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Technology Stocks : Energy Conversion Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Don Devlin who wrote (2749)	12/7/1998 3:25:00 PM
From: Allen Bucholski	Respond to of 8393

I want to respond to a poster on Yahoo ENER post 682. The post ask the question about (Heavy EV) Matsushita batteries. Did Matsushita win the lawsuit and don't have to pay ECD royalties. This is an opinion as I can't point to a document and say read this. It's my opinion as I see the story. Matsushita has a consumer battery license from ECD and is suppose to be paying royalties on them. When Matsushita came out with its heavy EV batteries without a license ECD sued. In court they got the electrode specs to examine. ECD found that for the best part these electrodes where not engineered as metal alloys. Meaning they where closer to natural elements in nature which ECD did not have patents on. ECD than drop the case(I belive it had to pay court costs.) but got some kind of statement from the court that Matsushita would have to respect ECD patens in the future if improved engineered electrodes were used. What it is suppose to mean is (my opinion) that Matsushitas NiMH battery technology can't get much better it battery is inferior in power and range but may have some cost advantage. To stay in competition it will have to improve a lot. Allen