After the failure of negotiations with Alenia, ASPS was in a stall situation. The problem they had to face was to convince a potential investor without revealing the know-how of PNN, clearly their biggest strength to negotiate with big industries. They solved the problem by writing an assessment procedure (valid up to August 2008) that aimed to meet the needs of both parties.

Here is the translation from the original document in Italian, that has been published on ASPS website in December 2003:

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The procedure is applicable if the counterpart:

• is a potential Financer, accompanied of course by his technical-scientific team
• is willing to assess experimentally the conditions in hereby protocol
• accepts that since ASPS is the part that can lose its know-how, it must be given to ASPS the opportunity to convince the counterpart without losing it if the attempt to find a Financer fails
• accepts to refund ASPS of its expenses for everything that will be exhibited

The whole procedure can be implemented or modified both from ASPS and Financer, until a shared procedure is established. The core of the procedure is the protection of ASPS know-how if the Financer does not decide to fund.

Before any procedure, ASPS will assess that the counterpart is a financier: he’ll must prove to be open to constitute a society with the aim of the industrial development of PNN if ASPS will make this experimentally possible. A specific shared protocol will be drafted before any experimental test.

ASPS procedure aims to produce unequivocal experimental information about the existence of a propulsion system that can generate thrust without expelling any reaction mass, while granting ASPS the retention of its know-how.  Said retention is possible only by cloaking the prototype in an enclosed box during experimental tests.

Once the procedure starts the next steps are, in chronological order:

1. Access to PNN video clips at one of ASPS experimental sites, respecting ASPS access procedure and observation protocol. Said clips are not a proof but just a preview of what the potential Financer will see. If in this phase the Financer step back ASPS will not ask for any refund.
2. The whole demonstration of PNN will be realized by ASPS if Financer will refund the expenses for the time and the complexity required by the demonstration itself. If the Financer is not willing to grant said refund, it will not be possible to proceed further. The procedure begins with the preparation of a first PNN experiment using ballistic pendulum; the counterparts (Financier and scientific team) must stay inside the ASPS designated perimeter.ASPS declare that the enclosed prototype:

              a) does not contain moving parts

              b) is not moving through expulsion of reaction mass

              c) is not moving through movement of external reaction mass

              d) is not moving through the effect of external forces

ASPS is willing to let the Financier to verify its claim at any time but if this implies the opening of the enclosed PNN prototype it must be defined an adequate disclosure protocol, divergent from hereby procedure.

In order to avoid the violation of the observation protocol by the counterpart without any consequences,  the whole procedure will be regulated by adequate legal standards (guarantee deposit or other regulation).

At the end of the test if the Financier doesn’t consider decisive the experiment he can change some experimental parameters like i.e. the direction of oscillation, the environment and the place where the test is conducted. It is not allowed to the counterpart to interfere with PNN experimental devices (that will be described during the demonstration phase). His request will be regulated by an appropriate protocol.

If the counterpart is not satisfied and he suspects a trick in what has been shown by ASPS, as a Financer with his own scientific team he’s encouraged to reproduce the same results of ASPS on ballistic pendulum, using his own thruster box in the same site where the PNN box has been verified. His box must work in UHF and must behave like PNN thruster, as stated at points a,b,c,d.

If his test is successful it must be granted to ASPS the verification of points a,b,c,d. All the procedure will be regulated by an opportune protocol.

3. The same test at step 2 will be repeated by ASPS on torsional pendulum: rotation instead of oscillation. Clauses, protocol and refunds remain the identical to those defined at step 2
4. The same test at step 2 will be repeated by ASPS on arm scale: weight increase and decrease of SC2.12. Clauses, protocol and refunds remain identical to those defined at step 2

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Many may argue that a patent should have granted ASPS the protection they needed without setting up this procedure, but the solution is not that simple: a premature patent application asked before the commercialization could facilitate the competitors and for eventual invention variations made between patent application and commercialization there is the risk that they won’t comply for patent protection criteria.  Furthermore, due the enormous interests behind such propulsion system ASPS would have to defend his patent with a team of attorneys, an hemorrhage of money that the Association can’t afford.

Emidio Laureti publicised this proposal among Usenet but he was ostracized by ASPS denigrators,  who forecasted that no one would accept such absurd proposal.

We’ll see in the next post how much they were wrong..