[time-nuts] WWVB for Time Nuts

Arthur Dent golgarfrincham at gmail.com
Tue Aug 12 22:59:23 EDT 2014


On August 10th Dale J. Robertson wrote:
"How does patent infringement litigation get started anyway?
I would think that the infringement claim would have to be specific i.e.
"you are infringing on our patent number blah, claims blah, blah, blah &
blah. not just "you are infringing on our patent. you need to halt
production immediately and can't resume until you have properly guessed how
you are infringing and stop, or, pay us a crapload of money"."

Exactly.

Many years ago the multi-national company I worked for had a corporate
lawyer visit our plant to discuss patents and related legal matters. One
example he used was of another division of our company wanting to enter a
market where a competitor had an established commercial product on the
market for a couple of years. What they did was go out and buy 2 of the
devices and strip them down, copying everything, even down to unused holes
in the internal mounting plates. Basically the only difference between the
product they released and the competitor's was perhaps the color and the
company logo on the front of the unit.

Obviously they were sued and after a lawsuit that lasted a couple of
years they settled for a large sum of money and had to stop producing the
exact copy. During this time the company was able to design their own
product that didn't infringe on any patents of the competitor.

The lawyer explained that copying this product, which allowed them to
establish themselves in the market, and settling the lawsuit, was still far
less expensive than waiting and trying to enter the market after the
competitor had a long head start and name recognition of the product.

Companies have lawyers and bean counters, not just engineers. ;-)

-Arthur


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