ming, An excellent response. Thank you.
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Since the competitive advantage had a limited timespan (until the USPTO published the application) can we assume that that advantage has been exploited vigorously and the scientific team has developed new classifiers in the interim?
I am not sure if you meant to use the past tense here. I do not personally think that the competitive advantage ends with the publication of the application (or the patent itself). In that case what they have or have not been doing in the interim is not directly relevant to this point IMO.
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It was Frudakis who inferred that the competetive advantage was directly related to the amount of time that the information could be kept from publication.
"..To maintain its competitive advantage, the company will refrain from presenting details of the discovery until the findings are published by the US Patent and Trademark Office."
It is not a stretch of the imagination to suppose that the eventual presentation of the details of the discovery will eliminate the competetive advantage.
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-If there have been no new products developed in the interim due to monetary or resource limitations, what advantage still exists now that the 'cat is out of the bag' so to speak?
The advantage conferred by the patent application and, in due course, by the patent itself.
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While the advantage offered by the patent application has always existed (assuming the eventual granting of the patent), the advantage referred to by Frudakis is clearly related to the release of the details of the discovery. Since he felt strongly that keeping them confidential provided a significant advantage, it is fair to assume that the competition can extract meaningful and helpful information from the application itself. Information that they can use outside of the protection provided by the patent. Otherwise there would be no advantage to keeping it secret.
