A Sandton company that claims it was bamboozled into paying R1 million for the rights to a new type of magnet-powered generator has obtained a court order to get its money back from the inventors.
The High Court in Pretoria ordered Roodeplaat businessmen Herholdt Gous, 78, and Reinert Boswel, 64, to pay back a down payment from renewable energy company Black Swan Energy.
Black Swan said in court papers Gous and Boswel in July last year convinced their representative, John Cowley, that they had designed and invented the “Rotonetic Magrotor Generator”.
They represented that the device could generate electrical currents of 6-7.8 kilowatts per hour and that it functioned without any external energy sources connected to it for 200 hours by using magnetic spinning wheels.
Black Swan said the information provided was false and that Gous and Boswel knew their device did not work and did not produce electrical current on its own.
The company insisted the device did not function as represented or at all and was merely “bait” to ensnare unsuspecting parties to pay money to Gous and Boswel.
Black Swan said Cowley had been induced to sign a written agreement which stated that the inventors guaranteed the functioning of the device and that all payments would be immediately refundable to Black Swan if the device did not generate electricity.
Black Swan would pay R10 million to the inventors to test and prove that the technology really worked and that a new company would then be formed to supply the product commercially.
It also agreed to pay the inventors R500 000 each for the right to patent, manufacture and market the Rotonetic Magrotor.
They guaranteed no external power cables or batteries were needed. The company obtained default judgment against the two inventors after they failed to file opposing papers in time. – ilsedl@citizen.co.za
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