Chances are your office has an NCAA March Madness pool. The most prevalent examples of this are discoveries in the natural world. Einstein’s Law of Relativity, for example, revolutionized the world of physics and will be forever linked with the man who devised it, but it has never been owned by anybody. One of the reasons Nasa and Langley were able to buck this trend was because it was, as Barry describes it, “nerd-heaven”. Years ago, I printed every single one of my stories. New Horizons has traveled for 13 years and across 4 billion miles to reach this point, and the probe looks to be in fine shape: Mission planners confirmed earlier this month that it will pass within 2,200 miles of Ultima Thule after determining that large objects, like moons, and smaller ones, like dust, were unlikely to pose a threat to the spacecraft as it blazed past in excess of 31,000 miles per hour. Through his observation that comet tails were blown around by some kind of solar breeze, he believed sails could capture that wind to propel spacecraft the way winds moved ships on the oceans.

The small but steady push of the EmDrive is a winner for space missions, gradually accelerating spacecraft to high speed. He received his first patent, for an electrical voting machine, at the age of 21. In 1876, he set up an invention lab in Menlo Park, New Jersey, and set a schedule of one small invention every 10 days and one major invention every six months. Much of this can likely be attributed to studio interference, as the film was infamously reworked only months before release to add in more comedic elements, as if this would suddenly make it a good movie. I don’t know why the Babylonians left this one in particular out, by the fact that it’s there doesn’t actually make a difference in your natal chart or horoscope. To make things simple, let’s assume that you only want to patent your idea in the United States. Once your prototype is finished, and you’ve successfully beamed your cat and a few incredulous family members across the room, the first thing you need to do is search the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s patent database to see what similar ideas have been patented.

With the exception of three states (New Jersey, Connecticut, and Alaska, as well as the District of Columbia), district attorneys are elected, unlike similar roles in other common law jurisdictions. Patent agents are people who have met the patent office’s qualifications but are not recognized as attorneys. Once she is familiar with your invention, Suzy begins a thorough patent search of her own to uncover all of the related ideas that have already been patented. The first thing Suzy wants to do is review your teleportation idea in minute detail. Let’s take a look at how your lawyer (let’s call her Suzy) would help you patent your teleporter. Let’s take a closer look at astrophotography and discover if you could be the next photographer to the stars. To enlist the government’s help in stopping infringement, the patent-holder must take any infringers to court. If you are contracted to grant your employer all patent rights to your work, selling your own invention would actually be infringing your own patent (and your employer could take you to court). The same holds for copyrighted “work-for-hire.” You may be the original creator, but if you republish the work yourself, you are infringing the copyright.

But you have added the crucial element that makes human teleportation possible: a sophisticated computer system that can arrange the replicated quantum particles in exactly the same configuration as the original. This system shows up in some form or another in most all developed nations, because it is so important to a country’s development. As we’ve seen, any original work of art is automatically copyrighted as soon as it is put into some tangible form. Instead of signing form letters, write a personalized letter with your views, and send it via email or snail mail. Microsoft might fly past competitors in the enterprise with a technology that creates a sort of cockpit that automates and simplifies for employees the use of their Microsoft and non-Microsoft software. Europa might be inhabited today. Jerome Lemelson (1923-1997) held 557 patents, and played a major part in the development of camcorders, CD players, word-processing programs, Walkmans, fax machines and automated industrial machines, among many other devices.