The dream about my Patents 25 3 4

Take II The dream about my later Patents..? Take I see 2015 2 2

Waking at a little before 7 am on this bright spring morning, 25 3 4, here in my adoptive Scandinavian country, the one with two official languages, Swedish and Finnish. My dream then comprised all the people whose job it was to research and write patents: people who had to spend so much of their valuable time finding somewhere to sit to perform these duties, whilst all the rooms allocated for these activities were occupied by the "higher-ups" who at the same time used these rooms to discuss the organisation of how to conduct these various businesses, trivia in other words.

No matter, in 1989 in my second year after having joined the company as Joint R and D Director, on a 4 year contract, I was to fulfill the task of having my idea of using lighter weight substrate abaca paper embodied in a patent specification: with a full year from the date of filing its specification, to exploit its inventiveness, before the specification would be examined in the Finnish Patent Office, and by others in the greater Patent World of Intellectual Property.

But fulfilling this task involved my contacting the Company's existing patent lawyers belonging to the Company here named K-H Oy, who perhaps unsurprisingly allocated a patent lawyer who was new to the business, so was cast in the position of the blind leading the blind, I can say now upon reflection. And that that first patent specification had three named inventors: the CEO and MD, my predecessor the other Joint Research and Development Director soon to be retired, and last but by no means least, yours truly!

So the programme of work to evaluate these lighter fibrous casings progressed as the business of protecting the intellectual property through the various patent offices was also anticipated. The company's mode of impregnating the base paper was with an extrusion die which relied on single- as opposed to double-sided viscosing (viscose being the name given to sodium cellulose xanthate, the chemical derivative of cellulose to render it soluble, after its early inventors Cross, Bevan and Beadle, in Britain in 1892. All of which lead to these lighter weights of paper becoming more uniformly impregnated throughout their thicknesses, which gave rise to their possessing inherently superior constructions to their heavier substate predecessors.  

Towards the end of my third contractual year therefore the objections were made to my specification : an American Company, the company who had founded the process for manufacturing fibrous cellulosic food casings, and the biggest German competitor. So began my fight to save and lose my first Finnish and its European version of the same specification owing to prior art in a Japanese filing 6 months earlier to ours, but not in Japan, where the prior art of Takugi's specification had dropped out of the race, as being not worth its annual upkeep, during the 7 years before examination in the more reasonable (?) Japanese Patent Office. But none of these events before, almost single-handedly, together with the patent lawyers, I should write an improved specification which in the fulness of time at its Appeal brought in 2005, I had the satisfaction of hearing my patent, now with only one assignee, declared inventive. Moreover, together with a different Patent Lawyer, I'll call B.T. of the Company B., we fought the German competitor's "me-too" specification: giving me the added satisfaction in 2006 of scoring 3 victories to 2 defeats in essentially the world's countries involved in the manufacture of fibrous casings.  

My job description after completing the 4 years contract was subject to many changes in the years that followed when I would also change the location of my work station 3 times in all and, although I was too late to claim a financial reward for assigning these patents to the Company who employed me, their value to the company's well being, once questioned, proved that the markets where they enjoyed most sales, were third most profitable after the U.S.A. and Finnish, in countries like Rumania and Bulgaria, for the first time replacing their collagen inferior alternatives..! hahaha   

Today then I shall adorn my blog with a couple of covers from some of the patents in this family: from the U.S.A. and Japanese Offices, to go with my European and one or two other countries' covers. My career owes much to my success with these patents which, together with my specialized knowledge of the long-fibred paper used in their manufacture, kept me gainfully employed until my 69th year. Not bad, even if I still have to re-visit their comings and goings from time to time, in my dreams?