September 5, 2024 • 48 mins
Have you ever had a good idea -- like, a brilliant idea? If so, you may have immediately started trying to figure out the cartoonishly complicated, labyrinthine world of patents. In today's episode, the guys dive into the strange history of the concept and process of patents.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Histories, a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the
(00:27):
show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for
tuning in. Let's give a shout out to the man,
the myth, the legend, even after a long weekend. It's
our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Woo who Happy Labor Day, guys, Max the patent troll Williams.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
It's true.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Da he trollin And you're Noel Brown and I'm Ben Bollen.
And recently, in an episode or i should say, a
series on the history of drive ins, we talked about
the guy who patented concept of a drive in, Richard
Milton Hollingshead Junior.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
That's right, great name, great idea. I do believe there was.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
There were some questions that popped up immediately on the
inherent novelty of this idea in terms of like the
setup and what made it patent worthy. And then we
kind of got into that and explained a little bit
of the nature of patents and the time limits and
all of that in the episode. But today we're gonna
get a lot deeper into the concepts of patents in general,
(01:31):
which I think is something.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
That a lot of people might be a little hazy
on I certainly was.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Yeah, it turns out there's a reason it's an entire
specialization for the lawyer types. This is not the history
of intellectual property. Please check out our two part episode
last year on IP and shout out to the Big
Mouse for now. Like you said, Noel, I think patents
(01:56):
are pretty confusing to the average person. Before we dive in,
we have to define what a patent is. And luckily,
at least the definition of a patent is pretty agreed
upon it.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
There's a really helpful kind of cheat sheet on the
University of Iowa, of all places. I'm sorry, I don't
know why I act like Iowa is some sort of
like you know, deep cut state.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Plenty of things go on.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
In Iowa, including a very helpful defining of patent basics.
You can find this if you just search on the
University of Iowa Library's website. But they define a patent
as an intellectual property right granted by the government to
an inventor or owner to exclude others from making, using,
offering for sale, or selling the invention throughout the said country,
(02:51):
or importing the invention into the said country for a
limited time in exchange for public disclosure of the invention.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
That's a cool part. Also shout out to the University
of Iowa. They have one of the best writing programs
in the United States and therefore arguably the world. The
last part of the definition you read there, NOL is
I think one of the easiest ways for we, the
non lawyers, to understand the nature of a patent. You
(03:20):
are essentially making a trade with a state government. You
are saying, look, I will go public with this right.
The idea is the powers that be are allowing you
to propagate your invention with a degree of exclusivity because
you have agreed to share it in some way with
(03:42):
the public.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Yeah, and I believe when you file for a patent
with the government, you're essentially filing a schematic or plans
you know of said invention. Though I'm sure it gets
a little murky when it comes to like trade secrets,
for example, like you aren't necessarily required to define every
single piece of material it's used to make your products.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
I don't know too much about this yet.
Speaker 4 (04:08):
I'm gonna do some more research later on, but it
feels like like from the stuff I was reading that
they've started to establish trade secrets as its own fourth category.
So you have like patterns, you have trademarks, you copyrights,
and now you have trade secrets because to your point, Nol,
it's like, like a pattern is very cut and dry,
and that's why I really like them, because it's like,
(04:28):
this is how you make X.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
Well, a trade secret, it's like how do you make X?
Speaker 1 (04:33):
And then someone sort of steeples their fingers and does
little Monty burns and they say, wouldn't you like to know?
Wouldn't you like to know? Indeed?
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Because I mean I could take a filed patent. You know,
that is public domain. It is available to public as
literally a whole caveat of being granted the patent, and
I could probably mock up something close to what the
real thing is. But surely there are certain components that
don't have to be disclosed, certain like you know, actual
materials or industrial processes inherent to making the thing. They
(05:06):
aren't necessarily included in that filing.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
And I love Max You're pointing out there are different
species of this conceptual ownership. We could call it. The
trademark is not the patent right, and the IP is
not necessarily the patent. But patents were a big, big deal.
The United States talks about them in the Constitution, specifically
(05:32):
in Article one, Section eight, clause eight, and their idea,
as we'll find, comes from the earlier legal framework of
the United Kingdom. They said, all right, we know we're
anti monarchy and this monarchy and specific However, not all
of their ideas were bad. That's why the Constitution says, essentially,
(05:56):
the Congress will have power quote to promote the progress
of science and useful arts, a term that will be
important later, by securing for limited times to authors and
inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discovery.
And they didn't put in that clause, by the way,
that was editorial. They didn't say a phrase that will
be important later.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Well, I mean it's essentially a I mean, I think
the term promote the progress of science and useful arts
is really important because without some kind of protection, it
doesn't really incentivize smart people to share their ideas for
fear that they're just going to get them ripped off immediately.
So this really is a way of promoting the spread
(06:38):
of good and useful ideas and technology by smart people.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Mm hmm, yeah, I mean, think about it, right, let's
exercise the empathy of these other perspectives. You spend twenty
years of your life figuring out a new and brilliant
process to make don't know shoes, right, You figured it out,
and if you go public with it without some sort
of legal protection, what's to stop the next cobbler down
(07:05):
the way from immediately taking that idea right, taking literal
decades of your blood, sweat and tears. And that's why
a patent, as we'll see, is sort of a mini
or constrained monopoly. If we go back to University of Iowa,
they talk about the expiration date for patents.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
That's right, I mean, And we're gonna end up using
the term kind of mini monopoly, which I like because
a big question that comes up is like, aren't monopolies bad?
Don't we not want to create monopolies? And so while
the term monopoly is used for what is the duration
of a patent that is issued, it isn't the same
as a monopoly of an entire industry. It is like
(07:49):
an individual or groups monopoly over an idea that they
created for a period of time. And like another good
way of thinking about that is like think of like
medications that then, after a certain period of time, become generic.
You know, that is also a positive thing that allows
those medications to then be created by other groups and
made more widely available and potentially more affordable.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Yeah, and the medication or the field of medicine in general,
as we'll see, as quite a sticky wicket. I would say,
even a little bit of stuff they don't want you to.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
Know big time.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Yeah, there, certainly we've got episodes about that out there.
Look at I would say, look for the episodes about
the Sackler family and just the idea of how medications
are approved and marketed specifically, that is where the real
nasty rubber hits the road. But twenty years, if I
didn't say that already, is the term that is assigned
for a properly registered patent.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
And what you get in the twenty years is the
following exclusive rights to stop other people from making or
selling your invention, your patent. The USPTO or US Patent
and Trademark Office is the big wig for this stuff.
They handle over something like three hundred thousand patent applications
(09:07):
per year on average. And another thing that will be
important later, most countries have their own thing here. Getting
a patent in the United States or getting a patent
in the United Kingdom doesn't apply across the globe.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
For a time, there was even an issue with our
giant company that were a part of iHeartRadio, or we
weren't able to broadcast or even podcasts using that trademark
in the United Kingdom. I don't know the details of it.
It was sorted out, but for a time it was
a bit complicated and caused some shuffling, kind of shenanigans
on the part of US podcasters and radio presenters in
(09:44):
order to make our stuff available in the UK.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
And yeah, and this was again, this was a whole
bag of badgers, definitely above our collective pay grade. But
we can assure you it did get worked out. It
is something that made a lot of lawyers I think,
really earn their crust for a while. And we see
(10:08):
how sticky it gets again with the difference between a
trademark and a patent, and the difference between like what
is a brand which will collectively roll our eyes out. Later,
if you're looking at patents in the United States, you're
gonna see three species. The vast majority of patents are
what we call utility patents about ninety one percent year
(10:29):
over year, and then there are design patents that's about
nine percent. And then there's something called plant patents. Now
they're by far the minority in this in this great panopoly.
That's we're talking something around zero point five percent.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Yeah, just in case anyone's curious and or confused like me,
A plant patent is a grant from the US government
to an inventor who has discovered or invented a new
variety of plants that can be reproduced asexually. And I
gotta wonder if, with the explosion of legalized marijuana in
the United States, if some of, if a lot of
(11:06):
these plant patterns have to do with certain hybridizations of
various marijuana plants and another explosion hot peppers.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
I almost guarantee that's another part of it.
Speaker 4 (11:18):
It has to be. Yeah, And like to be honest,
when I was writing this, I saw plants, plant and
I was just like, Okay, let's be talking about like, you.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Know, fact manufacturing.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
That's exactly what I thought that I'm typing it up
A b oh No, they're literally talking about a plant.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Yes, yeah, which is still a huge deal. This also
includes things that might be loosely categorized as GMO products
genetically modified organisms. It could include, you know, things like
the controversial terminator seed lines where you have to buy
the seed year over year from the same company. The
(11:55):
design patents are just what they sound like, a new,
original or ornamental design for an article of manufacture, and
the big ones the vast majority. Again, the utility patents
are a new and useful one process, two machine, three
article of manufacture, or four composition of matter. So that's
(12:16):
where you get to material science.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
And in terms of design, they have to be all
of the following, a new, original and ornamental design for
an article of manufacture. But it's not also to be
confused with trademarks, because you can have a logo that
would fall under trademark even though that is a design
y element. I believe this would fall more under a
(12:39):
product that isn't proprietary in and of itself. But the
look of it is.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Like going back to shoes examples, flip flops versus sandals. Right,
it's the same basic idea, but the way they adhere
to your feet is different, right and ornamentally so also.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Possibly like the soul of a particular like Doc Martin
or something like that. But then again that could also
fall under utility because it's a part of the shoe.
But it is a functional, utility part of the shoe
that perhaps has some proprietary quality to it.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
Shout out to Crocs.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
I'm wearing a Seattle Mariner's jersey right now, and the
materials may out of like definitely is like you know,
pattent and by Nike.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
The fabric blend literally that, right, yeah, right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
And as we can see, this can get confusing because
we're looking at a series of especially with utility and design,
we're looking at an intense series of Venn diagrams, right,
and determining which sort of patent you acquire or aspire
toward is Again it's a huge industry and one of
the other tricky things that we have to say at
(13:46):
the front, not everything is patent to bolt, right.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
You can't.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
You can't patent stuff that is here we go a
law of nature.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Can you patent the wind? Right?
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Can you sing with all the colors? You cannot legally
own gravity, nor physical phenomena, nor abstract ideas. The most
common word in the English language is the word the right,
So you cannot patent the concept of patenting at abstract
(14:17):
idea just to get meta with it.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
But but speaking of getting meta with it, I bet
that would also apply to philosophical concepts, right. You could
possibly copyright a book wherein you discuss a lot of
these concepts, but you can't trademark or patent rather a
specific concept like you know, I think, therefore I am,
or something like that.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
Side note, did you guys know the Ohio State University
did get a trademark for.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
The Well, trademark is not a patent, I guess, true, Right,
so they could, so they were able to skirt by
with that one. But I love the point that no
one can own nihilism, even though we've all.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
Experienced her, have we ever? On the daily?
Speaker 2 (15:00):
And then there are just some things that should be
excluded from the concept of patents because they belong under
another umbrella. Literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works of course
fall under copyright. And then there's the final outlier, which
doesn't really belong anywhere, inventions which are not useful or
offensive to public morality.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
I will jump in and say that gets interesting that
when we get into international.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Patterns exactly right, because cultural and social mores vary widely.
Max we get some scary music for the worst example.
Imagine you somehow created a contagion that only targeted a
specific type of person.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Yeah, that is the kind of thing that is universally
offensive to public morality. But as we said, it gets
much more complicated.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
But that's also the kind of thing that the government
would probably do keep a lid on, and would it
wouldn't even ever enter the conversation, would you know what
I mean? Like if that were if that were a thing,
and you know, likely it would be invented either through
the government or attained by the government, because I dont
think we're going to talk about this today in this
particular context. But something that we talk about on something
(16:18):
that I want you to know all the time, yeah,
is if someone invents a thing and then files a
patent and the government catches win to that and it's
something that could have a potential risk to national security
or some other vague concept that the government likes to
keep a handle on. They can seize it and everything
associated with them, and it's no longer yours.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
And there's a gag order so you may be a
ridiculous historian joining us today and you may have been
part of this.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
Now they what is that call? Again?
Speaker 1 (16:49):
It is the Invention Secrecy Act of nineteen fifty one.
The other thing that it imposes upon is inventions or
patents that may somehow threaten economic stability. Right, so that
could go to things like imagine, what's one of the
examples I used this earlier identificue, right that only you
(17:12):
only have to use once a year. Is that going
to topple an industry?
Speaker 3 (17:17):
See?
Speaker 2 (17:17):
But then you gotta wonder about like things like the
cure to cancer, you know, like with that topple, the
insurance industry with that topple, like medical insurance and the
big pharma.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
I mean, sorry not to get our.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Conspiracy hats on too heavily right now, but I do
really think.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
About these kind of things. I think you do too bad.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
I mean it does call into question like how deep
does the government go in terms of defining these things?
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Yeah, it's nuts.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Please check out our episode Audit, which unfortunately still holds up.
And we're very in that episode. We're collectively going, I
don't like it, but I get it, but I don't
like it, but I get it. The first recorded patent
(18:06):
that we know of was granted in fourteen twenty one
in Florence to a guy named Filipo brune Eschi. And
we are not native Italian speakers. That's something I'll come
up in a future episode on the history of pasta.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Just do your hand like this when you say you
know what I'm doing. Guys, everybody knows what I'm doing.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Brune Leeschi, you know, and then it's fine, and yeah,
this was This guy was a big deal in early
Renaissance architecture. In a lot of cases, governments issued grants
for the importation and establishment of new industries, like in
England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth the First. But
it started to become kind of in the zeitgeist that
(18:50):
the English Crown was abusing its authorities and perhaps playing favorites,
granting these kinds of rights to only folks that kind
of were in the inner circle.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
A little bit of nepotism. God forbid we bring that
up with monarchies. But because of this, because of the
increasing controversy, especially with the English Crown and the Privy Council,
common law courts of the time started to scrutinize these
patent applications with a little more care. And this led
(19:22):
to sixteen twenty three when Parliament enacted something called the
Statute of Monopolies. It prohibited most royal monopolies, but it
gave the right, or it preserved the right we should
say to grant letters patent for inventions of new manufacturing
for up to fourteen years. So again a mini monopoly letters.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Patent literally referring to kind of the document right like.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Issued, yeah, yeah, just so, And this is great for
marketing if you're starting a business in England at the time.
But again, there were so many wide variations in patent systems.
Depending on which country you were in, they had different,
you know, different windows of time for exclusivity. It could
(20:09):
be sixteen years, it could be twenty years. Sometimes a
country would grant a shorter term for a specific patent.
They would say something to the tune of, hey, this
is a great idea, my guy, this is so great
that everyone needs to be able to make it because
our nation needs more of these things in the world.
(20:30):
So just for the greater good, you got to take
a knee. We can only give you a few years
on this one.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
That is interesting because if you think about it, it's
almost like, yeah, you own the patent for this, but
maybe you're not the best outfit that would have the
you know, resources to produce this thing at proper scale.
So therefore we're gonna let you have some fun with
it for a little bit, knowing that eventually it will
pass into the public domain and then potentially we'll be
(20:57):
able to be produced much more widely.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
That's a great point the infrastructure argument. Right, you have
the right to do this at your cottage level for
a few years, but then we have to pass it
to the people who already have trade networks and mass infrastructure.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
That's right, though, the laws of like economics would kind
of imply that if something was a great enough idea,
then the money would flow and the small company would
no longer be small. They would able to be able
to parlay that amazing idea into set infrastructure. So it's
kind of a double edged sword there. I'm not quite
sure which side is right.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
There, we can imagine already in ridiculous cinema, an early
version of Shark Tank, right where somebody might say, hey,
we're in a hurry to get this out, so Can
we just buy the rights from you? Can we just
pay you some sort of partnership fee? In communist countries
it gets pretty fascinating because, of course, the Soviet Union
(21:56):
during its time treated the concept of property pretty differently.
So patents as we would understand them in the West,
weren't really a thing. Instead, if you were an inventor,
you got a certificate of some sort a certification that said, hey,
this person, this Jane or Joe, they deserve some form
(22:16):
of compensation.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Ata boy, you hopefully a little compensation. But it does
seem to me almost like they were in that situation,
are treating these things a little more like we would
treat the laws of nature.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
Yeah, a little bit right. It was all for the
greater good.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
Of the unis, of the collective unconscious. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
And so as as trade networks expand and as the
world becomes an increasingly smaller place, people are realizing that
they need these rules to be more uniform. It's similar
to the rollout of international rail when multiple countries said, whoops,
(22:54):
we have different gauges on our trade tracks.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
That's a really good point.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
And when you start to venge sure into these types
of parallel thinking, which also happens too.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
You know, you might have an invention.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
That's so duh. Yeah, of course that's gonna be a
thing like the toothbrush. Let's just say, for exare, well,
I imagine that multiple people came up with ideas for
something resembling the toothbrush at the same time, and that's
when the whole idea of novelty kind of comes into playing.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Yeah. Another example, just because it's I'm all neudle brained. Now,
another example would be, can you patent the idea of
wheat and water made into a paste?
Speaker 3 (23:34):
Can you patent a pasta shape?
Speaker 2 (23:36):
You can do that, Okay, you can do the spoiler alert,
spoiler alert, y'all. We got a fun episode on the
way about the ridiculous history of pasta.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
Oh my god, pasta shapes. It's very excited about and
I am as well. Did you go to that exhibit,
by the way.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Ben, Unfortunately they were closed when I got there.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
Yeah, you're in Atlanta. I Wood's the museum.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
It's the Museum of Modern Design.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Design, which I've never been to and really wanted to.
Ben had the great idea that had to take a
field trip to this history of pasta exhibit over the weekend. Unfortunately,
there's just a little bit too much going on and
we didn't make it, but we will explore it vicariously
through an episode in the very near future.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
Oh and yeah, shout out to the good folks at
that museum. The name, if you want to look up
their upcoming exhibits is MOTA Museum of Design, Atlanta. So
I shouldn't have said it was the Museum of Modern Design.
It's just design and justice design in general, real large, right,
It's a design patent, and this idea of these different countries, right,
(24:38):
having the cognitive version of different gauges on railroad tracks.
They run into this thing and they say, oh crap,
how do we solve this? And the piggle is they
never really did not really. Now you still have to
get patents everywhere separately to their earlier point you made,
(25:00):
Dear Noel, you have to apply for patent in every
country that you want a patent in because the patent's
power is exclusivity. So you could, for instance, like the
three of us could maybe nol you patent a breakthrough
and synthesizers. Right, of all the people, I know, you'd
(25:20):
be the guy to do it.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
It's very kind ben the fu I think about that though,
is there really haven't been that many breakthroughs and synthesizers.
It's like the kind of thing where we're still just
manipulating and rewiring and doing all of these things with
some of the basic ideas that were present like in
the thirties. Like it's super cool, and there are certainly
people that make products that utilize these things. And you
(25:43):
could probably do a design patent on the look and
arrangement of your piece, But you can't patent assign wave.
You can't patent a square wave. You know, you can't
even really probably patent a voltage controlled amplifier, which is
a very simple circuit. The cithicizers are all kind of
the utilized and are based on a lot of this
(26:03):
stuff has been around for generations.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
Right, and so imagine how big that breakthrough would be.
Whatever this hypothetical breakthrough is, now our poor inventor are
scrappy up and comer has to not only patent it
in the United States, but has to go to every
other country where they want patent protection, because if they don't,
then you know, it's again it's the cobbler up the
(26:28):
street from you who likes the way that you make shoes.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Would you guys say that in this day and age,
having something coming up with something that is that would
pass the test of being patented is probably more and
more difficult than it used to be.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
I would agree.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
I think so the one thing, the one countervailing factor there,
and this is where the Invention Secrecy Act comes into play.
The countervailing factor will be non tangible things like lines
of code, right, different sorts of algorithmic applications, so.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
A lot of microprocessing perhaps, yeah, very very proprietary chips
and micro circuits.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
But yeah, I agree with you.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
It's kind of like a parking lot that gets a
little bit bigger year over year, but there are still
a lot of cars in the parking lot, so it
can be tougher and tougher to find your spot in
this terrible analogy.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
Not at all.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
So with all of these, you know, potential weird interactions
I guess we could call them, or kind of conflicts
of interest when it comes to this kind of stuff internationally,
definitely was time there was an opening for someone to
step in and kind of figure out a way to
codify this stuff in a way that wouldn't screw over
the world at large.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
Yeah, so Paris tries and they they have something called
the International Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property Right.
This is adopted by Pairs eighteen eighty three. It's trying
to make things a little more uniform, and then fast
forward nineteen seventies, it's still wonky and confusing, and that's
(28:09):
where we see a new gang called the Trade Related
Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights TRIPS, a production of World
Trade Organization.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
That's right, and the idea here was to extend patent
protection to any inventions, whether products or processes. This is
from the WTO language in all fields of technology, provided
that they are new, involve an inventive step, and are
capable of industrial application. We already had some of these
kind of caveats laid out. I guess this sort of
(28:43):
titans in the language up a little bit, but still
seems kind of broad to me.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
The idea of a what is a novel step?
Speaker 4 (28:51):
I think the thing that really did someone was it
had some enforcement because it's like, okay, you're following these
It's like, if you want to be part of the WTO,
do you follow that rule.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
So we make sense we can punish you in other
financial ways if you don't play ball. And if you
don't play ball, then guess what all of us wto, guys,
we don't have to respect what you're doing.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
You're not saying at our table at lunch any longer.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
It's true, exactly exactly.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
They're real mean girls.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
I guess you could say, kitting wto don't come for
us exactly. OMG, you guys. So with this in mind,
you can see how this is already pretty complicated. We
have to ask why a patent gives folks a monopoly
and why does it expire. This is where we go
(29:39):
back to the thing that I think stood out to
all of us, the concept of a mini monopoly. Right,
like you said earlier, aren't monopolies bad.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
So according to the law Offices of Jeff Williams, not
our Jeff Williams, a patent can be viewed as a
sort of mini monopoly in that the patent owner is
granted the power to prevent others from using their protected
technology without a license or other permission. However, it is
always possible for others to negotiate with the patent owner
(30:10):
to make use of the technology if no agreement is reached,
then the competitor may try to design around the patent
or wait a few years until the patent expires, at
which time new innovations may look even more attractive. I
want to bring up one more synth related thing if
I might. Again, a lot of that technology is old.
(30:32):
There are very famous synth designs companies like Roland and
you know, like COREG for example, like Legacy, usually Japanese
companies that have designed these innovative synthesizers that again combine
you know, pieces and processes that have been around for
a long time. But I guess what happens is those
(30:52):
patents expire and they go into the public domain. And
now there are literally this company called Barringer out of
Germany that is basically kind of reviled but also beloved
by some for creating affordable clones of these other products
that look almost identical, even minus some certain little design features.
(31:13):
And it's just interesting because they are hated by a
lot of people in that community. But on the other hand,
they also give people access to affordable versions of vinted
synthesizers they would never possibly be able to.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Buy, right, Yeah, agreed, And this idea of accessibility. Affordability
is a very powerful legal concept and that's part of
why patents expire.
Speaker 3 (31:36):
Right.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
This is where we need to give a shout out
to one guy who did the most king move in
the history of medicine, Jonas Salk. Jonahs Salt could have
become a multi billionaire, but when he made the polio vaccine,
he refused to patent it. And he had this famous
(31:59):
quote where he said, they said, who owns the patent, Jonas?
And he said, well, the people own it. There is
no patent. Could you patent the sun and lawyers for
different foundations investigated whether they could patent this vaccine and
make a little scratch off of helping people stay safe
(32:20):
from polio, and he said that's just gross. He was like,
give it out. I want everybody to make this, and
so Jonahs saw it. If somehow you are listening to
this podcast, shout out to you man.
Speaker 4 (32:32):
I believe the COVID vaccine at least some of them
have that role as well, for like you know, especially
in international matters.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
Because they were spinning it up and part of that
was state level actors paying so much for the R
and D and then saying, look if we're giving you
all this money.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
You have to play nice, please, sure, But then you
have kind of the flip side of that. You have
real life super villain Martin Screlly, you know, who bought
the rights to a life saving pharmaceutical and then the
jack the price of it up like you know, tenfold
or whatever.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
That stuff happens too.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
I'm glad that he has to give back the Wu
Tang album.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
He doesn't deserve the Wuotang album.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
But if you're the latest that he made a bunch
of copies of it and is literally trolling the people
that bought it legitimately or that paid for it after
it was repossessed from him.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
The guy is an absolute.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Piece of work in a real life super villain that
let's not even go so far as to call him
a super villain.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
He's kind of a weenie, but he he is.
Speaker 4 (33:31):
There is a villain in a level of Bordlands two
that right before the boss fight with him, he stumbles
down a float of stairs and dies. That's what I think, Mark, And.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
You know, I always try to see the good people
you guys, you know that about me. But I hope
every time that dude tries to fart, he poops his
pants just a little, just.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
Hope it hurts a lot or just a lot.
Speaker 4 (33:54):
And it's in public and it goes down on his
leg if he's wearing shorts, well that's the thing.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
I want there to be a stained at the back
of the trousers.
Speaker 3 (34:02):
You know what I mean is a human steam.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
What happens when a patent expires, it becomes part of
the public domain. Other people can use it and market
their version of the invention. You stop receiving or you
can stop receiving the royalties from your invention, and you
can no longer enforce licensing agreements so other people can
use your invention. There's another way a patent can expire
(34:34):
before it's time. The maintenance fees. You haven't thought about
that for a lot of us. I'll be honest here,
when I was looking into some patents, I was under
the impression that I just had to play nice once
with a lawyer and the patent office. Now you got
to pay a maintenance fee. You have a subscription.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
Now you have to prove that you're actually I believe
in exercising the patent.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
In some you can't just like have it and then
not do anything with it.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
You know, well, maybe you can maybe Okay, maybe it
doesn't necessarily mean you have to manufacture the thing, but
you do have to in some way participate in this,
either paying into the system or what have you, or
else you're going to lose it. It kind of reminds
me again not to get to cross pollinady with intellectual property.
But the hell Raiser films, for example, there is like
(35:23):
I believe it's Miramax owns the right to the hell
Raiser franchise, and in order to continue to exercise those rights,
they are required to make movies in that franchise, and
in order to do that and make sure they hold
onto the intellectual property, they will occasionally make really really
low quality movies called ash Can copies that allow them
(35:45):
to continue to exercise that control.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
So this is sort of the patent d version of
that in a way, like you have to use the
parking space that you have right, so you have to
pay your parking fees. It also reminds me, of course,
of the fame It not to be too much of
a comic nerd, but a reminds me of the infamous
controversy surrounding Sony Sony will sometimes put out a movie
that's honestly not great, and the reason they're doing that
(36:10):
is because publishing that film, even if it's Morbius's, it
helps them retain the rights to that character, to its
likeness to that ip, so we see, we see this
use it or lose it mentality across the board.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
Hand, it allows them to continue to mess with Marvel Studios.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
I say, no, you can't have this villain in your movie.
Do some more rewrites, guys.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
Sorry, Also, quit killing Uncle Ben. You know, that's one
of the best things about the New Spider Man franchise.
They just fast forwarded past that horrible moment. They were like,
we all know how though.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
Well, also, I'm just gonna say, you just move it
to a different character. That's true, that's true.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Also, why does aunt May keep getting younger in every
Spider Man?
Speaker 3 (37:01):
Phil oh Man, I really quick aside.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
I went to a Broadway show with our good friend
of the show, Jordan Runtag, and.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
We had separate seats, and afterwards.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
He was telling me how, oh h, there was this
lovely woman sitting next to me I just had the
most lovely conversation with And he asked her oh are
you an actor?
Speaker 3 (37:17):
Do you do this kind of stuff?
Speaker 5 (37:18):
So well?
Speaker 2 (37:18):
I've always wanted to but never really got into it.
You know, it was Marisotome. It was totally Marissitome. He
didn't even have the revelation until we were gone, Like,
I think it was the next day that he like,
I don't know how that happens. Like He's Jordan is
a guy of a very specific taste. He basically only
knows about like stuff that happened before, like the nineteen sixties.
(37:39):
Everything else is kind of a blind spot for him.
But I just love that story. He said she was
a delight and wasn't self aggrandizing at all. It was
just sort of like, you know, happy probably do not
be wrecked exactly.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
That's it.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Most of the conversations I've had with people who turned
out to be a list musicians or celebrities, I had
no idea, And I think it's a very enjoyable human moment.
It's sort of like when jay Z was riding the
train on the train with Woman Square and met this
beautiful lady who just wanted to encourage him to pursue
(38:11):
his dreams.
Speaker 5 (38:11):
Keep going, Oh you're jay Z. I've heard of you.
You have mentioned, Yeah, my grandkids love you. So that is, by.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
The way, you should always treat people with just a
positive human interaction, no matter what you may see their
social standing. As we also know, and we're going to
wrap up here because this will be part of a series,
we also know that we've been we've been kind of
two stepping around this. What makes a patent different from
(38:43):
a trademark or a copyright. It's not quite the same
as apples to bananas. It's there's not even a remote
sort of one to one thing, but it can be
very confusing in conversation. So the easiest way to say
it and shout out to our research associate Max here
(39:04):
is a patent is an invention. A trademark swoosh, just
do it. That's a logo. A copyright is the authorship
of a work. So for example, someone who writes the
history of Nike, they have a copyright on the book
they publish. However, Nike has a trademark this awesome swoosh, right,
(39:27):
and Nike has some patents about how you make shoes.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Yeah, And if we ever did seem like we were
drawing parallels between them, I think the only thing we
were doing was talking about they both have systems in
place and kind of benchmarks that have to be met
in order to maintain those trademarks, copyrights and patents.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
And don't even get us started folks on how all
trademarks are brands, but not all brands are trademarks. It's
just like bump bump bup bup bupu, bumu, bum bu bumu.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
It's true.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
And lest we tease a topic with a nickname for
super producer Max and not follow through with it, I
think we should end today's episode with a little bit
of tangents and trivia surrounding the idea of patent trolls.
Speaker 3 (40:14):
I think we were I don't want to speak everybody.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
I certainly was first exposed to patent trolls in terms
of podcasting because early on we were actually lucky enough
to kind of be in on the ground floor of
this crazy industry of podcasting. There was a patent troll
whose name has been lost to history and I'm sure
you could find it, but with someone who was trying
to sue some of the biggest podcasting outfits in the
(40:37):
world over what he claimed was a novel and patentable
concept aka podcasting, the idea of publishing serialized audio content
on an RSS feed. And we were named in the
lawsuits at least our prior parent company US no thought,
(40:58):
but it was something like Joe Rogan, how stuff works? Yeah,
Jimmy Kimmel, I think Mark maren is well, you know
some of the ogs of podcasting. And it had the
potential to really throw a wrench in the entire industry
if this person prevailed. So what is a patent troll?
Speaker 3 (41:15):
Exactly?
Speaker 1 (41:17):
Yeah, so it's sort of it's a shakedout. That's the
best way to say. It's just blackmail our friends, ridiculous crime.
It's similar to extortion the idea. You know, a similar example,
not not involving patents, but a similar example would be
when the Internet became a wide common good, there were
(41:38):
there was a group of brilliant, if not ethical people
who just went around and bought domain names that they
knew would be really.
Speaker 3 (41:47):
Populople still, oh dude, someone one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
There was a big story on NPR recently about a
guy who's been doing that for years, and he does
it with campaigns. He'll buy a combination of running mate
potentials right, So he bought Harris Waltz dot com and
just you know, made a held out for the big
payday and you know, it wasn't like millions of dollars,
but it was like one hundred thousand dollars or something
(42:13):
significant like that. And he was interviewed, and I honestly
think that is a little less egregious than the hardcore
patent trolling, where someone you know is literally trying to
shake down an entire industry.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
Yeah, that guy sounds like he's basically rolling the dice
in the casino of the Internet and politics. But a
patent troll, the issue is a patent troll is inherently
predatory and abusive because they're not trying to manufacture a thing.
They're not selling a product that they have patented. They're
waiting for someone else to do it, or some version
(42:48):
thereof or something related to that concept, and then they
try to get a ton of licensing fees from that
person who is only actually building the thing they were
pretending to build.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
And you know, if you've maybe gotten the sense throughout
this episode that the whole patent process is a little
bit inefficient, you would be correct. And it relies on
a lot of legal jargon, and like, in order to
really navigate it, you have to be an expert. It
is a specialty of law in and of itself, like
you know, most areas of law need to be But
(43:24):
the patent troll actually really praise on that inefficiency and
oftentimes sends these kind of blankets like cease and desist
letters or I guess demand letters.
Speaker 3 (43:36):
I mean that's the word demand.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
Lill e're in my demands to someone who they believe
is infringing on their kind of blanket filing of a
patent for a concept that is perhaps not worthy of
a patent.
Speaker 3 (43:51):
It's a little.
Speaker 2 (43:51):
Confusing to me too, because wasn't it determined that podcasting
wasn't novel enough to even qualify for a patent because
it was just like realized content published on a feed.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
Yeah, the issue is what is a good or a
bad faith assertion. We know that this patent trolling in
the United States specifically is a huge economic danger. It
costs the US something around twenty nine billion dollars a
year back in two thousand and eleven, and the study
was published in twenty twelve. If you want to learn
(44:25):
more about it, there's an excellent article in the Harvard
Business Review from September of twenty twenty two hits by
a guy named Max Bacchus, and the title says it all.
It's time for the US to tackle patent trolls because
they're not going to make the thing that's the problem.
They are not themselves going to use that proverbial parking space.
(44:47):
They're waiting to trap someone else.
Speaker 4 (44:49):
And if you really think about it, that defeats the
actual purpose of a patent is designed for innovation. It's like, hey,
we will give you a temporary monopoly on this thing
if you are willing to. Because multiple times we brought
up the R and D with pharmaceuticals because to develop
these pharmaceuticals and there's a lot of you know, other
stuff with pharmaceuticals and not gonna that not on topic
(45:12):
right here, but it's like, you have to spend so
much time and money making this thing that may or
may not work that if you have all these patent
trolls disincentivizing people from doing it, then we are really
it's like it's a cell phone in some ways.
Speaker 3 (45:28):
Yeah, it's a goal.
Speaker 2 (45:30):
And just to close the loop on the whole podcast patentrol.
It was back in twenty thirteen and the company h
was Personal Audio LLC, and they sued Adam Carolla and
named a bunch of co defendants in the in the
In the suit again including how stuff works, they claim
that the podcasters podcasters in general infringed on the US
(45:51):
patent eight dot one one two dot five of four,
which claims a system for disseminating media content in serialized
episodes aka every other form of media that's ever existed.
And I just think it's interesting because they were obviously
granted this patent, but it was determined after a challenge
to that patent that it was not valid. The Supreme
(46:15):
Court had to get involved. So it just goes to
show that perhaps all patents that are granted are not
necessarily worthy of receiving that designation.
Speaker 1 (46:23):
Welcome to the United States. Everything's negotiable.
Speaker 3 (46:26):
Stamp rubber stamp, rubber stand How.
Speaker 1 (46:28):
Much money do you have, my friends, how much are
you willing to part with?
Speaker 4 (46:31):
I will say after, like, you know, writing some briefs
looked at when you read constitutions and stuffer and by
other countries and then you read the United States one,
You're like, right, this country was built by lawyers. Yes, yeah,
it's not a bad thing nor good thing.
Speaker 3 (46:44):
It's just a thing.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
Well, there's just a lot of vague language, you know,
in the damn Constitution.
Speaker 3 (46:48):
That's why there are so many divisive.
Speaker 2 (46:50):
Points and people that are just like absolutely on opposite
ends of an issue because the language is not particularly.
Speaker 1 (46:57):
Clear, and sometimes those folks are not arguing in good faith.
But we want to with this that Let's give a
shout out to our good friend aj Bahamas Jacobs. We
will never explain that street name the author of the
Year of Living constitutionally, wherein he finds out firsthand just
how vague the Constitution is and the brilliance of writing
(47:21):
it in that manner.
Speaker 3 (47:23):
This is why we.
Speaker 1 (47:24):
Call it the American Experiment. Thanks also to our pal
super producer research associate for this episode, mister Max Williams.
Oh and shout out to Alex Williams. I can't believe
we have our own composer.
Speaker 2 (47:37):
Indeed, and huge thanks to Christopher Hasiotis and Eves Jeff
Coates both here in spirit.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
Yes, big big thanks to Rachel Big Spinach Lance, big
big thanks to our own patent troll, Jonathan Strickland. Aka
the Quister. We would love to hear your take on
the most ridiculous patents. We haven't gotten to it yet,
but it's on the way. You can always find us
on our Facebook page, Ridiculous Historians, and I'll see. I
(48:04):
don't know, man, it'd be cool to have a patent.
I just like the certification. I like, you know, I
just want the paperwork, to have it on my wall.
Speaker 3 (48:13):
It would be cool.
Speaker 2 (48:14):
I guess people probably frame them, right, Like, if you
always hear about folks that have like multiple patents under
their belt, I'm sure in their little home offices they've
got those things framed.
Speaker 3 (48:22):
That'd be pretty cool. I agree, and that spirit. We'll
see you next time, folks.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous Histories, a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the
(00:27):
show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for
tuning in. Let's give a shout out to the man,
the myth, the legend, even after a long weekend. It's
our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Woo who Happy Labor Day, guys, Max the patent troll Williams.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
It's true.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Da he trollin And you're Noel Brown and I'm Ben Bollen.
And recently, in an episode or i should say, a
series on the history of drive ins, we talked about
the guy who patented concept of a drive in, Richard
Milton Hollingshead Junior.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
That's right, great name, great idea. I do believe there was.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
There were some questions that popped up immediately on the
inherent novelty of this idea in terms of like the
setup and what made it patent worthy. And then we
kind of got into that and explained a little bit
of the nature of patents and the time limits and
all of that in the episode. But today we're gonna
get a lot deeper into the concepts of patents in general,
(01:31):
which I think is something.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
That a lot of people might be a little hazy
on I certainly was.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Yeah, it turns out there's a reason it's an entire
specialization for the lawyer types. This is not the history
of intellectual property. Please check out our two part episode
last year on IP and shout out to the Big
Mouse for now. Like you said, Noel, I think patents
(01:56):
are pretty confusing to the average person. Before we dive in,
we have to define what a patent is. And luckily,
at least the definition of a patent is pretty agreed
upon it.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
There's a really helpful kind of cheat sheet on the
University of Iowa, of all places. I'm sorry, I don't
know why I act like Iowa is some sort of
like you know, deep cut state.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Plenty of things go on.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
In Iowa, including a very helpful defining of patent basics.
You can find this if you just search on the
University of Iowa Library's website. But they define a patent
as an intellectual property right granted by the government to
an inventor or owner to exclude others from making, using,
offering for sale, or selling the invention throughout the said country,
(02:51):
or importing the invention into the said country for a
limited time in exchange for public disclosure of the invention.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
That's a cool part. Also shout out to the University
of Iowa. They have one of the best writing programs
in the United States and therefore arguably the world. The
last part of the definition you read there, NOL is
I think one of the easiest ways for we, the
non lawyers, to understand the nature of a patent. You
(03:20):
are essentially making a trade with a state government. You
are saying, look, I will go public with this right.
The idea is the powers that be are allowing you
to propagate your invention with a degree of exclusivity because
you have agreed to share it in some way with
(03:42):
the public.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Yeah, and I believe when you file for a patent
with the government, you're essentially filing a schematic or plans
you know of said invention. Though I'm sure it gets
a little murky when it comes to like trade secrets,
for example, like you aren't necessarily required to define every
single piece of material it's used to make your products.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
I don't know too much about this yet.
Speaker 4 (04:08):
I'm gonna do some more research later on, but it
feels like like from the stuff I was reading that
they've started to establish trade secrets as its own fourth category.
So you have like patterns, you have trademarks, you copyrights,
and now you have trade secrets because to your point, Nol,
it's like, like a pattern is very cut and dry,
and that's why I really like them, because it's like,
(04:28):
this is how you make X.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
Well, a trade secret, it's like how do you make X?
Speaker 1 (04:33):
And then someone sort of steeples their fingers and does
little Monty burns and they say, wouldn't you like to know?
Wouldn't you like to know? Indeed?
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Because I mean I could take a filed patent. You know,
that is public domain. It is available to public as
literally a whole caveat of being granted the patent, and
I could probably mock up something close to what the
real thing is. But surely there are certain components that
don't have to be disclosed, certain like you know, actual
materials or industrial processes inherent to making the thing. They
(05:06):
aren't necessarily included in that filing.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
And I love Max You're pointing out there are different
species of this conceptual ownership. We could call it. The
trademark is not the patent right, and the IP is
not necessarily the patent. But patents were a big, big deal.
The United States talks about them in the Constitution, specifically
(05:32):
in Article one, Section eight, clause eight, and their idea,
as we'll find, comes from the earlier legal framework of
the United Kingdom. They said, all right, we know we're
anti monarchy and this monarchy and specific However, not all
of their ideas were bad. That's why the Constitution says, essentially,
(05:56):
the Congress will have power quote to promote the progress
of science and useful arts, a term that will be
important later, by securing for limited times to authors and
inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discovery.
And they didn't put in that clause, by the way,
that was editorial. They didn't say a phrase that will
be important later.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Well, I mean it's essentially a I mean, I think
the term promote the progress of science and useful arts
is really important because without some kind of protection, it
doesn't really incentivize smart people to share their ideas for
fear that they're just going to get them ripped off immediately.
So this really is a way of promoting the spread
(06:38):
of good and useful ideas and technology by smart people.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Mm hmm, yeah, I mean, think about it, right, let's
exercise the empathy of these other perspectives. You spend twenty
years of your life figuring out a new and brilliant
process to make don't know shoes, right, You figured it out,
and if you go public with it without some sort
of legal protection, what's to stop the next cobbler down
(07:05):
the way from immediately taking that idea right, taking literal
decades of your blood, sweat and tears. And that's why
a patent, as we'll see, is sort of a mini
or constrained monopoly. If we go back to University of Iowa,
they talk about the expiration date for patents.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
That's right, I mean, And we're gonna end up using
the term kind of mini monopoly, which I like because
a big question that comes up is like, aren't monopolies bad?
Don't we not want to create monopolies? And so while
the term monopoly is used for what is the duration
of a patent that is issued, it isn't the same
as a monopoly of an entire industry. It is like
(07:49):
an individual or groups monopoly over an idea that they
created for a period of time. And like another good
way of thinking about that is like think of like
medications that then, after a certain period of time, become generic.
You know, that is also a positive thing that allows
those medications to then be created by other groups and
made more widely available and potentially more affordable.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Yeah, and the medication or the field of medicine in general,
as we'll see, as quite a sticky wicket. I would say,
even a little bit of stuff they don't want you to.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
Know big time.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Yeah, there, certainly we've got episodes about that out there.
Look at I would say, look for the episodes about
the Sackler family and just the idea of how medications
are approved and marketed specifically, that is where the real
nasty rubber hits the road. But twenty years, if I
didn't say that already, is the term that is assigned
for a properly registered patent.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
And what you get in the twenty years is the
following exclusive rights to stop other people from making or
selling your invention, your patent. The USPTO or US Patent
and Trademark Office is the big wig for this stuff.
They handle over something like three hundred thousand patent applications
(09:07):
per year on average. And another thing that will be
important later, most countries have their own thing here. Getting
a patent in the United States or getting a patent
in the United Kingdom doesn't apply across the globe.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
For a time, there was even an issue with our
giant company that were a part of iHeartRadio, or we
weren't able to broadcast or even podcasts using that trademark
in the United Kingdom. I don't know the details of it.
It was sorted out, but for a time it was
a bit complicated and caused some shuffling, kind of shenanigans
on the part of US podcasters and radio presenters in
(09:44):
order to make our stuff available in the UK.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
And yeah, and this was again, this was a whole
bag of badgers, definitely above our collective pay grade. But
we can assure you it did get worked out. It
is something that made a lot of lawyers I think,
really earn their crust for a while. And we see
(10:08):
how sticky it gets again with the difference between a
trademark and a patent, and the difference between like what
is a brand which will collectively roll our eyes out. Later,
if you're looking at patents in the United States, you're
gonna see three species. The vast majority of patents are
what we call utility patents about ninety one percent year
(10:29):
over year, and then there are design patents that's about
nine percent. And then there's something called plant patents. Now
they're by far the minority in this in this great panopoly.
That's we're talking something around zero point five percent.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Yeah, just in case anyone's curious and or confused like me,
A plant patent is a grant from the US government
to an inventor who has discovered or invented a new
variety of plants that can be reproduced asexually. And I
gotta wonder if, with the explosion of legalized marijuana in
the United States, if some of, if a lot of
(11:06):
these plant patterns have to do with certain hybridizations of
various marijuana plants and another explosion hot peppers.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
I almost guarantee that's another part of it.
Speaker 4 (11:18):
It has to be. Yeah, And like to be honest,
when I was writing this, I saw plants, plant and
I was just like, Okay, let's be talking about like, you.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Know, fact manufacturing.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
That's exactly what I thought that I'm typing it up
A b oh No, they're literally talking about a plant.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Yes, yeah, which is still a huge deal. This also
includes things that might be loosely categorized as GMO products
genetically modified organisms. It could include, you know, things like
the controversial terminator seed lines where you have to buy
the seed year over year from the same company. The
(11:55):
design patents are just what they sound like, a new,
original or ornamental design for an article of manufacture, and
the big ones the vast majority. Again, the utility patents
are a new and useful one process, two machine, three
article of manufacture, or four composition of matter. So that's
(12:16):
where you get to material science.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
And in terms of design, they have to be all
of the following, a new, original and ornamental design for
an article of manufacture. But it's not also to be
confused with trademarks, because you can have a logo that
would fall under trademark even though that is a design
y element. I believe this would fall more under a
(12:39):
product that isn't proprietary in and of itself. But the
look of it is.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Like going back to shoes examples, flip flops versus sandals. Right,
it's the same basic idea, but the way they adhere
to your feet is different, right and ornamentally so also.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Possibly like the soul of a particular like Doc Martin
or something like that. But then again that could also
fall under utility because it's a part of the shoe.
But it is a functional, utility part of the shoe
that perhaps has some proprietary quality to it.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
Shout out to Crocs.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
I'm wearing a Seattle Mariner's jersey right now, and the
materials may out of like definitely is like you know,
pattent and by Nike.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
The fabric blend literally that, right, yeah, right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
And as we can see, this can get confusing because
we're looking at a series of especially with utility and design,
we're looking at an intense series of Venn diagrams, right,
and determining which sort of patent you acquire or aspire
toward is Again it's a huge industry and one of
the other tricky things that we have to say at
(13:46):
the front, not everything is patent to bolt, right.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
You can't.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
You can't patent stuff that is here we go a
law of nature.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Can you patent the wind? Right?
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Can you sing with all the colors? You cannot legally
own gravity, nor physical phenomena, nor abstract ideas. The most
common word in the English language is the word the right,
So you cannot patent the concept of patenting at abstract
(14:17):
idea just to get meta with it.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
But but speaking of getting meta with it, I bet
that would also apply to philosophical concepts, right. You could
possibly copyright a book wherein you discuss a lot of
these concepts, but you can't trademark or patent rather a
specific concept like you know, I think, therefore I am,
or something like that.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
Side note, did you guys know the Ohio State University
did get a trademark for.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
The Well, trademark is not a patent, I guess, true, Right,
so they could, so they were able to skirt by
with that one. But I love the point that no
one can own nihilism, even though we've all.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
Experienced her, have we ever? On the daily?
Speaker 2 (15:00):
And then there are just some things that should be
excluded from the concept of patents because they belong under
another umbrella. Literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works of course
fall under copyright. And then there's the final outlier, which
doesn't really belong anywhere, inventions which are not useful or
offensive to public morality.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
I will jump in and say that gets interesting that
when we get into international.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Patterns exactly right, because cultural and social mores vary widely.
Max we get some scary music for the worst example.
Imagine you somehow created a contagion that only targeted a
specific type of person.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Yeah, that is the kind of thing that is universally
offensive to public morality. But as we said, it gets
much more complicated.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
But that's also the kind of thing that the government
would probably do keep a lid on, and would it
wouldn't even ever enter the conversation, would you know what
I mean? Like if that were if that were a thing,
and you know, likely it would be invented either through
the government or attained by the government, because I dont
think we're going to talk about this today in this
particular context. But something that we talk about on something
(16:18):
that I want you to know all the time, yeah,
is if someone invents a thing and then files a
patent and the government catches win to that and it's
something that could have a potential risk to national security
or some other vague concept that the government likes to
keep a handle on. They can seize it and everything
associated with them, and it's no longer yours.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
And there's a gag order so you may be a
ridiculous historian joining us today and you may have been
part of this.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
Now they what is that call? Again?
Speaker 1 (16:49):
It is the Invention Secrecy Act of nineteen fifty one.
The other thing that it imposes upon is inventions or
patents that may somehow threaten economic stability. Right, so that
could go to things like imagine, what's one of the
examples I used this earlier identificue, right that only you
(17:12):
only have to use once a year. Is that going
to topple an industry?
Speaker 3 (17:17):
See?
Speaker 2 (17:17):
But then you gotta wonder about like things like the
cure to cancer, you know, like with that topple, the
insurance industry with that topple, like medical insurance and the
big pharma.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
I mean, sorry not to get our.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Conspiracy hats on too heavily right now, but I do
really think.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
About these kind of things. I think you do too bad.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
I mean it does call into question like how deep
does the government go in terms of defining these things?
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Yeah, it's nuts.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Please check out our episode Audit, which unfortunately still holds up.
And we're very in that episode. We're collectively going, I
don't like it, but I get it, but I don't
like it, but I get it. The first recorded patent
(18:06):
that we know of was granted in fourteen twenty one
in Florence to a guy named Filipo brune Eschi. And
we are not native Italian speakers. That's something I'll come
up in a future episode on the history of pasta.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Just do your hand like this when you say you
know what I'm doing. Guys, everybody knows what I'm doing.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Brune Leeschi, you know, and then it's fine, and yeah,
this was This guy was a big deal in early
Renaissance architecture. In a lot of cases, governments issued grants
for the importation and establishment of new industries, like in
England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth the First. But
it started to become kind of in the zeitgeist that
(18:50):
the English Crown was abusing its authorities and perhaps playing favorites,
granting these kinds of rights to only folks that kind
of were in the inner circle.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
A little bit of nepotism. God forbid we bring that
up with monarchies. But because of this, because of the
increasing controversy, especially with the English Crown and the Privy Council,
common law courts of the time started to scrutinize these
patent applications with a little more care. And this led
(19:22):
to sixteen twenty three when Parliament enacted something called the
Statute of Monopolies. It prohibited most royal monopolies, but it
gave the right, or it preserved the right we should
say to grant letters patent for inventions of new manufacturing
for up to fourteen years. So again a mini monopoly letters.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Patent literally referring to kind of the document right like.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Issued, yeah, yeah, just so, And this is great for
marketing if you're starting a business in England at the time.
But again, there were so many wide variations in patent systems.
Depending on which country you were in, they had different,
you know, different windows of time for exclusivity. It could
(20:09):
be sixteen years, it could be twenty years. Sometimes a
country would grant a shorter term for a specific patent.
They would say something to the tune of, hey, this
is a great idea, my guy, this is so great
that everyone needs to be able to make it because
our nation needs more of these things in the world.
(20:30):
So just for the greater good, you got to take
a knee. We can only give you a few years
on this one.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
That is interesting because if you think about it, it's
almost like, yeah, you own the patent for this, but
maybe you're not the best outfit that would have the
you know, resources to produce this thing at proper scale.
So therefore we're gonna let you have some fun with
it for a little bit, knowing that eventually it will
pass into the public domain and then potentially we'll be
(20:57):
able to be produced much more widely.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
That's a great point the infrastructure argument. Right, you have
the right to do this at your cottage level for
a few years, but then we have to pass it
to the people who already have trade networks and mass infrastructure.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
That's right, though, the laws of like economics would kind
of imply that if something was a great enough idea,
then the money would flow and the small company would
no longer be small. They would able to be able
to parlay that amazing idea into set infrastructure. So it's
kind of a double edged sword there. I'm not quite
sure which side is right.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
There, we can imagine already in ridiculous cinema, an early
version of Shark Tank, right where somebody might say, hey,
we're in a hurry to get this out, so Can
we just buy the rights from you? Can we just
pay you some sort of partnership fee? In communist countries
it gets pretty fascinating because, of course, the Soviet Union
(21:56):
during its time treated the concept of property pretty differently.
So patents as we would understand them in the West,
weren't really a thing. Instead, if you were an inventor,
you got a certificate of some sort a certification that said, hey,
this person, this Jane or Joe, they deserve some form
(22:16):
of compensation.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Ata boy, you hopefully a little compensation. But it does
seem to me almost like they were in that situation,
are treating these things a little more like we would
treat the laws of nature.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
Yeah, a little bit right. It was all for the
greater good.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
Of the unis, of the collective unconscious. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
And so as as trade networks expand and as the
world becomes an increasingly smaller place, people are realizing that
they need these rules to be more uniform. It's similar
to the rollout of international rail when multiple countries said, whoops,
(22:54):
we have different gauges on our trade tracks.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
That's a really good point.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
And when you start to venge sure into these types
of parallel thinking, which also happens too.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
You know, you might have an invention.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
That's so duh. Yeah, of course that's gonna be a
thing like the toothbrush. Let's just say, for exare, well,
I imagine that multiple people came up with ideas for
something resembling the toothbrush at the same time, and that's
when the whole idea of novelty kind of comes into playing.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Yeah. Another example, just because it's I'm all neudle brained. Now,
another example would be, can you patent the idea of
wheat and water made into a paste?
Speaker 3 (23:34):
Can you patent a pasta shape?
Speaker 2 (23:36):
You can do that, Okay, you can do the spoiler alert,
spoiler alert, y'all. We got a fun episode on the
way about the ridiculous history of pasta.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
Oh my god, pasta shapes. It's very excited about and
I am as well. Did you go to that exhibit,
by the way.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Ben, Unfortunately they were closed when I got there.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
Yeah, you're in Atlanta. I Wood's the museum.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
It's the Museum of Modern Design.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Design, which I've never been to and really wanted to.
Ben had the great idea that had to take a
field trip to this history of pasta exhibit over the weekend. Unfortunately,
there's just a little bit too much going on and
we didn't make it, but we will explore it vicariously
through an episode in the very near future.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
Oh and yeah, shout out to the good folks at
that museum. The name, if you want to look up
their upcoming exhibits is MOTA Museum of Design, Atlanta. So
I shouldn't have said it was the Museum of Modern Design.
It's just design and justice design in general, real large, right,
It's a design patent, and this idea of these different countries, right,
(24:38):
having the cognitive version of different gauges on railroad tracks.
They run into this thing and they say, oh crap,
how do we solve this? And the piggle is they
never really did not really. Now you still have to
get patents everywhere separately to their earlier point you made,
(25:00):
Dear Noel, you have to apply for patent in every
country that you want a patent in because the patent's
power is exclusivity. So you could, for instance, like the
three of us could maybe nol you patent a breakthrough
and synthesizers. Right, of all the people, I know, you'd
(25:20):
be the guy to do it.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
It's very kind ben the fu I think about that though,
is there really haven't been that many breakthroughs and synthesizers.
It's like the kind of thing where we're still just
manipulating and rewiring and doing all of these things with
some of the basic ideas that were present like in
the thirties. Like it's super cool, and there are certainly
people that make products that utilize these things. And you
(25:43):
could probably do a design patent on the look and
arrangement of your piece, But you can't patent assign wave.
You can't patent a square wave. You know, you can't
even really probably patent a voltage controlled amplifier, which is
a very simple circuit. The cithicizers are all kind of
the utilized and are based on a lot of this
(26:03):
stuff has been around for generations.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
Right, and so imagine how big that breakthrough would be.
Whatever this hypothetical breakthrough is, now our poor inventor are
scrappy up and comer has to not only patent it
in the United States, but has to go to every
other country where they want patent protection, because if they don't,
then you know, it's again it's the cobbler up the
(26:28):
street from you who likes the way that you make shoes.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Would you guys say that in this day and age,
having something coming up with something that is that would
pass the test of being patented is probably more and
more difficult than it used to be.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
I would agree.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
I think so the one thing, the one countervailing factor there,
and this is where the Invention Secrecy Act comes into play.
The countervailing factor will be non tangible things like lines
of code, right, different sorts of algorithmic applications, so.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
A lot of microprocessing perhaps, yeah, very very proprietary chips
and micro circuits.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
But yeah, I agree with you.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
It's kind of like a parking lot that gets a
little bit bigger year over year, but there are still
a lot of cars in the parking lot, so it
can be tougher and tougher to find your spot in
this terrible analogy.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
Not at all.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
So with all of these, you know, potential weird interactions
I guess we could call them, or kind of conflicts
of interest when it comes to this kind of stuff internationally,
definitely was time there was an opening for someone to
step in and kind of figure out a way to
codify this stuff in a way that wouldn't screw over
the world at large.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
Yeah, so Paris tries and they they have something called
the International Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property Right.
This is adopted by Pairs eighteen eighty three. It's trying
to make things a little more uniform, and then fast
forward nineteen seventies, it's still wonky and confusing, and that's
(28:09):
where we see a new gang called the Trade Related
Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights TRIPS, a production of World
Trade Organization.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
That's right, and the idea here was to extend patent
protection to any inventions, whether products or processes. This is
from the WTO language in all fields of technology, provided
that they are new, involve an inventive step, and are
capable of industrial application. We already had some of these
kind of caveats laid out. I guess this sort of
(28:43):
titans in the language up a little bit, but still
seems kind of broad to me.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
The idea of a what is a novel step?
Speaker 4 (28:51):
I think the thing that really did someone was it
had some enforcement because it's like, okay, you're following these
It's like, if you want to be part of the WTO,
do you follow that rule.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
So we make sense we can punish you in other
financial ways if you don't play ball. And if you
don't play ball, then guess what all of us wto, guys,
we don't have to respect what you're doing.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
You're not saying at our table at lunch any longer.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
It's true, exactly exactly.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
They're real mean girls.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
I guess you could say, kitting wto don't come for
us exactly. OMG, you guys. So with this in mind,
you can see how this is already pretty complicated. We
have to ask why a patent gives folks a monopoly
and why does it expire. This is where we go
(29:39):
back to the thing that I think stood out to
all of us, the concept of a mini monopoly. Right,
like you said earlier, aren't monopolies bad.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
So according to the law Offices of Jeff Williams, not
our Jeff Williams, a patent can be viewed as a
sort of mini monopoly in that the patent owner is
granted the power to prevent others from using their protected
technology without a license or other permission. However, it is
always possible for others to negotiate with the patent owner
(30:10):
to make use of the technology if no agreement is reached,
then the competitor may try to design around the patent
or wait a few years until the patent expires, at
which time new innovations may look even more attractive. I
want to bring up one more synth related thing if
I might. Again, a lot of that technology is old.
(30:32):
There are very famous synth designs companies like Roland and
you know, like COREG for example, like Legacy, usually Japanese
companies that have designed these innovative synthesizers that again combine
you know, pieces and processes that have been around for
a long time. But I guess what happens is those
(30:52):
patents expire and they go into the public domain. And
now there are literally this company called Barringer out of
Germany that is basically kind of reviled but also beloved
by some for creating affordable clones of these other products
that look almost identical, even minus some certain little design features.
(31:13):
And it's just interesting because they are hated by a
lot of people in that community. But on the other hand,
they also give people access to affordable versions of vinted
synthesizers they would never possibly be able to.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Buy, right, Yeah, agreed, And this idea of accessibility. Affordability
is a very powerful legal concept and that's part of
why patents expire.
Speaker 3 (31:36):
Right.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
This is where we need to give a shout out
to one guy who did the most king move in
the history of medicine, Jonas Salk. Jonahs Salt could have
become a multi billionaire, but when he made the polio vaccine,
he refused to patent it. And he had this famous
(31:59):
quote where he said, they said, who owns the patent, Jonas?
And he said, well, the people own it. There is
no patent. Could you patent the sun and lawyers for
different foundations investigated whether they could patent this vaccine and
make a little scratch off of helping people stay safe
(32:20):
from polio, and he said that's just gross. He was like,
give it out. I want everybody to make this, and
so Jonahs saw it. If somehow you are listening to
this podcast, shout out to you man.
Speaker 4 (32:32):
I believe the COVID vaccine at least some of them
have that role as well, for like you know, especially
in international matters.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
Because they were spinning it up and part of that
was state level actors paying so much for the R
and D and then saying, look if we're giving you
all this money.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
You have to play nice, please, sure, But then you
have kind of the flip side of that. You have
real life super villain Martin Screlly, you know, who bought
the rights to a life saving pharmaceutical and then the
jack the price of it up like you know, tenfold
or whatever.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
That stuff happens too.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
I'm glad that he has to give back the Wu
Tang album.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
He doesn't deserve the Wuotang album.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
But if you're the latest that he made a bunch
of copies of it and is literally trolling the people
that bought it legitimately or that paid for it after
it was repossessed from him.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
The guy is an absolute.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Piece of work in a real life super villain that
let's not even go so far as to call him
a super villain.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
He's kind of a weenie, but he he is.
Speaker 4 (33:31):
There is a villain in a level of Bordlands two
that right before the boss fight with him, he stumbles
down a float of stairs and dies. That's what I think, Mark, And.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
You know, I always try to see the good people
you guys, you know that about me. But I hope
every time that dude tries to fart, he poops his
pants just a little, just.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
Hope it hurts a lot or just a lot.
Speaker 4 (33:54):
And it's in public and it goes down on his
leg if he's wearing shorts, well that's the thing.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
I want there to be a stained at the back
of the trousers.
Speaker 3 (34:02):
You know what I mean is a human steam.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
What happens when a patent expires, it becomes part of
the public domain. Other people can use it and market
their version of the invention. You stop receiving or you
can stop receiving the royalties from your invention, and you
can no longer enforce licensing agreements so other people can
use your invention. There's another way a patent can expire
(34:34):
before it's time. The maintenance fees. You haven't thought about
that for a lot of us. I'll be honest here,
when I was looking into some patents, I was under
the impression that I just had to play nice once
with a lawyer and the patent office. Now you got
to pay a maintenance fee. You have a subscription.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
Now you have to prove that you're actually I believe
in exercising the patent.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
In some you can't just like have it and then
not do anything with it.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
You know, well, maybe you can maybe Okay, maybe it
doesn't necessarily mean you have to manufacture the thing, but
you do have to in some way participate in this,
either paying into the system or what have you, or
else you're going to lose it. It kind of reminds
me again not to get to cross pollinady with intellectual property.
But the hell Raiser films, for example, there is like
(35:23):
I believe it's Miramax owns the right to the hell
Raiser franchise, and in order to continue to exercise those rights,
they are required to make movies in that franchise, and
in order to do that and make sure they hold
onto the intellectual property, they will occasionally make really really
low quality movies called ash Can copies that allow them
(35:45):
to continue to exercise that control.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
So this is sort of the patent d version of
that in a way, like you have to use the
parking space that you have right, so you have to
pay your parking fees. It also reminds me, of course,
of the fame It not to be too much of
a comic nerd, but a reminds me of the infamous
controversy surrounding Sony Sony will sometimes put out a movie
that's honestly not great, and the reason they're doing that
(36:10):
is because publishing that film, even if it's Morbius's, it
helps them retain the rights to that character, to its
likeness to that ip, so we see, we see this
use it or lose it mentality across the board.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
Hand, it allows them to continue to mess with Marvel Studios.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
I say, no, you can't have this villain in your movie.
Do some more rewrites, guys.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
Sorry, Also, quit killing Uncle Ben. You know, that's one
of the best things about the New Spider Man franchise.
They just fast forwarded past that horrible moment. They were like,
we all know how though.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
Well, also, I'm just gonna say, you just move it
to a different character. That's true, that's true.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Also, why does aunt May keep getting younger in every
Spider Man?
Speaker 3 (37:01):
Phil oh Man, I really quick aside.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
I went to a Broadway show with our good friend
of the show, Jordan Runtag, and.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
We had separate seats, and afterwards.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
He was telling me how, oh h, there was this
lovely woman sitting next to me I just had the
most lovely conversation with And he asked her oh are
you an actor?
Speaker 3 (37:17):
Do you do this kind of stuff?
Speaker 5 (37:18):
So well?
Speaker 2 (37:18):
I've always wanted to but never really got into it.
You know, it was Marisotome. It was totally Marissitome. He
didn't even have the revelation until we were gone, Like,
I think it was the next day that he like,
I don't know how that happens. Like He's Jordan is
a guy of a very specific taste. He basically only
knows about like stuff that happened before, like the nineteen sixties.
(37:39):
Everything else is kind of a blind spot for him.
But I just love that story. He said she was
a delight and wasn't self aggrandizing at all. It was
just sort of like, you know, happy probably do not
be wrecked exactly.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
That's it.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Most of the conversations I've had with people who turned
out to be a list musicians or celebrities, I had
no idea, And I think it's a very enjoyable human moment.
It's sort of like when jay Z was riding the
train on the train with Woman Square and met this
beautiful lady who just wanted to encourage him to pursue
(38:11):
his dreams.
Speaker 5 (38:11):
Keep going, Oh you're jay Z. I've heard of you.
You have mentioned, Yeah, my grandkids love you. So that is, by.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
The way, you should always treat people with just a
positive human interaction, no matter what you may see their
social standing. As we also know, and we're going to
wrap up here because this will be part of a series,
we also know that we've been we've been kind of
two stepping around this. What makes a patent different from
(38:43):
a trademark or a copyright. It's not quite the same
as apples to bananas. It's there's not even a remote
sort of one to one thing, but it can be
very confusing in conversation. So the easiest way to say
it and shout out to our research associate Max here
(39:04):
is a patent is an invention. A trademark swoosh, just
do it. That's a logo. A copyright is the authorship
of a work. So for example, someone who writes the
history of Nike, they have a copyright on the book
they publish. However, Nike has a trademark this awesome swoosh, right,
(39:27):
and Nike has some patents about how you make shoes.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Yeah, And if we ever did seem like we were
drawing parallels between them, I think the only thing we
were doing was talking about they both have systems in
place and kind of benchmarks that have to be met
in order to maintain those trademarks, copyrights and patents.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
And don't even get us started folks on how all
trademarks are brands, but not all brands are trademarks. It's
just like bump bump bup bup bupu, bumu, bum bu bumu.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
It's true.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
And lest we tease a topic with a nickname for
super producer Max and not follow through with it, I
think we should end today's episode with a little bit
of tangents and trivia surrounding the idea of patent trolls.
Speaker 3 (40:14):
I think we were I don't want to speak everybody.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
I certainly was first exposed to patent trolls in terms
of podcasting because early on we were actually lucky enough
to kind of be in on the ground floor of
this crazy industry of podcasting. There was a patent troll
whose name has been lost to history and I'm sure
you could find it, but with someone who was trying
to sue some of the biggest podcasting outfits in the
(40:37):
world over what he claimed was a novel and patentable
concept aka podcasting, the idea of publishing serialized audio content
on an RSS feed. And we were named in the
lawsuits at least our prior parent company US no thought,
(40:58):
but it was something like Joe Rogan, how stuff works? Yeah,
Jimmy Kimmel, I think Mark maren is well, you know
some of the ogs of podcasting. And it had the
potential to really throw a wrench in the entire industry
if this person prevailed. So what is a patent troll?
Speaker 3 (41:15):
Exactly?
Speaker 1 (41:17):
Yeah, so it's sort of it's a shakedout. That's the
best way to say. It's just blackmail our friends, ridiculous crime.
It's similar to extortion the idea. You know, a similar example,
not not involving patents, but a similar example would be
when the Internet became a wide common good, there were
(41:38):
there was a group of brilliant, if not ethical people
who just went around and bought domain names that they
knew would be really.
Speaker 3 (41:47):
Populople still, oh dude, someone one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
There was a big story on NPR recently about a
guy who's been doing that for years, and he does
it with campaigns. He'll buy a combination of running mate
potentials right, So he bought Harris Waltz dot com and
just you know, made a held out for the big
payday and you know, it wasn't like millions of dollars,
but it was like one hundred thousand dollars or something
(42:13):
significant like that. And he was interviewed, and I honestly
think that is a little less egregious than the hardcore
patent trolling, where someone you know is literally trying to
shake down an entire industry.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
Yeah, that guy sounds like he's basically rolling the dice
in the casino of the Internet and politics. But a
patent troll, the issue is a patent troll is inherently
predatory and abusive because they're not trying to manufacture a thing.
They're not selling a product that they have patented. They're
waiting for someone else to do it, or some version
(42:48):
thereof or something related to that concept, and then they
try to get a ton of licensing fees from that
person who is only actually building the thing they were
pretending to build.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
And you know, if you've maybe gotten the sense throughout
this episode that the whole patent process is a little
bit inefficient, you would be correct. And it relies on
a lot of legal jargon, and like, in order to
really navigate it, you have to be an expert. It
is a specialty of law in and of itself, like
you know, most areas of law need to be But
(43:24):
the patent troll actually really praise on that inefficiency and
oftentimes sends these kind of blankets like cease and desist
letters or I guess demand letters.
Speaker 3 (43:36):
I mean that's the word demand.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
Lill e're in my demands to someone who they believe
is infringing on their kind of blanket filing of a
patent for a concept that is perhaps not worthy of
a patent.
Speaker 3 (43:51):
It's a little.
Speaker 2 (43:51):
Confusing to me too, because wasn't it determined that podcasting
wasn't novel enough to even qualify for a patent because
it was just like realized content published on a feed.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
Yeah, the issue is what is a good or a
bad faith assertion. We know that this patent trolling in
the United States specifically is a huge economic danger. It
costs the US something around twenty nine billion dollars a
year back in two thousand and eleven, and the study
was published in twenty twelve. If you want to learn
(44:25):
more about it, there's an excellent article in the Harvard
Business Review from September of twenty twenty two hits by
a guy named Max Bacchus, and the title says it all.
It's time for the US to tackle patent trolls because
they're not going to make the thing that's the problem.
They are not themselves going to use that proverbial parking space.
(44:47):
They're waiting to trap someone else.
Speaker 4 (44:49):
And if you really think about it, that defeats the
actual purpose of a patent is designed for innovation. It's like, hey,
we will give you a temporary monopoly on this thing
if you are willing to. Because multiple times we brought
up the R and D with pharmaceuticals because to develop
these pharmaceuticals and there's a lot of you know, other
stuff with pharmaceuticals and not gonna that not on topic
(45:12):
right here, but it's like, you have to spend so
much time and money making this thing that may or
may not work that if you have all these patent
trolls disincentivizing people from doing it, then we are really
it's like it's a cell phone in some ways.
Speaker 3 (45:28):
Yeah, it's a goal.
Speaker 2 (45:30):
And just to close the loop on the whole podcast patentrol.
It was back in twenty thirteen and the company h
was Personal Audio LLC, and they sued Adam Carolla and
named a bunch of co defendants in the in the
In the suit again including how stuff works, they claim
that the podcasters podcasters in general infringed on the US
(45:51):
patent eight dot one one two dot five of four,
which claims a system for disseminating media content in serialized
episodes aka every other form of media that's ever existed.
And I just think it's interesting because they were obviously
granted this patent, but it was determined after a challenge
to that patent that it was not valid. The Supreme
(46:15):
Court had to get involved. So it just goes to
show that perhaps all patents that are granted are not
necessarily worthy of receiving that designation.
Speaker 1 (46:23):
Welcome to the United States. Everything's negotiable.
Speaker 3 (46:26):
Stamp rubber stamp, rubber stand How.
Speaker 1 (46:28):
Much money do you have, my friends, how much are
you willing to part with?
Speaker 4 (46:31):
I will say after, like, you know, writing some briefs
looked at when you read constitutions and stuffer and by
other countries and then you read the United States one,
You're like, right, this country was built by lawyers. Yes, yeah,
it's not a bad thing nor good thing.
Speaker 3 (46:44):
It's just a thing.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
Well, there's just a lot of vague language, you know,
in the damn Constitution.
Speaker 3 (46:48):
That's why there are so many divisive.
Speaker 2 (46:50):
Points and people that are just like absolutely on opposite
ends of an issue because the language is not particularly.
Speaker 1 (46:57):
Clear, and sometimes those folks are not arguing in good faith.
But we want to with this that Let's give a
shout out to our good friend aj Bahamas Jacobs. We
will never explain that street name the author of the
Year of Living constitutionally, wherein he finds out firsthand just
how vague the Constitution is and the brilliance of writing
(47:21):
it in that manner.
Speaker 3 (47:23):
This is why we.
Speaker 1 (47:24):
Call it the American Experiment. Thanks also to our pal
super producer research associate for this episode, mister Max Williams.
Oh and shout out to Alex Williams. I can't believe
we have our own composer.
Speaker 2 (47:37):
Indeed, and huge thanks to Christopher Hasiotis and Eves Jeff
Coates both here in spirit.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
Yes, big big thanks to Rachel Big Spinach Lance, big
big thanks to our own patent troll, Jonathan Strickland. Aka
the Quister. We would love to hear your take on
the most ridiculous patents. We haven't gotten to it yet,
but it's on the way. You can always find us
on our Facebook page, Ridiculous Historians, and I'll see. I
(48:04):
don't know, man, it'd be cool to have a patent.
I just like the certification. I like, you know, I
just want the paperwork, to have it on my wall.
Speaker 3 (48:13):
It would be cool.
Speaker 2 (48:14):
I guess people probably frame them, right, Like, if you
always hear about folks that have like multiple patents under
their belt, I'm sure in their little home offices they've
got those things framed.
Speaker 3 (48:22):
That'd be pretty cool. I agree, and that spirit. We'll
see you next time, folks.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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