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MAURY HGT
High Gamma Tuner
MMLTR05/036
MMLTR05/070
Philippe BOULERNE
6980 LACROIX
Montreal, Province of Quebec, H4E 2V3
CANADA
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This page is how MAURY Microwave worked with me as an independent inventor
Shame on me!
I should have never bothered in the first place
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If you are an independent inventor, and you are about to work with MAURY
Microwave, read on.
The followings may interest you as a warning.
I am looking forward to sue MAURY Microwave for patent infringement.
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DESCRIPTION OF THE FACTS
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First some mechanical slide-screw tuner background.
The slide-screw tuner has been invented in 1966 by Dr Julius LANGE.
The VSWR of such tuners is typically around 20:1.
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A slide-screw tuner includes a coaxial transmission line in order to propagate electromagnetic or RF signals,
where one plunger or tuning element can be moved perpendicularly and in parallel to the center conductor.
The word plunger is replaced in Quebec by "slug", while in the US it is replaced by "probe".
The main performance of such slide-screw tuner is measured by its gamma or VSWR.
From 1966 until Jul 20, 2004 and US Patent #6,980,064, probes have been limited to elementary parallelepipedics.
The probe is the most critical part of slide-screw tuners.
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Dr Christos TSIRONIS from FOCUS
Microwaves was granted Jan. 6, 2004 for patent #6.674.293 about prematch tuners.
Prematch tuners are much superior to the standard slide-screw tuners, since
they can easily achieve a VSWR greater than 200:1.
You can see the performances of such prematch tuners on the FOCUS
website.
For some reasons, MAURY Microwave had also for sale at that time a prematch
tuner referenced M981D.
When FOCUS Microwaves has been awarded for its patent, MAURY Microwave has
been asked to remove their M981D from their sales catalogue.
Therefore,
since the beginning of the year 2004,
MAURY Microwave was out of business for high VSWR tuners 200:1,
and limited to tuners with VSWR typically 20:1.
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Jul 2004
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I filed US Patents #6.980.064, #6.992.538, #7.009.463 and #7.042.233 mid-2004 as an independent
inventor and single owner.
Patent #6.980.064
is about a corrugated probe or high VSWR probe which
allows performances comparable to prematch tuners.
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Sep, 2004
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Since MAURY Microwave was out of
business in this market segment, I contacted Marc MAURY, President of MAURY
Microwave, in early September 2004 in order to propose them a
replacement for their former prematch tuner M981D.
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Sep 15, 2004
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After the initial contact, I have been invited by MAURY Microwave to
present them my patented work of the corrugated probe, and to explain them
the benefit they could have using this new type of probe in order to come
back into the market segment of high VSWR tuners.
President Marc MAURY, his son and now President of MAURY Microwave, Greg MAURY,
former CTO Garry Simpson,
Director of Engineering Mike Keys, and John Sevic were present among others
in a meeting that I hold in MAURY board room.
Mid of october 2004, I will again attend a meeting with MAURY's staff.
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Dec 10, 2004
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I signed with MAURY Microwave a
consulting proposal
Exhibit A
Request for Proposal for Consulting Services
The following is a statement of work and related terms and conditions to
provide product design consulting services for Maury Microwave in the area
of automated tuner systems. The proposal in response to this request must
include the following requirements.
1.0 Scope of Work
Following is a description of the work to be performed by the consultant.
Any changes or additions to this scope of work will be mutually agreed in
writing.
A. Assist in the design of driving electronic and USB control circuit for
mechanical tuners and write program drivers including prototype testing and
cut over to production based on the Maury design concept for common control
of Maury electronic and mechanical tuners.
B. Develop algorithms and related code for power sweep feature of NG LSNA
project.
C. Assist A. Boudiaf (Manager, Solid
State Tuners) to
complete smart hub development (e.g. drivers and testing).
Not only the scope of work does not include my personal patents,
but furthermore all my patents have been explicitly excluded in Exhibit
D from the consulting
proposal that I signed with MAURY Microwave.
I got 2 reasons from MAURY Microwave for that agreement:
a) Before starting new projects, MAURY Microwave had an immediate need for
a software engineer for programming their USB tuners in order to complete
existing projects;
b) President Marc MAURY said they had received a letter from FOCUS
Microwaves Attorney's, Mark Turcotte, which was stipulating that I was
infringing FOCUS IPs with my applications;
Finally, in March 2007, Dr Christos TSIRONIS from FOCUS Microwaves,
signed a transaction in court where he
recognized that I am the sole inventor and owner of all my patents.
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Feb 2005
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Start of my contractual work with MAURY Microwave.
Independently, John Sevic and Marc MAURY asked me how to investigate a
"patent-around" of the prematch tuner of FOCUS Microwaves.
This request was out of the scope of the contractual work that I signed
with MAURY Microwave.
I have been unsuccessful in that task.
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Mar 11, 2005
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Marc MAURY asked me to prototype the corrugated probe of my patents.
Since that request is beyond the scope of my contractual work with MAURY
Microwave, Marc MAURY wrote a letter referenced
MMLTR05/036
in order to acknowledge
that his request was clearly outside my contractual work and
directly related to my patents that I personally owned.
Within this letter, he took the engagement of paying me royalties if the
corrugated probe was to be used by MAURY Microwave.
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Mar 2005
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I published an application note for
MAURY Microwave.
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Jun 07, 2005
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Marc MAURY and I visited Larry K. Roberts (MAURY Microwave IP attorney) in
Long Beach with the brand new Buick Cadillac of Marc (Thanks to Dr
Christos TSIRONIS from FOCUS Microwaves for this correction, and he insisted that he is personally
the owner of a BMW 530i and a Boxter :-).
Purpose of the visit to the attorney: how to pay me compensation royalties for my
inventions that I just had prototyped at MAURY.
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Jun 13, 2005
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Marc MAURY send to Larry K. Roberts a letter referenced:
MMLTR05/070
The letter starts with:
"The first thing we need to address is the compensation percentage we should be considering
paying Philippe for the use of his ideas".
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Jul 05, 2005
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Larry K. Roberts send Marc MAURY and myself a letter referenced MAU2.012about
royalties percentage.
The letter starts with:
Dear Marc:
This is further our conference on June 7th, and your letter of
June 13th regarding compensation percentages for licensing an invention,
and particularly the inventions of Philippe Boulerne.
...
Larry K. Roberts (MAURY Microwave IP attorney)
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Jul 29, 2005
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End of my contractual work. No progress has been made during this last month.
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Aug 08, 2005
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I received a draft TERM SHEET, referenced
MM05/051 ,
that was indicating the “Conditions of License” from MAURY Microwave
in order to license my applications.
A percentage
compensation of 4.2% for royalties was proposed by MAURY Microwave and I
agreed.
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Aug 09, 2005
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MAURY Microwave send me in Montreal,
CANADA, an employment
proposal .
I responded that I wanted a license agreement for my patents before
becoming an employee of MAURY Microwave.
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Sep 01, 2005
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I sent MAURY Microwave an exclusive patent license agreement. The license
is available here
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Sep 02, 2005
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I receive from Larry Roberts, MAURY Microwave patent attorney, a negative response to the exclusive patent license agreement that I sent the day before.
Document reference: MAU2.014.
Dear Mr. Boulerne:
...
"MMC appreciates your interest in offering a license, but has determined that such an
arrangement would not be in its best interests. MMC thus declines yopur license proposal."
...
Larry K. Roberts
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Apr 07, 2006
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MAURY Microwave introduced into the market the
High Gamma Tuner,
or HGT,
and stated that it was "Patent Pending"!
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At that point, a question is still remaining in my mind, and this is the reason why I reproduced MAURY webpage when they introduced the HGT:
Why did MAURY specified a VSWR of
666
for the HGT?
A VSWR of 100, 150 or 200 would have make sense, but 666 does not make sense to me.
If you have any idea, please contact me.
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Sep 05, 2005
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To the best of my ignorance (I will discover that in March 2007), Gary
Simpson filed provisional application 60/714,972
with claims about the corrugated probe that I prototyped at MAURY.
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Sep 05, 2005
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Gary Simpson filed patent application 11/468,433
with claims 10-27 about the corrugated probe that I prototyped at MAURY.
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This is not very surprising that the probe filed by Gary Simpson,
less than a month after the end of my contractual work,
look like the probes that I filed before my contractual work with MAURY Microwave:
because I designed these probes at MAURY accordingly to my patents!
Never Gary Simpson participated into that design.
Claim 1 of patent 6,980,064 says:
...,said corrugated slug having a curved slotted portion in relationship
with the transmission line and a corrugation structure comprising at least
one slot, said at least one slot being arranged in a direction
perpendicular to said longitudinal axis of said transmission line.
This demonstrates that
Claim 1 of Patent #6,980,064 fully applies on the probe filed by MAURY Microwave.
Patent #6,980,064
has to be understood has
a dominant patent or parent patent
compared to the "potential improvement" filed by MAURY Microwave in application 11/468,433.
For that reason, a license of Dominant/Parent US Patent #6,980,064 is requested for MAURY Microwave in order
to respect my rights.
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Nov 13, 2007
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After discovering MAURY's application on the USPTO website,
I filed form 2048 at USPTO about the
fact that:
Gary Simpson is not the inventor of claims 10 to 27 of
application 11/468,433.
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Never MAURY
Microwave warned me about the fact that,
MAURY Microwave or Gary Simpson in particular,
could have had similar ideas as the corrugated probe.
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If MAURY
Microwave had similar ideas as the corrugated probes,
why did Marc MAURY, former president of MAURY Microwave,
ask me to prototype a corrugated probe or multi-section for them?
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After we spent so much time during the fall of 2004,
writing a contract specifically excluding my patents,
why did MAURY Microwave suddendly change their mind just after the start of my contract,
and asked me to prototype my patents?
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End of 2007 until March 13, 2008, all these questions have been reported to
Larry K. Robers, MAURY Microwave Attorney.
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Feb 29, 2008
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I got a
response from their attorney Larry K. Roberts.
Basically, he just nicely ignored all my questions:
"MMC disputes the allegations set out in your statement. We do not
intend at this stage to provide to you an item-by-item discussion of these
allegations."
Why not? That would surely help, and he added:
"However, your allegations that MMC or Gary Simpson did not provide
information to you regarding multi-section probes are manifestly false, and
refuted by the MMC files maintained by you during the course of your
consulting work."
Well, what are you talking about Larry? Can you prove what you are writing?
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Mar 13, 2008
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Response to Larry K. Roberts first letter
DATE: Thursday, March 13, 2008 12:54 PM
FROM: Philippe Boulerne
TO: Larry K. Roberts
CC: Greg Maury, Marc Maury
Mr. Roberts:
Thank you for your email dated Feb 29.
Despite your long letter, you do neither answer any of my questions,
nor provide me with information which could help me understand why MAURY Microwaves had "similar ideas"
before my contractual work with them.
People seem "not to remember" what happened in 2005,
but seem to "remember more easily what happened before 2004".
Furthermore, nobody told me about this between September 2004,
when I first proposed MAURY Microwaves a collaboration about my inventions,
and July 2005, the end of my contractual work!
If so, of course, working on my ideas at MAURY Microwaves would have been a total non-sense and I would not have done it!
From your letter, I do not understand why you can not share information “at this stage”.
What are you waiting for?
I am waiting for an answer from MAURY Microwaves since beginning of October 2007.
How long should I still wait to have these information from you?
So far, what I understand, is that you are simply “rewriting history”.
Moreover, shall I remind you that you have been part of the licensing discussions between MAURY Microwave and myself, that I have even visited you on that purpose in April 2005 with President Marc MAURY himself.
Consequently, in June 2005, you transmitted by email a document about acceptable licensing conditions for my inventions.
However, I wish we could move forward and I am trying to find an acceptable solution for both parties.
I offer to refund MAURY Microwave for all the time I spent for the "out of scope work"
that I accomplished on my inventions at MAURY as per request of President Marc MAURY letter reference MMLTR05.036.
At the same time, I ask MAURY Microwave to make the written commitment
to immediately stop violating my patented IP by manufacturing, producing, using and selling the High Gamma Tuners.
I give you 10 days to come back to me with this information.
Very truly yours,
Philippe Boulerne
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Mar 13, 2008
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I got a
second response from their attorney Larry K. Roberts.
"As for your comments about "rewriting history", it is
our view that you are the one who does not recall or wish to recall
accurately the events during your contract work with Maury Microwave"
The only problem, is that the facts that are reported here are true.
This is Larry K. Roberts and MAURY Microwave that are refusing to give their
explanations.
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Apr 16, 2008
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I received an email from Brian Reider, attorney at law at BEST BEST &
KRIEGER representing MAURY Microwave.
The letter is available here.
"..., the entire web page and its related links constitute libel by
innuendo in that you falsely allege a series of events which accuse Maury
Microwave Corporation of stealing patented ideas from you."
Well the facts are the facts, they are reported here with all the proofs,
and there is nothing I can do about the feeling that one can have by
reading these facts.
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