NO more relationships with 'girls next door'!; - after TWO in the 'Priory Street Posse'!

the six Christian publishing houses I sent my book to,
there are still another five waiting games going on for me
– in all of five other ways I have set out to get promotion
or reviews at least of that book. Even before that in
hospital I had resurrected a two year old design of a
keyboard for which I learned that the patent application
had recently been cancelled, and took the advice of the
enquiry line at the Intellectual Property Office that I
should submit a Registered Design instead. Immediately
on leaving hospital I was effectively told by one Matthew
Botting of Trade Marks and Registered Designs that my
design could not be accepted. I immediately complained
to their Central Enquiries Office that I had first been told
by them in 2006 that applying for a patent was correct, in
May I had been told a Registered Design was more
appropriate; and now that had been stopped by them too.
I demanded a refund, and while the fee for a Registered
Design could not be refunded under the rules, two weeks
ago I did get a cheque for a full £30 refund of my 2006
Patent application fee! On Tuesday 10 th June when I
phoned, the Patent Office now advised me to apply for a
fresh patent, and see a patent attorney, and I had some
contact numbers from the Internet and from Business
Link, a local business advice organisation. So on Monday
16 th June I got the bus and spent an hour at Stevenage at
the offices of Herts Business Incubation Centre with a Bill
Collins, an expert there on patents. The upshot was, (1)
keyboards cost £10 and there were a lot of people trying
to capture the market in something so very cheap (2)
backlit lighting at about £100 was too expensive as in my
own design of keyboard (3) if I did a search on the
Internet I would probably find it had been done already
(4) I would need to raise £2,000 - £3,000 in Patent
Attorneys’ fees to ensure a really watertight application!
The last alone ruled a patent out, especially when a few
days later I received a letter from the patents office at the
IPO, one Gareth Davis sending me about half a dozen
sample keyboard patent applications already registered,
showing that a patent attorney was indeed vital. So now
both a patent and a registered design seemed out of the
question – until Matthew Botting at the design office there
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