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| Authored by: bugstomper on Thursday, February 21 2013 @ 04:17 PM EST |
I don't read it as espionage. As far as I can tell it works like this: Company A
has a secret process which is part of their product. They protect it by keeping
it secret, therefore it is not patented. The secret process is of course
"unobservable" which is how they keep it secret. Company B
"conducts research" using a computer to figure out the secret sauce in
Company A's product. This doesn't have to involve espionage.
What if they, as just one example, set up sophisticated statistical modelling to
look at many observables related to the product and figure out how it must be
done? The "research" does not have to be espionage.
Then Company B files a patent for the secret sauce. There may be no published
prior art for the that secret - It was an unpublished secret. I'm not a lawyer
or a patent expert, so I don't know the ramifications of the fact that Company A
can say that they made the product before the patent application was filed:
Maybe this scam only works in the US and only if Company B manages to file
within a year of Company A's first production of the product. Actually, the
patent has claims to cover that: Some of the claims involve finding an existing
patent that covers the secret process that Company B has figured out that
Company A uses and (claim 47) "paying less for the patent property than it
is worth", then using that patent to extort money from Company A. In other
words, figure out Company A's secret, find a patent that covers it, buy the
patent cheaply from the patent's owner who is not aware that it is being used
for something valuable, then threaten Company A with an infringement letter.
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