In 2002, I left my software design job at a financial products organization whose name you hear every night on the news. Shortly after my departure, they filed half a dozen patent applications covering the software I and my staff had designed. They’re unintelligble gibberish.
I told them I refused to sign off on the application – the patents were not describing anything new or novel, and the description of them was basically describing nothing.
Well, after loitering in someone’s inbox for 9 years, the USPTO approved the patent (“Hey, if it’s bogus, let the patent attorney firms fight it out and make millions of dollars”). So next time you hear a PSA about what a contribution it was to society that someone invented the parking meter – think of me.
