Hi Duff,

Good to hear from you again and you are, once again, asking a very good question; this time with respect to patents.

First rest assured that what you see is nothing to be concerned about.  One see’s this all the time when applying for a patent.  Talking from experience we, at PyroGenesis, have seen this with most of our patent applications, and I cannot think of a single patent application that we were denied.

To answer your question, one needs to understand the players and the process.  It basically works something like this: when we apply for a patent it behooves us to try and describe in as much detail  what the patent can uniquely do and, at the same time, get the best coverage surrounding the patent claims.  That is our role.  The examiners role, on the other hand, is to challenge our patent and/or limit our claims.  That is their role. Of note is that the examiner cannot be expected to be an expert in every field so often time the challenges are more of a “please explain why…” type of a challenge.  What you refer to in the link is a typical challenge which to the untrained eye may seem daunting.  Trust me it’s not. and it is all in hand.

It would not be wise for us to publicly disclose our patent application strategy (and there is always a strategy), so regretfully I will not go into the details of why and how we will proceed, but I can tell you that we have read the challenges and we are not concerned.  The challenges did not open our eyes to anything that would have us change our mind.  Remember, if we don’t think we will succeed we can’t afford to proceed.

Hope this helps Duff, and once again good to hear form you on Agoracom.  

Peter Pascali

CEO

PyroGenesis Canada Inc