A NATO so called ally trying to steal US tech.

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Gavin West, a former Marine officer who fought the Taliban and hunted al Qaeda terrorists, set out to capture the corporate world as a civilian. His startup company, Texas-based Aspis Forge Inc., is led by himself as CEO, a father-and-son duo known for their manufacturing savvy, and a German project manager, Anja Glisovic-Rosch.
Ms. Glisovic-Rosch, who serves as Aspis' chief technology officer, is a physicist within the German defense industry, an expert in chemical/biological warfare and a military officer in the German armed forces. It is she who caught the Bundeswehr's attention.

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She's smart and he's a badass:

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This fall, she reported her Aspis hiring to higher-ups. Then came Germany's claim that her work meant the Bundeswehr owned the patent rights.
Mr. West left the Marine Corps as a captain after eight adventurous years. He made three deployments to Afghanistan in the first decade of the "War on Terror." He commanded a scout/sniper platoon in 2004, which he said was the largest and deepest deployment of a Marine Expeditionary Unit in history. Two years later, he returned alongside Delta Force as an intelligence collector and then went back in-country, teaming up with intelligence agencies to hunt terrorists.

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Why this fight matters:

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He told The Washington Times that his standoff is not just for himself and Aspis. What if other countries snatch patents on which their citizens contributed while employed by an American company?
"There are almost 47,000 Chinese H1B visa holders in the U.S., the majority of whom work in technology," Mr. West said. "Imagine if China adopted the same position as Germany and required that each of their citizens reported technical details of emerging technologies directly to the People's Liberation Army."
The U.S. issues H1B visas to skilled foreigners, primarily in high-tech fields, for temporary employment. Thousands are involved in defense industry projects.

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Germans wanted to steal the device and build it in Germany vs Texas:

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Ms. Glisovic-Rosch won Bundeswehr's permission to join Aspis last year, and she was the silencer's principal inventor. Then a German Defense Ministry bureaucrat cited a German law to tell Mr. West that the German government would exercise authority over the silencer design. In other words, Germany, a NATO ally in the midst of record arms spending, could take the Aspis' creation and pass it to contractors.
Germany made the claim as Mr. West was trying to corral millions of investors' dollars to start a production line in Texas.

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German surrender:

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Fairly quickly in March, good news arrived. The Bundeswehr sent a letter dropping its threat to take patent ownership.
"The result of this review is that we consider your previous objections regarding the legal status of the invention to be justified. I would therefore like to confirm that the Federal Republic of Germany will not assert any rights to the invention. … I can now appreciate the reasons why you pursued this matter with such persistence and asserted your legal position."
The notification said the government had not seen Mr. West's letter of intent dated September until recently. He told The Times the letter had in fact been delivered to the ministry.

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Love this line:

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If officials had the letter from the start, the German ministry said, then "this escalation could have been avoided entirely."
Mr. West told me, "I've never seen a German letter of surrender before."

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The Washington Times article

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"Imagine if China adopted the same position as Germany and required that each of their citizens reported technical details of emerging technologies directly to the People's Liberation Army."

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As if China doesn't require this already.

I don't know German law or what agreements she signed with her employer but in the US, if you invent while at work the patent belongs to the company. I can't read the whole article so I can ascertain if her invention was for her company or on her own time.

BQ78 said:

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I don't know German law or what agreements she signed with her employer but in the US, if you invent while at work the patent belongs to the company. I can't read the whole article so I can ascertain if her invention was for her company or on her own time.

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Here is the whole article:

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The American war veteran who fought Germany to protect his invention
Another rift between the U.S. and its NATO allies
By Rowan Scarborough
A military gun silencer costs the cash-flush Pentagon about $1,500. Yet the component is so important to stealth missions that it became the crown jewel in a former U.S. Marine's ownership battle. He fended off the German Defense Ministry's bid to claim his company's invention for its own weapons buyer, the Bundeswehr.
Gavin West, a former Marine officer who fought the Taliban and hunted al Qaeda terrorists, set out to capture the corporate world as a civilian. His startup company, Texas-based Aspis Forge Inc., is led by himself as CEO, a father-and-son duo known for their manufacturing savvy, and a German project manager, Anja Glisovic-Rosch.
Ms. Glisovic-Rosch, who serves as Aspis' chief technology officer, is a physicist within the German defense industry, an expert in chemical/biological warfare and a military officer in the German armed forces. It is she who caught the Bundeswehr's attention.
This fall, she reported her Aspis hiring to higher-ups. Then came Germany's claim that her work meant the Bundeswehr owned the patent rights.
Mr. West left the Marine Corps as a captain after eight adventurous years. He made three deployments to Afghanistan in the first decade of the "War on Terror." He commanded a scout/sniper platoon in 2004, which he said was the largest and deepest deployment of a Marine Expeditionary Unit in history. Two years later, he returned alongside Delta Force as an intelligence collector and then went back in-country, teaming up with intelligence agencies to hunt terrorists.
Years later, Germany triggered his hard-charging combat instincts. He began protests by sending letters and contacting Capitol Hill staffers and members of Congress.
He told The Washington Times that his standoff is not just for himself and Aspis. What if other countries snatch patents on which their citizens contributed while employed by an American company?
"There are almost 47,000 Chinese H1B visa holders in the U.S., the majority of whom work in technology," Mr. West said. "Imagine if China adopted the same position as Germany and required that each of their citizens reported technical details of emerging technologies directly to the People's Liberation Army."
The U.S. issues H1B visas to skilled foreigners, primarily in high-tech fields, for temporary employment. Thousands are involved in defense industry projects.
The Washington Times has reviewed correspondence between Mr. West and Bundeswehr procurement czars. The Times reached out to the German government, both at the embassy in Washington and the Bundeswehr's press offices, but received no reply.
Ms. Glisovic-Rosch won Bundeswehr's permission to join Aspis last year, and she was the silencer's principal inventor. Then a German Defense Ministry bureaucrat cited a German law to tell Mr. West that the German government would exercise authority over the silencer design. In other words, Germany, a NATO ally in the midst of record arms spending, could take the Aspis' creation and pass it to contractors.
Germany made the claim as Mr. West was trying to corral millions of investors' dollars to start a production line in Texas.
On March 23, Mr. West fired off an appeal letter to the director of armaments, Vice Adm. Carsten Stawitzki, and he dropped some names.
"The United States trade office as well as our Senate and Congressional House Armed Services Committees are now involved in this situation," he wrote. "This is now a senior U.S.-German political issue."
He continued, "I will avoid attributing political motives to these threats to seize and nationalize our technology, but representatives of the U.S. government clearly see this as likely retaliation for the US Administration's policies on trade and NATO."
He further explained, "[Ms. Glisovic-Rosch's] work was conducted for project specific to Aspis Forge, on her own time, separate and distinct from her work with the German Armed Forces. In short, Germany has no claim to any portion of the invention, even under applicable German law(s)."
Mr. West's congressional contacts included Rep. Nick LaLota, a New York Republican and an old Naval Academy classmate.
Mr. West also emailed a House staffer: "We have invented a weapons suppressor that is half the weight of current ones and can be made invisible to thermal detection. The same goes for the rifle barrels we are about to start producing. These give us a decided advantage in night time ops and against drone based thermal [intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance.]" Mr. West told The Times that his emerging company has three U.S. patents in the books and will soon submit a fourth for the suppressor. All are centered on next-generation weapons components.
"To be clear, all the work on this project was done on our time at our expense, not on the German dime or clock," he said.
Fairly quickly in March, good news arrived. The Bundeswehr sent a letter dropping its threat to take patent ownership.
"The result of this review is that we consider your previous objections regarding the legal status of the invention to be justified. I would therefore like to confirm that the Federal Republic of Germany will not assert any rights to the invention. … I can now appreciate the reasons why you pursued this matter with such persistence and asserted your legal position."
The notification said the government had not seen Mr. West's letter of intent dated September until recently. He told The Times the letter had in fact been delivered to the ministry.
If officials had the letter from the start, the German ministry said, then "this escalation could have been avoided entirely."
Mr. West told me, "I've never seen a German letter of surrender before."
Rowan Scarborough is a columnist with The Washington Times.
Gavin West
COURTESY GAVIN WEST

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Ah, I see now, thanks. The Germans want to steal it from the US company because she is a German citizen, that is BS.

BQ78 said:

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Ah, I see now, thanks. The Germans want to steal it from the US company because she is a German citizen, that is BS.

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Yes and that she had a connection to their military.

BuddysBud said:

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"Imagine if China adopted the same position as Germany and required that each of their citizens reported technical details of emerging technologies directly to the People's Liberation Army."

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As if China doesn't require this already.

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Exactly. They debrief their citizens when they return home.

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He commanded a scout/sniper platoon in 2004, which he said was the largest and deepest deployment of a Marine Expeditionary Unit in history.

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Just a footnote from history to put Gavin West in context, he deployed with 1/6 under the command of LtCol Asad "Ghengis" Khan (IYKYK) and that one sentence description doesn't do justice to what this 2004 deployment accomplished.



The 22nd MEU deployment to Afghanistan in 2004 was extraordinary and still stands out for the amount of damage they did to the enemy with such a small footprint. By 2004, the Taliban had become comfortable in ambushing US forces that were largely confined to the ****ty mountain roads in Afghanistan and then falling back behind the ridge line because US forces would not pursue them. Khan's Marines did hunt them down on foot in the mountains and killed thousands of Taliban during that deployment. The scout snipers under Gavin West's command would have played a big part in that.

At the end of that deployment when 22nd MEU was aboard ship on its way home, LtCol Khan was fired by the MEU Commander...Col Frank McKenzie.

Any books that you can recommend on this subject. I want to know more about their deeds.

As a matter of fact, there is a recently published book by Khan.

https://www.amazon.com/Betrayal-Command-Afghanistan-2001-2004-Leadership/dp/B0G2L7PTY2/

Thank you. Just added it to my to read list.