>How does Patent law work into this equation? When the registrants receive a
>patent, aren't most trade secrets disclosed for that product? Why would lab
>and field research data be any different.
>I am not an attorney and may be wrong in this understanding of patent law.
>Anyone here know how this works?
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"Trade secrets" are not "Prior Art", if the knowledge was indeed secret.
"Prior Art", i.e., knowledge which might have made the claimed invention not
new, or obvious, must be disclosed at the time of application if known.
Applicants usually disclose as little as they can get away with. For this
reason, many patent attorneys (I was one such) advise their clients not to
do searches of the prior art, there being no penalty for not disclosing
something the applicant didn't know. The patent office, and those who later
contest the validity of an issued patent, may be relied upon to search the
hell out of it. If the examiners turn up a "killer" bit of prior art
during the examination, the applicant may contest it, modify the contested
claim, or throw in the towel. The examiners at the Patent Office usually do
a good job; reading the case history of the application will teach what they
found on their searches. Otherwise, you wait until the patent is litigated
and see what comes out. Future adversaries will turn up anything worth
knowing and try to beat you over the head with it.
But remember -- trade secrets are not per se "prior art". If an inventor
can use his trade secrets secretly without letting the world know what he's
doing, such as (for instance) an improved method of exploration for
subsurface minerals, he may choose to build and use his new system in
secret, in the hope that he may find a bonanza that his competitors are
unable to find. Disclosing his new idea through the patent process gains
the inventor only the right to exclude others from using the patented
method, as claimed in the patent, for a term of years, but by publicizing
the idea he has opened the door to development of his idea. In some cases,
fairly minor modifications can get around the language of his claims.
Walter Weller
Wakefield, Louisiana
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