Do you recall the saying, “Hidden in plain sight?” So it is with some politicians. What I want to know is, Can businesspeople do the same thing?
Finally—after how many months?—Hillary Clinton deigned to come before Congress to answer questions about the shameful handling of the Benghazi tragedy. This government we have—government by tyranny of the “smart people”—love to tell us how open and honest they are while hiding under—excuse me, I mean behind—whatever rock they can find.
Three years ago they wrote an enormous piece of legislation that no lawmaker or citizen could read before Congress “had to” vote on it. With respect to the Benghazi attack and subsequent investigation there have been a dozen different stories floated, at first to protect a fragile political stance taken by the President prior to the election (“Obama defeated al Qaeda”), then to cover up the lie, then to deny the cover up, then to blame the cover up on Bush. In the Congressional hearing Clinton had the temerity to say, “What difference does it make?! Americans are dead” while crying into her microphone. You have to salute the performances by this administration and their gutsy approach to “truth.”
This government by “smart people” may not understand much about business, freedom, economics, health care or health insurance, personal security, national security, international relations, how to compromise with almost half the nation that disagrees with everything they’re doing, or a host of other things they claim to be smart about. But by golly these people know how to hide their ineptitude and corruption in plain sight and then make it look like it’s their opponents who are insensitive and know nothing about anything.
I call this method of communications “Open Obfuscation” because it hides the lies within so much verbiage, so many words, so many claims, so many stories, so many angles, so much repetition, so much emotion, so many accusations, that by the time you get to the end of the sentence you forgot what the subject and verb were.
But the question I always want to turn to is this: Can entrepreneurs use these same tactics to gain an upper hand against your competitors?
The problem is that business has to tell the truth while politicians are presumed to be liars (at least by their opponents). If you told the kind of whoppers this presidential administration does every day, your derrière would be hauled into court—probably by this corrupt Department of Justice!
But there is a way to use the subterfuge of Open Obfuscation in business:
File a slew of provisional patent applications!
A provisional patent application costs almost nothing to file. It’s valid for a year. It’s never reviewed. By itself it protects only the recording date for a future non-provisional patent application, where all the real action is. BUT…
When you file a provisional patent application, you can use the words “Patent Pending” after your so-called invention. You may never actually file the non-provisional patent application, and if you did you might never receive a patent. But for up to one year, it appears that you have a patentable invention. Not only can you not be prosecuted for any wrongdoing, you would be actually telling the truth (unlike this presidential administration’s normal mode of operation) by putting “Patent Pending” after the name of your idea. Do that several times every year and—like the endless empty claims of a swaggering, corrupt President—you will have a powerful marketing message…at least until someone asks, “Where’s the beef?”
I’m neither advocating nor decrying this use (abuse?) of provisional patent applications, I’m merely pointing out that the law permits even entrepreneurs to legally to engage in Open Obfuscation.