of the table, his nose in his phone. Monique, who was supposedly dating him, sat next to him, staring down at her tablet.
Kovid was studying his computer screen, possibly trying to complete an important task even though we were obviously in the middle of hell and high water.
Roscoe stood at the door passing out photocopied sheets of his code “summary points.”
It became clear in a hurry that he didn’t care what we thought of his code. He was here to tell us what we thought of it, but four hours was way more time than even Roscoe could use to expound on his brilliance.
“What might have taken a normal engineer a thousand lines of code, I did it in a few hundred,” he stressed. “Not only can this Borgot phone answer questions better than Apple’s Siri assistant, Borgot’s voice assistant will translate phrases into foreign languages. The translation feature is not only great code, it moves this phone from ordinary to groundbreaking. I spent the weekend filling out patent forms.”
Ah, that explained Larry the lawyer. Patents meant patent lawyers to prove there was something to patent. Someone had to fill out reams of paperwork, understand every line of code and determine what ideas were unique enough to patent. I hadn’t recognized the guy sitting next to Lawrence, but he was taking notes and paying attention. He had to be the lawyer assistant, and the guy who would do most of the patent work. His college-aged face and perfect haircut matched the lawyer he was striving to be. The disgruntled look of a guy who was putting in too many hours while his boss sent text messages to the babe sitting nearby made him look more like an engineer than a lawyer.
Of course, it was possible that Monique wasn’t receiving suggestive text messages from Lawrence, but she was smiling at her tablet, and I’d seen her reach over to touch his leg under the table twice. Since they weren’t talking aloud, it stood to reason they were conversing on their phones.
I shifted my eyes to focus on Cary. He was blathering about how two of the ideas for Borgot’s invention were his. “That clearly makes the case for my name on the patent.”
Roscoe didn’t think so. “You didn’t code a single line.”
“The idea is worth more than the code. It’s the unique idea that is patentable, not the actual code.”
The lawyer assistant, introduced as Howard, muttered, “You can’t just patent an idea. You must have enough proof of the concept that an ordinary person skilled in the area can make use of it. The idea must be novel and non-obvious. The more patents a company has, the better its chances of survival.”
“I’m at this code review to make sure we’re headed down the right path,” Cary inserted. “I’ve read every line of code. I’ve got people testing it. I have the emails to show I submitted the improvements.” He waved papers around. “I’ll forward the emails around.”
Roscoe rolled his eyes. “Kovid submitted those ideas before you did. We talked about them long before you sent those emails.”
Kovid looked up. “The translation feature is one I’ve been working on for years. We just need time to finish coding each language. We’re well past proof of concept.”
“We’re past proof of concept if you count Pig Latin code,” Roscoe sneered. “My code will be far more important when it’s completed. I’m working on actual languages .”
I sat up straighter. “What?”
Kovid ignored the interruption. “No other phone assistant will have an active translation portal. Travelers can buy software separately for each language. The phone assistant will translate the phrases it hears or it can speak a selection of phrases as set up by the user.”
“Can the phone really translate Pig Latin?” I asked. Joe’s phone had spoken both English and Pig Latin in my living room. I wasn’t certain how the phone was set up, but until this moment, I had just assumed that Joe had entered a
Kovid was studying his computer screen, possibly trying to complete an important task even though we were obviously in the middle of hell and high water.
Roscoe stood at the door passing out photocopied sheets of his code “summary points.”
It became clear in a hurry that he didn’t care what we thought of his code. He was here to tell us what we thought of it, but four hours was way more time than even Roscoe could use to expound on his brilliance.
“What might have taken a normal engineer a thousand lines of code, I did it in a few hundred,” he stressed. “Not only can this Borgot phone answer questions better than Apple’s Siri assistant, Borgot’s voice assistant will translate phrases into foreign languages. The translation feature is not only great code, it moves this phone from ordinary to groundbreaking. I spent the weekend filling out patent forms.”
Ah, that explained Larry the lawyer. Patents meant patent lawyers to prove there was something to patent. Someone had to fill out reams of paperwork, understand every line of code and determine what ideas were unique enough to patent. I hadn’t recognized the guy sitting next to Lawrence, but he was taking notes and paying attention. He had to be the lawyer assistant, and the guy who would do most of the patent work. His college-aged face and perfect haircut matched the lawyer he was striving to be. The disgruntled look of a guy who was putting in too many hours while his boss sent text messages to the babe sitting nearby made him look more like an engineer than a lawyer.
Of course, it was possible that Monique wasn’t receiving suggestive text messages from Lawrence, but she was smiling at her tablet, and I’d seen her reach over to touch his leg under the table twice. Since they weren’t talking aloud, it stood to reason they were conversing on their phones.
I shifted my eyes to focus on Cary. He was blathering about how two of the ideas for Borgot’s invention were his. “That clearly makes the case for my name on the patent.”
Roscoe didn’t think so. “You didn’t code a single line.”
“The idea is worth more than the code. It’s the unique idea that is patentable, not the actual code.”
The lawyer assistant, introduced as Howard, muttered, “You can’t just patent an idea. You must have enough proof of the concept that an ordinary person skilled in the area can make use of it. The idea must be novel and non-obvious. The more patents a company has, the better its chances of survival.”
“I’m at this code review to make sure we’re headed down the right path,” Cary inserted. “I’ve read every line of code. I’ve got people testing it. I have the emails to show I submitted the improvements.” He waved papers around. “I’ll forward the emails around.”
Roscoe rolled his eyes. “Kovid submitted those ideas before you did. We talked about them long before you sent those emails.”
Kovid looked up. “The translation feature is one I’ve been working on for years. We just need time to finish coding each language. We’re well past proof of concept.”
“We’re past proof of concept if you count Pig Latin code,” Roscoe sneered. “My code will be far more important when it’s completed. I’m working on actual languages .”
I sat up straighter. “What?”
Kovid ignored the interruption. “No other phone assistant will have an active translation portal. Travelers can buy software separately for each language. The phone assistant will translate the phrases it hears or it can speak a selection of phrases as set up by the user.”
“Can the phone really translate Pig Latin?” I asked. Joe’s phone had spoken both English and Pig Latin in my living room. I wasn’t certain how the phone was set up, but until this moment, I had just assumed that Joe had entered a
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