The Volokh Conspiracy

Ryan sounds like a complete bore, even among those who deal with anal retentive lawyers. If Ellie agreed to marry him, suppose she's regreting it now and looking for some fun?

His professional profile is here. His dry wit is also evident in his listed publications. Another whimsical patent: Method and instrument for expressing gratitude for a scholastic experience.

I bet Ellie is glad she married a civil engineer.

For those with free Westlaw or old copies of the Green Bag lying around..

See also Steve Michelson, How Do I Love Thee--A Poem by a Patent Attorney, 7 Green Bag 2d 201 (2004) ("How do I love thee? Let me count the plurality of methods . . . .").

The application's great, but I want to see the first office action response.

And frankly, proposing by patent application is definitely novel, useful, and nonobvious, and given the liberal acceptance of methods and algorithms as patentable subject matter, it seems they should grant the patent. Which would then allow Mr. Grace to prevent future similarly inclined patent attorneys from proposing by patent application...

The application's great, but I want to see the first office action response.

It's on Public PAIR, and it makes interesting reading. Just enter the publication number at http://portal.uspto.gov/external/portal/pair

In response to the first office action, the main claim was amended to claim a method of proposing marriage by converting a patent application into a marriage proposal. There was even an interview, where the applicant argued that the application had utility, because it was useful to him to propose to his intended.

The application eventually went abandoned due to failure to respond to the final office action, which rejected the claims as failing to comply with the written description requirement (section 112), being directed to nonpatentable subject matter and not being "useful" (section 101) and being obvious (section 103) in view of a prior patent on a method of drafting patent applications and a list of marriage proposal ideas retrieved from the Internet Wayback Machine.

If Ellie is a patent examiner, this is absolutely brilliant. If she isn't, then it's a little bit weird.

"Take it from me, marriage isn't a word -- it's a sentence."

~ King Vidor

Maybe a lot of sentences. Almost a novella.

Licensing! Ellie can share in the royalties. :)

Depends on the state. In a community property state, I'm pretty sure that a patent issued during marriage, but on an application preceding the marriage (as was necessarily the case here), would be separate property. Thus, revenues from the licensing of the patent would be his property.