What if I don&#39;t patent my invention? Say I invent something and choose not to patent it but start producing and selling it, then if somebody else goes and patents my exact design what happens to my rights to sell/produce that product?
If you are producing and selling it, that is an absolute bar to patentability by anyone else (this is known as prior art). So if you are using it very publicly before they file, they can't get the patent.
If you are subcontracted, then some other company is going to use the code that you wrote, and since you were not paid for it, you are the copyright holder. A letter to that company's legal department might work wonders.
Such clauses are called "copyright assignment", "invention assignment", and/or "works for hire" clauses, partly depending on the clause's intent and wording. They're pretty common in employment contracts for software development and some creative positions. Frankly, the clauses don't actually do much, at least in the US -- copyright law already recognizes the concept of works made for hire (which belong to the employer), and claims too far beyond that are often rejected if they aren't obviously related to company business. With that said, your hypothetical programmer's painting is safe unless it depicts, say, the contents of an email from the CEO. :) Even if the clause technically entitles the employer to claim ownership, the employer has no legitimate interest in doing so. Likewise, that app created outside work is safe as long as it is created using no company resources and is unrelated to the employer's business. If the app is obviously related, that's where things get hairy.
Exactly the same way it works over all other content There are no special classes of copyright, there’s just copyright. What a user of a service may do with copyright materials will be spelled out in the licence. If there is no licence, then they are left with fair use/fair dealing.
They have copyright in their additional text, and possibly in things like their visual design choices (fonts, layout etc). They may also have introduced a few deliberate typos to detect any literal copies from their version (rather as mapmakers add a few imaginary features to their maps). None of this creates any rights to the original text. You are still free to produce your own copies of the original text. Just get it from some other source so you can be sure not to include anything of theirs.
You should talk to an attorney, but based on what you've provided, there are potential claims for copyright infringement, trade secret misappropriation, conversion, unfair trade practices, and probably quite a bit more.
Negotiate a licence Of course, your chance of doing so are not good - computer game companies routinely pay millions to use trademarks like this (and they usually get exclusive rights) and that’s probably out of your price range. Stopping you doing what you want to do without paying for the privilege is effectively what trademarks exist to do. If the usage was incidental and clearly used Star Trek IP to identify Star Trek products, like the usage in The Big Bang Theory TV show, then that’s OK. However, your usage is using Star Trek as the core of the product and that’s not OK. Others have suggested that the trademark owner may not pursue you - that’s unlikely. Unlike copyright, trademarks that are not defended can be lost - this trademark is worth billions, they will happily spend tens of thousands to grind you into the dust.
Before the AIA in 2012 both companies could apply for a patent and if one of the applicants thought they were both trying to patent the same thing they could initiate an interference proceeding. In that proceeding before the board, they each present their evidence as to date of conception and diligent effort from that point to the date of the first filing. The board decided which application went forward. Now the U.S. is with the rest of the world in first-to-file. It doesn’t matter who conceived first unless one actually stole the idea from the other. There is a new derivation procedure to try to prove that. I don’t think it has ever yet happened. One of the &quot;simultaneous&quot; inventors could publish the invention, putting into the public domain. If published before the other's filing date, it would theoretically prevent the other from getting a patent. In any case a patent owner can stop the other from making their product or charge a royalty. There is a narrow case under the AIA where one company has been using a process that another later patents and can retain a limited right to keep using that process but can’t move or expand operations. This is called Prior User Rights.