Jump in with a thoughtSince I think a lot of this debate about who’s first with technology etc may be moot
First. “ Patent pending “. Is a protected status.
Second. In order to submit for a patent the Topic/ process/procedure/formula or for whichever it pertains to cannot already exist nor can it be even close to an existing patent.
To sum it up even if another company has this technology they simply have not put their position forward in order to capitalize on it and are too late.
Another interesting fact about patents is that about half of patents in place are for things that don’t exist yet. So further helps you understand how many inventors attempt to beat people to the punch so that if a company comes along with the proven technology they would have to buy out that existing patent at the owners price
Good luck
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