Ruth smiled the way a shark might, if a shark had gone to law school.
“Then, Mrs. Vance, we have a great deal to discuss.”
PART 3
I did not go scorched-earth.
I want to be clear about that, because it matters for how this ends.
I could have.
Ruth laid out the nuclear option: file to enforce the patent, freeze Meridian’s operations, potentially claim years of back royalties.
It might have burned the whole company down — the company that employed a hundred and forty people who’d done nothing wrong.
That’s not who I am.
That was never who I was.
What I did instead was this.
I had Ruth file the paperwork to formally establish and record my ownership of the patent — quietly, legally, ironclad.
Not an attack.
Just the truth, finally written down where it couldn’t be erased.
And then I had Ruth send Gerald’s company a single, calm letter, notifying Meridian Systems that the intellectual property underlying its core product was owned by an outside party — me — and that any continued use would need to be licensed.
