Ever have one of those days?

I came up with a perfect invention. It was sooo simple and so awesome. I've never seen it in the stores and during my search online I couldn't find anything that really matched what I was thinking.. so.. bingo - patent it. And this wasn't one of my crazy ideas either, this actually had some practical use. So, talked to a lawyer, he loved the idea... etc. So, I scrambled to make a prototype - completed it in a night, woke up my wife at 11:30pm and threw my contraption on the bed and rambled on about it for quite some time.

Today, my wife did some internet patent searching. And sadly, at about 10am this morning, I lost all my virtual money. There, in an email sent from my wife, was a link to an american patent that resembled (almost picture perfectly) my prototype, filed 6 years ago.



A little bit of hope though.. I didn't see one filed for Canada (which is unfortunately 1/10 of Americas population).

There's got to be some similar stories like that out there.. lets see what you got!