[JamesM]

Well the patent application specifications were PPD50593 and PPD50602, U.K. patent applications 0026351.7 and 0026350.9 respectively. They covered a range of rootworm sequences and some potato inhibitor sequences, very oddly the potato sequences were not mentioned on the front cover of the relevant application. Was this an attempt to hide the potato sequences? It was successful I didn't spot them until much later but as I hadn't received any IP training then can't expect me to read them.

They were very easy to get as all I did was prepare a two page report including the sequences and say that they could be patented. That was my entire contribution, next thing I know the bio-tech project manager requested a presentation be abandoned due to intellectual protection being engaged.

But what I couldn't understand was why as the company partners had been informed by myself, of a directly competing also industrially funded research project, that the requested IP training wasn't provided. Withholding IP training makes no sense when the project manager was informed of data transfer requests by senior staff at the University, and when they sent the full patent specifications they even provided no IP training when the thesis was being written.

What possible business logic leads to witholding IP training from someone who has copies of a companies international patent applications?

You know with two concurrent and competing industrially funded GM research projects, groundbreaking research, intellectual patent applications, company failures, acting in a manner directly responsible for increasing the difficulty of the work and plaigiarism in the scientific literature someone might think that there are a lot of questions that could be asked.

Very uncomftable questions.