Vision-Ease: the one that got away

Time to tell another tale of a brief flirtation with legitimacy for REFR.

For this we go back to August 1997, when REFR caught a big fish on their licensee hook in the form of Orcolite, a division of Monsanto which was sold about seven months later to Vision-Ease, Inc.

The terms of said agreement would be enough to make any current REFR shareholder's eyes pop. In exchange for an exclusivity clause to the making of SPD eyewear, Orcolite agreed to pay minimum royalties which were scheduled to total $2,000,000 a year by 2004. To put that into perspective, REFR actual revenues over the entire period from 1997-2004 was about $1.45 million.

One might well wonder just who thought the whole idea of SPD eyewear was such a great idea. To remain in its clear state, SPD requires a small but steady source of electricity. That requires installing some kind of power source -- in the best possible case, a AAA battery -- inside the eyewear. That alone figures to make them kind of heavy. Then there's the issue of where the eyewear would be used. One popularly discussed application was ski goggles. The question of the interaction between melted snow and the electrical components of the SPD shading never really seemed to spark debate among shareholders.

Whatever may have occurred behind the scenes, REFR got a nice revenue boost in 2000, quite possibly largely coming from Vision-Ease, then a sharp decline in 2001. Then, on New Years' Eve 2001, REFR quietly filed an 8-K form with the SEC, announcing that the licensing agreement with Vision-Ease was terminated "for non-payment of royalties". Even then they wanted to phrase it in a way that made it sound like it was Vision-Ease screwing up. Regardless, REFR promised to look into finding a new patsy, er, licensee for their SPD eyewear application.

Frankly, though, I just can't see it.