Who Makes The Slabs (And Where)

You are correct BStrauss3, I did not mean to imply he owned the patent to all certified holders, but re-reading my post makes it sound like that was the intention. I meant he came up with a patent on the holders that most of the other TPGs now use for security reasons. The other TPGs probably pay him a small usury fee or royalty. Before he started ICG he worked at PCGS in the early days, back when they used the small thin holders. I still haven't read through all 20 cited patents yet, and may never do so, because I am not all that interested personally.

Sorry for any confusion on my part in the previous post. I didn't mean to imply that he was the inventor of the certified holder at all.

I am speaking as an american law-talking guy: you go one of two mutually exclusive ways for IP protection: Patents (which are a quid pro quo - the govt gives you a monopoly in exchange for your disclosing to the public the advance in science to which you contributed). The con to that is that the monopoly is the term. 20 years from filing (picking the easiest example).

Consider a trade secret, as long as it meets certain criteria (one of which is to keep them secret and their use is to maintain a competitive advantage), as long as those conditions are maintained, the trade secret is valid and I wouldn't want to be the defendant accused of divulging them. Think Coca Cola recipe. There is no patent on it; it is a trade secret.

It is only possible to sue someone (or prosecute) for divulging a trade secret if you have either signed a confidentiality agreement or have engaged in an illegal act to access the information. I think we have all read about people throwing out documents that should of been shredded and that information ends up in the public domain, or people sending confidential emails to their entire contact list.
Also "Federal law" only extends so far, you cannot prosecute the counterfeiters in China as they are not in US jurisdiction and trade laws are different outside the US.