Greg:
I don't regularly follow the thread here, but I will respond to your post at your request.
I connect Russell with Chuck in August of 1988 and became involved with the project in December of 1988, so I was around for almost the entire time.
Attorneys don't work unless their bills are paid fairly currently, and it was about 2 years IIRC after the start of the project that Nanotronics started putting out cash. So, someone paid the original expenses, but those paled in comparison to the later expenses paid by PSC. Patent expenses were second only to labor costs at PSC. The original expenses consisted only of the research and filing the original disclosure and claims. All possible delays in the patent office were made to defer the cash outlay on the patents, so the vast majority of the cost was paid by Patriot, with me as the technical author on almost all of the claim sets.
You are correct that all of the patents being licensed were of the original ideas of Chuck and Russel. Only a small percentage of patents make money. Patriot's percentage is quite high.
PSC always knew that they did not have an undivided interest in the patents, but there was no knowledge early on that they would be valuable. In abut 1995 or 1996 I was involved in a meeting with Chuck, and the CEO of PSC, at iTV to discuss ownership and inventorship of the patents. The meeting was fairly brief and got nowhere as at the time Chuck had little interest in the patents but claimed IIRC that iTV controlled them, but he agreed to cooperate in their prosecution. I don't think that the PSC CEO wanted to look too interested, and we had no idea what they might be worth at the time. It was more a matter of tying up loose ends. I suspect that later claiming PSC owned all the rights was simply legal maneuvering by PSC's attorneys to get Chuck to give up his rights.
