Question

Use the five-step decision-making process discussed to analyze the following situations and recommend a course of action.
The case:
You are the vice president for software development at a small, private firm. Sales of your firm’s products have been strong, but you recently detected a patent infringement by one of your larger competitors. Your in-house legal staff has identified three options:

(1) Ignore the infringement out of fear that your larger competitor will file numerous countersuits;

(2) threaten to file suit, but try to negotiate an out-of-court settlement for an amount of money that you feel your larger competitor would readily pay; or

(3) point out the infringement and negotiate aggressively for a cross-licensing agreement with the competitor, which has numerous patents you had considered licensing.

Which option would you pursue and why?

Notes:
The five-step is :
( Problem definition -Identify alternative -Choose alternative-Develop implementation-Evaluate the result)
I want your answer based on the five steps that I put for you in the notes, and for every step, I want an answer
answer by using your own words please ..
the name of course is "Ethics in Information Technology"

Answer 1

The company has been having great sales but recently they identified a patent infringement by a larger competitor.

The following are the options suggested by the legal team:

• Ignore the infrigement out of fear for various other countersuits
• Threaten to file a suit but negotiate an out-of-court settlement for money that the larger competitor wiould readily pay
• Point out the infringement and negotiate aggressively for a cross-licensing agreement with the competitor, which has numerous patents you had considered licensing

Since the company sales have already been great, there seems to be enough room for us and the competitor in the market. In such a case, the best option would be to threaten to file a suit but negotiate for money in an out-of-court manner. This will not require any money or time when compared to the third option. This will also give the company a new fund to utilize properly to increase sales.

In this case, a notice can be sent to the competitor to bring the infringement into their notice and since they wouldn't want to be dragged into a lawsuit too, they'd offer an out-of-court settlement. Even if they do not propose the same, it can be done by us.

The result would be saved time and earned money for our company and an avoided rivalry with a large competitor.