Update:Gates is trying to invest in this tech, intending to get into the ground floor of several of the "winning teams". He is trying to back Italians with early existing patents granted in Italy. Existing granted patents count for Gates as he has used them historically to assert sole ownership of technical items.
Russians teams have verified the Lugano test now.
http://www.e-catworld.com/2014/12/27/lugano-confirmed-replication-report-publ... AS the teams rush around trying to assert old patent rights, one of the oldest patent holders goes to the FOSS group and offers to team with them and offer his technical assistance so they can keep up with the leaders.
This is significant because any elements given over to FOSS become FOSS forever, and Francesco Piantelli could give up enough of his patented IP to the Martin Fleischmann Memorial Project to make sure Rossi and crew are never granted any form of patents, ever. Piantelli can give the whole thing over to FOSS since his patents predate the rest and if he cooperates with the Martin Fleischmann Memorial Project
then you got the originator and the earliest researcher saying it is all FOSS -- forget about patenting it.
From Gates hunting through the oldest guys one by one it does seem that Rossi just leveraged off the original cold fusion people's published research to start his work on nickel powder. Also, there are some folks like Decathlon who got started about the same time Rossi did using the same basis.
Rossi has demonstrated two completely different techs now, a water bath system, an electrical heating element system and he is now going after a gas fired heating element system (lowest cost highest COP system, suitable for coal power station refits). Rossi is making the best speed to commercialization and he has the earliest US patent attempts (not finalized though).
Brillouin is still stuck at go, with tons of patents on a gas floated control system that looks like it will be a no-show due to excessive complexity and very high cost.
People can now count in excess of 20 groups frantically trying to bring this tech to a patentable state since it is now pretty broadly acknowledged as real.
Nuts and bolts stuff ................The Russians debunked some of Rossi's "fog of misdirection" as they got simple mix of nickel powder and 10% added lithium hydride to light off and go. Rossi's mysterious additives may help the reaction start sooner and be less peaky (important to keep it from melting down and give a even slow ramp up).
The Russians used a simple coil of single phase power to set their reaction off .... so much for the requirement of the expensive three phase adjustable wave stuff Rossi was using. More and more it seems Rossi was obfuscating things as much as he could, trying to make a simple thing seem a lot more complex than it really is.