Legal Question in Personal Injury in California

I am a Indian resident and live in India, happened to contact a friend (Indian) who lives in California to get in touch with a patent holder whom I wish to associate for my new venture. The US patent has some relevance with my newly developed innovative business model.

After sending the copy of the patent on 4th Aug 2009 and subsequently mentioned about the business model and further to his request explained about the entire details of the innovative model. He requested the entire details so as to communicate with the patent holders.

As advised he wrote to the patent holders by an ordinary mail, within a week�s time they called and emailed to express their willingness to discuss the possibilities. Since there were two persons on the patent and they were at different areas within California they started of with a conference call and latter started to communicate via emails.

These correspondences were done between my friend and the patent holders all the copies of the mails were forwarded to me on progress. Towards the first of September they all decided to meet at one place and to discuss in detail. Before that the patent holders have forwarded all progress they have made till date with their patent.

After listening to our model they expressed their interest in associating based on this I suggested two options-either we pay royalty or they become partners in the venture. They opted for the partnership and it was agreed to a 10% for their patent.

By now the details have to be drafted and my friend brought forward the need of a company formation to have a legal entity. Different names were discussed and finally a name was selected for time being as 7thmediachannel as a web site was registered and email id�s were created.

After assessing the potential of the venture my friend had expressed his interest to join the venture, which I agreed but the share allocations will be decided later. And I have also mentioned the about the non resident director (me) be part of a US entity.

While such discussions were underway, towards the end of Sep 09 my friend mentioned to me that one of the patent holder is travelling abroad and once he is back we shall resume the discussions and finalize matter by then.

After 3 weeks when I contacted my friend he said he is waiting for response from the patent holders. He also told once they get back he will contact me and then we shall finalize. When I tried to contact him his response was lukewarm and told me to wait.

At this point I realised the overall feel we had earlier had changed. This triggered the thought to contact the patent holders directly on the 10th Dec 09, to my shock I hear a completely different story � my friend has presented the whole idea and the plan as his and have formed a company and is now trying to raise capital from investors for this venture.

When I explained the background he (one of the patent holder) seems to be puzzled and said he will initiate a conference call soon. The very next day I received a call from my friend�s representative in India and cautioned me not to contact patent holders directly and I have nothing to do with the new venture.

Supporting documents I posses are;

1. Email copies of all correspondence between my friend and me almost 200 mails in this 4 months period.

2. Email copies of all correspondences between my friend and the patent holders up to 30 Sep 09

3. Conversations and transfer of files during the conversations in Skype

Wish to seek guidance and advice to protect my idea and to stop my friends to proceed further and how to inform about the theft of idea officially to him and the patent holders and its consequences.

1 Answer from Attorneys

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