Eminent Domain Applied to IP Due To State Secrets

NormalVisual writes "Wired recently ran a story about a group of inventors that found themselves unable to sue Lucent Technologies for infringement of a patent they held on a novel design for a pipe/cable connector. They had been working with Lucent on an underwater application for this connector, but unfortunately for the inventors, Lucent's application was being developed for an as-yet-unnamed branch of the U.S. government. The government is now claiming a state-secret privilege, and is refusing to let the inventors sue Lucent for patent infringement, citing national security concerns. In the meantime, Lucent continues to directly profit from their invention without paying any royalties or other compensation. The patent in question can be found online. It's doubly a shame because, unlike so many other patents that we've seen here, this one is actually creative and non-obvious." We've touched on this topic before.

Comments

Re:In Soviet Russia

[poopdeville]

Maybe I should take her to Soviet Russia then. Sue's a hottie.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[richdun]

Wow, you screwed that one up, I'm not sure what to say...where do we send people who can't even get the Soviet Russia joke right?

Re:From digg's mouth to Slashdot's ears

[wcdw]

I prefer Fark, which likewise tends to pre-date /. The lack of threaded comments is a bore, but the wit and humor tends to be higher quality, and there aren't nearly as many wannabes.

Re:With drugs, we've already paid for the research

[Philip K Dickhead]

High Tech Bananna Republic.