Someone reads this! / Patent

* I have an amazing announcement to make... someone actually reads this NaviBlog Now! Blog!! Amazing, is it not? My very own dearest mother seems to be up-to-date on the latest on my blog. Well, that's what I'm writing this blog for anyway, to keep people on the ball with what's happening on the NaviBlog frontlines.
* Of course, no points for chief co-conspirator Mike Harris for checking up on this blog... you're the boss right? Can't give you points for stuff like that.
* Went over to the patent office lawyers today in Toranomon. The patent was finished to 95%, just part of the second part of the main patent was missing. Said I would send the missing paragraph or two before Friday... although I kind of blew my top (figuratively speaking) towards the end of the meeting. I was trying to explain the two only points of the patent which are (1) ease of use and (2) interactivity (as laid out in the business plan, but more detailed). The guys there look at me as blankly as when I explained this the first time and said that well, it wasn't going to be feasible for no.1 without categorising the patent with examples. But the whole idea is that it is openly customisable by customers... how can I give ideas of concrete examples when the customers are going to be customizing their own examples to suit them, not me, for what is THEIR service? I am not sure that these people have any idea what I'm going on about. That's why I'm not sure if we should continue working with/talking to them. Being nice and friendly is OK, but not being able to back up legitimate criticism of patents written by first-time inventors with professional advice is a sign of lack of professionalism. I am not very happy with this status, and will talk to James about it tomorrow. Maybe find another IP lawyer's office, like Eriko's previous IP business colleague, who specialized in telematics and other high-tech IP field patent work.
I more or less said that "well, I'll need to send you the info before we can talk any further". I kind of wanted to break off the meeting because the guys stopped in their tracks at page 1, and this is the 3rd meeting we have had. James sent them the business plan, they have my previous documents and my previous explanations. How much to people need? either you get it or you don't. Needless to say that they asked for detail last time, and I set up a complete system for each of the two main points that will form the NaviBlog system.
Interestingly, at the end of the meeting, they suddenly said that they'd be able to work on this patent because it was quite complete and looked feasible. Mmm, not so sure they can write me a winning patent.
* Well, James didn't look too happy with my outburst and said so afterwards, but I'm just worried that we'll do all this rigmarole and then the patent finally doesn't go through and we'll all have wasted a lot of money on nothing much. And coolster Sony or au or NTT Docomo IP guys can just lap up the info and put it together: and hey presto, you have to pay license fees to someone who's patented your system. Remember, patents are a commodity to big companies nowadays. More patents and you can call these assets and set these against debts on the books at financial year-end. The more IP you have, the more loans you can take out and declare yourself financially healthy, that's the deal. Maybe I'm over-reacting, but it's my first baby so who can blame me?