Chick Flick Read online

  The mathematician met with the two students and listened to each make his argument. Finally, he chose the student who had published, rather than the other, and this student was given the credit. The professor of the two students later came into his office and asked the mathematician if he did not think it was the second student who’d really done the work. “Personally,” the professor added, “I think it was the second student.”

  The mathematician replied quickly, “Of course I know he did the work. But that second young man will have many good ideas in his career. He doesn’t need this particular credit to prove his intelligence. The student who stole? It might be his only chance for success. We might as well let him have it.”

  When you get that first idea, an idea that you believe to be great, you hold on to it tightly. In fact, you sometimes hold on so tightly that people start to begrudge you for it. This was how I felt about the sexing application. On the one hand, I wanted everyone to leave me alone, to let me work on my project, solve the problem, and get on with the science. But on the other hand, I didn’t want to alienate potential investors. I needed money to make this project a reality, so I needed them to think that something big was cooking behind the scenes. It was a delicate balance.

  Todd, on the other hand, wasn’t as paralyzed by this kind of indecision. He set up meeting after meeting until we would secure an investment. With Lauralynn’s kindness and assistance, we reached out to every one of her contacts whom she shared with us. She gave us the names and details of anyone she could think of who would possibly meet the terms of a potential investor and allowed us to use her conference space as a neutral meeting ground.

  But the first thing on our list was to meet with a patent attorney with whom Lauralynn had set us up, Patrick Stockwell. She said he was the best patent attorney in the state.

  “Great,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Then we better find an investor soon enough to finance it, because it will probably cost us an arm and a leg.”

  Stockwell’s office was on the fifty-first floor of a skyscraper located across from Lauralynn’s building. His window faced the opposite side of the city, so we had a birds-eye view of our beloved home base. Todd and I sat, sipping coffee and quietly enjoying the view until the meeting started.

  Stockwell breezed into the room without so much as an introduction, sliding into a seat at the end of the glass conference table.

  “We’re talking $15K,” he said.

  “And what exactly does that include?” Todd jumped right in.

  “Initial preparation of the patent, which includes writing a summary of the idea and the claims. Then, we’ll file the application at the patent office and handle the case from there. Our lawyers are highly qualified and each has a Ph.D. in the required field, plus a law degree, of course,” he said.

  I gulped and looked around. No wonder they could afford such luxurious digs.

  “I, myself, have a Ph.D. in physics from Harvard, as it happens,” said Stockwell.

  A slim, blonde woman entered the room and smiled at Stockwell, looking for his cue. Once he’d nodded to her, she sat down and faced us. He must have gathered we were, indeed, serious.

  “This is Donna Burton,” he said. “She’s our bio-patent expert, and she’ll be handling your patent, should you choose to retain our services.”

  I opened my mouth to ask for a moment to consider, but Todd gave me the eye. I could tell he was already sold.

  Donna smiled warmly and opened up a file that Stockwell had prepared.

  “So, your company’s name is ‘Spells’? That is an interesting name,” she said.

  “It comes from our product,” I said, “which is essentially a spell-checker for DNA. We want to identify specific sequences.”

  “I love the spell-checker enzymes,” said Donna, and a feeling of gratitude washed over me. I had to thank Lauralynn for sending us here, no matter the price tag.

  “It’s nice to meet a fellow geek,” I said to Donna with a smile, “and I mean that in the best way possible.”

  “I gladly accept the compliment,” she said.

  Stockwell took over to talk about procedure.

  “What we usually do is write the patent in as general terms as we can, keeping in mind the scope of the idea, and then we narrow it down according to the examiner’s comments. The summary includes an introductory to the patent subject and references and other related ideas or patents that may influence the judgment of the patent. It also summarizes the other known methods. The claims are then the only thing the inventor claims as his or her invention. It is the only thing that is legally binding in the patent. Anything that is not written down in the claims, is not owned by the inventor.”

  “Who is the inventor here?” asked Donna.

  “I am,” I answered.

  “This is an important distinction,” explained Donna. “The patent owner and inventor are two different things. The inventor usually gets credit for the invention, but ownership is given to the company, which pays the inventor’s salary. That means the inventor is not the legal owner of the patent; the company is.”

  “Will I have to write the patent?” I asked.

  “No,” said Stockwell. “You’ll be working with Donna on that. You’ll explain your idea in detail and she’ll write out the claims. It’s your job to be explicit in your explanation of the idea and what exactly you claim as your own invention, so that Donna can do her job well.”

  “What is considered an invention?” I asked hesitantly. I had once taken for granted that I knew the answer to this question, but now that we’d stepped into the complicated world of legalese, I wasn’t sure which end was up.

  “An invention, in legal terms, is defined as a new, useful, and nonobvious process, machine, or product or an improvement of an existing one,” Donna explained politely, waxing into more about patent law, trademarks, copyrights, intellectual property, and more. That she could be an expert in biotech and this esoteric type of law astounded me. I knew she must have been truly brilliant.

  It wasn’t long after that moment that we signed a retainer and agreed to work with Donna. We set up a separate meeting with her, agreeing to be in touch by e-mail and phone and have a meeting once every two weeks in order to get the patent completed as soon as possible.

  Todd and I were meeting for business talk one night at what had quickly become our stomping ground, the Flying Cow. When he finished his beer, he stood up to go, and made a motion as if he were waiting for me to leave too. I shook my head.

  “I think I’ll sit for a while,” I said. “You know, stay out in the world a little bit before I get back to the lab.”

  The truth was, I was embarrassed about my motivation. I was hoping that I’d run into the cute newsman again. Blessedly, Todd didn’t make any inquiries, and soon I was left absentmindedly eating nuts and watching the muted news and sportscasts on the TVs behind the bar. After half an hour, I’d given up hope. I decided that I’d visit the restroom before walking back home.

  Winding my way back through the crowd, I suddenly saw him sitting at a back booth. He had a pile of papers in front of him and was reading. As I walked closer, I saw an undisturbed slice of apple pie sitting on a plate across the table from him. Gingerly, I looked around for a jacket or some sign of a date on that side of the table, and was pleased to find no such thing.

  “May I join you?” I asked. “Or does this pie belong to someone?”

  “I was saving this seat for someone who likes cinnamon apple pie,” he said, smiling. “That wouldn’t happen to be you, by any chance, would it?”

  I blushed. “Of course, good sir. I love cinnamon apple pie.”

  He stood up and grandly motioned to my side of the booth, taking my hand to guide me as I slid in, in front of the pie. It smelled perfectly delicious, and I was so happy I’d decided to wait. That feeling wasn’t just about the pie, though, obviously.

  He sat back down. “I should probably ask the waiter to warm it up for us,” he said. “I
t’s been sitting here waiting for you for a long time.”

  I couldn’t believe that he’d been waiting for me. He must have seen me when he came in, I thought with a smile. He motioned for the waiter, who took the pie away to warm it back up. The place was crowded with people and the music was loud, so I had to strain to hear William when he spoke. But his eyes shined clear at me from across the table; he had the most amazing eyes.

  “And what have you been up to?” he asked.

  “A lot, actually,” I said with a laugh. I couldn’t contain my emotion; it felt so right to be here with him. I told him everything, practically my whole life story. I was thrilled and nervous, and he could tell. Luckily, he thought I was funny—or at the very least, amusing. He laughed along, asking me questions as my words spilled out.

  At some point, I noted his questions were a little too perfect, a little too pointed.

  “For someone who didn’t know anything about the poultry business when we last spoke, you seem like you know a little more about what’s at stake today,” I said.

  “I have to confess, I did some research after we last saw one another,” he said.

  “And? What did you find?”

  “Plenty about chickens. Not much about chicken sexing, unfortunately,” he said. “No one on the bioblogs is really talking about it.”

  “No buzz, huh?”

  “Nada. I searched under ‘green’ and ‘cleantech,’ too, just to be sure,” he said. “My algorithm is very good. Incidentally, you wouldn’t believe what you get if you just type ‘chick sexing’ into Google.”

  I laughed. “So. You’ve been snooping around behind my back.”

  “You caught my curiosity,” he said. “What can I say?”

  I was silent, speechless for once. I took a bite of the pie and solicitously offered up my fork. “Any for you?”

  “I wouldn’t dream of stealing your pie,” he said. “You seem to be enjoying it too much.” He called the waiter over for another beer. “If I’m being entirely truthful, I didn’t totally come up empty-handed.”

  “Do tell,” I said, somewhat terrified that he had found an embarrassing old school photograph to gloat over.

  “I did find a lead,” he said, leaning over and lowering his voice. “It looks like there are some negotiations going on between the company that owns the injection-machine technology and a huge pharmaceutical company.”

  “RICPCom?” I was incredulous. Surely they would have mentioned this. “And who?”

  He nodded. “I mean, huge.” He made a motion with his hands to signal thumbing through a wad of cash. “I’m not sure what the deal is going to be about, but there’s a lot of talk.”

  I was confused; I was accustomed to doing plenty of my own searching, and I hadn’t found a thing.

  “How did you find this out?” I asked, leaning over, my voice straining to stay quiet but still be heard over the din of the bar.

  “Let’s just say it’s not information that’s readily available to the public,” he said. “Not in the public domain, as it were.”

  “Oh-em-gee! You’re a HACKER!?” My voice rose involuntarily. I quickly regretted it.

  “Shhh,” he admonished.

  “Sorry!” I put my hand over my mouth.

  “It’s OK. You just can’t be too careful,” he said with a wink. “You never know who’s sitting in these bars snooping around.”

  “I can’t believe you’d do this for me,” I said.

  “Hold your horses, cowgirl,” he shot back. “I didn’t say anything about doing this for you.”

  I don’t think he meant it to, but the remark stung. Of course, I thought. How could I be so foolish as to think this had anything to do with me?

  But then, in a joking tone, he added, “I did it for the fun of it.”

  I smiled. “Well, in any case, I’m grateful.”

  “I’m a newsman, after all,” he said. “Knowledge is everything to me.”

  I decided to press my luck. “Well, if you, by any chance, happen upon any more knowledge about that sector . . .”

  He winked again, reaching his hand across the table to tap mine, folded in front of my empty pie plate.

  “You know, I do have a question for you about something I read,” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “When do you plan to sex the chicks in the egg? On what day?” he asked.

  “We are planning to piggyback on the day the vaccines are injected: day eighteen. Then we can draw a sample for our sexing test. But we hope to get down to the tenth day for our next-generation product,” I explained.

  “Is taking thousands of eggs out of incubation twice really convenient, though? Once for the sexing and once for the inoculating?” he asked.

  I could see his point.

  “It does take time. But where are you going with this?”

  “My point is that the way these incubators are structured, it takes a lot of careful practice to get all these eggs onto the conveyor belts safely, and if you do it twice, you would be risking more trays falling and further product loss. I think you have to think this through. It may not be such a bad idea to wait until hatching day,” William explained.

  I wanted to control my anger, but I could feel my face turning red.

  “William, are you saying I shouldn’t pursue my project because the workers can’t handle moving trays with caution? I think we can give them more credit than that! Plus, this is important!”

  His reply was gentle, calm. “I am just pointing out that the poultry-industry people have their way of doing things and it may appear as interference on your part, trying to change things. Some things are better left untouched.”

  “I don’t understand, William,” I said. I was baffled by his comment. “I thought you would be on my side, encouraging me! You seemed like a guy who takes on challenges, not runs away from them. As a reporter who seeks the truth, I thought your moral judgments would prevail. RICPCom’s injection technology changed the industry. They went from inoculating by hand to automated inoculation, reducing the manual handling of chicks and disease transfer.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “I should and will support you. And I will also continue to be on the lookout for anything my crawler finds on the poultry sector on the Net.”

  He stared into my eyes quietly and gently put his hand back on mine again as if to reassure me he meant no harm.

  “William,” I said, rubbing a nascent tear from my eye. I was embarrassed to be so emotional. “I think I have something in my eye,” I claimed, leaning over to him and opening up my left eye widely. “Do you mind checking?”

  Ever the gentleman, he didn’t make a big deal of my waterworks. He looked into my eye intently, holding on to that moment for just a few seconds longer, my face so close to his.

  “Nope, it’s fine, nothing there,” he said.

  “Thank you,” I said, sitting back in my seat. “Must have been allergies.”

  I melted, and thought about that moment for the rest of the evening until I finally found sleep around midnight.

  The next potential investor on our call sheet was another heavyweight. George Roseword had sold a high-tech engineering company a few years back for millions; I had a tangential connection in my friend Paul, a software engineer who had worked for him in the summers. I had learned quickly from Todd that no matter how fragile a connection might seem, you need to work it for all it is worth. So I reached out. I was surprised when I received an e-mail from Roseword’s partner, Samuel Cole, who said they’d be interested in talking things out.

  Paul had prepared me for a lengthy process; first, Cole would vet the idea, and then, if he liked it, he’d send it up the chain to see if Roseword wanted to meet. I had prepared Paul to assist in the meeting by explaining the idea of Spells to him. I was nervous, but convinced myself that trusting Paul was worth the risk.

  We made our way to Cole’s office, which was located at Sea and Sun, a live/work complex overlooking the sea. As soon as Co
le welcomed us in, I took in the terrace with an amazing view. I hoped he’d invite us out onto the terrace, but instead, we clustered around the living room table, and Paul booted up a laptop.

  To my surprise, Cole started the meeting not by asking questions about Spells, but rather, discussing a subject that interested him. He wanted to translate our spell-checker method so that it could be retrofitted into a chip—the smaller, the better of course.

  “But biochip technology already exists,” I said, “as I’m sure you’re aware.”

  Cole waved me off dismissively. “Yes, I know,” he said. “But we can make it better, not to mention, smaller. With our experience in electrical engineering and your experience with the bio side of the house, I’m sure we can think of a more efficient way to get this done.”

  Cole sounded confident, but to be honest, I wasn’t so confident. I was already feeling a pressure that was bound to break the fragile bridge of my inspiration, my process. This wasn’t how I was used to working; instead, I found problems I was interested in and solved them in my own way, on my own time, intuitively, because I felt inspired. If I wanted to solve something, it was because I felt I had the tools to do it. Meanwhile, Cole was asking me to come up with ideas and solutions on commission.

  It wasn’t that I wasn’t familiar with the subject; in fact, I’d read a lot about biochips even before I’d started working on the chicken project. Single genetic alterations in DNA are important for detecting differences in genetic information, which may cause differences in normal characteristics or may alter genes to form disease. Cole wanted to use our technology on a biochip to detect these single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), whereas I wanted to test them with my assay. I wasn’t at all sure if his way was better, and furthermore, I had to hide my own solution to the same problem because I’d learned that until we had our patents in order, our intellectual property was low-hanging fruit for anyone savvy enough to snatch it from us. Still, I wanted to get on Cole’s good side in hopes of eventually meeting with Roseword and securing an investment; thus, on I pressed with the hypotheticals.