Celebrating completion of the Bilski brief with interesting drinks

Last week I finished and filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court for Red Hat in the Bilski case.  The case concerns a difficult line drawing issue in patent law:  the line between a process that is patentable and one that is not.  The Red Hat brief argues that patents on software hinder innovation.   We challenge conventional wisdom on patents in a way that I hope is provocative.  Anyhow, I think it says some things worth saying.  Here is is:  http://tiny.cc/e8XvW

Filing a Supreme Court brief feels a bit different from other projects.  There’s a sense of being a participant in history, of possibly leaving a footprint in the sands of time.  It took a lot of effort to get the thing done, and most of that effort had to be exerted in addition to my normal work routine.  In the end, it happened mostly at night and on weekends.

Sal and I celebrated last night by doing a neighborhood pub crawl and dinner.  We started at Foundation, a tiny, downstairs bar on Fayetteville Street that features handcrafted martinis and has nothing but American ingredients.  There appeared to be at least three dozen types of bourbon, of which Sal tried one.  I tried a cocktail involving moonshine and sparkling wine.  It sounded more interesting than it actually was, but it was worth a try.  We had dinner at Dos Taquitos, where we had fantastic pure agave margaritas.  Afterwards, we stopped by the Busy Bee, where the crowd was mostly young and hip.  Then we walked over to Glenwood and went in Amras.

We were surprised to find an older crowd there, and a band playing hits of the 70s.  It was good to see people with more gray hair who were still having some fun.  Some even danced.  The crowd as Busy Bee was, of course, more attractive, as young people usually are.