The Best of Science Fiction 12

"I won't argue the point, Alec. We may never know. Anyhow, the thing I came to see you about is this." He handed the other a legal-size sheet.

Cord's eyes widened. "An interference!"

"So maybe Gadsen allowed the claims just to set you up for an interference."

"Maybe. But not likely. If he were going to do that, he would have just sent the interference notice, this thing, without the allowance."

"Any ideas who the other party is?"

"Probably Du Santo. We've been picking up their foreign patents in the quick-issue countries, like Belgium. We'll know for sure after the inventors file their preliminary statements. Which brings me to the next question: How can we file a preliminary statement sworn to by a phony inventor who doesn't even exist?"

"I don't know. I want you to figure out something after we talk to Paul Bleeker."

"Take it from the beginning, Paul," said Patrick.

Paul Bleeker's face rippled with misery.

Cord said: "Maybe I'd better go."

"Stay put," said Patrick shortly. "Paul, you understand why we have to have Alec in on this. You're emotionally involved. You might not be able to do what has to be done. Alec has to listen to everything, so he and I together can plan what to do. You trust him, don't you?"

The young man nodded.

"It began as sort of a joke ... ?" prompted Patrick.

"Yes, a joke," said Paul. "When I was a freshman in law school. Harvey Jayne and those others were teasing Dad. That was when Dad was still Director of the Research Division, before they promoted him."

The light was dawning. Patrick sat up. "They were teasing him about the Research Division?"

"Yes, then Mr. Jayne said Dad's Research Division was essential, but only to verify outside inventions he bought."

"So you decided to booby trap Mr. Jayne?"

"Yes."

"You then wrote those patent attorneys in Washington?"

"Yes, I mailed them the examples for the patent application. They took them and changed them around a little bit, the same way we do here in the Patent Department. They added the standard gobbledygook at the front, and eight or ten claims at the back. They sent the final draft back to me for execution. The standard procedure. They sent me a bill for three hundred dollars. I paid that out of the money Mr. Jayne sent them, when he bought the invention. I still have the rest — four thousand and seven hundred dollars. I haven't spent any of it." He looked uncertainly at Patrick. "You won't tell Dad about this, will you?"

"Certainly not." Patrick looked at him with genuine curiosity. "But how were you able to make the oath? What notary would notarise the signature of 'Percy B. Shelley'?"

"Absolutely any, Con. They all just assume you are who you say you are, so long as you pay the fee."

Patrick was momentarily shaken. "But that's the whole idea of notarising, to make the inventor swear he's truly the inventor, the person named in the oath."

Cord smiled faintly. "Not all notaries waive identification, Con."

"Well," said Patrick, "now we've committed perjury, sworn falsely to the United States Patent Office. So far, all they can do to you, Paul, besides disbarring you, followed by imprisonment in the Federal Penitentiary, is to strike your Shelley case from the files in the Patent Office."

The young man was silent.

Cord said: "Harvey Jayne bought the patent application only after he knew it worked. The whole thing depended on whether John Fast could reproduce it in the lab. Paul, how could you be so sure it would work?"

"If John did it right, it couldn't not work. I copied the examples right out of something in the library. Somebody's college thesis."

Patrick brightened. "Alec?"

Cord shook his head. "Nothing like that ever turned up in our literature searches. We hit the Dissertation Abstracts, all the way back to the beginning."

Patrick turned back to Paul Bleeker. "You'll have to tell us more about this thesis. What was the name of the student? We'd also like the name of the university, and the year. In fact, anything and everything you can remember."

"All I can remember is these runs, tucked away in the back pages. They didn't really seem pertinent to the main body of the thesis. Other than that, I can't remember anything."

"You must have seen the title page," pressed Patrick.

"I guess so."

"You could identify it if you saw the thesis again?"

"Sure, but it's gone."

"Gone?"

"The library just had it on loan. They have hundreds come in, this way. Our people keep them a while, then send them back. You know the procedure."

"There must be some record."

Cord shook his head. "We've checked all the inter-library loans for the past five years. We found nothing. If Paul's memory is correct on the facts, that it was within the last five years, and the library did have it on loan, we are led to the conclusion that the thesis was done by somebody here at Hope, and lent on a personal basis to the library, without any formal record."

Patrick groaned. "Our own inventor, here all the time? That's all we need. He'll scream. He'll take it to court. We've got to find him first, before he finds us." He turned to Cord. "Alec, add it all up for us, will you?"

"It admits of precise calculation," said Cord, "in the manner of a chess combination. There are two primary variations. Each of these has several main subvariations. None of them is really difficult. The only problem is to recognise that our tactics are absolutely controlled, move by move, by events as they develop."

Patrick raised his hand. "Not so fast. Let's take the main angles. The primary variations."

"First primary. We do nothing. If we're senior party in the interference, this means we take no testimony, but rely purely on our filing date. Chances: better than even. If we're junior party, we lose hands down.

"Second primary. We fight. Firstly, this gives subvariant A. With Paul's help we find the real inventor. We buy his invention from him, and, if he hasn't already published, we file a good and true application for him. We enter a motion, to substitute the new case for Paul's case, and then we expressly abandon Paul's case. If this inventor actually has published in the way Paul remembers, this gives subvariant B. We find that thesis, then we move to dissolve the interference, contending that the sole count is unpatentable over the disclosures in the thesis."

Patrick twisted his mustache nervously. "However you state it, we wind up with no chance of a patent. Maybe we can live with that. Perhaps we can forego a patent-based monopoly. But there's one thing we must have — and that's the right to build the plant, free and clear from interference or infringement of anybody else's patent. Can we tell the Board we have that right? The Board wants to know. They're going to vote on it Monday. And I don't think we can tell them anything ... not yet. The economics and market are there. Everything hangs on the patent situation. Bleeker says the vote will be to build, if the patent picture is clear. We're holding the whole thing up in our shop right here." He turned back to Cord. "Alec, take it from the college thesis. Run the variations off from that."

"Variation One," said Cord, "the thesis is a good reference. This means it adequately describes the invention, that it was at least typewritten, that it was placed on the shelves at the University Library, available to all who might ask for it, and that all of this was done more than one year before either Paul or his opponent filed their respective cases. This would support the motion to dissolve. Both parties would lose, and neither would get a patent, fraudulent or otherwise. With no basic patent to be infringed, it follows that anybody could build a Neol plant. Paul's application would be given a prompt final rejection and would be transferred to the abandoned files in the Patent Office. Then it would lie buried until destroyed under the twenty-year rule. Nobody would ever learn about it.