Lividity, like many a small high tech company started, grew, stumbled and ultimately closed. As is often the case, Lividity also created a significant amount of Intellectual Property, manifesting itself as patents, during that same brief life. At the end these patents were in various stages of processing, from initial submission, to review, to approved and granted.
Derrick, with a long career in high tech, recognized the value in the Lividity IPR and sought to purchase it, leveraging his retirement funds to make the acquisition. He also sought the services of The Brain, a natural choice since as the Corporate Counsel The Brain had working knowledge of these assets and their position in the patent process.
The acquisition was made and work began to market the IP assets. But things did not go well.
The Brain soon became distracted by novel new work, not within his domain of expertise, but interesting and associated with key members of a small country club of which he was an active member and to whom he wished to ingratiate himself. This distraction was sufficient to cause The Brain to neglect the Lividity IPR portfolio, even to the extent of not turning over Works In Progress to the lawyer Derrick had to hire to back-fill. This neglect even went so far as to include NOT forwarding the patent maintenance fee notices, causing some already approved patents to lapse.
In the end Derrick was able to salvage a portion of the IPR assets, recovering his investment and a tidy profit, but recovered less than one fourth of the portfolio's initial value. The Brain faired less well. His career diversion with his country club buddies ending in a disgraceful public embarrassment and a forced resignation. Doors to two careers were firmly closed.
While Derrick is not at all pleased with the cost and pain he has suffered from The Brain's inaction he takes a small bit of comfort in the fact that had The Brain met his commitment his share would have been over two million dollars.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s drug-addled, delusional imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. This is especially true of the City of Dunwoody, recent events therein and anyone, no matter how distantly in time or space, associated with the formation, operation or future of our Smart City.
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