What a splutteringly unjust anecdote. That's just like a confrontation with the playground bully for whom "might makes right".

Part of me (the large, idealistic, why-can't-we-all-just-get-along part) wants to dismiss it as apocryphal. But the older, sadder, wiser part of me realises that this is the way of the corporate world.

I genuinely understand the desire to protect something you invented, but if a society in South America and a society in North Africa can both come up with the concept of pyramids, and if there are cave paintings in Spain that look remarkably like the cave paintings in South Africa, then surely we must accept that several people can come up with a similar idea without necessarily having stolen it from each other? In my own life, I have occasionally come up with some or other "brilliant" idea, only to find that it's already been done.

I can see how the idea of patents got started, but I'm very worried as to where it might end up.