How I find out I’ve been awarded a patent
I’ve applied for a couple patents, and two of them have actually been granted. For the one a couple days ago, a friend of mine at a conference told me that I’d been awarded a patent the same day it was granted, because he’d read an analysis-type article about it on someone’s blog:
Next Wave: Apple granted a patent for an Apple NC system
For the earlier patent, and also for this one, I got a USPS notification of my patent two days later. No, not from the Patent Office; not from Apple either. In fact, I don’t think I heard from Apple that my patent had been granted for about four months, when I got a notification that the $500 patent bonus would be on my next paycheck.
No, I got a piece of mail offering to sell me a plaque commemmerating my patent from a company which, I assume, is in business because they’re always the first company to tell folks their patent has been granted, and people order from them because they’re first. I didn’t order a plaque or anything ( Apple does eventually send me a plaque, about 6 or so months from now ), but I’ll put their url in here in case anyone wants to order one of these things.
Wow. Now that I’ve actually looked at the mail, their prices are crazy — $80 for the real low end; $170 or so for the midrange. No wonder they can afford to postal spam the known patent-grantee universe.
August 13th, 2006 at 10:50 pm
I’ve been wondering if I’ll find out about the status of my most recent patent application by reading Slashdot….