An American in Provence

The World's Happiest Dog lives in our building during the summers.
It is true.
This dog, a yellow labish sort of gal, makes me smile every time I see her.

Apparently, she belongs to my neighbor's son, who has a restaurant on the beach here in Marseille. I call her "Bonjour" to myself, but I don't think that is her name. I call her this because once I asked her owner what his name is, and he said "Bonjour". During the off-season, Bonjour lives with him on the beach, but I guess during the tourist season there is just way too much excitement (kids! frisbees! kites! ice cream cones! doggy brain overload!) that she is sent to stay with his dad.

I usually only see her when she is being taken out for her walk, but you can tell that every furry fiber on her body is just vibrating with excitement, and that she is thinking something pretty much along the lines of "Oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy.............." And that's about it.

Sometimes I feel like asking my neighbor if I can keep her for a few days. It would be nice to have someone around who thinks I am the world's greatest human being just for giving her some water to drink. Strangely, Alain doesn't seem to think that.

It must be nice to be a dog. Don't have to worry about passing an International Law Class in French, that's for sure.

It seems to me that most people, as a general rule, don't like hearing about other people's dreams. Let's face it- your dreams are only really interesting and make sense to you.

Ex-boyfriend showed up at your work in a chicken suit?
Yeah, that means absolutely nothing to me.

But I think I probably have the most boring dreams in the world.

I dream about Patents.

Honestly.
Like I don't get enough of it from 7:30 am to 6:30 pm five to six days a week.
I really like my job, but it's like my brain is continuing to churn to try and figure out how all the laws and stuff fit together. At any one time I have a mixture of French, European, International, and US law bouncing around in my head, sometimes colliding into each other.

For example, what is the only country in the world that has a first-to-invent system instead of a first-to-file system? (ie the invention belongs to the first person to conceive of it instead of the first one to file for a patent)
No, for once France isn't being different just to be different. It's the United States (way to go USA. Like the whole imperial system vs. metric system isn't screwy enough)
So all these different systems have different laws, and how they mesh together can really do your head in.

And NO there is no such thing as a worldwide patent. Doesn't exist people. I'm still trying to convince my father-in-law of this. You can file an international patent application, but then it gets divided up into individual patent applications for the countries that you want. And just because you get a patent in one country, it doesn't mean squat in all the other countries.
And you haven't really lived until you have cried due to frustration over a patent for goodness sake.
All of this gets worse before exams.

Okay, first a little background before I explain a dream I had before the USPTO exam:
***********
Once a patent application has been filed, it is (in most countries) examined in order to determine whether it is a) properly described and claimed b) new c) non-obvious and d) industrially applicable.

With me so far?
Okay, it gets more complicated. Actually, a lot more complicated, but I am trying not to bore all my readers away.

In the US, there are different statutes of prior-art material that can be used to show that the invention of the application is not new or obvious. For example, if it was published by another before the application was filed by the inventor. One of these is the

MPEP (Manual of Patent Examining Procedure) 102e:
If the invention was described in (1) an application for patent, published under section 122(b), by another filed in the United States before the invention by the applicant for patent or (2) a patent granted on an application for patent by another filed in the United States before the invention by the applicant for patent, except that an international application filed under the treaty defined in section 351(a) shall have the effects for the purposes of this subsection of an application filed in the United States only if the international application designated the United States and was published under Article 21(2) of such treaty in the English language.
for some examples, see
The Official Link

Asleep yet?

Okay, here is an actual dream of mine:
I was dreaming about different dates and different priority claims for a patent application, filed in various countries and languages, and trying to work out the applicable 102e date.
- Was it filed in the US before or after November 29, 2000 (the critical date)?
- Was it published in English by the World Intellectual Property Organization?
- Does it claim the priority of a foreign application filed before Nov. 29th?
- What is the earliest effective date?

That's it. Just dates and different facts and figures. Woohoo! Actually, it was studying the examples in the link above that got this into my head, so my subconscious was in overdrive with all the different options, published in English before Nov. 29th, not published in English and not designating the United States, etc.

So here is a challenge for anyone interested:

- An international patent application is filed in France in French on Nov. 6th 2000

- The patent application is published by the international bureau in French on May 6th 2002

- The patent application enters the US National Phase on May 6th 2003

- The patent application is granted on December 6th 2004

By what date is it applicable as prior art against another US patent application? Whoever gets it correctly will get their name in big glittery letters on my blog. And in order to win, you can't just pick a date and hope to get lucky. You have to say which example it is based on of the examples in the link above.

Pretty exciting huh? You too could be a super-cool Patent Agent!

I have made an amazing scientific discovery. I call it: "Megan's Time-Energy Discontinuum"

T = E^-1
wherein T = Time and E = Energy
In short, time is the inverse of energy, and energy is the inverse of time.

Ever hear of the time-space continuum?
Here is the wikipedia site:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_space_continuum

What does all this mean you wonder?

Simple: if I have the time to do something, then I don't have the energy. Likewise, if I have the energy to do something, then I don't have the time.

Concrete examples:
I have the energy to mop my floor around 2 pm on a Tuesday afternoon. However, I am at work when this happens, so I don't have the time.
I have the time to mop my floor around 2 pm on a Saturday afternoon. However, after a 45-50 hour workweek + spending all Saturday morning shopping for groceries, running errands, waiting in line at La Poste, etc. I don't have the energy. All I have the energy for is a three-hour PASSED OUT ON THE COUCH major nap session.
See? Time-Energy discontinuum.

I don't think this time-energy discontinuum will go away in the near future. Maybe once we retire. At which point, there will most likely be a (time*energy) - health discontinuum. Yay for the rat race!

Found out, in true French Bureaucratic fashion, that I have been accepted to the program and will be starting next week. Still haven't received the official papers and it starts less than a week.

I demand to be cited as the original discoverer of this Time-Energy Discontinuum for all future scientific articles.

On day two of our stay in Bretagne, after rolling out of bed around 9:30 or so (a first for me, I usually wake up much earlier than that, even on vacation) Alain's parents, Alain and I hit the road to drive to Lorient to see his cousin B. and his girlfriend S. who had a baby boy in March. He was quite cute, and is just starting to "eat". (see picture)
We hadn't seen them since our wedding, so it was good to be able to see them again. They have a great duplex apartment, and I turn green with envy everytime I think about how much they paid for it (about 2/3rds of what we paid for ours in Marseille).

We had a late lunch then went for a walk along the seashore, then it was late so we stayed for dinner, then left around 10 pm, getting back to Alain's grandmother's house a little before midnight.

Don't have much to say about Lorient, but it seems like a cute little city. My guidebook says that it has a little over 60,000 inhabitants and that it was almost completely destroyed during WWII. The books says that Lorient is the second biggest port of France for fishing, merchandise, and for pleasure cruises, but I don't really know how they came to this conclusion. Oh, and every year there is an Interceltic Festival for two weeks in August, which seems like it would be fun to go to. Once.