WATERLOO — The University of Waterloo is locked in a legal dispute with a tech startup that is based out of its own Velocity Garage incubator program for young companies.

The university is suing Salient Energy, which has developed technology for zinc ion batteries that can be recharged thousands of times, arguing patented technology belongs to the school.

The company's CEO, Ryan Brown, said the lawsuit contradicts the school's promise to startups that inventors will own the technology the university helps them develop and commercialize.

"At its core, this is not a very complex dispute. Everyone who comes to Waterloo is made a promise that they own their inventions and we simply want to be treated according to this promise," he said in a statement.

The university accuses Salient of misappropriating its business opportunities, and wants the right to license the battery technology to the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory — which, it argues, funded the startup's research in the first place.

The university is seeking $600,000 in damages, according to the lawsuit that was filed in Ontario's Superior Court of Justice.

"University of Waterloo constantly tells their students and researchers that everything they invent belongs to them," Brown said. "According to their own policies, graduate students give up their IP rights only when they give informed, written consent. This consent was never given and UW acknowledged this."

The university's Nick Manning, associate vice-president of communications, described the lawsuit as "messy" and a "last resort."

"We are obligated to protect our stakeholders including professors, students and research partners. We must also adhere to any legally binding contract or agreement we have entered into," he said in a statement.

"In this case, despite reviewing the situation in detail and numerous attempts to reach a solution, we filed a statement of claim as a last resort to avoid a statute of limitations and protect our ability to meet our contractual obligations."

The dispute has been brewing for months. Manning said the university still wants to reach a settlement to avoid dragging the startup through the courts.

"We remain entirely committed to achieving a negotiated outcome to this dispute and have made it clear that we would like to find a solution that protects the rights of the stakeholders, including co-inventors, and fulfils the university's legal obligations," he said.

Salient had been working on the battery technology since 2015, and expected to have prototypes ready this past spring. It believes its zinc ion batteries will play an important role in solar panels, wind turbines and electric vehicles.

The University of Waterloo has no intention of kicking the company out of its Velocity Garage incubator, Manning said.

"Before this dispute came to light and even to date, the university has continued to support the startup company through our entrepreneurship programs," the university's statement said.

gmercer@therecord.com

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