As such, over six months ago, I filed for patents in the NUSA, the European Community and Japan, and I finally got word back from the NUSA, the last holdout, that my patent was approved a few weeks before my second body came online. Just that process cost over a hundred thousand Eurodollars from the application and attorney's fees.
Much like my last world, the patent process here was relatively simple; it just had a lot of red tape involved. Not only would they not be able to reproduce my invention from the patent filing, but you could barely understand how it worked. Filing patents wasn't that suspicious, either, because many people filed patents for things that didn't end up working out as they had hoped.
Now that I had some figleaf of protection for my intellectual property, I still had to protect myself from claims of patent infringement. So, I also licensed both the sleep inducer and BD wreath technology from a Japanese electronics company called Fuyutsuki Electronics. Braindance hardware was a mature field with over one hundred firms producing them worldwide, so the fee for licensing their tech from any one company was small-one hundred and twenty thousand dollars and one per cent of gross sales. Everyone had patents that were almost identical in this area, somehow, and there was just a gentleman's agreement not to rock the boat in any way. Really, the only patents that were probably valid were the ones that the standards body, Braindance SIG, held.
The leading patent authorities that people listened to were in the European Community, and while they could be bribed, clearly, they were probably the only ones around that would invalidate a bunch of patents if companies or Corporations rubbed the public's nose in their patent office corruption. Europe was one of the few places where governments were still slightly more powerful than the Corps, after all.
So braindance technology was one of the closest things to the public domain that existed in this world, and it was even managed as an Open Standard like DVDs were in my old world.
The sleep-inducer tech was even cheaper because almost everybody considered it worthless. They didn't even ask for a percentage of sales, just an up-front fee. They were sure whatever I made would fail, so they just wanted a payout right away.
A start-up that wanted to manufacture small boutique amounts of tech that everybody hated? Just give us a small fee upfront. Now. Before you go out of business, they all but demanded. The way common sleep inducers worked was a little bit different from mine, though. My version was much more similar to braindance technology in how it interfaced with the brain, but I just wanted a plausible starting point if I got sued or investigated.
Since my version was so similar to a braindance wreath, I figured I would make a sleep inducer that doubled as one! On the downside, since Braindance was an open standard, I wouldn't be able to sell my product until I got my wreath approved by the Standards Body. Not and be able to call it "Braindance" anyway.
I had already sent multiple prototypes to be reviewed, although they only had the braindance technology installed and not the sleep tech. They were a pretty standard implementation of a braindance wreath, so I felt there would be no problem getting it approved, even if it was submitted by an unknown company with hardly any employees and no history of other products.
Things only got hung up in this world if you were attempting to step on the toes of established players in some way, and this absolutely wouldn't at all. It was just one more no-name firm making an average product, as far as they knew anyway. When you weren't obviously disrupting the status quo? Well, then, liberal amounts of baksheesh could cause processes to move at rapid speeds!
An incoming call distracted me. Normally, I would have my calls set to do-not-disturb while I was in the middle of surgery, but since I could focus on more than one thing at once, I decided to stop this practice for important calls, and this one went through a few of my filters. It was the attorney I had on retainer to handle the business of my two companies. So, I picked up and answered in my normal cheery, " Moshi-moshi, Hasumi-dess~ssu."
" Ah, Dr Hasumi... Ahem... Hello, this is Jacob Philby. I was listed as a point of contact for your firm's application to the Braindance Special Interest Group for the approval of a consumer electronics device. The application has been rejected," he said formally.
What?! Did I fucking just jinx myself in my internal monologue?! The timing of this! And this damned lawyer was no doubt billing me for this call. I ground my teeth together and asked, "On what grounds? Were there any remedies listed? The product was a normal implementation of the qualification and declaration process." It was especially standard since I had just copied almost all of Fuyutsuki Electronics' circuits and software. It was basically a Fuyutsuki Electronics braindance wreath with a few internal changes that supported my sleep inducer, and none of those changes violated their standard.
He coughed and said, "I'll forward you the documents, but the main issue appears to be your inclusion of a feature you referred to as a firewall. Implying that any sort of personal protection equipment is necessary for a Braindance™ user is not in accordance with the Braindance™ Copyright License Agreement and the Braindance™ Trademark License Agreement. I'd say it is borderline defamatory, even." I could hear the little TM's he was including every time he said Braindance, even if he didn't actually say them, somehow. The blood pressure in both my bodies was rising.
He hummed noncomittally over the phone and then continued, "They clearly used an AI to review your filing as they were kind enough to include three possible remedies, the simplest being removing this feature. They'll accept an amended filing electronically within two business days and associate it with the prototypes you sent. Otherwise, the prototypes will be destroyed, and you'll have to send more and start the application process from the beginning."
Fuck! I had included the same feature I added to all of the braindance wreaths that I had bought; I even hacked this feature into the wreath that was installed in my Trauma Team helmet. It protected you from what, in effect, was subliminal advertising and potentially malevolent Braindances. I felt that a maliciously-formatted braindance could do much worse than just make you want a Nicola to drink, possibly causing brain damage or even psychosis. It was a good feature to include in a boutique product. Really, it should be in every wreath as standard.
I stewed, thinking, 'This is stupid.' Of course, Braindance users needed protection-the devices interfaced almost directly with your sensory cortex and other parts of your brain. But I was more stupid because saying so was definitely the exact kind of "stepping on people's toes" that I had thought I wasn't doing. Just the advertising companies would probably be against such a feature, but I figured since I would never sell too many of this first version that nobody would care.
"Thank you, Mr Philby. I'll review the documents, and hopefully, I'll be able to make an amended filing," I said, wanting to get off the phone call that was costing me over seven Eurodollars a minute. To say nothing about how long it took him to review the rejection document before calling me.
I hung up, sighed, and finished up on my patient, dialling his sedation back so that he would wake comfortably in a few minutes. He was an obvious mercenary, and I was a little curious why I was getting more and more of this type of client-at least three a day. It was a nice change of pace, and I enjoyed not working on my sixty-sixth elf, but I had another in an hour. The notes said he wanted subdermal armour and a ballistics co-processor. I was going to run out of these things, according to my stock-keeping system.
While I waited for my patient to wake up, I called my Militech sales rep, who answered on the second ring, "Dr Hasumi, how's it hangin'?"
"Symmetrically, thank you for asking, Bob. I need to order another twenty-five Rhino subdermal armour systems, five Sharpshooter ballistic co-processors and hmm..." I tried to gauge the desire and bankroll of my rash of mercenary clients, "and maybe five units of the Spartan Syn-Lungs. I suppose that's it. I've been having a very unusual amount of patients requesting strictly combat augmentations lately."
"Sure thing, Doc. And I can't say that I'm surprised; I've heard that a lot both in SoCal and NorCal lately. How about some Sandys?" he asked, trying to upsell me as he always did.
I paused, about to ask him to elaborate but stopped myself, "No. Although the top-of-the-line Militech products in this sector are quite nice, these are mainly entry-level customers I'm seeing. They can't afford the top-of-the-line. For the price you charge, Kang Tao or Arasaka provide better entry-level value-for-eurodollar in their boostware."
I heard an exaggerated "Tsk" as he sucked his teeth at me. As if he couldn't believe what I just said, "I don't believe that for a second, Doc... but... but... I think I might have a solution for you. I got a ton of last-generation Sandevistan units that we're trying to sell in California. They're about four or five years old and not quite as good as the current models, but they're still nova, ya hear? I can almost give them away at a thousand eddies a pop, so long as you buy at least a gross and agree not to sell them north of Night City."
I blinked. A gross was twelve to the second power, according to my quick net search. Why the hell did people persist in using archaic units of measurement and counting? Also, that was a lot of fucking Sandys. "Send me the deets on them, Bob."
"Preem! Coming right at ya," he said, and a file was sent on the call's out-of-band data channel. This conversation had gone long, so I stopped simultaneously mentally reviewing the rejection documents that the attorney Philby sent me and tended to my patient as he woke up.
It was the Militech Chronus Mk1, which was, sure enough, the entry-level Militech brand Sandevistan. It only caused a subjective slow of time by half and had an MSRP of six thousand eurodollars when new. The new generation had the same temporal factor but had a bit of a quicker cool-down between when a user could activate it again. That was an important factor in a prolonged battle but not a huge deal for most mercs who dealt in ambushes and quick run-and-gun types of fighting styles.
Normally, Militech would charge me four thousand Eurodollars for this unit, and I'd sell it at or close to MSRP. That's why I didn't want any, as Kang Tao's entry-level had an MSRP of five thousand five hundred, a price to me was a thousand lower and was just as good.
However, I could sell these older versions for thirty-five hundred eddies and still make more profit, so it was a good deal for me and my customers. But how long would it take me to sell one hundred-and-forty-four units?! Sandys were a bit of a niche product, and not every merc got one.
The fact that he wanted a promise from me not to sell them in northern California didn't bother me. Militech was synonymous with the NUSA government, which I thought was why he was specifically not mentioning the Free States by name. He didn't want me to sell them to the Free States, which meant that they were probably having one of the disputes that broke out perennially between the Free States and the federal government. It seemed to happen yearly, and I had been desensitised to it by now.
"They're not second-hand or QA rejects, are they?" I asked the used car salesman suspiciously.
He shook his head, "No way! We just uhh... kind of didn't time the release of the next generation as well as we could have and have been sitting on a ton of last-generation products that nobody wanted to buy." He spread his hands on the vidcall and then held his hand up in the three-finger Boy Scout salute, "Scout's honour. Quality guaranteed or your money back. We just think it's two birds with one stone deal to get them off our books while getting them into a bunch of mercs in SoCal. We're hiring most of those mercs as contractors, as you know, after all."
I didn't know that. I wondered why, but if that was the case, it made more sense. There was nothing on the net in a couple of cursory searches that gave me any clues why, but it could be any number of things. I'd ask Kiwi about it later. Finally, I nodded, "Okay, I'll take them. One kay per unit is too good a price to pass up, even if I have no idea when I'll sell all of them."
"Nova! We have all of this on hand in the LA office, so I'll have all of this boxed up. I'll send a squad in an MRAP to deliver it to your clinic within the next two hours. That'll be one-hundred-and-ninety-one-thousand-five-hundred eurodollars; since we're friends, we could round that to one-ninety-two even, okay?" he said.
I almost agreed before I realised what he said, and I growled, "When you say that, you're supposed to round down, Bob."
"Really?" he asked, affecting a guileless expression before finally grinning and chuckling, "Alright, fine. One-ninety-one. Can't blame a choom for tryin'." I could, actually, but I left it at that and disconnected the call after getting a digital receipt and transferring the funds as requested.
It might be wondered why I called up my sales rep instead of just using the net to make any purchases from Militech. This was, after all, a digital age. The reason was one of networking and of tradition. My Lotus Tong "friends" would have called it guanxi or "the closed system ." It was baked into Corporate culture to the extent that I wasn't even sure that most people, like Bob, realised what they were doing. But it was a way to make sure I was "the right sort of people." It was a modern "old boy's network", in other words.
I could buy most of the products online, but before I had made a personal relationship, I would find the prices to be high, and a lot of the products I wanted to buy would be listed as restricted or perhaps out-of-stock. It was just one of the dozens of ways the culture worked to put barriers to entry for anyone wanting to better themselves who weren't "of our caste."
It hadn't started out specifically as a way to exclude people. It probably started this way shortly after the DataKrash out of necessity, where Corporations were using pencils to keep records and phone calls to order stock, but since then, it has become a part of the culture. The generation after the DataKrash saw business being handled in a much more personal way out of necessity and imitated it. Honestly, I kind of liked it, although I didn't particularly like that it, in effect, put barriers against ambitious non-Corpo entrepreneurs.
