I walked toward Tobias Hawthorne’s desk. I knew he’d spent hours sitting there, working, strategizing. Putting myself in his position, I took a seat behind the desk. I looked down at it, like I was working, and then I looked up. When that didn’t work, I thought about the way that neither Jameson nor Xander could think sitting down. Standing, I walked to the other side of the desk. Look up.
I did and found myself staring at the wall of trophies and medals that the Hawthorne grandsons had won: national championships in everything from motocross to swimming to pinball; trophies for surfing, for fencing, for riding bulls. These were the talents that Tobias Hawthorne’s grandsons had cultivated. These were the kind of results he’d expected.
There were other things on the wall, too: comic books written by Hawthornes; a coffee table book of Grayson’s photographs; some patents, most of them in Xander’s name.
The patents, I realized with a start. Each certificate had a number on it.
And each number, I thought, the world around me suddenly crisp and in hyperfocus, has seven digits.
CHAPTER 54
We looked up US Patent number 3631982. It was a utility patent issued in 1972. There were two patent holders: Tobias Hawthorne and a man named Vincent Blake.
Who am I? the man on the phone had said. And when I’d told him to tell me, he’d said that he already had.
“Vincent Blake,” I said, turning to the boys. “Did your grandfather ever mention him?
“No,” Jameson replied, energy and intensity rolling off him like a storm rolling in. “Gray? Xan?”
“We all know the old man had secrets.” Grayson’s voice was tight.
“I got nothing,” Xander admitted. He wedged himself in front of me to get a better look at the computer screen, then scrolled through the patent information and stopped on a drawing for the design. “It’s a mechanism for drilling oil wells.”
That rang a bell. “That’s how your grandfather made his money—at least at first.”
“Not with this patent,” Xander scoffed. “Look. Right here!” He pointed at the drawing, at some detail I couldn’t even make out. “I’m not exactly an expert at petroleum engineering, but even I can see that right there is what one would call a fatal flaw. The design is supposed to be more efficient than prior technology, but…” Xander shrugged. “Details, details, boring things —long story short is that this patent is worthless.”
“But that’s not the only patent the old man filed in nineteen seventy-two.” Grayson’s voice was like ice.
“What was the other patent?” I asked.
A few minutes later, Xander had it pulled up. “The goal of this mechanism is the same,” he said, looking at the design, “and you can see some elements of the same general framework—but this one works.”
“Why would anyone file two patents in the same year with such similar designs?” I asked.
“Utility patents cover the creation of new or improved technologies.”
Jameson came to stand behind me, his body brushing mine. “Breaking a patent isn’t easy, but it can be done if you can weasel your way around the claims to uniqueness made by the prior patent. You have to break each claim individually.”
“Which this patent does,” Xander added. “Think of it like a logic puzzle.
This design changes just enough that the infringement case isn’t there—and then it adds the new piece, which forms the basis of its claims. And it’s that new piece that made this patent valuable.”
This patent had only one holder: Tobias Hawthorne. My mind raced.
“Your grandfather filed a bad patent with a man named Vincent Blake. He then immediately filed a better and non-infringing patent by himself, one that made the first completely worthless.”