RE: A little more...You have covered this off Jeepman but it is clear law that it is first to register, not first to get the idea that counts. The only exception is if someone steals someone's idea unlawfully; for example, a member of senior management who has access to a company's trade secrets misappropriates a secret and patents it or to repeat the example in your extract, aquires the trade secret through industrial espionage and patents it. Then the patent can be successfully challenged. But the exception is narrow. Merely acquiring another's prior idea is not per se unalwful, since there is no property in ideas unless and until the idea is patented.