Steve Case, the CEO of America Online, was mildly intrigued when one of his top engineers actually sent him an email. This was unexpected, since the guy almost never voluntarily contacted him if it was not related to work.
"Let's see."
He clicked the mail, and to his surprise, in it was just a single link. "What the hell is this?" he muttered. There was no description or even a note as to what the link was for.
"Jay Studios, huh?" He stroked his chin and leaned back into his chair. "Must be a media-related website." John Wu was not from America. He was an immigrant in New York, and most of the content he consumed was Chinese, at least as far as he had seen, so why was he suddenly recommending a media website to him?
His interest was piqued, so he opened another tab. In a few clicks, Jay Studios was opened, and he was immediately put into a batch. His batch number was five, and he had to wait 50 minutes to enter the website.
Steve Case was initially taken aback, not sure what was happening, but after reading the explanation presented on the screen, he quickly understood what was going on.
His eyes lit up, and he was amazed at how ingenious the solution was.
Network bandwidth was a problem for all the internet companies, and it was the same for his AOL as well. Everyone was limited by how many users they could handle, so they had to spend boatloads of money to put down multiple lines of internet service connections.
But this person, whoever he was, came up with an elegant solution where the servers wouldn't crash and the user was completely informed as well.
Just then, a surprising development took place. He was in batch five, but he suddenly jumped to batch four. There was no explanation for it, so he was caught off guard, but after a little thought, he understood. Probably a user in batch four couldn't wait any longer and left, so he got to take their spot.
"This slotting mechanism is interesting as well."
There were still around 35 minutes before the website opened, so he focused his attention on handling the documents for the day and setting up goals and directives for the company.
Just as he was done with the work, the website opened, and looking at it, his eyes immediately brightened.
Steve Case noticed the unique user interface. It was nothing like he had ever seen before. He would even dare to say that the front page of this website was even more elegant and good-looking than his own website.
Knowing that he would only get ten minutes on the website, he quickly pulled out a rough piece of paper and jotted down all the design elements he identified. He even drew up a rough layout at the bottom of the page. There were a lot of things that could be used and implemented in his own AOL, so he thought to task his engineers to adopt some of the features on this website whenever applicable.
In fact, Steve Case was not the only one who was alerted and inspired by Jay Studios.com.
The president of CompuServe, an online service company led by Robert Massey, directed his engineers to study the user interface of Jay Studios.
The co-founder of Netcom Online Communication Services, Howard Sachs, immediately took an updated layout for their website inspired by Jay Studios to his co-founder, Ann Winblad.
The webpage even attracted the attention of internet giants like Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Intel, and Novell.
Ajay knew nothing about this and finally woke up after a proper sleep, completely refreshed.
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He stretched his back and let out a comfortable moan and went into his bathroom to freshen up.
Vincent was not there, but he was not surprised. Ajay had scheduled a lot of interviews for Melissa Keys with several college radio stations throughout Los Angeles. Vincent was left to handle the logistics of the whole thing.
After taking a bath, he quickly wore a fresh pair of clothes and finally sat before the computer, wanting to see if there were any more promotion opportunities.
However, just as he sat on the hardwood chair, the landline rang.
Ajay's first instinct was to ask Vincent to pick up the call, but realising he was not there, he begrudgingly got up himself.
"Hello, Jay-Studios." He greeted in a professional tone.
"Hello! We are from Netscape Communications. Are we talking with the same company that launched Jay Studios.com?"
'Netscape.' Ajay found the name familiar, but he instinctively responded. "Yes?"
"Perfect. Right, my name is Jim Clark, co-founder of Netscape Communications. May I know who I'm speaking with?"
Jim Clark, Netscape. Ajay immediately realised. This was one of the early internet giants in his last life, one of the first internet unicorns that rose to prominence with the browser.
Thinking about it, Jim Clark should have founded the company with Mark Anderson earlier this year, and they still haven't released their browser. His mind quickly spun, and knowing that Netscape would become one of the biggest companies in the first wave of internet giants, the idea of investing immediately crossed his mind. Sadly, reality made all his hopes and dreams come crashing down. He didn't have the money, so he quickly calmed down and first decided to understand what the other person wanted.
"Nice to meet you, Mr Jim Clark. My name is Ajay Williamson, and I'm the CEO and founder of Jay Studios. How can I help you?"
The very next moment, Ajay heard an excited voice from the other end.
"Really? My God! Mr Williamson, how were you able to optimise your website to such a degree? What was your idea behind the user interface? How did you build that batch entry and exit system? Did you use some new tracking logic?"
A barrage of questions came his way, but the voice did not belong to Jim Clark. Ajay immediately realised who it was, Mark Anderson, the co-founder of Netscape and the brain behind the technology.
Sure enough, Jim Clark confirmed his guess the very next moment. "I apologise on behalf of my friend Mark, he is quite impressed by your website."
"Ah, thank you for your praise."
"Mr Williamson."
"Jay will do."
"Yes, Mr Jay. We would like to purchase the patent for the batch input and output system. We feel like it is a very good addition to our product. Are you willing to discuss the price?"
Ajay's mind immediately went blank. 'Patent?' He never thought of that. However, he reacted quickly and responded without raising any suspicions.
"Of course, no problem."
After deciding on the meeting location and everything else, he put down the phone, and the very next moment, he was like a husband running back from work after getting a call that his wife was about to give birth.
He immediately called his lawyer, Harish, and directly ordered him to come to the apartment with his car.
In the meantime, he prepared all the documentation he had with him and eagerly waited.
As soon as Harish arrived, he got in and told the objective. "We have to quickly register a patent. At least we have to file it immediately."
Harish was confused. "Patent!? Not copyright?"
Ajay shook his head and urged Harish to hurry with his gestures. "I built a website in order to promote my new song, but one of the features on the website has caught the attention of an internet company. They are willing to buy the patent rights. I agreed to discuss, but I don't have a patent in the first place, do I? So we have to register the patent before someone comes up with an alternative and registers it before us."
Harish understood the seriousness of the situation, and his expression turned sombre.
Patents are not like copyrights. For a copyright, the ownership of the work cannot be taken away from the original author even if he has not registered the copyright. As long as the original author still has the drafts that he used for the creation of the work, it is legible in court, but patents are different. They are rights granted to inventors, and usually the first one to register a patent will have an advantage in terms of disputes, and without solid proof, it will be very hard to prove the ownership of a certain technology.
Ajay and Harish spent the entire day in the patent office and finally got the algorithm into the patent process.
Ajay heaved a sigh of relief and headed back home. He was once again penniless. The $2,000 he had kept for emergencies was spent completely, since not only did he have to pay the normal money to register the patent, but Harish also had to buy some favours within the office to get the patent number.
Ajay went to the bank once again and took out another loan, but this time he was not nearly as stressed. Once the patent was sold, he would be able to repay the money.
He had wanted to borrow another $10,000, but since he was once again mortgaging the mechanical rights to his thrift shop, he could not secure that much. The loan officer said they were only willing to lend him around $7,000, so he had no choice but to accept it.