Patent evidence 'burnt' due to paranoia

Philip Whitley sent a provisional patent application to the United States patent office from a Richmond post box but did not bother registering the letter, a court has heard.

In a voluntary interview with the Serious Fraud Office, video-recorded in 2008 and yesterday played in the Nelson District Court, Whitley said he sent the provisional patent application around April 2006.

Whitley said he made the application under his own name and received a postcard back confirming the application.

He told the SFO he did not use the customer number he got from the US patent office in 2002 on the application because he was paranoid people were out to steal his technology.

He said he burnt the postcard from the patent office and a copy of the provisional patent application about the time the liquidators were appointed because he had a breakdown.

He told the SFO he destroyed hard drives from his computer and the corporate books because he was so paranoid.

"The [security guards] said that the Russians were trying to penetrate and we ended up with security guards living in my house, camped on the floor.

"I couldn't go out of the house without having security ... it just built up inside me to the point where I just lost it from a point of paranoia."

Whitley, 48, has denied two charges of making false statements as a promoter.

The SFO says that between August 2006 and May 2007 490 investors put $5.3 million into Whitley's US-based company NearZero on the basis that Whitley claimed to have invented and secured patent protection for a revolutionary data compression technology system. The technology would have been worth billions if it existed.

SFO investigator Kim Murray was the last prosecution witness to give evidence yesterday.

Ms Murray said the SFO had sifted through 1800 documents seized by the liquidators in relation to the case. She didn't find any documents relating to the compression technology or the software's research and development.

Searches at the US patent office records failed to find any record of any patent applications filed by Philip Whitley, she said.

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