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

On Sat, 08 Nov 2003 14:35:50 -0500, Alan Beagley
wrote:

I understand that patents do not always tell the whole story either:
many, many years ago I worked in a pharmaceutical laboratory where we
were trying to come up with a product that circumvented a German patent,
but we could not even get the process described in the patent to work --
they may have omitted mention of a catalyst.

-=-
Alan

Hi Alan,

More their problem. By law, a patent is FULL disclosure. Failure to
that end is sufficient to nullify it. If you simply copied their work
and added that "catalyst," then you have just nudged their patent into
the dust bin.

Not necessarily.

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)

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC