Boeing sued over alleged theft of IP, counterfeiting of tools used on NASA projects; CNBC, June 7, 2023

 Michael Sheetz, CNBC; Boeing sued over alleged theft of IP, counterfeiting of tools used on NASA projects

"Wilson’s complaint alleges that its tools — used for NASA projects including the International Space Station and its Space Launch Systems moon rocket — helped Boeing win billions in contract awards and fees from the government. Wilson also alleges that the counterfeit version of the tools that Boeing made led to leaks on the ISS and the SLS — and “put lives at risk,” including the lives of astronauts.

The company brought 10 claims against Boeing, including claims of copyright infringement, misappropriation and theft of trade secrets, and fraud."

The Epic Rise and Fall of Elizabeth Holmes; The New York Times, January 3, 2022

 David Streitfeld. The New York Times; The Epic Rise and Fall of Elizabeth Holmes

In Silicon Valley’s world of make-believe, the philosophy of “fake it until you make it” finally gets its comeuppance

"Whenever anyone — a regulator, an investor, a reporter — wanted to know a little more about exactly how the Theranos machines functioned, the company cried “trade secrets.” The real secret, of course, was that Theranos didn’t have any trade secrets because its machines didn’t work. But her answer worked for a long time."

Theranos: How a broken patent system sustained its decade-long deception Op-ed: The patent bargain is seriously busted.; Ars Technica, March 4, 2019

Daniel Nazer, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); Theranos: How a broken patent system sustained its decade-long deception

Op-ed: The patent bargain is seriously busted.

"Early Theranos skeptics tended to be scientists who had heard the company’s extravagant claims and had asked the obvious question: does the tech really work? In 2014, a pathologist wrote that he was skeptical Theranos was using proprietary technology for many of its tests. Other scientists expressed frustration that Theranos had not shared its methods with the scientific community nor offered any evidence that the methods worked.

In April 2015, while Theranos was still enjoying mostly fawning press coverage, Business Insider published an article quoting some skeptical scientists. The article noted that “technical details about Theranos’ seemingly revolutionary tests are hard to come by.” Notably, Theranos had hundreds of patents by that point. Yet a scientist looking to understand how Theranos actually conducted its test wouldn’t learn anything useful from a typical Theranos patent. This is because companies can submit rough outlines of their processes, leaving out the key details, and still get patents. Recent legal reforms have only made this easier.

Business Insider wrote that if Theranos had come up with a “killer application” for microfluidics, “that may explain its reluctance to show the patented details that make its technology unique.” This sentence shouldn’t make sense, because patents are public by nature. So “patented details” should be public.

The sentence only makes sense when you realize that the patent bargain is utterly broken. The people who work within the patent system realize it. That’s why no one raised red flags when Theranos received hundreds of patents without telling the scientific community how its machines actually worked."

A Scholarly Sting Operation Shines a Light on ‘Predatory’ Journals; New York Times, March 22, 2017

Gina Kolata, New York Times; 

A Scholarly Sting Operation Shines a Light on ‘Predatory’ Journals

"The open-access business model spawned a shadowy world of what have been called predatory journals. They may have similar names to legitimate journals, but exist by publishing just about anything sent to them for a fee that can range from under $100 to thousands of dollars."

‘Fraud is not a trade secret’: How a 27-year-old blew the whistle on Theranos; MarketWatch, 11/17/16

Barbara Kollmeyer, MarketWatch; ‘Fraud is not a trade secret’: How a 27-year-old blew the whistle on Theranos’ :

[Kip Currier: Ethics instructors of all stripes were served up a whopping good case study with the story of Tyler Schultz (grandson of former Secretary of State George Schultz) exposing the dazzlingly fraudulent actions of health tech powerhouse, Theranos, Inc. and its now-disgraced CEO Elizabeth Holmes. This is one that should and will be studied in MBA programs and ethics courses for years.]

"‘Fraud is not a trade secret. I refuse to allow bullying, intimidation and threat of legal action to take away my First Amendment right to speak out against wrongdoing.’"

Patent office workers bilked the government of millions by playing hooky, watchdog finds; Washington Post, 8/31/16

Lisa Rein, Washington Post; Patent office workers bilked the government of millions by playing hooky, watchdog finds:

"Thousands of employees who review patents for the federal government potentially cheated taxpayers out of at least $18.3 million as they billed the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for almost 300,000 hours they never worked, according to a new investigation.

The investigation scheduled for release Wednesday by the independent watchdog for the Commerce Department, the patent office’s parent agency, determined that the real scale of fraud is probably double those numbers..."

The hours not worked could have helped the patent office whittle down a backlog it has struggled for years to shrink, the report said. The backlog stood at about 550,000 applications last spring. Reviews take 16 to 26 months to complete...

The patent office, while relatively small, plays a big role in supporting the nation’s economic development by determining whether innovators’ new products should be given sole rights to exclude competitors from making or selling their invention. The government issued 326,000 patents last year."

6 Men Admit to Running a Global $100M Software Piracy Ring; Wired.com, 12/17/15

Andy Greenberg, Wired.com; 6 Men Admit to Running a Global $100M Software Piracy Ring:

"On Thursday the Department of Justice announced that it’s reached plea agreements with all six individuals charged in a six-year massive fraud scheme, which prosecutors say sold more than 170,000 copies of Adobe and Microsoft programs including Windows, Office, Photoshop, and Creative Suite, complete with valid registration codes and even physical certificates of authenticity. The men, who were tracked by investigators at the Department of Homeland Security, offered those pirated copies of the software at a discount through sites including Amazon, Overstock, eBay, Craigslist, and in some cases their own individual websites. Five of the convicted men face up to five years in prison (the sixth faces just three years) and up to a quarter million dollars in restitution each.

“It appears to be one the biggest software piracy cases, if not the biggest, the department has ever handled,” US Attorney Tammy Dickinson told WIRED in a phone interview."