January 19, 2022 • 20 mins
What are patents for? How long do they last? And what's a patent troll? We give a quick overview about patents and why they're such a big deal in tech.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio.
And how the tech are you? It's time for a
text of tidbit, those shows that at least in my mind,
are going to be a little shorter and really focused
(00:26):
on a specific topic related to tech. And earlier this
week I talked a little bit about patents and their purpose. Namely,
a patent is a government backed grant that covers an invention,
and it gives the inventor or you know, whomever's name
happens to be on the patent application, the exclusive right
to exploit that invention. So the inventor can produce the
(00:50):
invention themselves if they have the means to do so.
They could build it, manufacture it, you know, sell it
to people. They would have exclusive rights to do that,
or they could license the design to others. So let's
say you're an inventor, but you don't happen to have,
you know, a manufacturing facility at your disposal. You can
make a deal with a company that will manufacture your design.
(01:13):
They'll pay you a license fee and you know, maybe
there will be some other's parts of the agreement there
and then in return they'll have the right to produce
whatever is based off your invention, or you could even
you know, just sit on your invention and wait more
on that in a little bit. But that exclusivity is
key here. Should you, as patent holder, discover that someone
(01:36):
else is making use of your patented technology without your consent,
you know you haven't signed a licensing deal or given permission,
well you would have the right to pursue legal action
against that other person or a company or entity. The
flip side of this is that patents tend to be
public information, like publicly accessible, so if you want to,
(02:00):
you can browse through patent applications and read up on
various inventions covering pretty much everything you can think of.
It's all laid out there. Uh, it's it's a description
of the invention and supposed to describe not just how
the invention works, but you know what it's supposed to
do and what effect it's supposed to have, often in
(02:23):
language that is a little inscrutable. I think perhaps as
part of a strategy to protect the inventions somewhat, and
it can be a little vague, like you don't typically
see patents that go into such detail that just by
reading the patent you could easily duplicate whatever was invented.
And also, patent protection has a time limit to it.
(02:46):
They expire. Here in the United States, a patent now
lasts twenty years from the earliest filing date of the patent.
That's filing date, not the date upon which the patent
was granted. Sometimes it can take years before a patent
goes from being filed to being granted, so the expiration
(03:07):
will go back to whenever the inventor first filed for
the patent in the first place. So after twenty years
of filing, the patent protection on the invention expires, and
then anyone can make free use of that invented technology
or process in whatever way they like. They don't have
to pay licensing vs. They don't have to fear reprisal
(03:28):
from the patent holder because now it's it's public domain.
Of course, you know, in two decades after the filing,
there's a pretty good chance that the state of the
art in whatever we happen to be talking about has
advanced to a point that the old patented invention is
less applicable, might even be obsolete depending upon the technology
(03:49):
in question. But you know, not all tech involved superfast
computers or pupi lasers. It could be something so fundamental
and simple that all technology following it is built up
upon it and incorporates it in some way. It might
not be like an end product. It might just be
a part of larger things. Now, let's contrast that, you know,
(04:13):
the whole patent idea with just keeping your invention a
secret from others. You keep it secret, keep it safe,
with the hope that you can perpetually maintain control over
your invention and have exclusive use of it because no
one knows how it works. You never share that information,
you never filed for a patent. However, if someone else
(04:35):
figures out how you're doing what you're doing, you know
they're able to reverse engineer your invention in some way,
then you don't have that patent protection to fall back on,
and you are, in technical terms, up the creek as
far as that exclusivity goes. I mean, obviously there are
different circumstances, like if you can prove someone was uh
(04:56):
using industrial espionage to steal trade secret, it's that's a
big no note. But if someone independently figures out how
you're doing stuff and you never bothered to patent your inventions,
then you really you're you're lacking a major component of
protection on your ideas. Now, patents get way more complicated
(05:17):
than what I just describe. That's a very high level
overview of what patents are and what they're for. Different
nations have their own rules for patents, including when patents
expire and what can and cannot be patented. Like typically,
patent offices require a submission to be something that you
(05:38):
can produce or that can be used. Uh, there are
some really interesting cases with patents that seem to go
outside of this. I mean, there are software patents, and
that becomes a whole thing because it starts to enter
into an argument of when do you get to a
point where you're talking just about math, Because you can't
patent math, right, you can't generally patent anything natural. Now,
(06:03):
if you're able to engineer something out of natural products
and you create something new, you can potentially patent that.
In some places, genetically modified organisms are something that you
can patent. But but if we're looking at it from
big picture, whatever you're patenting it should be new. That
(06:23):
means you can't submit something that already exists out there.
If I went out and tried to patent uh, you know,
a a car jack, just a regular car jack, that
the basic kind that you can find anywhere, well, that
would just fall flat in its face. That invention has
been around for ages. I can't patent that. Also, whatever
(06:45):
you patent should be inventive. It shouldn't just be a
modification of existing technology. So you know, you couldn't go
out with an AMP and patent it because this one
goes to eleven. That doesn't mean anything. So and it
also can't just be an idea. You can't patent just
an idea. And theoretically it should be something that actually works,
(07:07):
although proof that it works is not always required or
even frequently required. However, in the United States, an examiner
as in someone who is examining the patent application and
determining whether or not the US government should grant a
patent to the applicant. An examiner can contact that applicant
(07:27):
if there is a question about operability. The applicant can
then demonstrate the operability of their invention in any so
way they choose to prove that in fact, it works. However,
there is one big exception to this. If someone should
submit a patent for a perpetual motion machine, that is,
a machine that, once you set it into motion, will
(07:49):
continue to be in motion, in defiance of the laws
of the universe, well, then the applicant has to produce
a working model of the device before the patent office
will even go any further. There are no exceptions to
that rule. And that's because for a while there was
a kind of this craze where people were convinced that
they had come up with a perpetual motion machine or
(08:11):
a free energy machine, a machine that, once you put
in the energy to start it going, produces more energy
than it consumes. That's also in defiance of the laws
of the universe as we understand them. And Uh, if
you ever see claims that say that, you should certainly
be skeptical. Uh. I've talked about those extensively on this
(08:34):
show before. And I'm sure there's no shortage of patents
that have gone through the process for inventions that actually
don't work, or maybe they quote unquote work, as in,
they operate, but they don't do what is intended. I'm
reminded of numerous kinds of of like exercise equipment for example,
where you could argue, well, it works in the sense
(08:57):
that all the parts moved together, and like the motor
makes things move or whatever, but it might not work
in the sense that it actually helps you get into shape. Right,
So there are different different points of view on what
work means here. Uh. It would also be far too
labor intensive to demand each and every patent applied for
has to pass some sort of operability test. When we
(09:20):
start talking about the numbers of patents, you'll see it's
just it would be unreasonable to expect any government agency
to go through and make that sort of demand. But
generally speaking, if you're applying for a patent, that patent
should be for some sort of invention that actually works.
I mentioned that the invention shouldn't just be a modification
of existing technology. That is true, it shouldn't just be
(09:43):
a minor modification. However, it can be a significant evolution
of technology, and that can be patentable. You'll often see
patents that reference earlier patents, and in some cases it's
to explain how the new invention is a significant improvement
over an older one, and in other cases it's just
to differentiate the two, to say, Okay, I'm filing this patent.
(10:08):
I'm aware of this earlier patent that's for something similar. However,
my invention is different enough to justify its own patent.
At least that's the argument you're making. Patents in the
United States date back to the late eighteenth century, but
the concept is much much older. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica,
(10:28):
the oldest patent on record dates to fourteen twenty one.
The applicant was an engineer named Filippo Bruno Leski, and
the invention was for a barge that included a hoist
mechanism for the purposes of lifting and transporting marble. And
this was in Florence, Italy during the Renaissance. Marble was
(10:50):
in high demand. So the grant that that Philip got,
the good Old phil received, gave him a three year
period of exclusivity in which he would have the exclusive
rights to his invention before other uh folks on in
Florence would be allowed to copy what he was doing.
(11:10):
So he had some protection there. He could go after
anyone who was making use of a barge with a
hoist and they didn't. You know go through him first.
And this is actually super important because in the early
Renaissance folks were more than happy to run with a
good idea, especially if it wasn't their own, and run
away with that idea. So let's say you're a smarty
(11:32):
pants kind of person, right, you are an inventive engineering type,
and you come up with an ingenious way to simplify
something that is otherwise a difficult task, and your invention
is going to make things much much easier and streamlined
and be a huge benefit. However, you also happen to
know that if you come forward with your idea and
(11:54):
you don't have any like significant wealth of your own,
people who have more resources than you are just gonna
take your idea. They're just gonna say, like, that's brilliant,
I'm using it, and then you're left out in the cold.
That kind of removes your incentive to do anything with
your idea. Right If you're discouraged, if you think, well, yeah,
I know how to do this better than anyone else,
(12:15):
but I'm not in a position to do it and
profit from it, well, then your idea may never materialize
in the real world. You may just let it die.
But if you are granted at least temporary exclusive rights
to your idea, then you can profit from your invention,
and that in turn encourages other inventive types to seek
(12:36):
out the same sort of protection so that they can
actually benefit from their good ideas and not just see
them stolen like crazy. In fact, this is the same
reason folks came up with the idea of copyright and trademarks.
It's kind of like making sure the right person gets
the credit, whether the credit is acknowledgement or you know,
actual credits as in cold hard cash. We've got more
(12:58):
to say about patents, but before we do that, let's
take a quick break. The first patent in the United
States was for a process for making potash a component
and fertilizer. George Washington himself signed the patent, which went
to Samuel Hopkins. In eli Whitney received a patent for
(13:22):
his invention of the cotton gin, which is a pretty
famous example, and by eighteen o two the United States
needed a dedicated superintendent to oversee the patent office. In
eighteen twenty one, Thomas Jennings received the first patent issued
to an African American for his invention of dry scouring
kind of a predecessor to dry cleaning. Flash forward a
couple of centuries, and now we're well past ten million
(13:44):
patents issued in the United States. In fact, we hit
the ten million milestone in two thousand and eighteen, and
in one we had eleven million patents. That just goes
to show that folks are really inventive. Like the the
pace of invention increases, and a lot of course happened
in the middle there. I mean, you're talking about more
than two hundred years of history. Obviously tons of stuff happen.
(14:08):
But the patent law has been revised numerous times throughout
the history of the United States. But let's go more
high level. I mentioned earlier that one of the things
you can do with patents is just sit on them,
and you can also buy and sell them, like they
can be property, like real estate or things like that.
So you might be an inventor and the way you
make your money as you invent something and then you
(14:28):
sell your invention to someone else and that's the end
of that. So there are companies that essentially just deal
in the business of purchasing patents and then kind of
lying in wait like a predator, and the derogatory name
for these sorts of companies as a patent troll. Typically,
a patentrol company is one that doesn't make anything on
its own. It doesn't produce stuff, it doesn't sell anything,
(14:49):
but it holds patents to various technologies, and if someone
tries to make a product or service that overlaps with
one or more of the patents, then the troll pounces
and usually there's some legal timidation that goes on. Essentially
the troll saying, hey, you can't make this product that's
key to your business because we hold the patent on
it and we didn't give you permission, so we're gonna
sue you. And the goal is just to get as
(15:11):
big a settlement out of the target as you possibly can,
and that's how the patentrol makes money. Meanwhile, if no
one actually tried to make something that overlapped with the
patentrols patents, well then nothing related to those patents ever
really comes into being, because again, the patentrol isn't going
to do anything about it. So you have these ideas
that are effectively locked away, and it's antithetical to the
(15:34):
spirit of the patent system in the first place. Patentrols
are not always successful in their efforts. There's the famous
example of Personal Audio LLC, which claimed a patent it owned,
specifically Patent number eight million, five hundred four, which was
called a System for Disseminating media content covered the technology
of podcasting, and this company then began suing podcast producers,
(15:58):
including Adam Corolla, uh and that turned into a massive
legal battle, and ultimately Personal Audio LLC dropped the case.
And Outsider suspected that the company realized that it was
facing an uphill legal battle and that it could potentially
lose that patent, like the patents teeth could be removed,
and that the court was likely to find that the
patent was overbroad and vague. But Personal Audio LLC said
(16:22):
the reason they dropped the case was that podcasters weren't
generating a significant amount of revenue from infringing their patents,
which I mean, I guess that just means the company said,
we don't expect to actually make any money off this lawsuit,
and that's all that really matters, so we're done. But
Corolla actually countersued and sought the Patent Office to invalidate
the patent in question. Personal Audio LLC ultimately settled with
(16:45):
Corolla out of court for an undisclosed amount, but the
Electronic Frontier Foundation or e f F, filed a challenge
to that patent, and the U S Patent Office ultimately
revoked five provisions within the patent, essentially neutering it. And
Patent Audio LLC appealed all the way to the Supreme Court,
but the Supreme Court rejected the petition for review and
(17:07):
the case ended with the podcasting patent effectively neutralized. Part
of the arguments in that case was that the patent
wasn't just overly broad, it was describing something that had
already existed before the patent was granted. And that's one
of the big things about patents. If someone can prove
that person did not actually invent something, but that the
supposed invention already existed, well, that's called prior art. It
(17:31):
means the invention is already known and that the patent
office shouldn't issue a patent in that case. We've seen
that pop up in a defense time and again, um
sometimes in an attack as well, and sometimes pop culture
serves as an example of prior art, such as the
tablet like computers that are seen in two thousand one
A Space Odyssey, the Stanley Kubrick film of the Arthur C.
(17:53):
Clark story that served as an example of the tablet
form factor in a patent dispute that was between Sam
Sung and Apple, and companies often use patents as both
kind of a shield and a sword at the same time.
You'll frequently hear stories of companies suing one another for
patent infringement, and it's not unusual to hear company A
sues Company B for infringing on like ten patents, and
(18:15):
then company B SU's Company A for infringing on twelve
other patents and so on. That happened a lot between
Apple and Samsung, as well as Apple and tons of
other companies. And sometimes these are maneuvers that play apart
in tough negotiations between companies as they try to land
a favorable licensing deal. That's what we've seen recently between
Apple and Ericsson. Patent licenses are key to business these days.
(18:39):
It's pretty much impossible to do business in the tech
sector without relying on someone else's patented technology in some way,
so typically businesses secure licenses with those patent holders to
avoid any litigious entanglements down the line, and there's usually
a lot of criss crossing agreements between these large companies,
with them becoming dependent upon one another, though things can
(18:59):
get ugly when license agreements come too close to expiring,
which we've seen recently. There are tons of other interesting
stories about patents, including some of history's greatest feuds. Maybe
I'll cover those in a future text stuff tidbit. Uh.
The one that leaps to mind is between Nikola, Tesla
and Marconi, but I'll have to wait and hold off
on that. Maybe I'll do a text stuff tidbit to
(19:20):
really lay out that story. It's a pretty infuriating one,
but a really interesting one as well. And uh, yeah,
that's our tech stuff tidbits about patents. You get a
little bit of information about that, and again I can
probably do another follow up to talk about it more.
But if you have suggestions for topics I should cover
on tech stuff, reach out to me on Twitter. The
(19:41):
handle for the show is text Stuff h s W
and I'll talk to you again, really sick. Text Stuff
is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from
my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app Apple
Podcasts wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio.
And how the tech are you? It's time for a
text of tidbit, those shows that at least in my mind,
are going to be a little shorter and really focused
(00:26):
on a specific topic related to tech. And earlier this
week I talked a little bit about patents and their purpose. Namely,
a patent is a government backed grant that covers an invention,
and it gives the inventor or you know, whomever's name
happens to be on the patent application, the exclusive right
to exploit that invention. So the inventor can produce the
(00:50):
invention themselves if they have the means to do so.
They could build it, manufacture it, you know, sell it
to people. They would have exclusive rights to do that,
or they could license the design to others. So let's
say you're an inventor, but you don't happen to have,
you know, a manufacturing facility at your disposal. You can
make a deal with a company that will manufacture your design.
(01:13):
They'll pay you a license fee and you know, maybe
there will be some other's parts of the agreement there
and then in return they'll have the right to produce
whatever is based off your invention, or you could even
you know, just sit on your invention and wait more
on that in a little bit. But that exclusivity is
key here. Should you, as patent holder, discover that someone
(01:36):
else is making use of your patented technology without your consent,
you know you haven't signed a licensing deal or given permission,
well you would have the right to pursue legal action
against that other person or a company or entity. The
flip side of this is that patents tend to be
public information, like publicly accessible, so if you want to,
(02:00):
you can browse through patent applications and read up on
various inventions covering pretty much everything you can think of.
It's all laid out there. Uh, it's it's a description
of the invention and supposed to describe not just how
the invention works, but you know what it's supposed to
do and what effect it's supposed to have, often in
(02:23):
language that is a little inscrutable. I think perhaps as
part of a strategy to protect the inventions somewhat, and
it can be a little vague, like you don't typically
see patents that go into such detail that just by
reading the patent you could easily duplicate whatever was invented.
And also, patent protection has a time limit to it.
(02:46):
They expire. Here in the United States, a patent now
lasts twenty years from the earliest filing date of the patent.
That's filing date, not the date upon which the patent
was granted. Sometimes it can take years before a patent
goes from being filed to being granted, so the expiration
(03:07):
will go back to whenever the inventor first filed for
the patent in the first place. So after twenty years
of filing, the patent protection on the invention expires, and
then anyone can make free use of that invented technology
or process in whatever way they like. They don't have
to pay licensing vs. They don't have to fear reprisal
(03:28):
from the patent holder because now it's it's public domain.
Of course, you know, in two decades after the filing,
there's a pretty good chance that the state of the
art in whatever we happen to be talking about has
advanced to a point that the old patented invention is
less applicable, might even be obsolete depending upon the technology
(03:49):
in question. But you know, not all tech involved superfast
computers or pupi lasers. It could be something so fundamental
and simple that all technology following it is built up
upon it and incorporates it in some way. It might
not be like an end product. It might just be
a part of larger things. Now, let's contrast that, you know,
(04:13):
the whole patent idea with just keeping your invention a
secret from others. You keep it secret, keep it safe,
with the hope that you can perpetually maintain control over
your invention and have exclusive use of it because no
one knows how it works. You never share that information,
you never filed for a patent. However, if someone else
(04:35):
figures out how you're doing what you're doing, you know
they're able to reverse engineer your invention in some way,
then you don't have that patent protection to fall back on,
and you are, in technical terms, up the creek as
far as that exclusivity goes. I mean, obviously there are
different circumstances, like if you can prove someone was uh
(04:56):
using industrial espionage to steal trade secret, it's that's a
big no note. But if someone independently figures out how
you're doing stuff and you never bothered to patent your inventions,
then you really you're you're lacking a major component of
protection on your ideas. Now, patents get way more complicated
(05:17):
than what I just describe. That's a very high level
overview of what patents are and what they're for. Different
nations have their own rules for patents, including when patents
expire and what can and cannot be patented. Like typically,
patent offices require a submission to be something that you
(05:38):
can produce or that can be used. Uh, there are
some really interesting cases with patents that seem to go
outside of this. I mean, there are software patents, and
that becomes a whole thing because it starts to enter
into an argument of when do you get to a
point where you're talking just about math, Because you can't
patent math, right, you can't generally patent anything natural. Now,
(06:03):
if you're able to engineer something out of natural products
and you create something new, you can potentially patent that.
In some places, genetically modified organisms are something that you
can patent. But but if we're looking at it from
big picture, whatever you're patenting it should be new. That
(06:23):
means you can't submit something that already exists out there.
If I went out and tried to patent uh, you know,
a a car jack, just a regular car jack, that
the basic kind that you can find anywhere, well, that
would just fall flat in its face. That invention has
been around for ages. I can't patent that. Also, whatever
(06:45):
you patent should be inventive. It shouldn't just be a
modification of existing technology. So you know, you couldn't go
out with an AMP and patent it because this one
goes to eleven. That doesn't mean anything. So and it
also can't just be an idea. You can't patent just
an idea. And theoretically it should be something that actually works,
(07:07):
although proof that it works is not always required or
even frequently required. However, in the United States, an examiner
as in someone who is examining the patent application and
determining whether or not the US government should grant a
patent to the applicant. An examiner can contact that applicant
(07:27):
if there is a question about operability. The applicant can
then demonstrate the operability of their invention in any so
way they choose to prove that in fact, it works. However,
there is one big exception to this. If someone should
submit a patent for a perpetual motion machine, that is,
a machine that, once you set it into motion, will
(07:49):
continue to be in motion, in defiance of the laws
of the universe, well, then the applicant has to produce
a working model of the device before the patent office
will even go any further. There are no exceptions to
that rule. And that's because for a while there was
a kind of this craze where people were convinced that
they had come up with a perpetual motion machine or
(08:11):
a free energy machine, a machine that, once you put
in the energy to start it going, produces more energy
than it consumes. That's also in defiance of the laws
of the universe as we understand them. And Uh, if
you ever see claims that say that, you should certainly
be skeptical. Uh. I've talked about those extensively on this
(08:34):
show before. And I'm sure there's no shortage of patents
that have gone through the process for inventions that actually
don't work, or maybe they quote unquote work, as in,
they operate, but they don't do what is intended. I'm
reminded of numerous kinds of of like exercise equipment for example,
where you could argue, well, it works in the sense
(08:57):
that all the parts moved together, and like the motor
makes things move or whatever, but it might not work
in the sense that it actually helps you get into shape. Right,
So there are different different points of view on what
work means here. Uh. It would also be far too
labor intensive to demand each and every patent applied for
has to pass some sort of operability test. When we
(09:20):
start talking about the numbers of patents, you'll see it's
just it would be unreasonable to expect any government agency
to go through and make that sort of demand. But
generally speaking, if you're applying for a patent, that patent
should be for some sort of invention that actually works.
I mentioned that the invention shouldn't just be a modification
of existing technology. That is true, it shouldn't just be
(09:43):
a minor modification. However, it can be a significant evolution
of technology, and that can be patentable. You'll often see
patents that reference earlier patents, and in some cases it's
to explain how the new invention is a significant improvement
over an older one, and in other cases it's just
to differentiate the two, to say, Okay, I'm filing this patent.
(10:08):
I'm aware of this earlier patent that's for something similar. However,
my invention is different enough to justify its own patent.
At least that's the argument you're making. Patents in the
United States date back to the late eighteenth century, but
the concept is much much older. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica,
(10:28):
the oldest patent on record dates to fourteen twenty one.
The applicant was an engineer named Filippo Bruno Leski, and
the invention was for a barge that included a hoist
mechanism for the purposes of lifting and transporting marble. And
this was in Florence, Italy during the Renaissance. Marble was
(10:50):
in high demand. So the grant that that Philip got,
the good Old phil received, gave him a three year
period of exclusivity in which he would have the exclusive
rights to his invention before other uh folks on in
Florence would be allowed to copy what he was doing.
(11:10):
So he had some protection there. He could go after
anyone who was making use of a barge with a
hoist and they didn't. You know go through him first.
And this is actually super important because in the early
Renaissance folks were more than happy to run with a
good idea, especially if it wasn't their own, and run
away with that idea. So let's say you're a smarty
(11:32):
pants kind of person, right, you are an inventive engineering type,
and you come up with an ingenious way to simplify
something that is otherwise a difficult task, and your invention
is going to make things much much easier and streamlined
and be a huge benefit. However, you also happen to
know that if you come forward with your idea and
(11:54):
you don't have any like significant wealth of your own,
people who have more resources than you are just gonna
take your idea. They're just gonna say, like, that's brilliant,
I'm using it, and then you're left out in the cold.
That kind of removes your incentive to do anything with
your idea. Right If you're discouraged, if you think, well, yeah,
I know how to do this better than anyone else,
(12:15):
but I'm not in a position to do it and
profit from it, well, then your idea may never materialize
in the real world. You may just let it die.
But if you are granted at least temporary exclusive rights
to your idea, then you can profit from your invention,
and that in turn encourages other inventive types to seek
(12:36):
out the same sort of protection so that they can
actually benefit from their good ideas and not just see
them stolen like crazy. In fact, this is the same
reason folks came up with the idea of copyright and trademarks.
It's kind of like making sure the right person gets
the credit, whether the credit is acknowledgement or you know,
actual credits as in cold hard cash. We've got more
(12:58):
to say about patents, but before we do that, let's
take a quick break. The first patent in the United
States was for a process for making potash a component
and fertilizer. George Washington himself signed the patent, which went
to Samuel Hopkins. In eli Whitney received a patent for
(13:22):
his invention of the cotton gin, which is a pretty
famous example, and by eighteen o two the United States
needed a dedicated superintendent to oversee the patent office. In
eighteen twenty one, Thomas Jennings received the first patent issued
to an African American for his invention of dry scouring
kind of a predecessor to dry cleaning. Flash forward a
couple of centuries, and now we're well past ten million
(13:44):
patents issued in the United States. In fact, we hit
the ten million milestone in two thousand and eighteen, and
in one we had eleven million patents. That just goes
to show that folks are really inventive. Like the the
pace of invention increases, and a lot of course happened
in the middle there. I mean, you're talking about more
than two hundred years of history. Obviously tons of stuff happen.
(14:08):
But the patent law has been revised numerous times throughout
the history of the United States. But let's go more
high level. I mentioned earlier that one of the things
you can do with patents is just sit on them,
and you can also buy and sell them, like they
can be property, like real estate or things like that.
So you might be an inventor and the way you
make your money as you invent something and then you
(14:28):
sell your invention to someone else and that's the end
of that. So there are companies that essentially just deal
in the business of purchasing patents and then kind of
lying in wait like a predator, and the derogatory name
for these sorts of companies as a patent troll. Typically,
a patentrol company is one that doesn't make anything on
its own. It doesn't produce stuff, it doesn't sell anything,
(14:49):
but it holds patents to various technologies, and if someone
tries to make a product or service that overlaps with
one or more of the patents, then the troll pounces
and usually there's some legal timidation that goes on. Essentially
the troll saying, hey, you can't make this product that's
key to your business because we hold the patent on
it and we didn't give you permission, so we're gonna
sue you. And the goal is just to get as
(15:11):
big a settlement out of the target as you possibly can,
and that's how the patentrol makes money. Meanwhile, if no
one actually tried to make something that overlapped with the
patentrols patents, well then nothing related to those patents ever
really comes into being, because again, the patentrol isn't going
to do anything about it. So you have these ideas
that are effectively locked away, and it's antithetical to the
(15:34):
spirit of the patent system in the first place. Patentrols
are not always successful in their efforts. There's the famous
example of Personal Audio LLC, which claimed a patent it owned,
specifically Patent number eight million, five hundred four, which was
called a System for Disseminating media content covered the technology
of podcasting, and this company then began suing podcast producers,
(15:58):
including Adam Corolla, uh and that turned into a massive
legal battle, and ultimately Personal Audio LLC dropped the case.
And Outsider suspected that the company realized that it was
facing an uphill legal battle and that it could potentially
lose that patent, like the patents teeth could be removed,
and that the court was likely to find that the
patent was overbroad and vague. But Personal Audio LLC said
(16:22):
the reason they dropped the case was that podcasters weren't
generating a significant amount of revenue from infringing their patents,
which I mean, I guess that just means the company said,
we don't expect to actually make any money off this lawsuit,
and that's all that really matters, so we're done. But
Corolla actually countersued and sought the Patent Office to invalidate
the patent in question. Personal Audio LLC ultimately settled with
(16:45):
Corolla out of court for an undisclosed amount, but the
Electronic Frontier Foundation or e f F, filed a challenge
to that patent, and the U S Patent Office ultimately
revoked five provisions within the patent, essentially neutering it. And
Patent Audio LLC appealed all the way to the Supreme Court,
but the Supreme Court rejected the petition for review and
(17:07):
the case ended with the podcasting patent effectively neutralized. Part
of the arguments in that case was that the patent
wasn't just overly broad, it was describing something that had
already existed before the patent was granted. And that's one
of the big things about patents. If someone can prove
that person did not actually invent something, but that the
supposed invention already existed, well, that's called prior art. It
(17:31):
means the invention is already known and that the patent
office shouldn't issue a patent in that case. We've seen
that pop up in a defense time and again, um
sometimes in an attack as well, and sometimes pop culture
serves as an example of prior art, such as the
tablet like computers that are seen in two thousand one
A Space Odyssey, the Stanley Kubrick film of the Arthur C.
(17:53):
Clark story that served as an example of the tablet
form factor in a patent dispute that was between Sam
Sung and Apple, and companies often use patents as both
kind of a shield and a sword at the same time.
You'll frequently hear stories of companies suing one another for
patent infringement, and it's not unusual to hear company A
sues Company B for infringing on like ten patents, and
(18:15):
then company B SU's Company A for infringing on twelve
other patents and so on. That happened a lot between
Apple and Samsung, as well as Apple and tons of
other companies. And sometimes these are maneuvers that play apart
in tough negotiations between companies as they try to land
a favorable licensing deal. That's what we've seen recently between
Apple and Ericsson. Patent licenses are key to business these days.
(18:39):
It's pretty much impossible to do business in the tech
sector without relying on someone else's patented technology in some way,
so typically businesses secure licenses with those patent holders to
avoid any litigious entanglements down the line, and there's usually
a lot of criss crossing agreements between these large companies,
with them becoming dependent upon one another, though things can
(18:59):
get ugly when license agreements come too close to expiring,
which we've seen recently. There are tons of other interesting
stories about patents, including some of history's greatest feuds. Maybe
I'll cover those in a future text stuff tidbit. Uh.
The one that leaps to mind is between Nikola, Tesla
and Marconi, but I'll have to wait and hold off
on that. Maybe I'll do a text stuff tidbit to
(19:20):
really lay out that story. It's a pretty infuriating one,
but a really interesting one as well. And uh, yeah,
that's our tech stuff tidbits about patents. You get a
little bit of information about that, and again I can
probably do another follow up to talk about it more.
But if you have suggestions for topics I should cover
on tech stuff, reach out to me on Twitter. The
(19:41):
handle for the show is text Stuff h s W
and I'll talk to you again, really sick. Text Stuff
is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from
my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app Apple
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TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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