Patent denied.. Now have Patent Pending Copycat.

[joshsorenson]

Towards the end of July 2005 we filed for a patent on a Feed Sensor Control for a hog confinement building. Eventually hearing back from out lawyer that the patent was not granted due to the idea not being novel enough. Now, several years later a corporation much larger than ours has reverse engineered our product and has it marked as patent pending. I have a few questions on this scenario:

1) If they are granted the patent will we be forced to stop selling our product?

2) Is there any way to stop them from producing this product?

3) What are the chances they will be granted a patent if ours failed?

Any advise is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[Michael Wechsler]

Towards the end of July 2005 we filed for a patent on a Feed Sensor Control for a hog confinement building. Eventually hearing back from out lawyer that the patent was not granted due to the idea not being novel enough. Now, several years later a corporation much larger than ours has reverse engineered our product and has it marked as patent pending. I have a few questions on this scenario:

Very sorry to hear about what has happened. From my understanding, they should not be granted a patent since what they are doing already exists. What you should do is ask a lawyer to determine what it is that this company is doing which they claim to be "unique." The company could not, in theory, preclude you from using your own product since that would undermine their own claim that they invented the item first.