a similar lawsuit dismissed this summer by a Federal court in Texas. (That court did not rule on the merits of Quantum’s patent infringement allegations, but simply said that it did not have jurisdiction, since all the principals except for one are based in Massachusetts.)
The complaint Quantum filed in federal district court in Boston is essentially an expanded version of the Texas suit. But by lumping together “multiple vague claims” without saying how Ze-gen’s technology infringes on Quantum’s patents, the new complaint fails to demonstrate any basis for legal relief, Ze-gen’s counter-motion argues.
The motion also argues that even if some of Quantum’s patents are still in force, the fact that others have expired brings the company’s whole argument into question. “There is no basis for the defendants to discern what portion of the ‘Protected Technology’ is attributed to some real, as opposed to imagined or expired, trade secret,” Ze-Gen’s legal team says in the motion.
If the case is allowed to go forward, the motion says, Quantum should be required to outline exactly how Ze-gen’s conduct infringes on the Molten Metal patents that are still in force, so that Ze-gen can muster a detailed defense.
The motion also describes the history behind the Quantum/Ze-gen dispute, giving Ze-gen’s take on many of the same events first outlined in the Quantum complaint. Quantum, for example, said that its CEO, Preston, met Ze-Gen’s Davis in November 2005 to discuss licensing some of the old Molten Metal patents. Quantum argued that Ze-gen would need such a license in order to proceed with its planned gasification plant. Ultimately, Preston declined to grant any license to Ze-gen, according to Quantum’s complaint.
But Ze-gen has a different version of events. It claims that its approach to gasification was never related to the processes described in the Molten Metal patents, and that the licensing discussion was merely preemptive, designed to keep Preston from claiming later that Ze-gen was treading too close to its intellectual property. It was Davis, according to Ze-gen, who broke off the licensing negotiations, after learning that many of Quantum’s patents had expired.
In perhaps its most cutting passage, Ze-gen’s motion calls the Quantum complaint “the last dying breath in the well-known saga of Molten Metal Technologies.” Preston helped MIT doctoral student Christopher Nagel to launch Molten Metal in 1989 while he was still director of MIT’s Technology Licensing Office. The company, which intended to commercialize liquid-metal bath technology as way to safely dispose of hazardous wastes, was briefly considered a rising star in the clean-technology field, but was later engulfed in shareholder lawsuits and accusations of improper campaign contributions and government favoritism.
The motion argues that Preston—who was a major shareholder in Molten Metal and started Quantum Catalytics immediately after that company’s bankruptcy, acquiring Molten’s patents using funds from a radioactive waste handling company called Allied Technology Group that itself went bankrupt shortly afterward—is still gripped by the “delusion” that his initial investment in Molten Metal will generate a fortune.
The Quantum complaint “is about Preston’s effort to squash any competition in an emerging field of global importance,” Ze-gen’s motion says. (As already noted, I was not able to reach Preston for his response to these charges.)
No depositions or hearings have been scheduled in the case; both parties now await Judge Dein’s ruling on the motion to dismiss.
