Nemaska Lithium Inc. and its wholly-owned subsidiaries, collectively, called "Nemaska Lithium", announce that the company has obtained four additional issued patents as well as two additional allowed patent applications.
- These granted patents clearly confirm the uniqueness of our processes that allow us to produce low cost, high purity lithium salts in an environmentally friendly manner. We have considerably strengthened our patent position with respect to protecting our lithium hydroxide and lithium carbonate manufacturing processes in Canada, USA and Australia, which are the major centres for hard rock lithium production, underlined Jean-Francois Magnan, Technical Manager of Nemaska Lithium.
Based on issuance of these patents and in view of accelerated examination via the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH), the Company can thus expect to obtain more efficiently, more rapidly and at lower costs, the allowance of other patent applications belonging to same patent families in foreign countries.
Nemaska Lithium intends to become a lithium hydroxide and lithium carbonate supplier to the emerging lithium battery market that is largely driven by electric vehicles, cell phones, tablets and other consumer products. The Corporation is developing in Quebec one of the most important spodumene lithium hard rock deposit in the world, both in volume and grade.
The spodumene concentrate produced at Nemaska Lithium's Whabouchi mine will be shipped to the Corporation's lithium compounds processing plant to be built in Shawinigan, Quebec.
This plant will transform spodumene concentrate into high purity lithium hydroxide and carbonate using the proprietary methods developed by the Corporation, and for which the Corporation holds four granted patents and several patent applications that are pending in different countries, covering different aspects and improvements of its proprietary technology for preparing high purity lithium hydroxide and carbonate.
Patents & allowances:
Canadian Patent Nos. 2,871,092 and 2,928,227 related to processes for preparing lithium hydroxide were granted on May 9, 2017 and May 16, 2017, respectively. US 14/396,109, the equivalent in the United States of CA 2,871,092, was allowed by United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on April 25, 2017.
This latter patent should thus issue within few weeks. AU 2014339706, the equivalent in Australia of CA 2,928,227, was accepted on May 18, 2017.
The Corporation is also pleased to announce that Canadian Patent No. 2,940,027 issued on May 16, 2017. This patent relates to methods for treating lithium-containing materials.
Finally, Australian Patent No. 2013270412 related to a process for preparing lithium carbonate was granted on March 30, 2017. The Canadian and US corresponding patents were previously granted last summer.
(Source: shortened press release)
