Wei Yong’s assistant said, “If it’s not urgent, I’ll get Mr. Wei to give you a call when he’s free.”
“Okay. Thanks a lot,” replied Qi Hui politely without hanging up the phone. He probed. “Oh yes. How’s the patent application for the project going?”
The assistant was unsurprised by this question. After all, Qi Hui had provided most of the data they needed for the patent application previously and Qi Hui probably knew what they were trying to do.
He replied easily. “I’ve already submitted the application a couple of days ago. I think it’ll get approved in half a month.”
Liu Qian had already submitted the patent application much earlier and Wei Yong had only just submitted it. It was no surprise Liu Qian had beaten them to it.
When Qi Hui did not react, the assistant asked. “Hello, Mr. Qi?”
Qi Hui snapped out of his thoughts. He pondered before deciding it was best to tell them about the patent problem.
The moment the assistant heard what he said, he promptly frowned. “Has it already gone through preliminary approvals? How could you do this to us? Don’t you know this is a confidential project?”
Qi Hui could not help feeling annoyed by the assistant’s self-righteous and indignant tone of voice. After all, the institute was shamelessly trying to steal the students’ research. Since the institute was very powerful in the academic world, he smiled and said apologetically, “I only just found out about the patent myself. The teacher in charge of the project applied for it without informing me in advance.”
Wei Yong’s assistant touched his brow as he contemplated. The patent meant a lot to Wei Yong, so he was bound to throw a fit when he learned of this.
The assistant said nothing and promptly hung up the phone.
