After years of planning, months of wrangling and days of begging, we have finally done the impossible. We’ve shorn up our business model to fend off all comers. We’ve taken that extra step to secure our cash flow, protect our product and lock up the economic basis of our operations to insure a uniqueness and exclusivity in regards to listing the schedules for New Monsoon, Lewis Black and The Good Life. Now, if anyone wants a piece of us, it’s gonna cost ’em.

That’s right. We’ve won a patent for listing tour information.

And it wasn’t easy. First of all, we had to prove that the date, city, state, venue model upon which this company was founded was a unique and utterly exceptional construct brought to life in our research laboratories back in 1931, and that a simple statement, such as Reba McEntire playing in Baltimore on July 17 at the 1st Mariner Arena, represented the sum total of our combined intellectual proprietary knowledge. No easy task for sure.

But there’s a reason God gave us lawyers, and our patent attorneys, along with our civil attorneys and our ambulance-pursuit attorneys, managed to hammer out a document that the U.S. Patent office could not refuse. It’s unbeatable, unstoppable and unapprehensible. Crazy? Maybe. But now we have the papers to prove it.

Furthermore, we’ve also won a patent on the listing of events in chronological order as specified by the Western calendar. Ticketmaster, TV Guide, MovieFone – they’ll all have to pay us a licensing fee if they want to stay in business. That is, if we let them.

What’s more, we’ve also obtained a patent on the entering of tour information, like the schedules for Rockapella and Sammy Kershaw, into a digital, electronic database retrievable by entering a query based on city and venue. Isn’t America great?

But what does this mean to you, the typical concert fan who only wants to know where your favorite act, like Van Halen or Metallica, are playing this summer? It’s simple. You can still look up all the schedules we have to offer, including 38 Special, Gomez and G3, and it won’t cost you a single penny. However, if you wish to gather and then post tour information on your own Web site, you’ll then have to obtain a licensing agreement from our legal department. So get in line while the gettin’s good!

What will happen if you don’t obtain a licensing agreement from us? What will happen if you blatantly violate our patents and list the dates for the Eagles or Paul McCartney in a manner that infringes upon our intellectual property? Will armed thugs come to your door, shake you down for your pocket change, kick your dog, issue a strong warning and than depart knowing that they’ve scared you out of your wits? Will we use the threat of legal action, coupled with the promise of doing physical harm, as our sole basis of protecting our intellectual family jewels? Is that the method we’ll employ to protect our concert data goodies? No, of course not. We have no use for such a method at Pollstar.com.

At least, not until we patent it.