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Bevo in VA

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Posts posted by Bevo in VA

  1. @Dnaguy Just wanted to clarify that when I posted the link above, I wasnt trying to be an asshole suggesting you should file for divorce.  There truly is a lot advice in there about people going through similar things that you've posted above - not necessarily all ending in divorce.  Good luck!

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  2. 8 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

    Ohhhh, that was your federal job.  interdasting.  Examiner?

    And yeah it is possible to continue to prosecute an application without an inventor's signature, but the more important issue really is the assignment.  Without it, the inventor could potentially license all your competitors, immunizing them from suit.

    Yeah - I posted in the RTO thread in CR but just took Elon's offer to voluntarily resign/retire back in Feb.  So technically I am still on the books until September but no longer working.

    Started off as an examiner way back in the day.  Became a SPE 25 some years ago and then spent the last 20 or so as a QAS (which for those non-patent people out there is a Quality Assurance Specialist / pseudo manager type without having to actually manage people).  Saw a lot of crazy stuff (on both sides of prosecution through the years)!

     

    So here's a story for @Celery Man as to how not to go about things after leaving your job and dealing with patents.  Pretty early in my career at the office, I got a Reexam application.  @TwiceHorn will know what that is but basically, it's a request for you to take a look at a granted patent and re-evaluate whether or not the original patent is valid.  So this reexam application was apparently filed by this ex-grad student from Florida who had recently gotten a couple of patents.  However, it turns out he had done all the research and come up with the invention while he was in grad school working for the University.  He graduates and then proceeds to go out and file for a couple of patents on the work that was done in his grad school lab.  The school finds out he got the patents and go to the cops.

     

    Cops end up charging him with grand theft.  That's when he comes back to the office wanting us to say that he is the rightful owner of these patents.  The court finds out about it, he's found guilty and basically is told to drop the matter and not pursue the patents anymore.  He ignores all this and pisses the court off who then sends him to jail for violating terms of his probation.  Ended up serving time and actually put on a chain gang down in Florida.

     

    Eventually, the Office just told the University to file Assignment papers demonstrating that they owned the patents and they would recognize them as the rightful owners.

     

     

    https://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/14/us/former-student-in-patent-fight-leaves-prison.html?unlocked_article_code=1.-k4.kTT4.992kueITE_yB&smid=url-share

     

    Spoiler

    Former Student In Patent Fight Leaves Prison

    Petr Taborsky, a former student research assistant at University of South Florida who was imprisoned in November in a dispute with the university over the ownership of patents, was transferred today to a work-release center in Tampa.

    Although Mr. Taborsky, 34, will have more freedom at the center, he still faces civil and criminal charges. But state officials announced this week that he did not deserve imprisonment or chain-gang duty, to which he had been assigned for two months.

    I don't know what he was doing in prison," Harry Singletary Jr., the State Corrections Secretary, said on Wednesday after ordering the transfer of Mr. Taborsky pending further decisions in his case.

    Although Gov. Lawton Chiles agrees with Mr. Singletary and is ready to receive Mr. Taborsky's application for clemency, the university maintains that Mr. Taborsky stole valuable property and must be held accountable.

     
     

    Mr. Taborsky was an undergraduate in chemistry and biology, working as a laboratory assistant at the university's College of Engineering in 1987, when he took part in a research project to make sewage treatment cheaper and more efficient. The project was sponsored by a subsidiary of Florida Progress, a utility holding company. The university said the company had all rights to the research.

    Mr. Taborsky, who did the testing for the project, discovered a way to turn a clay-like compound similar to cat litter into a reusable cleanser of sewage, a process that has potentially valuable applications.

    The project's principal investigator, Robert P. Carnahan, maintains that Mr. Taborsky was part of a research team and that the discovery stemmed from the team's decisions. But Mr. Taborsky said that he made his discovery after the project had ended and that he conducted related experiments on his own.

    A jury convicted Mr. Taborsky of grand theft of trade secrets in 1990. He was sentenced to a year's house arrest, a suspended prison term of 3 1/2 years and probation for 11 1/2 years, as well as 500 hours of community service. Mr. Taborsky violated the terms of his sentence when he obtained three patents related to the research. The ownership of the three patents is still in dispute.

     

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  3. As others have said, you might be able to get a small payout for your time to review and sign the docs.  However, the company can still go forward without your signature.  It a pretty straightforward process to file papers with the Patent Office showing your refusal to sign and overcoming that obstacle.  While it might be worth a small payout to avoid the extra paperwork for the lawyers - it's probably not going to be worth it to give you a large payout.  I worked in the office for 30+ years and have seen this exact scenario numerous times.  If Applicant can show evidence that they tried to get the uncooperative inventor to sign, the PTO will generally accept it and move on.  TLDR - not really that big of a deal for the company to go forward  without your signature.

  4. So thanks to all that offered suggestions.  We were really limited with the last minute timeline - just not a lot of options to get a reservation within a couple of days.  Came down to Pesce and Eddie V's - both had availability so I threw it to the wife and she went with Pesce.

     

    Dinner was really good.  We ordered a cauliflower curry soup and tuna carpaccio for appetizers - both were excellent.  My wife had a lamb entrée that she really enjoyed.  I order the sweetbreads which were good, but the mashed potatoes served with the dish were incredible.  Service was top notch - had some great wine with dinner.  Little more casual vs. three star fine dining, but we had a great time - highly recommend.

     

    Looking forward to trying out some of the other options mentioned in this thread next time we're in town.  Thanks again to everyone!

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  5. Second what @DalTxHornFan said. Also shoutout to @immamacfor putting together a great dinner.  The BBQ was top notch.  The meats were all spectacular, sides wonderful.  My wife loved the whisky cocktails!  The TE's are just awesome, genuinely nice guys.  Very personable - they would come right over and introduce themselves, shake your hand - you could tell they are very comfortable interacting with folks in this type of situation. 
    Enjoyed hearing their stories!

     

    Looking forward to next year's dinner.  Thanks again to Immamac for putting this together!

     

     

    IMG_20250328_190027688_HDR.jpg

    IMG_20250328_190516634_HDR~2.jpg

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  6. 3 hours ago, jimmyjazz said:

    Good luck?  Any top end restaurant is surely booked at this point.  I randomly checked Red Ash and the closest available time is Monday at 9:30 PM.

    Monday, April 7.

    That's what I was afraid of.  Kind of a last minute trip so didn't have time to make a lot of plans in advance.

     

    2 hours ago, Cap33 said:

    Check around on Thursday afternoon before the 24-hour cancellation window closes, and set some notifications/alerts on Open Table and Resy for the places you might like that are already booked. Jeffrey's and J. Carver's are pretty reliable. Check the Austin specific page for some other recs. Good luck, and happy anniversary.

    Will definitely give this a shot.  Thanks!

  7. I took the deferred resignation/retirement offer and my last day was last Thursday so fortunately don't have to deal with this nonsense.  Am hearing from people I worked with that they were told not to respond until further guidance given, but start working on your bullet points.  That's in Dept. of Commerce.

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  8. 5 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

    So announce it so that the people collecting these fraudulent paychecks can log in to make up 5 things in an email?

    but do these jobs not have supervisors that might notice a lack of work product from their report?

    Yeah but did you stop to think that maybe those supervisors are non-existent or dead people too?

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  9. Just an update on my situation.  I was told late Wednesday afternoon, that Thursday would be my last day in the office and I would be put on Admin leave starting Friday.  They added a new time code to my time sheet indicating "Admin Leave for Deferred Resignation" and that was used for today.  I was locked out of the system within a couple of hours after logging off for the day.

     

    I did put in for Early Retirement and my last official day will be September 20th.  So far things seem to be working out.  As I said earlier, I suspect there is a good chance my job title will be getting cut or eliminated, so they wanted us gone anyways.  There are other positions in my Agency that are mission critical, and while initially offering the early resignation package to those folks, they haven't really heard much since applying.  As of now, they are being told that they are not being put on Admin Leave at this time and to keep working.  It will not surprise me if they decide to pull the offer from them and make them stay on.  I have heard that there are no plans to get rid of our probationary employees.

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  10. 4 minutes ago, immamac said:

    How does resigning now vs September affect early retirement? 

    Not a huge impact.  My agency and position (as have most other government agencies) have been deemed eligible for Voluntary Early Retirement Authority (VERA) BUT only if you take Elon's  Fork in the Road offer.  For my wife (same job I have) and I, the VERA is the most important aspect of the whole deal.  Under that, you can retire with full benefits immediately (i.e. start receiving a pension, keep your health insurance).  So for our agency, the VERA is authorized until the end of September so by sticking around until then, we'll get that time credited to service length and still accumulate leave while (in theory) still get paid.  We would have gladly stayed on working until September but that option wasn't given.  Return to Office wasn't an issue for us - we work full time from home and there wasn't much chance of us getting called back into the office due to space constraints (Agency employs 14000 people and we have room for 1300).

     

    I'm hearing rumors at work that my position is going to be eliminated and I would have been demoted if I had chosen to stuck around, so I thought it was worth the risk taking the offer.  Never expected my career to end this way but we'll be ok either way.  I look at others going through the same thing and feel terrible about what he's doing to the Federal workforce.  If we were 20 years out rom retirement, we'd pretty much be screwed.

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  11. I took the offer so I'll update as far as getting paid.  Got a contract to sign today.  Last day of work is Feb 28th - turn in all of my equipment at that time.  I would have gladly continued working up until the Sept 30th resignation date but that wasn't presented as an option.  Was given instructions that after Feb 28th, my timekeeper and/or boss would enter all hours into my time sheet as Administrative Leave.  I'm only a couple of years from retirement eligibility anyways, so I plan on taking early retirement in September with minimal hit to my benefits.

     

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  12. 1 hour ago, hookem2010 said:

    So early signs look bad for Nevada, good for PA, and possibly promising for GA? Or am I misreading things?

    And I'm guessing if one state is to look bad, Nevada would be the ideal choice (outside of # EVs) because it's probably least indicative of how other swing states are going?

    Looks like there was an update from Clark County and a lot of ballots weren't initially counted by the SOS.  Good news for Dems.

     

     

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  13. 17 minutes ago, Knoxtnhorn said:

    Hat tip for next year.  Park at the other end of the Green Line (Buckner Station).  I was worried that it'd bottleneck downtown, so I tried out the south end of the Green Line and was back at my truck 15 mins after leaving the Fair.  We were back in Rowlett by 7.  Our train car had 5 people in it.

    That's a great idea!  Will be trying that out next year.

  14. DART is a total clusterfuck tonight.  Got on at MLK and it took an hour and a half to go about 6 stops.  Stopped at every station for 10 minutes while we waited for "train traffic up ahead".  One point there was a medical emergency in the train ahead so more waiting.  Got two stops away, stopped and waited and waited.  Eventually they told us that we are free to get out and stretch our legs while the traffic ahead of us cleared.  At that point we bailed and took a Lyft to make our connection to the TRE.  As we passed by the fair park station there were tons of people waiting to get on but we couldn't take any more on.  Those folks might be there til tomorrow.   I guess DART didn't think there were going to be many riders leaving the fair tonight.   Ok rant over!

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  15. 1 hour ago, markstanco said:

    Hey gamblers.

    Texas at -37 and the o/u is 59. That’s 22 points for state with a freshman qb that sucks, while Texas has given up 22 points all year? What do yall say on that? Seems like o/u should be in the 40s.

    You're doing the math wrong.  That line is predicting a 48-11 game.

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  16. 1 hour ago, Steel Shank said:

    I’ve golfed a few times with Dr Rueben Pizzaro. He’s a good dude who really adds to the golfing experience.

    Does he shout GOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLL whenever you sink a putt?

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