Patent Payback

Thirty-five of the core patents the Xinghai Group runs on are held personally by its chief engineer, Zhou Jingyuan, and the company uses them under licence from him. His wife, Lin Wantang, and her lover, Shen Ziang, join forces to take over the company and have him thrown out. Zhou puts up with it and lays his plans without saying anything. Then he takes back the rights to all thirty-five patents, stops the company's licence, and sends it a demand for the usage fees it owes, which come to a very large sum. Lin Wantang and Shen Ziang carry on as they were. They get caught up in a scandal over their business connections, a case of technical falsification, and a rumour campaign of their own making, and their reputations do not survive it. By the end of that the Xinghai Group is close to bankruptcy.