throwaway1,
That guy at pattakon is definitely very creative, and seems to have quite a bit of free time on his hands. I have seen pictures of test hardware he built for some of the valve concepts, but I haven't seen any results published.
While there's something to be said for creativity, in my opinion, most of his concepts simply appear to be different variations of existing mechanisms. Some are fairly practical concepts, while others are not. For these devices to have commercial value they would need to significantly improve on existing designs in terms of cost/benefit.
Sadly, it is very difficult for independent inventors like pattakon to commercialize their inventions. Automotive companies are no longer much in the business of developing these kinds of technologies. Rather than risking small amounts of money to assist inventors in developing their technologies, they'd rather simply pay to buy the technology outright after it is already developed. The OEM's accept a higher purchase price in return for a lower risk.
Here's a link to pattakon's US patent for the desmo system:
http://www.google.com/patents?id=c6HVAA ... on&f=false