For questions 23 – 24, please refer to the following passage…
Questions
Fоr questiоns 23 – 24, pleаse refer tо the following pаssаge: Michael Jennings is a “reverse engineer” whose business is to buy a product and then reverse-engineer it to find out how it functions. Once a job is complete, Michael’s memory is erased by Shorty to prevent him from divulging secrets regarding the reverse engineering process. ARC has recently put on the market a “living monitor” called “A-life” that can display images on a computer display or monitor in three dimensions (3D). Allcom hires Jennings to reverse engineer the A-Life product. Jennings purchases ARC’s A-Life monitor from a store and eventually determines the complicated algorithms and functionality needed to generate A-Life’s 3D images. Jennings then contacted and sold the technical details that he derived from the reverse-engineering process, not the software code, to Allcom, which never had access to the software code. Jennings is paid a lump sum $526,000.19 paycheck for his work, but Jennings was and is not an agent, employee, or contractor of Allcom, and had no affiliations with Allcom until Jennings offered the technical details for sale. Allcom understood Jennings's reverse-engineering process. Allcom eventually begins to sell its holo-monitor, which incorporated similar functions as A-Life’s product performed. Unbeknownst to Jennings and Allcom, ARC had filed for a U.S. patent prior to Jennings’ reverse-engineering success, but the U.S. patent had been maintained as a secret in the USPTO because it had not been published yet. The now-issued, published valid U.S. patent literally claimed every element of the methods used in Allcom’s product. [Inspired by the movie "Paycheck."]