I appreciate the approval tongue emoticon I was going to patent
something once. Only once. It was new at the time. A
modification to a car. Funny 'cause I didn't drive all that
often. Searched USPTO (this is in '99/00) online. Nobody had it.
Learned all about the process, crunched the $ on and off at
work. Six months later, I decide to go for it. I had the money
to start. Did ONE MORE SEARCH... ...and someone beat me to it 4
months earlier. They weren't approved, but they were in the
system going through the process. I couldn't find a single flaw
in their set up where I could distinguish mine from it. So,
after a week of cognitive dissonance, I just figured, "It's an
idea whose time had come, and he had the corp connections to get
his stuff pushed through faster". So, last time I did that.
