Findings of fact
37.As I have indicated, part of Dr Spaziante’s explanation of events was a phone call with Mr Dichand on 25 June 2013 during which Mr Dichand was said to have been abusive for an hour and after which Dr Spaziante resolved to end the partnership. Mr Dichand said that if this call happened at all, it would have been short and he would not have been abusive. 38.Dr Spaziante’s version is supported by an email from him to Julian Sproule’s wife, Caroline Meroz, dated 25 June 2013 in which he describes Mr Dichand as having been “very wilde and could not stop talking and telling me (probably) the nastiest words he could find”. In the email Dr Spaziante did not say that he had decided to end the partnership; he said that he did not know what to do. 39.It seems to me more likely than not that the phone call happened at least broadly as Dr Spaziante described. 40.Next according to Dr Spaziante’s version of events came the meeting with Mr Dichand in about September 2013. At this meeting, Mr Dichand and Dr Spaziante are said to have agreed to go their separate ways and, crucially, that Mr Dichand would keep the Prototype while Dr Spaziante would have the PCT Applications. 41.There was no documentary evidence to show that this meeting happened. Dr Spaziante said that it had been attended by Mr Messner, an associate of Mr Dichand’s, but neither side produced evidence from Mr Messner. Dr Spaziante initially said that the meeting had happened in July. Mr Dichand’s response was to produce emails to show that he was in California in July 2013. Dr Spaziante then said that the meeting could have been later, although no later than September. Having established a likelihood that there was no meeting in July, Mr Dichand did not follow this up by producing documentary evidence to prove that he could not have attended a meeting with Dr Spaziante in September. 42.Both Mr Dichand and Dr Spaziante gave evidence about the logic or otherwise regarding the split of assets which, by Dr Spaziante’s account, was agreed at the September meeting. According to Dr Spaziante the PCT Applications did not relate to the MRVB technology embodied in the Prototype. I was not taken through the PCT Applications or other documents by either side to confirm or refute this. Dr Spaziante also expressed the view that none of the PCT Applications claimed valid inventions. In his witness statement he said they nonetheless had value as something to be used to impress potential investors. In cross-examination he suggested that there was a remote chance that the technology they claimed might be developed if an investor were ever found and to that extent the PCT Applications were worth having. 43.For his part, Mr Dichand said that having the Prototype would have been of no value without the PCT Applications. Again, this was an assertion which was neither endorsed nor undermined by reference to the documents. 44.There was some support for Dr Spaziante’s version, at least to the extent that there was an agreed split of the assets towards the end of 2013. In an email dated 25 February 2014 to Mr Dichand, Dr Spaziante said that Metronik was threatening to dismantle the prototype and sell any salvageable parts if they did not receive €80,000. On 28 February 2014 Mr Dichand responded, saying that if Metronik harmed the prototype he would take legal action for “vandalizing my property” (emphasis added). 45.It was common ground that the Prototype had been the property of the partnership between Mr Dichand and Dr Spaziante. If by February 2014, as seems probable, the Prototype was now treated by them as Mr Dichand’s property, it is likely that Dr Spaziante would have acquired other property of the partnership as a quid pro quo. 46.A key part of Mr Dichand’s version was the alleged meeting with Dr Spaziante in Bangkok on or about 10 December 2013. This was when the misrepresentation was said to have been made by Dr Spaziante, i.e. that a fifth PCT application was to be made by the partnership of Mr Dichand and Dr Spaziante, that the application needed redrafting and that it would be re-presented to Mr Dichand for signing in due course. 47.There was no documentary evidence or corroboration by any other witness that this meeting happened. As I have already mentioned, some months earlier, in an email dated 5 May 2013 from Dr Spaziante to Mr Dichand, Dr Spaziante referred to three patent applications having been filed, to a fourth awaiting Mr Dichand’s signature and to “patent no 5 under final revision”. So at that stage anyway, there was a fifth PCT application in contemplation and apparently in draft. Dr Spaziante was asked in crossexamination what happened to it. He said that he had no recollection of it and added that he never spoke to Mr Dichand about any fifth PCT application. 48.Mr Butler submitted that if there had really been a meeting on 10 December 2013 at which Dr Spaziante had presented and then withdrawn documents, Mr Dichand’s team would have asked for copies, which they did not do. Mr Butler said that this was an implicit recognition that no such documents ever existed. Another possible explanation is that Mr Dichand’s legal team knew that it was central to Dr Spaziante’s case that the documents did not exist and so it would be futile to ask for them, although Mr Edenborough did not say as much. 49.Taken in isolation, I could reach no reliable conclusion as to whether the meeting of 10 December 2013 took place or not. 50.The final and most important event was the dinner held at Mr Dichand’s hotel on about 13 December 2013 at which Dr Holasut presented the First Assignment to Mr Dichand in an envelope. It was common ground that Mr Dichand signed the document and returned it to Dr Holasut, who later gave it back to Dr Spaziante. 51.In his witness statement Mr Dichand said that he skimmed the document. In crossexamination he said that he did not read it at all. 52.Dr Holasut’s evidence provided the most reliable guide. According to Dr Holasut, he had been told by Dr Spaziante of a meeting between Mr Dichand and Dr Spaziante in the summer of 2013 at which Mr Dichand had said that he wanted nothing more to do with the MRVB project. Dr Holasut said that he had not been surprised to learn this. Dr Holasut volunteered to help make sure that the partnership between Dr Spaziante and Mr Dichand was properly ended, because he was friends with both of them. Dr Spaziante told Dr Holasut that he wanted Mr Dichand to assign his interest in the PCT Applications to a new company, which would also receive Dr Spaziante’s interest. Dr Holasut agreed to pass a draft assignment to Mr Dichand for Mr Dichand to consider when Dr Holasut next met him. 53.This happened at the dinner party at Mr Dichand’s hotel on 13 December 2013. Dr Holasut said that he had not been asked by Dr Spaziante to persuade Mr Dichand to sign the First Assignment. In fact, Dr Holasut (like Dr Spaziante) had expected Mr Dichand to take it back to Europe for consideration by his lawyers. Instead, Mr Dichand read the First Assignment and signed it. 54.The time taken by Mr Dichand to read the First Assignment is important. In his witness statement Dr Holasut said that Mr Dichand read it for a few minutes. In crossexamination he said that this meant one to two minutes tops. 55.Dr Holasut’s evidence was that he did not recall Mr Dichand saying anything about an expectation that the document in the envelope would relate to a new patent application. He also said that he was sure that he would have remembered such a remark. 56.The First Assignment looks nothing like a PCT application. It is headed in block capitals “DEED OF ASSIGNMENT” and its language, although in legal form, is not particularly obscure. Towards the bottom the four PCT Applications to be assigned are listed with their details in a box headed “LIST OF ASSIGNED PATENT APPLICATIONS”. This is far from consistent with a document relating to a single (fifth) PCT Application. Mr Dichand was asked about it in cross-examination. He said that he did not believe that this was the fifth PCT application itself but was a necessary preparatory step in the process of filing a further application. 57.The First Assignment is not a long document. The entirety of it is on one side of A4 paper with room at the bottom for signatures. Mr Dichand read it for between one and two minutes. That, in my view, was more than sufficient time for Mr Dichand to understand that it had nothing to do with a fifth PCT application and that it was concerned with the assignment of the four existing PCT Applications clearly identified. Mr Dichand seemed to be a man careful in his business dealings. I think it is very likely that if he had had doubts about the effect of the document, he would have passed it to his legal advisors. He confirmed in cross-examination that he is in the regular habit of using such advisors. 58.As against that, the plan supposedly hatched by Dr Spaziante seems unlikely. According to this, he deliberately planted the idea of a fifth PCT application in Mr Dichand’s mind on 10 December 2013, then three days later used Dr Holasut to send the First Assignment in the hope that Mr Dichand would be deceived. The First Assignment is in no way dressed up to be anything other than what it is: a document assigning the PCT Applications to HTI. Dr Spaziante is nonetheless supposed to have gambled that Mr Dichand would not read it and even more improbably that Mr Dichand would not give the document to his legal advisors to consider. 59.In my view Mr Dichand knew what he was signing. He did so because he no longer had any faith in the MRVB project but wanted to keep the Prototype. It appears that at a later stage Dr Dichand came to regret this decision and probably persuaded himself that he been duped. In my judgment he was not.