In fact, nine of the 16 claims on Sorensen's patent relate to the
waffling. What requires so much elaboration? "Spacing. Depth. All
sorts of things," Sorensen offers, then fesses up. “Basically the
attorneys write a bunch of b.s. and hope they bore the patent
examiner to death and he'll approve it.”
Fighting
off Starbucks
Mark filed a
patent while working for a previous company. I saw the original idea, and
he read me the original patent before being submitted to the patent board at
the previous company. He also read me the patent after it came back from
the patent board and I swear, I wouldn't have recognized it at all. Mark
barely recognized it. The lawyers made all sorts of extra claims because of
the parts involved. They removed some claims because of the parts involved.
I think the lawyers basically made stuff up and turned it into
Legalese™ in order to keep their jobs.
You have my permission to link freely to any entry here. Go
ahead, I won't bite. I promise.
The dates are the permanent links to that day's entries (or
entry, if there is only one entry). The titles are the permanent
links to that entry only. The format for the links are
simple: Start with the base link for this site: https://boston.conman.org/, then add the date you are
interested in, say 2000/08/01,
so that would make the final URL:
https://boston.conman.org/2000/08/01
You can also specify the entire month by leaving off the day
portion. You can even select an arbitrary portion of time.
You may also note subtle shading of the links and that's
intentional: the “closer” the link is (relative to the
page) the “brighter” it appears. It's an experiment in
using color shading to denote the distance a link is from here. If
you don't notice it, don't worry; it's not all that
important.
It is assumed that every brand name, slogan, corporate name,
symbol, design element, et cetera mentioned in these pages is a
protected and/or trademarked entity, the sole property of its
owner(s), and acknowledgement of this status is implied.