Why this charter exists
SEM TECH (Salt Electro Mining Technology) is an electrochemical platform that separates and recovers elements from ores, waste, and industrial streams using ion exchange membrane electrolysis. We believe it can change how industrial and chemical work is done, moving the field toward clean, electrically driven separation of elements in place of harsh reagents, large fixed plants, and concentrated foreign supply chains.
That goal is bigger than any one company. This charter states, in plain terms, how we intend to share the technology, keep it from being locked up, and keep it safe to use. These principles are meant to last. They apply to all of Rowow’s research over the long term, not only to SEM TECH, which is our current primary focus. Where this charter names a hazard or a method, treat it as an example, not a limit.
What we are trying to do
Our goal is impact, not ownership. We want this technology adopted, improved, and built on by as many capable people as possible: small labs, researchers, domestic manufacturers, and industry. We measure success by how widely it is used and how much cleaner and more local it makes critical mineral and chemical production, not by how much of it we can keep to ourselves.
Definitions
- Core technology: the general, field-wide technology, including the membrane, the cell and stack architectures, the general methods, and any improvement that would help the whole field rather than one customer.
- Application IP: work specific to one client’s feedstock, site, process, product, or industry. It is licensed commercially and is not part of the open commitment.
- General improvement: an advance that is not specific to one client and that belongs in the open core. When it is genuinely unclear whether an advance is general or client-specific, we treat it as general and it goes to the commons.
- Keystone invention: one of the small number of genuinely novel parts of the core that we may patent defensively.
- Pledged Patents list: the public list of patents we have committed to the open commons under the Patent Non-Assertion Pledge.
Our commitments
- Open by default. Our intent is to release the core technology openly so anyone can study it, build it, improve it, and use it, including for commercial purposes. Openness is our default, not the exception.
- Protect the commons, not a monopoly. Where we hold patents, we hold them to keep the technology open and to stop others from fencing it off, not to charge rent.
- Share-alike on what we release. Technology we release publicly carries a strong reciprocal license, CERN-OHL-S, so that improvements others build on our work stay open for everyone. Everything we release publicly, including the membrane, carries CERN-OHL-S.
- Safety before disclosure. This work involves real hazards, which vary by process and can include toxic or reactive chemicals, hazardous gases, strong acids and bases, flammable or explosive materials, and high voltage. We publish the safety knowledge and teaching materials for a process before we publish the step-by-step details that someone could follow.
- Honest claims. We publish measured results, document independent replications, and correct ourselves in public when we are wrong. We would rather be trusted than impressive.
How we license our work
The membrane, including its design and manufacturing process, is released under CERN-OHL-S, the same strong reciprocal license as the rest of our core work. Its patent, US application No. 19/531,984 and any patent that issues from it, is licensed through that release, because CERN-OHL-S grants a patent license for the covered design, and it is also listed first on the Pledged Patents list under our Patent Non-Assertion Pledge. This is a license and a pledge, not an abandonment: we keep the patent so it stays a defensive shield for the commons, and we intend to commit never to assert it against good-faith users. The relicensing and the pledge take effect on publication, after legal review.
New core technology that we choose to release publicly defaults to CERN-OHL-S. Anyone can use, make, sell, and improve it, on the condition that they pass on the full design source of what they build, under the same license. This keeps the commons growing and stops anyone from taking the shared work private. Because we own our work, we can also license the same technology to companies on separate commercial terms, which funds continued development without closing anything already released.
Open core, commercial applications
The open commitment applies to the core technology: the membrane, the cell and stack architectures, and the general process methods, including improvements that would benefit the whole field. Much of our real work is applying that core to a specific client’s problem: a particular feedstock, site, product, or industry. That application work, done under paid consulting, contract research, and research partnerships, produces niche, customer-specific IP, which we license on ordinary commercial terms. This funds the development of the open core, and many partners will only enter a research relationship if the niche IP created for them can be licensed in the normal commercial way.
This is the engine behind the open commitment, not a loophole in it. Because Rowow owns the core technology, we can build proprietary solutions on top of it for a client without removing anything from the commons. The test is simple: if an advance is general and would help the whole field, it belongs in the open core and flows back to the commons, subject to the safety schedule and any agreed confidentiality period; if it is specific to one client’s process, site, feedstock, or product, it is application IP that we may license commercially.
Patents
We may file patents on a small number of genuinely novel, keystone parts of the technology, for two reasons only: to keep those methods available to everyone by preventing someone else from patenting and blocking them, and to give our open license real force on physical hardware. Patents we have pledged are committed to the open commons through our Patent Non-Assertion Pledge, with the single exception that we reserve the right to defend ourselves and the community against patent aggression.
Safety and staged disclosure
We open as much as we responsibly can, as soon as we responsibly can. For hazardous steps, “responsibly” means the safety framework and educational resources come first, and the most dangerous specifics are held until that foundation is in place. This is not a way to keep secrets indefinitely. It is a sequence, and the gates are written down in the Staged Disclosure Policy so anyone can hold us to them.
The name and brand
The technology is open. The name is not. Our primary mark is Rowow. Anyone may build, use, and sell our designs under CERN-OHL-S, but that does not grant any right to use the Rowow name or logo, or to suggest that Rowow endorses a build. This is the one thing we keep, because when the technology is free, an honest name is how people tell a Rowow-supported build from a copy.
Stewardship and continuity
Today this work is led by its inventor, Robert Karas, under Rowow LLC. We intend for the technology to outlast and outgrow any single person. As the project matures we will invest in documentation, open data, independent replication, and, when the time is right, a durable steward for the open commons. Our intent is that if Rowow stops maintaining this work and does not answer a release request for twelve months, the technology we are holding back, and our patent commitments, default to open. Until that instrument is signed, this is our stated intent, not yet an executed guarantee.
The limits of this promise
We commit to openness as the default for the core technology. Two honest limits apply. First, client-specific and niche application IP created in paid engagements is licensed commercially and is not covered by the open commitment; no commercial field of use will be drawn so broadly that it fences off the core. Second, if the future of the mission ever genuinely required it, we may change the cadence or the license we use for new releases going forward, in the open and with our reasons stated. This can never reduce the openness of anything already released. Anything already released under CERN-OHL-S stays released, permanently.