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How Patents Work · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know Frondhouse stuff Works dot Com. Hey,
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant, and this is Stuff you should Know. There's
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Jerry too. By the way, Jerry, he's ready for January. Me. Uh, yeah,
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: you're ready for a new year. I'm ready for this
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: year to be done. Yeah. I think it's been kind
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: of cool year. No, it's been fun. I'm just I'm tired.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: I feel i'd be much more rested in It's October.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: You know, we've got a little ways to go. I
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: know this is my favorite month too. I'm just gonna
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: drag you, Hippy. You're gonna start saying far out next
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: starting to it is far out, so Chuck. Yes, I'm
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: very curious. Do you have any patents to your name? Now? Man,
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: I'm not. I don't have an inventive mind. I don't either.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: My brother does, and he has had some good ideas
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: that have later been made into inventions. Why didn't he
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: patent them? I don't know. Man. Every every time I
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: see a new one, I sent it to h and say, hey,
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: I remember when he had this idea twelve years ago. Scott. Yeah,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: what are you doing? I know, Well he's got a
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: bunch of pinball tables, so he's doing all right. He
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: doesn't own the patent on them though, Um no, but
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: he could, you know why, because it's America, that's right.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: So it turns out, chuck um and doing a little
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: bit of research, that there's mention of patents and patent
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: protection in the Constitution, dude, not even the Bill of Rights.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Freedom of speech isn't even mentioned in the constitutions and
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: the Bill of Rights, but patent protection is in the Constitution,
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Article one, Section eight, clause eight, which is known as
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: the Intellectual Property Clause, and it says, quote, Congress shall
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: have the power ellips to promote the progress of science
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: and useful arts by securing, for limited times to authors
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: And since this is the late eighteenth century, a lot
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: of that stuff was just like randomly capitalized, like a
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: sixth grader wrote it or something right, And my apologies
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: to all of you six grade listeners out there who
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: know your capitalization like we love proper now. So um,
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: it's in the Constitution. Like if you invent something that's
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: new and novel and cool. We think you should have
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: some sort of government sanctioned monopoly over that, at least
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: for a limited amount of time. You know why, because
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: very early on the United States said we want to
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: encourage uh inventiveness and forward thinking, an entrepreneurship and great ideas.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: They were on board pretty early. Even though it's a
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: sort of a mess these days, which we'll talk about
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: against the end, we will. Yeah, but yeah, the whole point,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: the whole purpose of a patent system and apparently every
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: it's one of the hallmarks of the m of the
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: modern society, I guess, is to have a patent office.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: It says we value innovation, we value technological progress, artistic progress, um,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: and we're going to show a commitment to that by
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: by basically saying you you have again. I guess the
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: best way to put it is a monopoly on your
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: invention for a limited amount of time. And it harkens
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: back um. Apparently the first patent was issued in fourteen
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: nine in jolly old England by King Henry the sixth,
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: who gave it to a guy who didn't even have
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: a last name. Well, yeah, of Utnam is not a
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: last name, that's where you're from. It sounds like I'm
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: Josh of Toledo. I'm just saying this midi evil. It's
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: not the sixteenth century. Uh No, it's not so. U
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: John of Unam got a patent from King Henry the
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: sixth for stained glass manufacturing. Yeah, back then patents in
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: England were it was a little bit different. It was
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: more like, Hey, we want to protect the crown and
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: our country and our good friends and our good good
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: friends of the Crown, and um make sure that if
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: they have an idea that we can go after anyone
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: else in any other country, even if it's something like
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: stained glass that's already clearly being done in places like Italy. Right.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: It was basically like, you know, officially, are the only
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: person who can make stained glass. It was a bit
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: of a sham. Yeah, they would. They would give out
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: patents not just on an item or an idea or
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: an invention, but like a whole industry. So like this,
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: somebody held the patent on the publishing industry for a
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: while and apparently got out of hand because it was
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: just royal prerogative left and right. And yeah, it didn't
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: lasted that long though. The four they started to pass
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: statutes and laws to try and curb that abuse of power. Um,
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: anyway they could and make it a little more like
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: the patent system that we know and support today. Yeah.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: They were like, the Crown can't give out patents unless
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: it's for a new invention. Yeah. So yeah, that that
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: is very similar to what we have today. UM. So
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: right off the fat, America's like new country. We're setting
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: up a patent office. Um. And the first person to
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: get a patent in the United States was one Samuel Hopkins.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: Hopkins is the last name, not Samuel of Pittsburgh, Samuel Hopkins. Yeah,
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: he got a patent for, UM an improvement in making
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: in the making of potash? Is that potash or potash?
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I said it eight different ways in
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: my head earlier. Well one of those, right, yes. Um.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: And so he held the first patent. Actually, the person
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: that reviewed his patent was a man named Thomas Jefferson. Yeah.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: He was big on innovation, as was Lincoln. And Lincoln
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: is the only president to actually hold a patent. Um.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: He got a boat stuck one time in the river
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: and said, hey, that'd be neat if we could find
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: a way to not get boats stuck, right, So he
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: devised a system to unstick boats when they were stuck
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: on a sandbar for the river was too shallow or something. Yeah,
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: by inflating some booie's that would just basically let you
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: float over. And they were like, President Lincoln, that's a
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: great idea. Here's your patents. Well he was a congressman
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: at the time, but yeah, he's the only president to
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: hold a patent. Uh. And then Jefferson handled the application
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: process for a while before passing it off to um,
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: you know, other cabinet members. And then eventually they're like,
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: you know what, we this is all out of hand.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: We need to establish our own patent office. And they
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: did so a E ten o two. Yeah. I think
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: they grossly underestimated the number of patent applications they were
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: going to receive. People got their invention on. Yeah, the
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: first patent um that Samuel Hopkins received, UM Jefferson examined,
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: he saw it, he gave it to the Secretary of War,
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: who signed it, who then passed under the Attorney General
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: who signed it, and then President George Washington signed it.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: So that wasn't a sustainable process. And then Chuck there's
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: like tons of millions of patents. I think like five
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: point seven million patents, tons of millions. Yeah, five point
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: seven A a ton um. Anyway, there was this notable
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: one that I think is kind of hilarious. Mark Twain,
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: beloved American humorist he invented. Who didn't like Mark Twain, Man,
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of twin haters. Well, he invented the
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: elastic brass strap. Yeah. Uh, I wonder why he invented
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: and improve it an adjustable and detachable straps for garments,
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: which he suggested to be use for pantaloons or vests
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: or other garments. But basically, if you look at it,
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: you're like, that's a brass strap. Yeah. I bet that
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: the old stot garter benefited from that idea. I would
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: guess so. And then one other things I wondered. He
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: also held two other patents, one for um Witty Banter,
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: a game he invented a game to help players remember
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: important historical dates. Okay, I don't think he ever saw
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: a dime on that one, I'm sure. And then a
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: self pasting scrapbook, which wouldn't become huge until the nineties.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: Self pasting means I don't know, it's already sticky. Yeah,
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: like the photo albums, you peel back the plastic and
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: that that sheet underneath is sticky uses static electricity. No,
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: it's actually sticky too, wouldn't it. I think it's static.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: This is sticky. I think it's sticky. I haven't looked
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: at a photo of a minute while. Well, I have
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: to have to go to uh, I don't know, the
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: Hallmark store and check on out soon. Let's do it. Well,
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: we were going anyway, so I know the new Christmas
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: tournaments are. Uh so, Chuck, let's talk patents, man. Yeah, this.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: I had this idea because I'm a big fan of
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: Shark Town, the TV show, and there's a lot of
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: patent talk, and uh I was watching it the other
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: day and they says, well, we have the utility patent,
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: but not the design patent. And I was like, I
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: gotta look this stuff up and see what all that means.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: And um, well, we'll get to that in a second.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: But let's start out and we'll probably do shows on
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: maybe copyright and trademark at some point. Maybe they're still
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: they're worth mentioning here though. Yeah, copyright, those are all
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: forms of intellectual protecting your intellectual property and copyright is
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: the easiest and most broad and wide reaching and longest
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: lasting form because you can just write something and it's
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: yours automatically in the United States. Yeah, and it lasts
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: um for your lifetime plus seventy years. Not bad, no, um.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: And literally once you, like Chuck, if you write a
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: short little story, you can write. When you finish, you
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: can write see put a s fill around it, Chuck Bryant,
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: two thousand fourteen. And you have your official copyright. That's right, Like,
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: that's it legally. You you're done just because you created
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: a work of authorship. And that's pretty great. If you're
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: a company and you've done, have a copyright as a
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: company at last um up to a hundred and twenty years,
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: depending on whether they publish it or not. Um. Yes,
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: but that's uh. Eventually it does run out and then
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: it can be shared and other people can make money
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: off of it, like for example, old um HP Lovecraft stories.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: Like you or I could take a bunch of love
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: Craft stories. UM, let's say we wrote them, type them,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: put them together, and publish them and sell those books.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: Really like a collection that you don't have to get
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: any kind of permission for that. Nope, it's in the
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: public domain at that point, belong to the world. That's right. Well,
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: we read every Halloween. We have to read something from
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: the public domain, I know, because it's really expensive to
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: do weatherwise, it is. Trademarks are a little bit different.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: They're a lot more narrow and what they protect, and
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: they protect designs and phrases that businesses use, or maybe
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: trade secrets like a formula for a soda. Those are different.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: That's its own thing. Yeah, but that's still a trademark,
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: is it. Yeah. I thought it was separate from a trademark.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: M M. I don't think so. So with a trade
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: says it's a trademark trade secret. Well with the trade secret, um,
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: it's actually uh, it can be beneficial to keep something
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: under wraps as a trade secret because if you have
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: something that you patent, you're protected for twenty years in
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: the United States, your patent is but part of the
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: patent processes we'll talk about is to publish it. You
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: make it every detail of it public. So then after
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: twenty years, when your patent runs out, anybody can go
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: and look at your patent and recreate it and not
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: give you a cent for it if it's a trade secret,
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: as long as no one discovers the the says secret
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: formula for Coke by accident or by being this American
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: Life and rooting it out right, and uh and then yes,
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: so like Coke could sue This American Life for damages.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: But once it's out in the public, like, it's no
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: longer a trade secret and other people can use it legally. Uh.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: The the other way you can do it is to
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: take Coke and reverse engineer it and come up with
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: the formula successfully that way that's not protected by trade secrets.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: But then, uh, I think Coke diffused that well though
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: they were kind of like great, good luck. Yeah, supposedly
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: they keep it in a bank in a bank vault
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: here in Atlanta. Yeah, like you. Um. And then the
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: last one is a service mark, which is like a
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: trademark for a company that provides services rather than products.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: So like if you're a plumber, you might have sm
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: next to your your logo. Those are the different types
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: of intellectual property protection protections afforded in the United States, Chuck.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: But the final one, and the one we're discussing that length,
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: is the patent, and that is a copyright for an invention,
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: and the US patent law uh defines that is, quote
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: any new and useful process, machine manufacturer, or composition of matter,
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: or any new idea and useful improvement thereof and quote
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: and that is Uh. Well, we'll get into all that.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: But the wording there is sufficiently vague and specific, because
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: when you're talking about inventions, it's got to be a
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: little bit vague. Yeah, because you don't have it all
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: worked out. Maybe no, because with the copyright, for example,
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: what you wrote down is is protected, right, the sentence structure,
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: the paragraphs you use, the wording you used, that's protected.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: The thoughts that it's getting across about the little puppy
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: who got lost and came back home and everything ended
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: really well, like you, you're the idea of a puppy
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: getting lost can't be copyrighted with a patent. It's the reverse,
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: like the actual invention, like the platform shoe with the
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: goldfish tank and the heel that you invented, right, the
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: you can't defend that actual tangible shoe, but the idea,
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: the design of that shoe, that's what a patent protects. Yeah,
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: and you can't steal it. Gets a little tricky with
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: things like writing or like movie ideas. You can't steal
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: someone's idea. Um, like, there could be two movies about
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: lost puppies. But if you could somehow prove that you
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: met someone in a meeting and pitched him this idea
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: for the Lost Puppy, and then six months later they
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: came out with a script for Lost Puppy, you might
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: have a case that they I don't know, man Um, Okay,
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: but think about Deep Impact and Armageddon. Let's go back
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: to that. Well, well, now I know that's what I'm saying.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: You can have two movies. There their lawsuits every day
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: filed on Hollywood over stolen intellectual ideas. But um, whether
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: or not successful is whether or not you can make
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: your case. You know, it depends upon each one. That's
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: a good point. So the first thing if you want
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: to patent an invention is that you have to uh well,
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: it has to be sufficiently novel, is what they say.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: So it can't be uh, I mean, it can be
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: similar to other things, but it has to be different
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: enough to something that's already patented or been published in
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: a publication to grant the patent. Yeah, because if this
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: that's a really key point if if the even if
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: you invented something right, Um, and let's say you wrote
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: about your platform few with the goldfish tank in the heel, right,
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: if you wrote about it and don't file a patent
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: application if it was published, yes, within a year, Um,
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: you you can't file a patent after that. Yeah, that's
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: why the first thing you need to do is file
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: the patent. Like no one invents something and writes all
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: about it in the Washington Post for a year and
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: it's just maybe I should patent this. So that's that's
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: your first step. And so that's and that's that's what
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: makes a novel. It's new. It's a different idea. And
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: like you said, you can be taking different things that
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: already exist but putting them together in a new way
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: that people hadn't thought of or that wasn't what's called
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: um obvious. So the the invention also has to be
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: non obvious. Yeah, and that's what most inventions these days
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: are our improvements on things that already exists. Like there
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: are new inventions, but a lot of it Like the
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: great example they use in nineteen seventy seven when Jerome
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: Lemelson invented or got patented the idea of the cam qorder.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: It was so absurd at the time. People were like,
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: you hit recorded video and sound at the same time.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: Just that's denied. That's just silly. Get out of here.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: And he said, actually, now that's kind of a good
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: idea and it's super easy to do because I'll have
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: to do is tape the tape recorder to this camera,
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: which is probably what he did. And uh, he was
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: able to get the cam chord patented. Of course, Now
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: if you go to the patent office and do some research,
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: there probably thousands of patents that have to do with
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: the cam quorter. Each individual little piece that someone innovates,
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: they can patent, like night vision on it or a
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: light attached to it, right exactly. But you couldn't say,
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna patent a cam quorder this other guy's cam
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: quorder idea, but it'll be green because it's an obvious change.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: Or this article gives the example of like a toaster,
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: Like you couldn't patent a toaster that has an extra
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: two slots for bread because anybody could think of that, exactly.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: It's that's obvious, that's no obvious. It's just a bigger toaster.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: And then there's also useful um useful as kind of
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: the last of the triumvirate for what makes a patentable
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: item or invention, and like it has to be something
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: that works. So like the example given in this article
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: is like, you couldn't patent random configuration of gears because
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: it doesn't do anything, It doesn't work, it's not useful.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: But if those gears transported, uh, you know, it's a
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: new way of transporting something from one place to another
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: more efficiently maybe than you could patentable patentable um. And
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: then in the same vein something that apparently the patent
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: office interprets something that can be used strictly for immoral purposes,
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: that they consider that non useful because at the end
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: of the day, the patent office is supposed to be
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: doing this for the benefit of society, so I guess
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: they feel that they also can morally interpret things as well. Yeah,
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: what is that? Like, you can't patent like a whiskey
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: still like in your bedroom? No, I no, no, I don't.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't. I think it'd be more harmful than that.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: Like like maybe um, a doomsday laser that only works
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: on children who haven't done anything to anybody. But the
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: doomsday laser for bad kids is great. You see my
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: point patentable, That was a great example if you asked me.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: And then similarly, your device has to be able to
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: be to not just work. Like, yes, you could say, well,
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: this random configuration of gears will work. Why can't I
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: patent it? It's because it's not useful in the In
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: the same vein, you can't patent like a time machine. Again,
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: the example they give this this article is lousy with
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: great examples. Yeah, like we we tried actually to get
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: our way back machine patented and they said, guys, that's
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: real cute. They're like, that's basically just sound design. Thanks
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: for wasting your time. We could probably trademark it though,
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: although I'm sure the good people who made Rocky and
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: bowl Winkle would sewer. Yeah. Yeah, so ourselves the patent
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: in the United States, and I apologize that this is
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: not patents all around the world, but we don't have
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: like eighty hours because we search each country. Again, any
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: any modern developed country typically has a patent system. Yeah,
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: and good advice. If you have something that you think
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: could be used internationally, you need to get patents in
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: all the countries you fear might rip it off, right,
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: because you're your patent that you've received in the United
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: States protects you in the United States, not Canada, not Japan,
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: not Mexico, not China, not anywhere for twenty years, right
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: these days, that's a long your patent will last. That's right, Chuck.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: Um it used to be seventeen and I can't remember
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: when they changed it, but it wasn't too terribly long ago,
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: within the last couple of decades, I think. Yeah. And actually, um, well,
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: we'll go over the types of the patent real quick too,
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: because one of those, the design patent, is only for
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: fourteen years unless that's changed. Design patent. You'll hear that
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: on shark Tank all the time. Uh. That is something
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: like if you designed a new chair like an ikea
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: chair that would be design patented. You can't go and
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: rip off that chair. Oh, but the the idea of
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: a chair itself isn't patentable. It's just this configuration of
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: the chair concept, right. Or Steve Madden will just in
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: a shoe and Steve Madden can put a design patent
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: on that shoe even though it's a shoe. You can
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: even patent the sole of a shoe, if it's some
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: innovative new tread tread or for like a tire or
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: that channels water away or something like that exactly. Um,
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: I don't think those are designed patents though. I think
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: that would be a utility patent, but design patents are
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: enforced for fourteen years. Utility patent um that is, there
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: are five categories there. It can be a process, a machine,
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: a manufacturer, a composition of matter, or an improvement on
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: an existing idea and it might fall into a certain
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: category like more than one, but it'll only be patented
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: for one of those categories, but it's covered and that
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: lasts for twenty years. So basically you're like the coffee
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: maker that also makes an egg and toast at the
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: same time. That would have gotten a utility pattern right,
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: uh yeah, does that exist? Yeah? Emily said. The best
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: eggs she ever had was it a cafe in Utah
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: where they um cook them using a like what you
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: used to heat the milk, like that sprays out the steam.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: They were steam cooked. Weird. Yeah, Like to make an espresso,
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: they will put the raw egg like as if you
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: would make an espresso and cook the eggs with that steam.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: I've never heard of that. I've never heard that either. Um.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: And then there's the super Weird Plant patent, and that
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: is granted for any a sexually or sexually reproducible plant
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: or flour that is novel and non obvious. Yeah, that's
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: that's kind of a big one because there was and
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: in Australia it's this is the way it is. But
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: in the US it was up in the air for
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: a little bit that people were worried that like naturally
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: occurring genetic sequences could be patented. So we're basically some
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: company could be like, hey, we now own your jeans
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: and you can't do anything with them, even to save
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: your own life unless you pay us. In in Australia
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: they're one of their federal courts said yeah, like we're
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: totally down with that, which is crazy. In the United States,
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: I think in two thousand and fourteen, the Supreme Courts
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: and yeah, we're not doing that. You you can patent
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: um if you can figure out how to manipulate jeans
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: to make them do something that doesn't naturally occur, knock
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: yourself out totally patent that. Like for example, mont Satto's
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: seeds that um, that prevent themselves from receding or creating
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: more seeds. Yeah, or some new strain of tree that's
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: hardy against what some kind of insect. You can patent that, right,
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: But you can't just go out and patent an oak
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: tree or a human gene. No. You can in Australia,
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: which you should not be allowed to do, but in
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: the US you can't do that. And that was a
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: big load off off. I think a lot of people's minds,
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: including mine. Uh, well, that's good. I'm glad you can
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: sleep tonight. I'm feeling great. Plant patents are good for
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: any years as well. So I don't know why I
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: designed pats are only fourteen, but you know, maybe they
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: just want to encourage more to values design like they should.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: That's the problem. Uh. As far as we mentioned Jerome Lemelson,
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: and as far as inventors go, he ranks second to
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: Thomas Edison a number of patents in US history, not
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: necessarily a number of inventions, though a lot of people
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: would point out, Yeah, he's a pretty controversial guy. Some
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: people see him as a philanthropic genius. I'm talking about Edison,
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: Oh don't know, I was talking about Limelson. Yeah, he is.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: He's controversial himself too, Yeah, because he um has accused
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: a lot of people of creating what's called submarine patents,
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: which are it's basically a patent that you sit on
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: even and knowing that there's something just like that being developed,
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: and you don't let anyone know, and you just hope
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: it doesn't get their attention, and then later on when
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: it's huge, you come out and say, hey, you owe
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: me a ton of money because I have this seventeen
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: year old patent. Now this, this Lemilson is basically what
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: you're talking about is a form of patent trolling. And
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: that's he does definitely stand accused of that, or we
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: should say his foundation stands accused of that. Um But
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: Samuel Lemonson had was um in controvertibly a genius inventor
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: who definitely did come up with a lot of really
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: great ideas, things like the cam quarter, things like bar
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: code scanning, like just like basically the modern world. A
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: lot of it came out of Lemilson's head. Jerry Lemilson's head, right,
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: But you are right. His foundation has racked up like
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: a billion dollars in licensing fees and court awards from
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: these kind of these kind of lawsuits and litigations until
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: they ran up against one where it was like I
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: think a bar code scanning case. A couple of them
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: got put together and then they were added onto like
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: seven others, and the judge in the case found that
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: they basically this even though there isn't necessarily statute of limitations,
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: a reasonable statute of limitations, they've run out on the
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: time between when barcode scanners came out and the time
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: they filed the lawsuits. And they used the term submarine
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: patents in this article and said time's basically run out.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: These things belong to the world now, and you know,
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: sorryle Wilson Foundation, you're not gonna get this money. Interesting. Uh,
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: there was something past called TRIPS Agreement Agreement on Trade
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: Related Aspects of Intellectual Property rights, and that was supposed
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: to kind of curb submarine patents. But they'll still pop
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: up every now and then. I think I think TVOW
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: reared their head. I think I saw something about that.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: I know the details though, with a submarine patent saying hey,
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: everyone with a Comcast DVR, we actually invented that whole technology.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I'm not sure how that all panned out,
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: though I didn't get to look into it any further.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: But it's interesting. Well let's keep at it, but we'll
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: start again right after these messages. Okay, So Chuck, Yeah,
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: do you want to talk about Edison? So yeah, I said,
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: lem Jerome Lemelson was number two with five hundred and
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: fifty seven patents held in the US, but Edison eclipses
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: that with one thousand, ninety three patents. Uh. And he
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: had a set up in Menlo Park, New Jersey that
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: was just like a the idea factory basically, which ironically
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: is unrelated to the Menlo Park US Patent and Trade
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: Office out in California. Oh really yeah, it was just
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: coincidentally named from what I understand. Interesting. Uh, I never
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: do that connection. Um. He when he set up the
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: Menlo Park, he hired a bunch of like really bright
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: people and said, come up with one small invention every
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: ten days, one major invention every six months, and I'll
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: put my name on all of them, exactly. And if
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: if the your hackles are raised right now, go back
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: and listen to our Nicola Tesla episode, which is a
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: good one. Edison was a smart guy in many ways.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: He was quite a good promoter, like the lightbulb. He's
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: frequently credited with inventing the light bulb. A lot of
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: purests will point out, like, no, he didn't really invent
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: the light bulb. He took a lot of other innovations
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: that were incandescent light related and he figured out how
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: to put them together into what we understand now is
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: the light bulb. Well, yeah, but that's an invention. Yea.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: He went and got the patent, and now everybody says
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: Edison invented the light bulb because uh, and I like
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: that too, because you know, that's the kind of the
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: whole point of patents is this stuff is available to
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: the public to look up. And that was one of
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: the original reasons they made it public is so people
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: could look up other people's ideas and build upon that, right.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: You know, that's one that's one mark in the favor
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: of patent offices in the patent system in general, is
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: that it's a way to disseminate scientific information and encourage
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: growth and uh, you know, inventiveness, right, And the way
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: with the way it does that is by offering an
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: incentive for inventors to invent. Because that can be a
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: very long, arduous, heartbreaking experience inventing. And if you're gonna
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: do that and go to all the work of research
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: and development and then right when you come up with it,
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: somebody can just come along and mass produce it, then
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: you're you're not gonna have any incentive to invent anything.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: You're just gonna go off and like work on a
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: road crew or something instead, because it's probably a lot
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: more satisfying at the end of the day. Yeah, and
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: you can't just go to the government and say, hey,
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: they you need to look into this guy. They stole
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: my idea that I have patented. The government would be like,
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: I don't care. Well, they may care that's at callous,
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: but they say that's not our job. You can go
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: and take someone court if you want to challenge this.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: But there's no government agency that like patrols the patents infringements. No,
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: it's up to the patent holder to to monitor and
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: police their own patents, which they are big on. So
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: let's talk about the courts a little bit. Um. It's
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: like twenty years ago, if you had held a patent
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: and you took someone to court for infringement, the courts
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: typically sided with the infringer. There was a I guess
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: kind of either a thought that you are stifling innovation
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: if you're just kind of suing people over patent infringement,
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: you know, or else they just didn't view patents like
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: they do today. Nowadays, it's going to the other extreme,
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: where the court's rule in favor of the patent holders
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: so frequently that a cottage industry of what are known
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: as patent trolls sprang up, where you have groups of
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: people or companies or individuals who just go around either
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: applying for pat that are really abstract and really shouldn't
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: have been approved, very vaguely written, right. Uh. And they're
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: typically software related too, because I think there's a sentiment
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: that the the U. S. Patent Office it doesn't fully
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: grasp software and the Internet and I T and that
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: kind of stuff. Um, So you either going and file
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: for and get a patent on something really overly broad
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: and vague, or you buy a bunch of other people's
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: patents and you just start for the whole purpose of
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: going to people and saying you're infringing on these patents
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: that I now own, give me some money, I'm gonna
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: take you to court. It's a business unto itself, it
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: is um. The problem is because the courts moved so
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: far in favor of patent holders that people would sell
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: settle out of court to avoid litigation. And so as
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: a result this, this whole cottage industry came up. And
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: then recently there's been some steps taken to kind of
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: reform that a little bit. There was something called the
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: Innovation Act. The Innovation Act past the House, was sent
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: to the Senate, it was in the Senate Judiciary Committee,
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: and then Senator Patrick Lahey killed it, and the tech community,
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: who's really big into patent reforms, um accused him of
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: being in the pocket of the pharmaceutical companies that would
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: never happen in this country, who are really big into
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: preserving the status quo. And if you really look at
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: what's going on with patent reform today in this argument, Chuck,
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: you've got the pharmaceutical companies versus the tech industry. Tech
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: industry is like things are moving so fast and there's
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: so many ideas coming out that we don't like, we
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: can't focus on patent infringement. It shouldn't be as big
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: of a deal because it's stifling innovation. There's people here
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: that are scaring people from you know, licensing computer software
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: because this guy says that he has a patent that um,
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: you could says you could put software onto a CD
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: raw and and and sell it right that you know,
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: that's the kind of patentrol thing. On the other side,
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: the pharmaceutical companies say, hey, man, we make tons of
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: money licensing our patents, and so if people are afraid
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: of infringing on patents because they can get sued, then
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: our investments are portfolio patents are going to be protected.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: So there's a huge behemoth lobbies like hammering it out
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: right now in in the halls of Congress, and it
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: seems like the Supreme Court in the federal government are
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: siding on the tech side. Yeah. They You sent that
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: great article from Forbes about just the problems with the
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: modern patent system, and that was one of the great
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: points that I can't remember who wrote the article. The
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: guy who found a priceline, Jay Walker. Really yeah, he
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: said that, you know, people are so scared companies are
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: these days of infringing on patents because if you can
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: prove that you knew about this patent, then you could
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: be in big trouble. So they're not even looking, which
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: is the original idea of making these things published is
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: like I said earlier, so people would go and look
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: up how someone did something. Maybe I can improve upon that. Right,
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: So people aren't even looking now because they're afraid that
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: they will be it'll be traced back and be like no, no, no,
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: we know that you saw this, this patent pulled three
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: years ago. Yeah, because the penalties for accidental infringement and
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: willful infringement are vastly different, it's a big problem. Well,
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: the the jay Walker suggests that you kind of cut
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: the courts out and maybe make some sort of make
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: it easier to license things. So we just create some
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: big national exchange where somebody can go and easily give
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: somebody some money or temporarily licensed whatever they need. And
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: he cites some um, I think a forest research study
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: that suggests of the five point seven million patents that
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: the US is granted, two point one active patents okay
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: go unused and unlicensed, and of those, approximately half a
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: milli in are considered to be like high quality patents.
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: They're just a lot of them are from university research. Uh,
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: and they just sit there, Yeah, and so protected the
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: same The same study found that like one trillion dollars
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: of revenue is not generated each year in the United
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: States because of this unused innovation that's just sitting there
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: in this this um in this big pot. Yeah, a
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: big guarded vault with a pot in it of unused ideas. Yeah,
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: which definitely goes against the spirit of the original idea
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: for you know, Yeah, which means the system is broken.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: It is broken. The other way that it's broken, too,
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: is the enormous backlog that's going on at the Patent
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: and Trade Office, oh with just getting it reviewed. And yeah,
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: so if you file a patent, and we're going to
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: talk about this in a minute, but um, if you
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: file a patent, chuck and they rejected, that is not
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: the end of the story. You can keep coming back
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: and back and back and back. In fact, you usually
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: will get rejected on the first try for one reason
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: or another. Right, But every time you come back, you
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: add to the PTOs already big backlog. Right. And so
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: apparently there's another another study that Ours Technica wrote about
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: or carried out that that found that there was a
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: huge decrease in the backlog under the Obama administration. But
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: they suspect that it was because the PTO lowered their
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: standards and issued patents for a lot of shoddy patents
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: just to get people to go away to clear the backlog,
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: because that's the best way to get rid of somebody
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: who keeps refiling their patent is to just grain them
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: the patent and get them out of your hair. Well,
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: they're saying, yeah, that decreased the backlog, but it led
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: to a lot of shoddy patents, which in turn led
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: to the patentrol industry. Yeah, and a lot more burden
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: on the courts to suss all this stuff out later. Exactly.
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: The problem is the Patent Office has an incentive to
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: keep letting people file and file again because they make
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: money every time they generate revenue from that. Yeah, it
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: cost I mean, the actual patent itself will cost you
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: five or so that you have to keep every year
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: and pay a little bit more maintenance fees. Uh, well,
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: it depends. Have you seen the feat schedule. Yeah, there's
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: like thirty or forty different things you could pay fees for. Well, yeah,
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: it all depends on what how detailed your patent is
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: and what you're trying to get through. Um, all right, Well,
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: let's talk about what you can and can patent. We
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: talked a little bit about it um. You cannot patent
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: something that is exists in the natural world, like a discovery.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: Like they give another great example Einstein's law of relativity.
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: He can't copyright that or patented. I mean, it's it's
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: a thing, and he might have named it and figured
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: it out, but it occurred long before Einstein was around,
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: just in the solar system. It kind of it belongs
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: to the universe. It belongs to the universe. It's good
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: ways in it um. You can patent like an industrial process,
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: like we said computer programs, you can, but it gets
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: a little dicey um. And you know, if you if
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: you have something that you think might be patentable, patentable,
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: patentable or not, what you the first step you probably
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: should is like higher in either an agent or an attorney,
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: an agent or a patent attorney. Yeah, and a lot
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: of people do. And this is if you're like serious
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: about this stuff, like you really think you're onto something.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: This is something you do not just say you got
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: this idea for a thing. Uh, You're not gonna want
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: to spend thousands and thousands of dollars unless you really
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: think you're onto something, right, So the first step you
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: want to talk about the steps of pattenting something, Yeah,
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: I guess the first step you can do is to
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: do is search yourself. Um. I think Google even has
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: a search function to search patents in the United States,
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: um easily. But if not, you can definitely go to
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: the U S. Patent Office site and search you some
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: keywords to kind of generally describe what your invention is.
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: Did just see off the bat if there's already something
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: out there that's patented, and there probably is. It's very
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: rare to have a truly truly unique idea these days.
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: But if you have something and you're like, like the
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: guy who made the thermonuclear fusion reactor in his garage
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: is sixteen year old, if he wanted to patent that,
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: there's probably a pretty good likelihood that he could get
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: that patent, and then it's gonna be worth a ton
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: of money. So we're gonna take that kid and run
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: him through the patent process because it's gonna pay off
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: for him and the end, despite the enormous amount of
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: money that he's gonna have to spend up front to
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: just to get the patent protection in the United States, right,
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: So he searched the database. Let's say he went to
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: the office in person, because that's what kind of kid
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: he is, and he looked through the files and he
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: found you know what, I think, I'm onto something. I
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: don't see anything else in here that's super like it.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: I feel like it's novel and it's innovative, and it's
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: not obvious and so um, but it's there's a lot
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: of money on the line here, So I'm gonna hire
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: a patent lawyer who Um, patent agents aren't attorneys. They
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: function similarly, but an attorney obviously has a little more
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: power under their belts. Well, they have a technical degree
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: typically and a law degree, so they understande. It just
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: knows about the patents. They don't have the law degree.
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: They have the technical expertise because you have to be
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: able to look at the the actual invention and understand
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: how it works or if somebody's just trying to pass
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: off something dumb like you're you're not a divorce attorney
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: and a patent attorney. You might be, but probably sure
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: there's probably one out there. So um, a patent lawyer
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: will review everything and say, yet, I think you are
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: onto something here with your garage nuclear fusion reactor. Kid,
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: You're you're a heck of an inventor, and I think
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: we can take this right through the roof. So who's
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: this guy? He's you know, the kids stays in the pick.
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: What's the guy, the producer, legendary producer, the guy. Yeah,
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: Robert Evans, that's who. That's who this attorney is. Yeah, Okay,
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: we're getting this nail man, like we're really filling it
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: out with Although Lionel Huts or I'm sorry, Robert Evans
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: may say, you know there is a patent here, don't
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: waste your time. Um, it's up to you. But like
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: it's really similar in these ways, or maybe hey, this
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: thing is super similar, but this actual process within your
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: patent that you're applying for is super unique. So maybe
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: you should just focus on that, right, and then you
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: can license it to the person who's already got the
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: patent exactly. Uh. And then that's the point where the
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: kids is all right, I want to move forward on
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: this smaller part or the original patent, and I want
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: to fill out my application like anything else. That's the
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: first step, as you have to fill out that application
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: and send it in with some money, with some money
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: depending on you have to pay that front, right, it's
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: for the for the application fee. Yeah yeah yeah um.
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: And then after at that moment, once you file your
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: application fee, your patent starts, so that twenty year protection
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: that doesn't kick in when your patent is granted, like,
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: it kicks in from the date you filed your application,
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: so you can go out and put patent pending on
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: your thermonuclear fusion reactor and start selling it to people.
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: That's right. In your application, you you kind of have
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: to spell it all out for him. You can't just
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: throw your idea in there and say, you guys, do
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: the research and see if there's anything else out there.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: You have to list any kind of um potential roadblocks
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: and prior art that may be similar for them to review.
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: You have to briefly summarize your invention. You have to
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: give a description of what they call the preferred embodiment,
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: which means how are you going to use this thing basically, yeah,
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: or like what shape is it supposed to take? How
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: do the components fit in together? Uh? And then your claims,
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: which are this is the most important part um and
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: this is what you're actually gonna be arguing about in
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: court if you have to go that route, because your claim,
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: and that is the actual legal description of your invention, right,
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: and uh, if your claim is very well written, if
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: you spring for a great lawyer Robert Evans, this, this
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: claim is going to be very well written, very concise,
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: very um descriptive and so, but also sufficiently vague. Sure
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: you know, because when you do take somebody to court
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: and you say, this guy has totally ripped me off.
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: Here's my patent, here's the description of what my thing does. Now,
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: look at what this guy is doing. It's the exact
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: same thing that my patent lawyer described years ago when
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: I filed my patent application. So the claim is extremely important.
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: I mean like it's it's basically it's as important as
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: getting the patent itself. Yeah, yeah, totally. Um, how much
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: you're gonna pay that attorney all depends, of course on
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: how many hours they in. But they put in this
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: article between five thousand and twenty thousand dollars. Yeah, I
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: saw more than that. I'm sure it can get up
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: to as much as you know. I'm sure corporations pay
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: these people a lot of money. Yeah, Well, the patent
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: office actually has a sliding scale of um fee feet schedules.
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: So like, if you are a micro entity I think,
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: which is like just probably one guy, you're you're an inventor,
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: you're gonna pay the least. If you're a corporation, you're
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: gonna pay the most. And that's for the patent fees,
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: not the attorney's fees, right, they don't care about those. No,
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: But if you're a corporation and you have a lot
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: of like a large patent portfolio, and you have an
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: R and D company, you have a patent attorney, a
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: stable of patent sordies who are working on that anyway,
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: they have their own office in your building. But I saw,
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: for a in a two thousand five article, I saw
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: a a study had found that for a small size business,
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: so probably the middle slot of the schedule fee UM,
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: it would cost about three thousand dollars to get and
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: maintain patents in ten industrialized countries. So I mean, like,
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: if you've got a thermonuclear fusion reactor and it works,
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: it's gonna totally be worth that you want to patent
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: it everywhere you can possibly do that because you're going
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: to make you're you're going to change the world with it,
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: and probably as many sub patents as you can create.
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: If you are kind of shaky on your idea or
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: you don't think it's gonna end up paying off that much,
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: then who knows. Maybe a high flute and patent attorney
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: isn't the way to go, but maybe you go the
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: route of like a UM inventors help group, Like there's
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: actually one called invent help, and some of those some
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: of those things are scams. I looked up invent help.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: It appears to be totally legitimate. It's got an a
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: minus rating on the Better Business Bureau. UM. You have
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: you ever watched like daytime television? They're like inventors, do
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: you want to help get your invention to market? They
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: do every every step of the way, Like you submit
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: your invention. I think they help you get it patented,
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: to help you market it. They may set up a
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: website to sell it on TV. Yes, they get a
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: piece of the revenue down the street, down the line,
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: or they may also require fees along the way. UM,
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: but some of them are kind of scammy. Apparently invent
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: help is not UM. And then another good resource for
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: you if you're an inventor of limited means would probably
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: be to get to the Lemmelson Foundation that was established
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: by that inventor, Jerome Lemelson, who spent most of his
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: career suing companies that we're using his patented stuff. Um.
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: They I think it's called Lemlson Foundation dot org. They
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: have a bunch of programs to help inventors, especially young inventors.
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: It's a good place to start. I would think, all right,
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: we're gonna finish up on how to finish up the
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: patent process and a few more critiques right after this. Alright,
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: so this kid has has turned his idea into the
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: patent office. Um, like we said earlier, it has a
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: pretty good chance of getting rejected on the first pass,
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: and they will tell you exactly why, and then it's
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: up to you whether or not you want to redo
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: it or just bail on it altogether, or you know,
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: like I said, redo it and resubmitt it and see
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: how your luck runs. Right, And the reasons for rejection
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: can be myriad, you know, like literally thirty thousand different reasons. So, uh,
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: it can be something from the patent office saying like
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: we think that this is way too close to another
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: already patent invention. We don't think it's necessarily an improvement.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: It's not useful. These are the very high level reasons
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: they can be rejected. If that happens, then you might
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: want to go back to the drawing board more frequently.
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: I think it's like, we think the wording in your
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: claim is a little too vague. We don't quite understand
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: the description. Can you make these changes to this paragraph
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: you're drawing is missing a label like the the patent
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: is supposed to be flawless, well written, the like. If
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: you hire a patent attorney, they're going to hire an
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: artist to do the drawing for that's submitted to the
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: patent office. Um, so it's like really supposed to be
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: professional and well done and so like for any minute
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: technical detail, they can reject it, but then they'll also
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: explain why, and then you can just make the change
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: in refile. Um. If it's something that's just kind of
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: open new interpretation. If you have a patent attorney, your
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: patent attorney can be like, let's negotiate this point and
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: hopefully get the whole thing passed through. I wonder if
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: you have to go back to the back of the
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: line or if you have a new phone number you
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: can call I don't know for like, you know, man,
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: that's the key, isn't it. You get that that secret
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: phone number to the person who actually picks up the
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: first time, and you can be like, please help me. Yeah, Um,
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: I don't think one thing we did mention if you uh?
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: And it gets really dicey if you work for a
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: company and you have an invention as an employee of
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: that company. Um, there have been countless hinky situations. I
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: remember the one They made the movie about the guy
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: who um invented the delayed winshield wiper? Is that a
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: documentary that's out on Netflix? There probably is, But I
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: think what's his face? The guy from As Good as
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: It Gets? Um. I didn't see the movie though, but
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: I think that was a case of someone who works
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: for a or work for a company, or maybe he
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: didn't work for a company. Maybe he just presented it
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: to car companies and he thinks they ripped him off.
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: But if you work for a company, you might get
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: the patent, but the company might still own the product
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: or the process that you invented, you know, because you
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: did it as their employee. Under their purview, but you
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: might still get a personal patent for it, but maybe
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: you might not benefit like you would as a as
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: a private person. No, And basically, if you're an inventor,
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: good luck getting a contract with the Corporation of the
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: United States where you don't automatically sign over every bit
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: of your invention to that company. Or if you are
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: if you create anything creative, you are probably have a
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: work for higher contract where all of your work that
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: you write or draw, or design or compose automatically belongs
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: to the company. So the ironic thing is is like
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: you are technically the creator of that work or that invention,
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: but if you go and republish it like on your
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: own personal website, you're infringing on this copy right right,
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: Um that your your company owns, and your company can
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: sue you to get you to stop or to do whatever. Um.
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: And that's a big critique of the patent system too,
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: is that there's not a lot that the Patent and
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: Trade Office can do about it. But just the way
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: the system works right now, corporations have all of the
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: power as far as patents go. Yeah, that's it's such
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: a tough thing. I mean, you hear they're just countless
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: stories from history of so and so invented this this
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: thing that we all use, but they never made a
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: penny off of it because they did it for IBM,
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: or like the guys who invented Superman. They were paid
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: like a hundred and fifty or three hundred bucks by
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: d C, and UM basically told thanks a lot. And
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: over the years of DC made tens and tens and
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of dollars off of Superman. These guys
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: are like, like, this isn't right. And finally, after there
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: was enough outcry, they were granted like some some back
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: revenue they got. Do you remember our Christmas extravaganza from
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: last year? The guy who composed Rudolph the Red Nose
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: Reindeer for Montgomery Ward and hit on hard times and
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: the president of Montgomery Ward granted him the copyright to
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: root off the red nosed Reindeer. That doesn't happen. Yeah,
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: And that's that's a copyright, not a patenter and invention.
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: It's I see both sides a little bit. You know.
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: I always think that corporations are the ones taking advantage.
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: But if you work for IBM and you have they
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: have given you the resources and paid you money to
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: do this. Then that's you know, quit your job and
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: go invent something on your own. Then you know, yeah,
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: um so a kind of see both sides, But generally
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: I think corporations probably sticking it to the man. So,
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: speaking of corporations sticking it to the man or humanity
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: in general, UM is of the pharmaceutical industry again, so
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: I said that they're they're very happy with um the
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: status quo. And one of the great criticisms of the
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: patent system now as it is is you can get
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: a patent. You can buy a patent and just sit
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: on it, like you can buy a patent, say from
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: a competitor or from somebody who may be a competitor
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: down the road and prevent them from making it. Even
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: if this thing benefits humanity, even if it literally saves
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: people's lives, you can you can sit on a patent.
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: And apparently drug companies have been known to do that.
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: There was one famous um uh case with a company
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: called am Gin and they developed an anemia drug that
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: treated anemia and iron deficiency and it worked really well. Um.
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: The problem is like the body absorbed it really quick,
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: so you had to take large doses for your whole life.
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: Apparently this researchers chemist found a way to make the
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: drug longer lasting, which, in am Gen's mind meant while
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: we can't make as much money off of it. So
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: this lady was like, can I just see your patents
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: and I can figure out a way to to latch
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: this onto your drug and save lives. And Anteon was like,
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: we're not gonna let you see our our material reels
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: are researched. We don't want to make that better man.
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: But so that and that's that's not as overt as
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: buying a patent sitting on it to keep people from
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: doing it. But that does happen like it's a it's
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: a it's a it's a competitive way to navigate the
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: business climate. Well, put to Josh, you've worked your way
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: around that one very nicely. Oh I got something here.
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: Um if you it might take like a year to
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: five years to get this patent um from pending two approved.
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: And let's say you put in an idea very similar
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: to someone else around the same time. That happens all
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: the time. If that happens, they declare and what they
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: call an interference, a dance off a dance off exactly,
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: and they have to actually have a little trial. Um,
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: a little trial like they serve tea and everything's a miniature,
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: everything small. Um, they have a trial. They basically figure
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: out who got there first. Yeah, there's a very famous
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: case of um Alexander Graham Bell and Elijah Gray Um
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: basically putting in a patent for the telephone at the
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: same time. And I guess for a long time it
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: was whoever could prove they invented it first in the
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: United States was the one who got the patent. And
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: then I just to simplify things, in March of two,
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: the US changed its patent law. So now the first
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: inventor to file is the one who receives the patent. Right,
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: so even if it's by a minute, whoever got it
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: there first is the one who gets the patent. That's
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: why filing that patent right away is uh is your
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: best defense? Like go now, stop, press pause and do
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: it right now. Seriously if you haven't invention. Um, I
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: just got one more thing on the the old the
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: infamous poor man's patent or poor man's copyright. Sure everyone's heard,
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: Like all you gotta do is write it out and
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: mail it to yourself. I think I suggested that on
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: this this this show before, didn't you remember? I don't
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: remember that. But that is just an old wives tale
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: that's not going to hold up in court. It's basically worthless.
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: But I don't understand why if like right when you
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: create the work, it automatically is copyrighted, why would that,
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: like dating it not make it not just substantiated even
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: more Well not, I'm not talking about writing a book.
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: I'm talking about Hey, I'm I did this invention, and
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: here's the schematic, and I'm gonna man. Okay, So it
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: could work for something copyrighted, but not a patent. Well no,
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: I mean if it's if it's just an original work
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: of art you've created, like a book, then like it said,
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: it's already copyrighted, so that doesn't even apply. Okay. So
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: but if you invented something in designed and dismail this
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: to yourself, it's worthless. Basically you can't prove like envelopes
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: can be steamed open and manipulated, like, that's not gonna
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: hold up in court. You can do it if you want,
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: sure to take it to court. And so I have
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: an extra stamp that I don't know what to do
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: with that's right. Uh, let's see you got anything else
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about patents. Uh, it's
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: actually surprisingly interesting stuff. Um you can type that word
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: in the search part how stuff works dot com. And
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: since I said that, it's time for a listener mail,
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this. Thanks for the panic attack episode.
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: Oh I'm glad, they said episode. We've got a lot
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: of great feedback. I think this touched a lot of
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: people because they're way more common than you think. Um, Hey, guys,
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: love the episode on panic attacks. I had them in college,
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: brought on by normal college stress plus the loss of
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: a beloved uncle. I would often wake up in the
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: night standing in the hall of my dorm, feeling like
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: I could not breathe. Sometimes I would be awake enough
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: to think I'm dying. I just need to get the
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: hallway so someone will find me or my body. Sometimes
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: I would just wake up screaming. What helped and the
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: reason I'm writing was some wonderful therapy offered through my
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: university's health services, along with some antidepressants. In the support
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: of my family and friends, I learned coping mechanisms to
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: get me through my anxiety, how to express my stress
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: so I wasn't bottling at all up inside, and the
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: importance of taking time to rest my mind and body.
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: With all the help, I was able to leave therapy
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: after a few semesters, was able to recognize that I
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: needed it again later and graduate school after the birth
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: and my second year my much love but very unplanned child.
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: I urge all college students, graduate and undergrad to really
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: take advantage of their mental health services that are offered
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: to them. For me, as a student at my university,
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: each session was only ten bucks. And remember that in college,
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: all that stuff was so cheap, like the doctor. You
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: can go see a shrink for like five dollars. I
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: remember I got acupuncture of like three bucks a session.
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: Really they had no I did that in l A
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: through a university though my roommate there's just some dude exactly.
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: He was good with a needle. Um uh. And it
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: could also be charged to my births are account, which
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: I don't even know what that is. Burstir. Yeah, I
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: didn't have one of those. Yeah, I remember that from college,
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: but I don't remember what it was. I think the
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: word looks familiar. The health building was on campus so
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: sessions fit right into my schedule, and I can't stress
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: enough how beneficial it was for me. Without therapy, I
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: would no doubt have not made it through college and
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: graduate school. There's no shame in therapy or medication to
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: help you through tough times. Turns out pretty much everyone
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: goes through it to some extent, and no one is
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: weak for getting help. Admitting you need help is what
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: makes you a stronger person in my opinion. And Rosalie Maltby,
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: researcher at the University of Oklahoma Department of Biology, I
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: couldn't agree more. Well, thanks a lot, is it? Rosa Lee, Rosalie, Rosalie,
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, Rosalie. We appreciate you writing in spreading
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: that message because it's a good one. Very pretty name
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: as well. Um, if you have a patent, we want
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: to hear from you. Tell us what your patent is
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: so we'll steal it. No, No, I can't, it's patented.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: Man about if you've got a great idea that you
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: haven't yet patented, send that to us. Whatever you want
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: to do. You can tweet to us at s y
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: com slash stuff. You should know. You can send us
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com,
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: and as always, joined us at at home on the web.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff Works
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: dot com.