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 _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
