I was on the US Patent Office TESS database
last night and searched m’s famous patent. 
It does exist as US Patent No. 5,982,710, and describes a “method and
apparatus for providing time using cartesian coordinates”… via means of a
wristwatch that would access information from a database of world time zones
and automatically update itself, wherever the wearer happens to be.  The co-inventor of this watch is Rives Tripp
McDow.

McDow owns Global Time Systems, a business
he set up to market this one invention a few months before the publication of
his patent application in November 1999 (according to the “wares” in his
application for US Trademark No. 57689492). 
Soon afterward he abandoned that application and substituted it with one
that made no mention of the fancy watch, describing his wares only as “world
maps depicting time zones of the world” (TM No. 2420266).  He is the sole registrant of that
trademark. 

Global Time Systems has a website so
minimalist it is almost zen, but it has some interesting information: that the
invention was developed by Enteles Systems Incorporated, and that Global
apparently has only one licensee, hourworld.com, which uses the GTS algorithms
in its own Mac application.  McDow bought
enteles.com in 1999 and is the sole owner of the domain, but there is nothing
but a site marker at that URL, and few indications that Enteles Systems ever
did much business (at least, not that I could find).  I did find that Enteles Systems was listed in a 2004 US SEC
declaration as the buyer of more than a million shares in World Associates
Incorporated, a land development company that describes its focus as “acquiring
properties where sustainable communities can be built over time”.  They own a lot of land.  For instance, a May 2006 press release
describes a new project called the Yellow Hills Ranch, in Tierra Amarilla, NM -
the company has almost 15,000 acres of New Mexico under contract for it.  They also own a manufactured home
dealership, so you can plunk your house right down.  McDow also owns shares in World Associates Incorporated in his
own name, but it’s Enteles I’m interested in. 

I feel like a dog that has just discovered
a dead squirrel, but can’t decide whether it’s smelly enough to be worth
rolling around on.  In this whole trail
of breadcrumbs m appears once, as co-inventor of a contraption that appears
never to have been put into actual production. 
Perhaps McDow was briefly bitten in 1997 and inspired to honour the lard
with token credits to “co-inventor” status, but by 1999 had come to his senses
enough to market further developments in his software, and later to buy into
land development, for his own benefit. 
Perhaps m is silly and vain enough to be content just to be able to brag
about his “patent ownership”, not realizing what a gold mine it could be to own
distributable licensing rights on the invention.  Then again, maybe the patent is an element of a money-laundering
scheme in which m benefits directly.  So
many possibilities, so few facts.  Does
anyone here know much about this patent?