Omigod! I have a Patent!

I was going through the junk mail, and almost threw out a flyer from someone trying to sell Patent services. Then I noticed that it had my name and patent number on it (!!!)

I’ve mentioned that my name was on a patent before, but this is a brand spanking new patent, and I am the sole inventor. And I learn about it from someone trying to sell me stuff.

I’d filed for this two years go, at my previous employers. I thought it had sort of died, and that they had no interest in seeing it through, as I was no longer there. But these things grind along, I guess.

Link? Description of patent? Don’t leave us hanging.

U.S. Patent #6,480,268, granted Nov. 12, 2002. “Method for Temporary Suppession of Reflection for Optical Measurement”:

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/search-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=ft00&s1=6480268.WKU.&OS=PN/6480268&RS=PN/6480268

Congratulations.

My brother-in-law works in the patent office. (he does a lot of reading.)

That’s very cool, CalMeachem. Congrats.

It’s one of my goals to one day have a patent on something. But seeing as how the most inventive things I create are sand paintings, I doubt that’s really ever going to happen. Ah well.

Cal, comgratulations. You are the man.

And I am not. Because, of course, the man can splel.

Now you can finally build that interoceter.

Why don’t you sell it to TV stations to temporarily reduce reflection off eyeglasses while a guest or anchor is on camera.

.

Damn straight. You have no idea what a problem front-surface reflection is with those triangular screens.
What still kills me about this whole episode is that th damned government doesn’t tell me about this at all – I have to learn about it from a huckster trying o sell me a framed copy of my patent front page.

Of course, I learned that my book got published in a similar way – it got listed on Amazon as soon as it got assigned an SBN number. Nobody told me that this had happened, of curse. I learned that I got an ISBN number when I saw my book suddenly pop up at Amazon before it was published.

Wow! It’s a good thing the same thing didn’t happen with that Nobel Prize I saw you won a few years ago?

Clever li’l weaver/beaver. I take my hat off sir, and smack you with it. But now you are one of them. The “better” people now. You have been warned.