Chemical Engineering

There is a fine line between a natural substance and a proprietary one. As we have seen with the field of genetics, there is quite a bit of legal confusion when it comes to intellectual property created in a laboratory. It touches not only on legal philosophy, but upon ethical and moral philosophy as well. As a cutting edge insurer, Dumont promises to remain at the very cutting edge of any breaking developments, and to keep you covered accordingly.One of our clients is a high profile chemical engineering firm located in the Southwest region of the US. Their specialty, polymers and silicates, has a particularly strong market in the consumer technology field. As such, this company generates quite a bit of profit.

One of the more respected scientists at this firm decided to branch off and form his own smaller “boutique” development firm. Although our client ought to have been more strict with him as far as non-competition, they instead agreed to his own weakly worded document.

Regretfully, this company did not consult with us before signing the document, and the former employee was within weeks creating and selling slightly tweaked versions of our client’s products. While competition is generally accepted as an all-around good thing for the market, it can kill individual businesses… particularly when it is so malicious and parasitic. Our client, fortunately, had the wherewithal and resources to overcome such a setback.

We spoke with the board of directors and urged them that, with no uncertainty, they must consult with us should any circumstance arise again even remotely similar to this one. The best insurance coverage is that which is hyper-vigilant. This is why there are so many thousands of heavily tailored plans available for thousands of different kinds of clients. The only insurer worth keeping around is the one whose interests are the same as yours.


Firearms Accessories

People give a lot of credit to the NRA for keeping the government away from people’s guns. They are both praised and loathed, depending upon one’s particular political beliefs, for the role they have played. But they are not as effective as one may think. Although gun control activists believe that the government has not done enough, the truth is that they’ve been heavily involved in the entire process.This involvement means that gun manufacturers must devise new safety features every few years, in order to assure that accidental gun deaths will be kept to a minimum. Safety engineers have been hired into numerous firms and have been paid exceptionally handsome salaries in order to meet these compliances. An extremely competitive market has developed as a consequence.

With every market is going to be a certain degree of foul play, and the gun manufacturing industry is no exception. One of our clients nearly fell victim to a well-established patent troll law firm, and would certainly have if it were not for our coverage. The product in question had actually been on the market for a few years, and the patent was fully our client’s. However, the product did have some convergent similarities to another product which the troll had sought out and co-opted with the sole intent of predatory litigation.

This was a contentious issue, and the costs of merely going to trial added up quickly and substantially. The total cost to our client, with regard to a relatively insignificant and superfluous government-required part, totaled in the 10’s of Millions. Without expert legal advice and representation, along with full IP insurance coverage from Dumont, it is quite possible that this troll may have eventually sunk our client’s business permanently. Instead, every single penny spent on court costs and high quality representation was recovered, and the troll’s once thriving enterprise came to a rather violent halt.


Gaming Software

Though it has taken on the connotation of “playing video games” in recent years, “gaming” has much longer been used as a euphemism for gambling. Although card and mechanical games are still romantically considered the real gambling experience, for most gamblers the electronic slot machine is the way to go.These electronic slots are heavily regulated. The motherboards governing game play must be registered with respective gaming commissions, and every batch is subject to routine inspection within production facilities, upon delivery to gambling establishments, and randomly on site after delivery. This is to ensure that there is no fixing of games or any other type of fraudulent activity going on with the technology.

One of our clients had developed a particular game which proved to be extremely popular, to the eventual detriment of numerous other games. Our client, being exceptionally meticulous, had engaged us not only in the distribution of the final product, but during the entire development process as well. As a result, this product carried numerous patents and was heavily insured by Dumont.

This played out quite well when knock-off products began to appear in various casinos around the country. It turned out that one of the official gaming inspectors had been secretly working with one of our client’s competitors, and had stolen valuable detailed information about our client’s proprietary product.

Had it not been for the heavy security we had offered our client, the knockoff would have been able to slip through the slippery cracks of the patent world, and our client would have experienced devastating losses. Instead, the offending party was fined heavily, and our client’s product installed in place of all the offending party’s counterfeit machines.


Industrial Products

A small manufacturer of heavy general equipment located in a highly industrialized area decided to shop out a new product to long-time associates. Although the new product was extremely convenient and profitable, its producer was lax on patenting and patent insurance, despite strong contrary advice from Dumont. This proved to be quite unfortunate.Initially, the trust between long interdependent industrial businesses remained intact, the product kept a very low local profile, and everybody made money as a result. However, as the manufacturer improved and perfected said product, they began to realize that there was great potential for huge profits. Just as this was happening, word was spreading from clients as well, attracting great interest from competitors.

By the time said small manufacturer was ready to produce and sell their innovative product on a global scale, one such competitor had already copied, improved, and started patenting the product in question. Quite possibly a worst case scenario, the manufacturer sought every avenue of legal action against said competitor. However, all legal attempts proved futile.

Dumont is not in the “I told you so” business. The stark ramifications of this case are enough to drain the blood of those even remotely involved; one could only remotely imagine the effect it had upon our client. A long established business-to-business relationship afforded our client a false sense of security in this case. The business world is cut-throat these days. It is indeed sad that we can no longer trust one another, but profit is the number one motivator in this case. The other business saw a great opportunity and exploited it to the fullest. Had our client been insured and gone through the patent process with their innovative product, they would be quite wealthy rather than out of business.


Mobile Technology

Do you remember when people didn’t use cell phones? Probably not if you are in your 20’s. Even if you are older, it might be difficult to imagine how you ever got by without them. And now they are basically computers. It is something of a mistake to merely call them “phones” as they are becoming the technological equivalent of the Swiss Army Knife.Technology is also making it much easier for anybody to develop “apps” for these incredibly smart phones. What was once the domain of highly paid professionals is now something you can do in your mother’s basement – and the market is thankful. Applications have gotten much cheaper and more useful in recent years. They have also gotten a lot more plagiaristic.

Many application developers, both on the corporate and cottage level, have a fundamental lack of creativity which lends itself to the need to “borrow” from other applications. They way these things are developed – sometimes dozens a week from one individual – means that sometimes the security of one’s intellectual property may go overlooked.

Dumont, in light of the current development of this market, has consulted with some of the best minds in technology – both on the academic and business sides of it. We have numerous clients in the software development field who hold their proprietary applications dear to their respective livelihoods. We are not about to let uncreative, awkward, self-important “remixers” get all the credit for things they did not create.

Our understanding of today’s modern technology, along with our close study of any and all legal precedents in this field, will go a long way to assure that there will be no piracy of your software. It’s just the Dumont way.


About Dumont Insurance Corp.

Dumont Insurance Brokers Corp. – renowned for the cumulative industry knowledge, experience and insight of its staff, its close attention to customer care, and its innovative, automation-tinged model – was developed with a unique system underwritten by the most trusted and highest-rated carriers. This unique equation allows Dumont to provide customers with the very best, and most cost-effective, professional liability and E&O coverage, in spite of the ever-increasing hazards of a litigious society.

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