3. TIL Sears was sued for stealing an invention when they suddenly stopped ordering...

TIL Sears was sued for stealing an invention when they suddenly stopped ordering it... and released their own Craftsmen version

If loggerhead couldn't keep up with demand, but someone else could, what exactly is the problem?

Kids weren't dying due to a lack of these wrenches. This company didn't need to go under just because their product was "too successful".

Sears had exclusivity rights and maintained them until their replacement hit the shelves.

Legal? Yeah. Scummy? If you have any stake in the situation, this is what you don't want done to you.

I've owned multiple small businesses and have experienced several situations like this. The first one involved paying a monthly service fee to "Bob" who maintained a trading software. One of my peers, Cass, did not think the software was as good as it could be, and did not like the response to his suggestion for obvious improvements... so he secretly commissioned someone to create a replacement over the next six months. When it was finished Cass suddenly ended his service and switched over to the new program, immediately offering the service to all his peers at a rate that undercut Bob for better software, leaving "Bob" with no customers besides myself (temporarily, I left too, Bob was done in).

Cass thinks he did nothing "wrong." "Bob" should have gave him what he asked for. Cass made a better software, what's so bad about that?

When "Bob" politely claimed the changes weren't feasible to be done immediately, he was right - all these changes were going to be wiped away when we moved to a new platform in 6-18 months. It was basically a big impatient waste of time

I think Cass was a selfish jerk. He could've pushed for Bob to make these changes. He didn't. He said "Do what I need" and did not engage in a debate, he simply replaced what he saw as a weaker businessperson.

We all wanted the improvements, but we all knew they'd come as soon as the new platform rolled out, and didn't feel like forcing Bob to do extra work for... in our humble opinion's... no reason. Many of us think Cass wanted to replace Bob all along, and that was the real reason he did this. Not because Bob couldn't keep up. Cass did it secretly because he knew he'd be run out if he did it openly; Bob would make the changes to protect himself, and everyone would hate Cass for attacking Bob's livelihood.

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