Comment by 🚀 stack
Interesting. It is a good story. You hear success stories, but there are so many near misses and complete failures no one hears about...
Do you think someone leaked it or was it one of those things that is not that hard to repeat once you know it's possible?
Sounds like a process patent... Did competitors hit upon it before priority date, or did they just work around the patent? I've had both things happen to me.
[I hate IP, but when in Rome...]
Sep 14 · 3 months ago
3 Later Comments ↓
There are two main steps to make the product. (I am simplifying here.) It is somewhat obvious if you study it. Step one was in the public domain and extremely efficient. All the IP was around the catalysts to make the magic happen in step two (which was rate limiting) but it turns out there are dozens, possibly hundreds in nature that perform the same function (with varying efficiency) in this application. We locked up about 20 of them, some of them very efficient and some of them lousy. One competitor was stopped from using one but we lost our shirt doing it and they easily worked around the patent. Others just worked around the IP. The engineering to build this is all public domain.
My favorite fail involved an IP attorney I hired to negotiate with a large manufacturer/distributor in a specific market. Turned out he was more interested in getting the manufacturer as a client, and at one point asked me how one could work around my patent, in order to supposedly strengthen it and apply for supplemental patents. Like a fool I told him what I would do (which was pretty specific and not at all obvious), and a couple of days later the manufacturer did just that. The manufacturer told me that he 'had fulfilled all his legal and moral obligations' and told me to f**k off. The product has been a good seller in their catalog for over two decades now.
Oh, and I had to pay the attorney another fifteen thousand to avoid getting sued.
Wow that is pretty bad. I got offered a consulting gig basically doing the same thing, telling someone how to defeat my former company's patents. The offer was $150 for a one hour consultation but the screener questions were specific enough to get the required information without paying. I told them no thanks.
Original Post
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