order other than mutual dismissal, and my understanding at the time was that details would be worked out. A formal settlement offer would certainly have been used to argue for some cash or other compensation to IH. However, there is this persistent idea that they lie and conceal. It’s misplaced on the wrong party.

There is no sign of IH deception in the evidentiary record. They are close-mouthed, they don’t blab, except maybe Dewey sometimes, but that’s it.

(Rossi apparently gave Mats a copy of the agreement. It was not yet in effect, because it had not been signed by all the parties necessary.)

This was the Lewan blog about the alleged offer:

Claiming that everything he said could be proven with documents (or that he otherwise would be lying), Rossi told me regarding the one-year 1MW test that:

This was published May 16, 2016, a month after Rossi filed the lawsuit. There are many factoids there, many of which turn out to be misleading. In any case, here is the relevant item, and some more that was stated with it.

During summer 2015, IH offered Rossi to back out from the test and cancel it, with a significant sum of money as compensation. Rossi’s counter offer was to give back the already paid 11.5M and cancel the license agreement, but IH didn’t accept.

The first part, the alleged offer from IH, is more-or-less believable, though it probably was not stated quite like that. Rossi knew, before the alleged “test,” that the amendment that allowed a late test had been cancelled, because Ampenergo refused to accept it. IH did tell Rossi not to worry, money was not the problem, but they needed to have his full support in making devices that worked. This could readily have been intepreted by Rossi as he claims here. The Doral Plant was not called a “test,” as far as the documents show, until Rossi rejected the IH engineer visit in July, 2015.

At that point, IH was still attempting to work with Rossi, but Rossi had obviously already decided not to work with them, hence he may have thought of his counter-offer. At this point (May, 2016), though, Rossi’s story was totally self-serving. His point would be that IH believed the license agreement was worthwhile.

What I thought about this when I first saw it was that $11.5 million wasn’t enough, given that IH had invested, by this time, about $20 million.

From their Answer and countercomplaint, IH was running two possibilities: first, that the technology was worthless, nothing there, but the second was that Rossi had, out of his paranoia, not shown them how to make it work. In that event, they would not want the license cancelled, but they would refuse to give him more money until he satisfied the Agreement requirements.

If the technology was worthless, if they had concluded that by that time, they would have jumped at the offer, I suspect, if it was actually made. They also would have known that Rossi could not afford more, possibly not even $11.5 million. So, if this was actually an offer, more than just some idea in Rossi’s mind (like his relationship with Johnson Matthey), they might have come back with something different, and if Rossi ignored that, it would be consistent with the story told to Lewan. They “didn’t accept.” That is what they did not do, not what they did. Lewan is so frikkin naive!

Lewan pretty clearly did not ask Rossi to see the “documentary proof,” and I may readily speculate that this is because he knows what would happen if he did. In any case, this went on:

The unidentified customer (‘JM Products’) using the thermal energy from the MW plant, had its equipment at the official address—7861, 46th Street, Doral, Fl. The total surface of the premises was 1,000 square meters, of which the MW plant used 400 and the customer 600.

The customer was supposed to be very secret, but Rossi and his attorney were in such a hurry to file the lawsuit (they actually filed the day before the alleged $89 million payment became past due)  that a document signed by Johnson for JM Chemical Products (later “JM Products”) actually irrelevant to the Agreement and signed years later, was included in the Exhibit.

We came to know that there was no distinct customer, that this was entirely Rossi, and that there was no process being run by JMP that required substantial energy. JMP was Rossi all the way down, with an old friend as a figurehead signing trust papers, the trust entirely administered by Johnson, President of Leonardo Corporation, and all funding coming from Rossi and Rossi being the manager of JMP — with James Bass as an occasional figurehead. The Bass testimony nails Rossi on a series of issues, such as the claim that the real customer of interest was the British firm, Johnson Matthey. And I could go on and on about this. Rossi lied, and the jury would have concluded that.

(Rossi makes claims about this that are simple denials, but that ignore the actual evidence that Rossi intended to deceive, and continued it.)

The equipment of the customer measured 20 x 3 x 3 meters, and the process was running 24/7.
The thermal energy was transfered to the customer with heat exchangers and the heat that was not consumed was vented out as hot air through the roof.

This was total BS. First of all, heat is not “consumed,” generally. At this point, as I recall, on JONP, Rossi was claiming an endothermic process. In testimony, the product was a few grams of platinum sponge, or later, a little graphene. So endothermy was out of the question even if inadequate to handle a megawatt. Secondly, the steam was conducted into a series of pipes in the “customer area,” and presumably the product samples were placed in containers inside those tubes. While one might call that a “heat exchanger,” it was really just a soak in heat. Again, at this point, Rossi was claiming that heat went out the roof as hot air.

When it became apparent, by the beginning of 2017, that this simply was not going to fly, his own expert attested that the warehouse would have become fatally hot, then — and only then, Rossi claimed a “heat exchanger,” which, again, was not actually a heat exchanger in the sense of transferring power for usage, it was claimed to be a massive set of pipes that would transfer heat to air being blown out of the front windows of the warehouse, above the entrance. This was not a means of “transferring heat to the customer,” Heat, whatever heat there was, was transferred to the “customer area” — this was, quite simply, Rossi — by the main steam pipe only. Then, in the later story, the enormous alleged heat was dissipated in the mysterious heat exchanger that nobody saw.

MATS would not have known all this at that time, but had he followed the case, he would have known much more when he interviewed Rossi after the settlement. I conclude that Lewan did not follow the case, and flat-out doesn’t know what he’s doing. It’s unfortunate, because I think Lewan started out attempting to be a neutral journalist. That, however, cannot be done by communicating only with one side and paying no attention to the rest. Mats is no longer a journalist, he is a book author, with a subject rapidly becoming completely moot.

Sifferkoll wrote:

Nigel Appleton wrote:

So you’re presenting an evidence-free assertion as fact? Way to go.

Ehh, it is a fact that it was claimed. What is so hard to understand? And it is beyond reasonable doubt that IH will never admit it due to legal circumstances.

Yes. “It” was claimed, but without actually sourcing it, any difference between what as claimed by Rossi and what was then claimed by Sifferkoll will be obscured. So it was still “evidence-free.” Further, Sifferkoll did not start with an attributed claim, he started with an alleged fact:

Well, he did. He even offered to pay for getting the license back, but they denied

And then, with no evidence at all, Sifferkoll claims that IH “will never admit it” is “beyond reasonable doubt.” That is a legal term. It means what it says, yet it is not actually plausible that IH (which isn’t a person, by the way) “will never admit it due to legal circumstances” — with those circumstances not being stated. This is all Sifferkoll acting as if he is an inimpeachable source, to be trusted without evidence, and he’s right as to some on Planet Rossi. If there had been such an offer, it would not harm IH, unless one imagines IH as being crazy-defensive, not ever admitting any errors, because that is the most that this could be, an error in hindsight. In fact, in the business Darden is in, lots of investments fail, and some of those investments, in hindsight, were errors. It’s the nature of a risky business.

IH is not selling their stock on youtube or using social media, where mob psychology might demand this or that. The investors are all close, and understand the risks. However, their activity with LENR requires that they be considered trustworthy, and if they lie about what has happened, it could damage that. This was also possibly a reason for walking from the lawsuit. They were countersuing, which made it easier, but … if they had a reputation for suing inventors, it could seriously damage future prospects. They would want to be forgiving, and to appear so. That is how Darden appeared at ICCF-19, and in the Macy interview, it is the identity of Darden and Industrial Heat.

(His personal presence in Miami, was consistent with it, by the way. He seemed puzzled by how Rossi had treated him.)

Max Nozin wrote:

maryyugo: IH lost the moment trial went in front of the jury.

Charismatic engineer fighting for adoption of his Earth saving tech vs a big Corp backed by an expert who can’t properly read water pump label to determine max flow.

Again, I was there. The day before the settlement, all the parties gave their opening statements to the jury. The facts presented did not look like Nozin claims. Yes, Rossi counsel was probably going to try to present it that way, but … that story was far more complicated than the Industrial Heat story, which was carefully designed to be easy to follow. Maybe oversimplified, and Rossi presents that water pump issue as a “gotcha.” Wrong, he claims. In fact, we have gone around and around that issue. Both sides have been inaccurate. We will come to that. But the jury would still have seen Rossi as a nice-looking liar, willing to deceive to get what he wants. Rossi had not done well in court in the past. His followers follow him in claiming that he was “exonerated of all charges” in Italy. That’s not what Mats Lewan reports, and Mats is quite generous to Rossi. Most charges were dismissed on technicalities, not as “exonerations.”

The jury did not see the Smith report on the pump capacity; rather, Pace, in his opening, wherein he would present what he wanted the jury to keep in mind, presented an image of the pump label and showed the drastic difference between the capacity listed there and the necessary rate for flow to be as claimed by Rossi and Penon.

The reality: the label rating is a guaranteed flow, not an actual maximum, but to get greater than the stated flow, one would need to be running the pump outside of its specified range. As has been pointed out, there are manufacturer documents which refer to the flow rate in question as “maximum,” so the Smith comment, on which Pace was apparently relying, was easily understandable and not at all as stupid as Planet Rossi thinks. (Planet Rossi is fond of considering others, including experts, as stupid>)

Sifferkoll wrote: [to Mary Yugo]

We’ll take the QX, feed it with a couple of Watts and then you will of course voluntarily put your finger on it…. And … we will have a result that can be measured by both sound and color.

Sifferkoll has no concept of physical reality with a “couple of Watts.” The QX is a small device. Feed it with a couple of watts, (i.e., dissipate a few watts in it) I would expect it to be too hot to touch. Of course, the whole scenario is preposterous. Even when Jed Rothwell was writing that he thought the E-Cat was real, Rossi would not let him attend a demonstration, because he wanted to bring his own instruments. Rossi does not allow people to bring their own instruments, generally. If a person is gullible and thinks that “hot” means “lots of power,” he might let them touch it, though.

This went on and on, repeating arguments that have been thoroughly addressed before, and by experts and others who are knowledgeable.

The tests of the Prominent pump Rossi used were misrepresented. The issue of the “ERV” was misrepresented. The problems with the Penon report were ignored in favor of “he is an expert, so I trust him.”

What problems” Well, supposedly the plant was generating steam, but pressure was 0.0 bar, probably an error for 0.0 barg, a shocking mistake, in fact. But assuming 0.0 barg, we then get to the lack of motive power if that is the pressure. Okay, then, they will assert that the pressure in the customer area was below atmospheric, but then we end up with the problem that for the flow rate to be as high as claimed, forward pressure is needed. Basically, the entire data set is divided into pieces and distinct explanations are created for each piece to make something that sounds plausible.

But they don’t fit together! The temperature was reported to be quite stable, but maintaining dry steam — also claimed — at constant temperature is extremely difficult … and unnecessary. No, the constant temperature is an indication that this is saturated steam, which will be stable. Sure, that requires that the pressure reading be incorrect, but …  the pressure gage was being operated well above its maximum operating temperature, and, in addition, that absolute stability at 0.0 barg is very suspicious that this is not real data. There was no computer feedback to allow tight control.

Jed Rothwell has seen a lot of calorimetry data and that is why he has written that the report was bogus on the face. Real data simply doesn’t look like how that report looked.

If one looks at the temperature data, it’s crude, with low resolution. The flow meter was operated well below the specific minimum flow rate. And this goes on and on. And then what was the expertise of Penon?

He was a nuclear engineer. This may or may not have involved any substantial experience with steam. He does not seem to have been aware of the necessary precautions. IH never accepted him as “ERV” for a “Guaranteed Performance Test.” One might imagine that for a test on which $89 million was handing, there would be clear written agreements. There were not (and a written agreement to the start of the GPT was required by that defunct Second Amendment, and this never happened).

The whole show was one preposterousness after another. And it continues, with Quark-X.

 

Author: Abd ulRahman Lomax

See http://coldfusioncommunity.net/biography-abd-ul-rahman-lomax/

2 thoughts on “How to win by losing: give up and declare victory!”

  1. That’s an interesting read, but the whole matter can be dispensed much more simply if we just accept what has been obvious since October 2011, and that is, the whole supposedly amazing Ecat energy catalyzer is a sham. This has been made more obvious at every supposed test and demonstration ever since.
    The fact that a court case was going to be fought over something which was based on so much unreality was incredible to me and I would love to have seen it argued all the way through to the only ending possible, had they done so.

    The final proof that it was all a load of horsefeathers is in the fact that Mr Rossi, having fought so hard to get the IP of his incredible device back into his ownership, has discarded the whole pile of steaming excrement to the scrap heap. He now says there will be no Ecat devices manufactured using this variant of the technology because it is now superseded by the even more amazing later version, the ecat QX.
    Is that even remotely credible? Of course not.
    An almost free energy device with a COP of between 60 and up to 140 has been relegated to the scrap heap because a new version is in development, which has to now go through all the same exhaustive development and reliability tests before it can even be considered for mass production. And still, the loyal cheer squad follow him along, cheering him on and singing his praises, even to the point of again recommending him for a Nobel Prize. What a joke!
    He now claims the 1MW plant as tested was not as reliable as first thought and therefore he will put all efforts into the new QX version, which of course he claims will be much more reliable, even though at this point there is no large composite version made as yet. And even though the new version is incredibly smaller at only 20 watts per cell, so requiring thousands of them to produce any large scale energy output.
    Why would anyone believe at this point that that configuration would be less prone to problems than the previous, even in the unlikely event that any of it was real?
    It is incredible that if the previous 1MW device actually had a COP of anywhere near 80 over a period of one whole year that it would now be considered unviable due to any small defects which became apparent over the test period.
    I believe we are seeing the whole charade disposed of by way of the same excuse which was used to explain the non-performance of one of his previous inventions, namely the super high-efficiency thermoelectric cells, when he claimed the failure of them to work was due to the difficulty to upscale production from the laboratory to the mass production phase.
    In similar manner, no effort is being made to rectify whatever the defects of teh last 1MW plant were, but after almost getting to the finish line of saving the world by way of cheap and clean energy production, the whole project is dumped on the basis of some supposed small problems which any competent production facility could rectify in a few months.
    I believe the only reason Mr Rossi was even a little bit pleased with the result of the court case was that he was able to reclaim his precious 1MW plant and thus prevent any further work being done on it to conclusively prove it was all just an elaborate electric kettle, with all supposed over-unity energy production being arrived at by shonky test methods.
    I confidently predict, on the basis of all past performances, the latest apparition of the amazing ecat QX will be no different. It will be worth seeing, but only for the same reason that any half decent magic trick is worth seeing, just for the spectacle.

    1. Sometimes what is obvious is also not reality. Plenty of signs of scam were visible by October, 2011 — or before. However, IH nailed it.

      Yes, it could have been useful to pursue the trial, but there was a substantial cost to that. for no benefit other than holding a worthless license; recovering what they had spent was unlikely. Johnson was liable only for the costs of the fraud in which he participated. They weren’t going to get damages from earlier fraud. Estoppel. I assume they were aware of that risk of the strategy they followed with Rossi. The documents and testimony that became public from the trial should be enough to warn any future investors. It isn’t guesswork and inference and yellow journalism any more.

      What I find quite sad is Mats Lewan. I have not seen evidence that he has actually read the trial documents. He has personal knowledge of some of this stuff. He was very involved in the Hydro Fusion test, so he would know that what Rossi told IH about it was deceptive — or Rossi was lying to Hydro Fusion.

      Bottom line: Rossi lies. His claims cannot be trusted. He has successfully influenced scientists to go along with his deceptions. Again, that’s sad. Black marks on careers, that will not go away.

      If Rossi were not lying, there could have been products on the market already, saving billions of dollars in fuel costs, up to a trillion per year.

      Rossi now gives the excuse about the 1 MW plant that it required his continuous presence. For $1000 per day, the value of the power (as established by the Term Sheet), one could have a full-time monitor, but it should be possible to install remote monitoring. The Penon report gives no clue of the “breakdowns.” It is obvious that the Agreement was written by Rossi or to satisfy Rossi, the “tests” and standards for them did not cover reliability at all, when reliability is essential for a commercial product. Rossi complained about things — the NDA and the right of first refusal — that did not cause him any actual hindrance. And Mats Lewan swallows all of it and reports it, some at least, as fact.

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