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Google Patents: US 6,362,718 family, legal events, continuation (2026-10-05)

Investigator run (STEP I), first run for Bearden. Chrome, Google Patents. Pages: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6362718B1/en , https://patents.google.com/patent/EP1446862B1/en , search https://patents.google.com/?q=(%22motionless+electromagnetic+generator%22)&inventor=Bearden Queries: patent page US6362718B1; "motionless electromagnetic generator" inventor:Bearden; (a guessed publication US20020097013A1 turned out to be an unrelated Bedini patent, "Permanent electromagnetic motor generator", Bedini Tech Inc; not relevant here).

Findings

  • Filed 2000-09-06 as US 09/656,313 "by Individual"; granted 2002-03-26. Current assignee shown: Magnetic Energy Ltd. Status: expired (anticipated expiration 2020-09-06).
  • Maintenance history: reminder 2005-10-12; lapsed for failure to pay the 4-year fee (effective 2006-03-26); petition filed and granted Dec 2005; 4-year fee with surcharge paid 2006-05-12; reinstated 2006-06-19 (effective 2006-06-23). 8-year fee paid late with surcharge 2010-03-02; 12-year fee paid 2013-09-17.
  • Assignments: 2006-06-01, nunc pro tunc assignment from the inventors (Patrick, Bearden, Hayes and others) to "MAGENETIC ENERGY, LTD., ALABAMA" (reel/frame 017706/0167, effective 2006-05-30); 2006-06-08 corrective assignment fixing the name to "MAGNETIC ENERGY, LTD." (017746/0237).
  • 2006-06-12: SECURITY AGREEMENT, assignor Magnetic Energy, Ltd., owner name "COLMAC HOLDINGS LIMITED, CANADA" (reel/frame 017759/0537, effective 2006-05-23).
  • Child application: US 10/081,847, continuation, filed 2002-02-26, "Power generation within a motionless electromagnetic generator" (see the archive.org note: rejected, then abandoned).
  • Cited by 76 later patents (list not examined).

Bearing on claims: claim 5 (MEG) and the arbiter's "Absence of evidence" analysis. The company did not let the patent die: it kept it alive to full term (fees to year 12, 2013), the patent was formally assigned to Magnetic Energy Ltd only in 2006 (until then it stood in the inventors' names), and in May 2006 the company pledged it as security to a Canadian holding company. This is the first documentary trace of financing found: a secured lender, not an equity round or a product. It bears on explanation (b) "commercial failure / no capital raised" and (d) "absorption into another firm": a security agreement means a lender took a claim on the patent; whether the loan was repaid or the lender foreclosed is not recorded on this page. Colmac Holdings Limited is otherwise unidentified (one Google query returned only this patent page).

2. EP 1 446 862 B1: the European member was GRANTED in 2013 [web: https://patents.google.com/patent/EP1446862B1/en]

  • Application EP01988155.6, filed 2001-11-06 (PCT, published as WO), EP A1 published 2004-08-18, B1 granted 2013-10-23, expired 2021-11-06. Family members listed: WO, KR, CN, IL, JP, EP (the WO, KR and CN entries are shown struck through on Google Patents, i.e. not in force or withdrawn; status of each not checked). Inventors: the same five. Assignee on the EP: "Individual".
  • Granted claim 1 (19 claims) is narrower than US claim 1: its characterising part requires that the switching changes flux "without driving said magnetic core to magnetic saturation" AND "means for providing a portion of the electrical power induced in said first output coil ... to a power input of the switching and control circuit", i.e. the self-powering feedback loop is part of the granted European claim. Claim 2 adds the start-up battery and switchover.
  • The granted EP description differs from the US patent in what it says about measured performance: it keeps the 100 V extrapolation paragraph ending "the coefficient of performance would be 3.44" [0045] and the thermodynamics paragraph naming the magnet's flux as the energy source and demagnetisation [0048]-[0049], but FIG. 8 (the COP-versus-input-voltage plot) is gone (FIG. 8 in the EP is the cross-section that is FIG. 9 in the US patent), and the US passages "At each measurement point, the output power was substantially higher than the input power", the agreement with "RMS power measured using a Textronic THS730" and "The coefficients of performance, all of which were significantly greater than 1 ... Therefore, it is apparent that the electromagnetic generator 10 can be built in a self-actuating form" do not appear in the EP text I read [web, page text of both documents compared]. When and why they were removed is in the EP file (see EPO Register note: description pages 1, 10, 16-20 and drawing sheets 2/5, 4/5, 5/5 were replaced with a letter of 15.06.2005).

Bearing on claims: claim 5. A second patent office (EPO) granted a patent whose claim requires the self-powered loop, after a 12-year examination. As with the US grant, a grant is the office's act, not a performance test; the EPO grant record shows what the office accepted, not that the device works. The removal of the COP plot and the "all COP > 1" sentences from the European text is a lead for the reviewers: it suggests the European text was trimmed of the measured-COP evidence during prosecution, while the extrapolated 3.44 sentence remained.

Not done

  • Espacenet / national registers for the JP, CN, KR, IL members (status, publication numbers) not opened.
  • "Cited by (76)" list not reviewed.
  • Nothing downloaded (file downloads need the owner's explicit approval). PDF links: Google Patents "Download PDF" on each page.