Withholding key process steps in patents
"Well Conrad, I'm glad at least the Tripos technical people have something to do after the fire!" observed Martin Diesirae as he walked into the lab office.
Conrad, the elderly company chemist, glanced up from his papers. "I like to keep busy," he replied. "While the contractors are fixing up the lab area, I thought I'd catch up on paperwork. Like this patent application."
"Yeah. Half of our production lines were knocked out," said Martin. It's going to take some time to get that back together."
"We're lucky to have anything left at all," retorted Conrad. The firefighters were superb, and we got a few good breaks in the way the fire spread. Otherwise, this facility would've been toast."
Martin sat down and gazed pensively into space. "It's like my whole life is coming apart," he observed incredulously. "And I'm only a senior in college! First I have to take over technical sales from my boss, who's hurt in a car accident. Then there's a big fire at the plant. And I break up with my girlfriend."
"Myra? You broke up?" Conrad asked in surprise.
"Well, maybe not totally. We still call once in a while. She promised to help me with a term paper a few weeks ago, but wanted to cancel at the critical moment. It was just the last straw. We'd been fighting for a while. She was just so whiny... so depressed... so needy... so emotional," Martin said wistfully.
"The opposite of you," Conrad observed. "Think hard about walking away from Myra for good. It's a profound truth that people tend to complete what remains undeveloped or suppressed in themselves by finding it in a mate. That's a good thing, because then the unity is more complete than either of the parts. The trouble is, sometimes what people are attracted to from afar disgusts them when they get close." Conrad paused and eyeballed Martin. "If that happens to you, it usually tells you as much about what you need to seek within yourself as about the defects in the other person."
A long silence ensued. Martin became uneasy and changed the subject. "So what are you working on?"
"This patent application," responded Conrad. "It's for a new polishing etch that I cooked up with some of the other guys. It's some slick chemistry. I have to make sure we protect the formulation legally while not giving away too much of what we know. Otherwise, our competitors may try an end-run around the patent, or will just infringe secretly."
"But infringing is illegal!" exclaimed Martin.
"Yup. But there's a penalty only if you're caught and prosecuted. We're a small company, Martin. We don't have the resources to test much of the stuff made by our competitors. Or the deep pockets for a crack legal staff. It's safer if we just don't tip all our cards, and hope our competitors can't figure out what we did."
"What do you mean?" asked Martin.
"Well, take a look at this flowsheet for our process." Conrad pointed to two separate steps on the page in front of him. "There's a reflux boiling step here. The etchant doesn't work right if you leave it out. Same thing over here. You have to add a little vanadium to get the right properties. We don't know exactly why. The point is, though, we're going to leave any mention of these procedures out of the application. We'll get legal protection for the main idea behind our formulation, but we'll leave out some key steps to discourage cheating."
"Isn't that lying?" demanded Martin. "Or at least deceptive? I thought that legally you have to fully disclose the process to get a patent on it."
"True, but this is stock-and-trade in the business," chuckled Conrad. "The patent examiner will never know. A patent is supposed to protect your idea, right? This just adds some insurance."
"But you're not explaining your whole idea! I don't see why you don't leave out five or six steps," retorted Martin. "Why say much of anything at all, for that matter?"
