By that time I had gone over the entire rejection and planned my complete response to the Examiner. I sat down with Mr. Krome on Tuesday morning and talked steadily for fifteen minutes before I realized he was watching me instead of paying attention to the case. I said, "What's the matter." He said wonderingly, "I've never seen you like this before. You are acting almost as unreasonably as an inventor. You don't even want to hear what I have to say about this case. You should relax, Mr. Saddle. You are here as an advocate, not as a midwife." "I don't think that's very funny, Mr. Krome," I proceeded to explain the high merit of the case, and he seemed to listen then. Before I left he promised to give the case careful consideration. This was all he ever promised, so I thanked him and went back to my office. I filed my amendment in the case the next day. It was eight months before I got the next Office Action. * * * Callahan returned in six months and immediately opened a project on the Tearproof Paper. The two of us sat down together to determine the best way to handle the research. I said, "Henry, we have already drawn up a complete research program. All we have to do is follow it." "We have?" Callahan was surprised. "Sure." And I laid out in front of him a copy of our patent application, and riffled through its pages. "All we have to do is go through all the examples here to make certain they all work. If they do, the program will be complete, except for the product itself and commercial production. Our patent application will make the best research guide we could get." "Why certainly," said Callahan. "We have already spent a great deal of time working out all kinds of substitute and equivalent reactions. It's all here. Good. I'll set it up." Callahan began distributing the work to various groups, and I went back to my office. Every Friday afternoon thereafter I went out to the laboratories to see how things were coming along. They came along well. From the beginning the actual results reached by the research teams matched the predictions we had made in our patent application. At the Friday afternoon meetings Callahan and I got into the habit of tossing pleased and knowing glances at each other as the streams of data continued to confirm our work. Several months rolled happily by. Then came a letter from the Lafe Rude Consultants, Inc., up in Boston. The letter said that their people understood that the Marchare Laboratories had under development a remarkably strong paper, and they would be very much interested in discussing licensing possibilities with us. I grabbed the letter and stormed into Mr. Spardleton's office.