In posts here, I read of others independently coming up with the same scenario. You cannot be certain that your "pitch was stolen". In general, my belief is that if I can think of an idea then someone else can too. But I don't tell others about it unless I'm willing to let the idea go.
How could we be sure IBM didn't pitch a similiar idea in isolation? I don't know what the RFP looked like, but it doesn't seem crazy that two teams would come up with similiar solutions to the design constraints, even with.a relatively unusual idea such as this one.
