Hello
Our company recently hired a patent counsel.
I have
Several file cabinets filled with paper copies of patents
A database which lists which patents are in the cabinets
A new document imaging system which contains PDFs of patents
I also send out a current awareness bulletin listing the new patents I've received
The patent counsel has told me that if a competitor finds out that we have copies
of his patents in our patent collection, that an assumption is made that our
chemists have read his patents, and we could possibly loose a patent infringement
lawsuit if there is one. So the patent files and databases may have to go as well
as any patent copies in our chemists files.
I do not want to put our company at any legal risk.
Has anyone else encountered this issue? Don't we all have in-house collections of
patents and patent databases? Does anyone know of what law he may be thinking of?
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