I appreciate the approval tongue emoticon I was going to patent
   something once. Only once. It was new at the time. A
   modification to a car. Funny 'cause I didn't drive all that
   often. Searched USPTO (this is in '99/00) online. Nobody had it.
   Learned all about the process, crunched the $ on and off at
   work. Six months later, I decide to go for it. I had the money
   to start. Did ONE MORE SEARCH... ...and someone beat me to it 4
   months earlier. They weren't approved, but they were in the
   system going through the process. I couldn't find a single flaw
   in their set up where I could distinguish mine from it. So,
   after a week of cognitive dissonance, I just figured, "It's an
   idea whose time had come, and he had the corp connections to get
   his stuff pushed through faster". So, last time I did that.