ndrosen

The Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, a prolific inventor with many patents, visited the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Tuesday morning, to give a speech praising innovation and the patent system, and then answer questions. A number of employees were in the auditorium; I attended remotely. In answer to one question, he defended Trump’s tariffs, whether out of sincere belief, or because he needs to say things like that in order to stay in the boss’s good graces. He did have a vision of factories being largely automated, rather than of tens of millions of Americans working on assembly lines, the way they did before America ceased to be great, and became in need of the Mango Mussolini’s work to restore its former greatness.

At the end of the session, the acting Director of the USPTO presented the Secretary with two gifts: a framed copy of his first patent, and a wooden pen made of American white oak, and crafted by Peter MacArtisan from a salvaged “shoe.” Back in 1998, the Patent Office still had “shoes” with paper copies of patents that examiners could consult, although there was an electronic search tool already. Today, we have more advanced electronic search tools, and no shoes. Ms. Stewart, the acting Director, described “Peter MacArtisan” as a former examiner, now on the Board of Appeals. The name was quite familiar to me (I’m not using the man’s real name because I don’t have his permission, and he’s not a public figure like Secretary Lutnick); a few months after I had submitted a job application, he got back to my father, who then called me (I had started my probationary period as a science teacher and dorm parent at a private high school for troubled teenagers) to inform me that I had a better offer, and here I am.

I talked with Mr. MacArtisan on the phone, and then met him; he was a supervisory patent examiner at the time, and then ascended to the Board of Appeals. I didn’t know that he also made wooden pens.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office is part of the Department of Commerce, and Howard Lutnick, Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Commerce, is or has been an inventor in the field of business methods. The name seemed familiar, so I did a little searching, and confirmed that I was the examiner for three patents with his name on them: U.S. Patent 6,850,907, U.S. Patent 6,963,856, and U.S. Patent 8,209,249. I don’t recall interacting with Mr. Lutnick personally, although I could have done so. Examining the applications would probably have involved written communications with a patent attorney, and perhaps a telephone or in-person interview with an attorney. Anyway, this may be of a little interest.

I have been a part-time teleworker for the past couple of years, but then Donald Trump issued an executive order basically banning teleworking, the brass at the USPTO sent an email telling us not to telework, and the president of the Patent Office Professional Association sent an email saying that we have a contract which provides for teleworking, so the order does not apply to covered employees. I don’t want to be a test case, so I’ve been coming in to the office each day this week to work. There may be further developments.

And now, I will catch a bus, and go in to work.

Early Wednesday afternoon, there was a Bring Your Own Mug event at the Patent and Trademark Office, an opportunity for a little socializing (I still put in enough hours actually working). I brought my Henry George mug, which I filled with mint tea, and chatted a couple of people. I wandered around the room, and saw a man I hadn’t met before, with a mug that had “Nihilist” crossed out, and “Thomist” written above it. I did not at first see the whole message, which was “Hillbilly Thomist”. This was (as I did not know until later) a reference to something which Flannery O’Connor wrote, that people thought she was a hillbilly nihilist, but she was actually a hillbilly Thomist.

Since the gentleman with the mug did not give me permission to use his name online (we didn’t discuss the matter), I’ll call him Peter. We had some interesting conversation, as I had at least heard of Saint Thomas Aquinas, and he had both heard of Henry George, and had some knowledge of attempts to get Georgist reform enacted, for example, in Detroit. We talked about that, and about other matters. It turns out that there is a musical group of Dominican priests who perform country/Western music, and are known as the Hillbilly Thomists. I thought of a very Catholic friend of mine at that the Patent Office; Peter didn’t know him, but the next time I see him, I hope to tell him about my new acquaintance, and this musical group.

Now, to get what used to be called second sleep.

After being a civil servant for more than twenty-five years, I have now received a step increase to GS-14, Step 10. I’m now being paid a little more than I was as a mere Step 9, which is nice, but I wish they would pay me my old salary, and let me churn out a few Office Actions less. Step 10 is the highest step, so unless I someday become a supervisor, or something special, this is as high as it gets for me; I’m not likely to become a GS-15.

Now, I hope to go back to sleep, before rising in four hours for another day of examining.

I work in the Knox Building (these days, I do so when I’m not teleworking). Some years ago, I had a conference with my then supervisor, He Who May Not Be Named, and another senior of mine, Mr. M. This would probably have been to decide whether I had written sound rejections, and whether we could go to the Board of Appeals with them in response to an applicant’s Appeal Brief. After the business part, Mr. M asked whether I knew the maiden name of Henry Knox’s wife.

“Lucy Fluckner,” I answered.

I don’t think that I told him that I knew this, not from my profound study of history, and superb memory, but because I had read a trilogy of historical mysteries by Barbara Hambly, writing as Barbara Hamilton, in which Abigail Adams solves murder mysteries.

On Thursday, the Toastmasters club held a hybrid meeting, and my friend Ian showed up in person. We didn’t discuss my writing about him, so Ian is a pseudonym. It was good to see him, and see that he at least appeared healthy, because he found out a few months ago that he had cancer, and took some time off to undergo treatment.

From what he said, he was treated only with radiation, not chemotherapy, so he didn’t have to deal with the side effects of chemo. He is well for now, as I understand it, but will need periodic examinations to make sure that the cancer has not returned.

Meanwhile, it’s cheering to see a cancer patient with good news.

At noon, USPTO Toastmasters held its club contest, in which three members competed, while others among us served as judges, timer, ballot counter, contest master, and so forth. One of the three won, and will go on to the Area level contest, and then possibly farther and farther; he might reach the Finals, and become World Champion of public speaking.

Even if he doesn’t, we had some entertainment.

Not too long ago, I received an email at work, with the following reminder on exercising care:

All suffering is the result of attachment.

— Buddha

All suffering is the result of attachments.

— Infosec

On Thursday, I gave a Toastmasters speech. Only one speaker had signed up to give a speech, so I figured I should step up. I chose to speak about Savonarola, the supposed mad monk of late fifteenth century Florence, responsible for the Bonfire of the Vanities, in which priceless art may have been destroyed, together with various luxuries and items of frivolity. I had read a bit about him, first in a children’s book, Tales of the Renaissance, and then in a history of Florence and some writings of Machiavelli. More recently, I read Jo Walton’s novel Lent, which makes an unlikely protagonist of Savonarola.

This led me to do a little more reading, and so I talked about the man, and made the point that while most of us today would not be comfortable with Savonarola, he was, for example, a friend of the scholar, humanist, and unorthodox religious thinker Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, and a more complicated man than one might think. He probably did have real sympathy and good intentions for the poor of Florence, for example.

Last week, I attended (remotely) a training session on Clear and Concise Writing; the Patent Office wants its employees to write clearly and well. What we were told mostly made good sense, although I could not help reflecting that Orwell had said it better in that classic, “Politics and the English Language.” Advice about avoiding excessive use of the passive voice, for example, is sound enough, but, though I do not dispute that words should not be strung together at excessive length or without a good organizing principle, I question whether short sentences are always to be preferred. Patent attorneys, after all, are not six year olds.

I posted a comment in the chat, asking what application of the precepts we were given would have done to the literary works of Edward Gibbon, Edmund Burke, and Samuel Johnson. The instructor did have a response, but I’ve forgotten just what it was.