I've wasted lots of time learning the legal side of patents....orders of magnitude more than the "simple" side: the inventing! =)
In process, gaining many of the same black eyes and broken ribs everyone else has gotten from the IP monster.
For that particular case, you do not have to sue. If it was granted, or is still under review, you can file with the USPTO and have the thing invalidated....won't cost you a dime! Even if the company went under, perhaps some creditor assumed the rights? If it's an orphan, and nobody's pursuing it, you could go and file a provisional patent on your own and lay claim to it from scratch, or some novel twist on it in hindsight. If it was rejected, you won't get very far. But if it just died on the review vine from going out of business or neglect, you can probably resurrect the idea.
It's funny how if you had released the idea anonymously on FR, for example, to where it was out in the public domain, you could also terminate their lingering rights to it and while technically fraud, it's actually a just outcome and you could manufacture and sell the thingy free and clear (but so could others of course).
I don't think there was any need for us to get cross wise on this thread, and I apologize for reacting. But these content free technical articles using Carl Levin and John Frakkin MCpain as the technical experts burn me up.
Pretty much what I told the company that I later consulted for and needed the technique to make their critical and otherwise unmanufacturable part.
I don't think there was any need for us to get cross wise on this thread, and I apologize for reacting.
Not to worry, no offense taken, I appreciate the passion.
But these content free technical articles using Carl Levin and John Frakkin MCpain as the technical experts burn me up.
Me too.