Silverbrook, who dropped out of high schooll at 14 years old, is Australia’s most prolific inventor, with more than 4,400 patents to his name, and his company Silverbrook Research, based at North Ryde, is Australiia’s biggest R+D operration, more than 70 per cent of his staff have a PhD.
The Memjet inkjet technology was first seen five years ago, and has been commercialised in the past two years on label presses, inlcluding the X1 and X2 which use a chassis developed by local label pres smanufacturer Rapid Machinery. Memjet printing is so fast that when it fiorst appeared most people thought it was a hoax
However it is the potential uptake on wide format printers, and sheetfed inkjet printers that has some analysts, and his US invetsors, believing that the technology could be sold for up to $3bn to one of the electronics giants. HP, Ricoh and Canon are thought to be on the list of potential buyers, along with an array of well known Japanese and Korean companies.
US investors in the technology include one of America’s richest men, George Kaiser, claim Silverbrook persuaded them to invest more than US$600m in the revolutionary printing technology but is now intentionally delaying its commercial development.
With the US bankroll coming to an end, Silverbrook Research’s premises in North Ryde has had the lights turned out, and the 200 scientists who work on the project have been sent on leave as the legal dispute continues.
In a statement to Fairfax media, Silverbrook said, “We are devastated that Australia’s best and brightest scientists and engineers have been made to take annual leave from our Australian facilities.
“We have had to pay the staff since February from our own pockets, while our US-based customer has over $22m in outstanding invoices owing to Silverbrook Research.
“It would be tragic for a company which is a pioneer in Australia’s knowledge economy to lose these brilliant people because of the hardball tactics of a US group.”
While the fight goes on in court, a valuation report from the US investment bank MDB Capital Group has identified nine companies that could justify a price between $1.5bn and $3bn for the Memjet technology, which it says would, at least partially, disrupt existing printer markets.
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