On Sat, 08 Nov 2003 23:49:03 GMT, Roger Halstead
wrote:

On Sat, 08 Nov 2003 19:59:02 GMT, Richard Clark
wrote:

More their problem. By law, a patent is FULL disclosure. Failure to
that end is sufficient to nullify it. \

Not necessarily.

Necessarily. Failure to provide full disclosure is FRAUD.

Some years back I worked for a company that had a series of products
that it had been producing for years. Long enough that some patents
would have run out, but they never patented any of the work. They had
chosen to keep the process proprietary.

A competitor, after something like 30 years finally figured out how to
make the stuff and applied for a patent. They served notice that we
were in violation of "their" patent applied for and would have to pay
royalties on 30 years of production. It only took a few days with
the company lawyers showing that we had been producing and selling the
stuff for years. That was the end of their patent attempt. OTOH they
were able to go ahead and produce their own "brand" of the products
although they were not able to use the trade name which was
copyrighted.

Roger Halstead (K8RI EN73 & ARRL Life Member)
www.rogerhalstead.com
N833R World's oldest Debonair? (S# CD-2)

Hi Roger,

All you've done is provide an anecdote that shows how companies use
the legal system for intimidation.

There is no such thing as protection for
were in violation of "their" patent applied for
(legal baloney). Anyone can sue anyone else for anything. Bringing
suit, like patent pending, has no basis in law until the judge smacks
the gavel. No basis, that is, except putting a cloud on a title (the
intimidation factor). If you can wait it out and have no asset sale
in the works, there's no problem and you can counter-sue if the
original suit is found be a nuisance. If you can't wait it out
(because you are selling assets) you settle; thus the intimidation
becomes extortion.

The only protections allowed in your story would have been your old
company would have been allowed to continue production to their old
standard and could not be held in violation of the patent to the
second company. This has a special legal term within patent law(which
I cannot currently recall) that recognizes an established product
could be brought to market before a patent for basically the same
thing is published (there are no issues of prior art for the patent
holder and no issues of violation for the prior manufacturer).

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC