Now that's confidence: PIEtech, Inc., a company in Powhatan, Virginia, actually asked to be a defendant in a patent infringement lawsuit that involved one of its clients.

In August, PIEtech's competitor (and neighbor in Richmond, Virginia) Wealthcare Capital Management, sued the large Wall Street firm UBS Financial for infringement of patents for a “Method and System for Financial Advising”. Both patents were issued last summer.

PIEtech's CEO Bob Curtis believed that Wealthcare's real target was its own MoneyGuidePro software, and that Wealthcare targeted UBS instead in order to "make a bigger PR splash." So, against Wealthcare's wishes, PIEtech requested to join the lawsuit in early November.

Well, they have now gotten their wish: they were allowed to join the lawsuit. And despite the plaintiff's initial reluctance to let PIEtech be a defendant, Wealthcare CEO David Loeper is "quite happy" about this development because "I think it's going to set the record straight."

PIEtech plans to challenge the validity of the patents on the argument that the patents seem to cover the basic process that most financial planners use - a process that it contends can't be patented.

And though other PIEtech clients that use the MoneyGuidePro software would seem to be good targets for further lawsuits, Wealthcare CEO Loeper says it's not likely that they will be sued at this time. (Perhaps they want to see how this lawsuit against a big fish works out before they go after the small fry.)