submarine patent
n.— «A man fought with the Patent Office for 15 years while lots of different laser products were being developed. Eventually, makers of laser products were forced to pay him. “We call those “submarine patents,” Nickey said. “When he came to the surface, he made a lot of money.”» —“OSU Could Lose Out In World Of Patents” by James W. Crowley Dispatch (Columbus, Ohio) Dec. 12, 1993. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Is there such a thing as a “neutral” accent, and if so what does it sound like? And that quirk in the way southern Californians talk about freeways. They’ll say things like take the 405 and get on the 8. Why the definite article...
Floordrobe is the new word for an old habit: piling your clothes on the floor instead of putting them away. The Oxford English Dictionary recently added an entry for it, defining floordrobe as “an untidy heap of discarded clothing left on the floor...