[Grady Clay]

First let me tell you a story.
One of our family friends was an engineering manager for GE Appliance Park in Louisville. He invented the self-cleaning oven. All of the other oven manufacturers jumped in and built self cleaning ovens and just let GE sue them. Maintaining market share was far more valuable than any award.

I was close to the same situation. I went through the whole process and the manufacturers were IBM, HP, TI, and many others. My patient attorney had me get non-disclosure agreements from several of my banking friends. The plan was to license it to perhaps #3 in the industry and have them defend the patent (my pockets weren’t deep enough to fight IBM.) HP had their application in a week before mine and documented working on it longer. I was only our about $1K but it was worth it.

Over the years I have given Porsche K. –G. and Porsche A.G. and VW-Porsche Vertriebgesellschaft mbH ideas that probably were patientable.

Best,
Grady