January 27, 2025 • 53 mins
“IP ownership matters most when your creation has real economic value. Protect it accordingly, but always validate your market to ensure it’s worth protecting.” – Dr. Fredric Abramson
Episode Summary:
In this episode of Patent Insider Secrets, host Tariq Najee-ullah interviews Dr. Fredric Abramson, a multidisciplinary pioneer with extensive experience in genetics, biotechnology, software development, music production, and IP law. Dr. Abramson shares how his early involvement in the music industry shaped his appreciation for intellectual property, especially copyrights. He illustrates the complexities of IP ownership across different jurisdictions—highlighted by a memorable case involving German law in a U.S. federal court. Dr. Abramson also dives into his current venture, Golden Thread Technology, which harnesses DNA analysis and AI to lower athletic injury risks. Throughout the discussion, he emphasizes the importance of understanding the economic value of IP and why it’s crucial to align IP protection with real-world market needs.
Brief Description:
Join host Tariq Najee-ullah and guest Dr. Fredric Abramson as they explore the nuanced world of IP asset mindsets, copyright protection, international legal complexities, and the transformative power of AI in genetic analysis. Dr. Abramson’s unique perspective—rooted in decades of experience spanning law, science, and entrepreneurship—offers invaluable insights for inventors, content creators, and startup founders alike.
Show Notes:
Introduction (00:00 – 03:00)
Tariq welcomes Dr. Fredric Abramson.
Overview of Dr. Abramson’s background: genetics, AI, biotechnology, legal expertise.
From Music to IP Law (03:01 – 07:45)
Dr. Abramson’s early days producing rock shows and records.
How observing creative processes in music led to an appreciation for IP protection.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Um,
Greetings and welcome backeveryone to Patent Insider Secrets.
I'm your host Tariq Najee-ullah, andwe're diving into another exciting episode
(00:22):
where we break down intellectual propertystrategies into their five core pillars.
Today, I'm thrilled to introduce a pioneerin the field of genetics, artificial
intelligence, and biotechnology, Dr.
Fredric Abramson.
Dr.
Abramson has not only built groundbreakingsolutions in DNA analysis to lower
athletic injury risk, but but hasalso held an impressive range of
(00:43):
roles in business, law, and academia.
Dr.
Abramson, welcome to the show.
Thank you very much, Tariq.
We're happy to be here,happy to share thoughts.
Okay, I definitely, really appreciativeof you being here and welcome.
So I'm going to get a little bit moreinto your background just to share, , you
are one of our experts when it comesto intellectual property and not, in
(01:05):
addition to being a visionary leaderat the intersection of genetics,
technology, and intellectual property law.
You are the founder and CEOof Golden Thread Technology.
You've pioneered the use of data analysisto help athletes reduce risk injury
to personalize insights powered byartificial intelligence and your work
spans decades of innovation with a patentfor a system and method for evaluating
(01:27):
and providing nutrigenomic data.
Information and advice, , whichrevolutionizes the way that genetic data
is applied to improve health outcomes.
You have, this is super impressive, fiveadvanced degrees, including a PhD in human
genetics from the University of Michigan,a JD, a Juris doctorate in intellectual
property law from American University.
(01:48):
You have a parallel breadth of expertise.
Your career has been shaped by rolesas a biotechnology professor at Johns
Hopkins University, a business technologyattorney, and a consultant on the
European Union's Fifth Framework Fund.
On Nutria Genomics, you have what itlooks like from your courses of study
in your experience that you have aunique ability to combine scientific
(02:10):
research, AI driven technology andpractical business solutions, you
know, earning you the reputation ofan intellectual omnivore, a testament
to your dynamic and multidisciplinaryapproach to solving complex problems,
both for health and business.
So, That's again super impressivebackground to kind of kick things off.
(02:33):
, you know what Patent Insider Secretswe do focus on the five pillars of IP
strategy, which we do that in a wayto kind of teach our audience, and we
break it down to an IP asset mindset.
An IP asset development and fortificationis taking whatever IP assets you have
identified and put in the proper legaltool or form, , to fortify the asset.
(02:57):
And then we have IP enforcementand defense as the third pillar.
Once you, , had the asset in place and howdo you defend it or enforce your rights?
We also have IP commercialization.
And then the fifth pillar, isgreat when we focus on long term.
Long view of intellectualproperty is not an instant.
it has to take some time.
in our previous discussion, you talkedabout, your experience in your
(03:21):
background, , you really think IP assetmindset is something that's always
been kind of emphasized or developed.
how has that been partof your experience?
Well, I think part of my introduction tothe importance of IP came from my early
(03:42):
days when I was in the music industry.
Um, when I was a young person, I workedin the rock and roll field and I used
to produce records and put on rock androll shows in Philadelphia and New York.
I knew Sam Cooke and Jerry Lee Lewis,which tells you how far back I go, but
(04:06):
I was able to be part of an experience.
Of watching people create things andthat began that journey to understand
what it is to be creative at a very, inthis case, practical level because if
you create a song and nobody listens toit doesn't matter that you created it.
(04:29):
Right.
So that I mean a music businessI think that's, that's full of.
I mean, we always hear about the starvingartists artists getting the raw deal.
So, what was In that, in that industry,what are some things or some insights
that you, that you gained when itcomes to intellectual property and
understanding idea ownership, especiallyas it relates to artists and creatives?
(04:55):
Well, it's interesting question.
I think the thing I learned, whichmoves a little beyond the intellectual
property itself, is that when you createsomething that nobody cares about,
It doesn't matter what intellectualproperty rights there are, and that if,
(05:19):
if someone creates a song that nobodylistens to, who cares who owns it?
So it's only when you create something theother people go, wow, that's neat that you
get into the issue of who can play it, whocan perform it, what happens when you make
the record, how do you put it on the air?
(05:39):
Because obviously on the, in the, in thosedays, I think it's still true in the,
in the, in the radio industry when thesong is played, a small amount of money
had to be paid to ASCAP and, and to theintellectual property people as part of,
of being, performing a song on the radio.
(06:00):
So, and this is, I think thiskind of gets into one of our.
Risk areas, especially when itcomes to content creation, , and
songwriting cold, even thoughit's AI, , it's a big thing about
infringement, copyrights and ownership.
So, you know, I know you, you mentionedthat it's something that you're
passionate about knowing who ownswhat and when, but also demand is very
(06:26):
important if you have something thatnobody wants to listen to or nobody
cares about, or doesn't, it's not used.
What, what kind of insights do you haveon that in terms of your experience?
Like what is.
What's the importance of copyrightsand ownership when it comes to IP?
Well, it's a great question.
And a lot of my interest moved from themusic side to the computer side because I
(06:48):
started writing computer software in 1965.
And so I began to observe thatthe creative process of writing
software translated into protection.
And then in the 80s and90s, I was in the industry.
And the question of who owns what becomesreally critical when it comes to software.
(07:12):
That's why I ended up going to law schoollater in my life, in my 40s, because
what I discovered was that a lot ofpeople were confused about who owns what.
And what I realized is that if you haveclarity about what ownership means and
(07:34):
what rights transfer with that, You havethe beginning of, of the opportunity
to know what to do with what you have.
Does that make sense?
It makes sense.
And I'll share one quick story,uh, because it relates in 1980.
Obviously, this isbefore I learned the law.
(07:56):
My wife and I were in Manchester,New Hampshire at the Holiday Inn to
give a workshop the day after RonaldReagan won the New Hampshire primary.
Okay, so that night we were in thelittle ballroom where he got up and
said, we want a New Hampshire primary.
Why am I telling that the nextday when I, we went in to do the
(08:18):
workshop, there was a canvas bag inthe corner with a tape recorder and
tapes in it, but no identification.
And they were tapes of RonaldReagan on the campaign trail.
So I took it to the desk andthey said, give it to us.
I said, no, have the person contactme, but apparently they never did.
It was press.
(08:38):
So, interesting question.
Who owns the right, the intellectualproperty rights, to fork tapes of
Ronald Reagan giving extemporaneousspeeches on the campaign trail?
Well, clearly, Ronald Reaganhas rights to it, or is a state.
But so does the owner of the tapes,because they're two independent things.
(09:02):
curious thing about the law, but I justthought I'd share that little story
with you because sometimes you stumbleinto something and it's so good to
know whether you have anything goingwith you when you stumble into it.
I think I've seen something similarto that like when there sometimes be
like musicians or famous artists thatlet's say they go to New York Fashion
(09:25):
Week and they're photographed andtheir photograph is in a newspaper or
magazine and it's a famous photograph.
I think I read something where itwas, , A rapper he was photographed
and then he got sued because he putthat image on a t shirt and sold the
t shirt But the photographer sued himbecause he owned the rights to the image
(09:47):
out as a as a creative or, ideaauthor, how do you how do you protect
against these types of things?
How can so how is it possible that yourimage and likeness can be used by somebody
from a practical point of view, giventhe world today, particularly with the
Internet, And the ability to createthings to make a copy of things.
(10:11):
And of course, with AI, we havepeople creating things that
you know, never existed before.
There's no way to stop somebody from usingyour image or what you do somewhere else.
The key element is.
Is what you have had doesn't have economicvalue and can you move forward and
(10:39):
enforce your rights in a reasonable way.
So if if a teenager in New Yorkcopy something for of yours.
And puts it out there and yousay I'm going to sue them.
Well, they don't have any money anyway.
So what are you going to sue them for?
(11:01):
But if it's someone who's got a lotof resources and they misuse what you
own, you at least can recover somethingof value from them when in a lawsuit,
but lawsuits are a pain in the ass.
That's the thing youreally don't want to do.
The other thing is that is, and thisis true for the transactional side.
(11:26):
It's important in my mind for peoplewho are in business or creative areas to
actually understand the legal frameworkinternationally that is what copyright is
structured around, because that impactshow you enforce things, where you enforce
(11:48):
it, and what rights, who has what rights.
So, I'll let you ask your next question,but that's leading to an area that I
think you know we're going to talk about.
how do you navigate complexity,especially if we talk start talking
about jurisdictions or internationally,you know, it seems like ownership issues
can be very tricky, especially when itcomes to international laws, especially
(12:13):
when there's conflicts and you said,you know, law lawsuits can be a pain.
Do you have any instances?
I know we talked before about somethingthat happened in Germany or courtroom.
How have you navigated this successfully?
Let me share the story andthen I'll give a couple of easy
things that people can remember.
(12:34):
Okay.
If you know the rule,keep it simple, right?
Right.
But in the late 80s, I was being an expertwitness in a copyright infringement case.
being heard in Chicago.
Now in the United States, allcopyright cases must be heard in a U.
(12:56):
S.
federal court.
State courts have nojurisdiction over copyright.
The second thing to know about U.
S.
law is that there's a ticket ofadmission to get into the court, and
the ticket is a registration in the U.
S.
Copyright Office.
Now the fact is, The registrationis a step beyond the existence of
(13:24):
copyright, when this tape that you'remaking now is, has a copyright attached
to it, because you're creating it.
So arguably this is yourintellectual property.
Now, you wouldn't want to go down to thecopyright office and spend, uh, whatever
(13:44):
the fee is these days, to register it.
Because the only time there'sa worry about registering it is
somebody steals it and uses it fortheir own financial gain, right?
Then, if someone does that, you can goto the copyright office and say, I'm
filing for a copyright application,and then the copyright office says
(14:08):
yes, and now you can go to court.
So I'm in the federal court inChicago, and a lawyer asked me
some question, and I said, well, U.
S.
law and German law applies.
And the judge said, what did you say?
I said, U.
S.
law and German law apply.
She said, why does German law apply?
I said, well, under the internationaltreaty called the Berne Convention,
(14:32):
and that's B E R N E for thosewho want to look up the city,
200 countries signed this treaty.
And the treaty says that the applicablelaw of copyright that applies to any
work created depends on two things,the location where the work is created,
(14:54):
and the nationality of the creators.
So this work, I said, was createdin New York City, and one of the
creators is a German national.
So German law applies.
And then the judge turned aroundto the two lawyers and said,
I'm stopping the case here.
You're going downstairsand settling this case.
(15:16):
We're not having German law in this court.
But that's the important thing.
So
when you create something, and you're inanother country, or someone where you're
working with a national of that country,you have to learn that country's law too.
Now, why does it make a difference?
(15:38):
Here's a good example.
The law of France
has certain protectionsfor creative people.
One of them is that your name has to beassociated with the work all the time.
There's no way, you can't beanonymous unless you choose to be.
(16:00):
The second is that even when you sellthe work to somebody else, they can't
change it without your permission, right?
Now, how is that important?
Here's an interesting little from me.
This is what I learned in law school.
Have you heard of the artist named BernardBuffet, a French artist from the 50s?
(16:23):
No.
If people look him up inGoogle, it's B U F F E T.
It's his last name.
Very stylistic.
He had children with big eyes and so on.
But here's the story.
He died and a French couplebought his refrigerator and he
(16:45):
had painted his refrigerator.
Now, in the old days, the refrigeratorshad handles on them that you had
to pull down and kids would crawlinside and they would close the
refrigerator door and they'd suffocate.
So the owners of the refrigeratortook the door off so kids wouldn't
crawl in and get and resuffocated.
(17:06):
The French government sued them andsaid, you've mutilated his work.
You have to put the door back on.
That's an example.
Yeah, this is, this issome of his work here.
Oh, yeah.
Look at that.
Yeah.
Fascinating artist.
(17:27):
You know, very stylized.
So you can only imagine whathe painted his refrigerator.
But, but that's the key.
The other key element.
And, and this is true in U.
S.
law.
And again, I try to keep itrelatively understandable.
(17:49):
In the U.
S.
statute, the phrase they use,Congress wrote is, a work made for
hire is owned by the hiring party.
Now, if I say that to you, that youprobably think, well, if I paid you to
do this thing, then I own it, right?
(18:10):
No, not quite.
What they were referring to was,if you're a W 2 employee, and the
work that you create is part of youremployment, the employer owns it.
But if the person's acontractor, they own it.
What does that mean in the world of theinternet and new websites and so on?
(18:32):
If I hire you to do my website in myagreement, it could be on a napkin.
It has to say, I, Harik, Najula, assignmy rights and copyright to Fredric
Abramson for the work he's paying me for.
Is this, this is a workfor hire agreement?
(18:52):
That's a work for hire.
But the fact that someone paidyou doesn't mean you own it.
I think that's, that's quite confusing,especially in an age of freelancers.
, I can get a, and I think even whenwe get into AI, and that's one of my,
my later questions, we get into AI,especially when it comes to your work.
(19:14):
The idea of ownership though, what canI do like this is this is something
that happens and I'm saying yourexperience, what, what can we do if
we didn't, you know, oftentimes starta company we didn't start off right.
We didn't do everything,dot our I's cross our T's.
We don't have a copyright.
We didn't get trademarks or patents.
(19:35):
We hired contractors to do all of ourlogos and websites and everything.
How can we correct that?
Or what's what strategies, work
that's a great question.
And first of all, for 99.
9 percent of the people who you hireto do websites and so on, they don't
think of themselves as the owner there.
(19:56):
They, they think thatyou, you, you paid me.
So you own it.
But if you wanted to really getinto the details of things, then
I would go to the person who didthe website and say, look, U.
S.
law has got this interesting littlenuance in it that you have to say in
a written document, I give FredricAbramson my rights and copyright
(20:22):
for the website I created for himand sign your name and date it.
That means that as the guy paying, Inow own the rights to the copyright.
Now, if it happens that you'reFrench, and you're living from
Paris, but you're living in New York.
then I can't change the sitewithout your permission because
(20:45):
French law still applies.
Right.
Well, if I'm not a French national, ifI'm not working with someone from France,
and that's the other thing, like, so a lotof times people will get freelancers on,
on these websites, and these freelancersare from other countries, like say India.
I had a guy, I did a project one time, Ihad a guy from the Philippines and from
(21:05):
India and the Ukraine all work on it.
So I did have a work for hire, but.
Mostly where you just, you feellike if you pay through this
website, then it's mine, right?
Yes, but legally it's not.
So, but in the world, everything is soinformal on the internet these days.
(21:26):
That people don't do it that reallyit if someone came if I hired you
and you came up with this amazinglycreative design, I'm not your
socks off one in a lifetime design.
I don't want someone else copyingthat and using the same design.
So I'd want you to give me the rights.
(21:48):
Assign me the rights to the copyright,and that would mean that someone can't
create what's called a derivative work.
They can't take the site andadjust it to their own use.
But in a world where people are informalabout stuff, the specifics of copyright
ownership aren't going to rise up to thelevel of monetization or value unless
(22:14):
something really important is created.
And then you got to make sure your I'sare dotted, your T's are crossed, and all
the contractors are signing the rights.
And it's a whispering battledown the lane, by the way.
If I hire someone in New York who hiresa subcontractor in Germany who hires
a subcontractor in Ukraine, everybodyin the chain has got to assign the
(22:37):
rights all the way up to the top.
Wow.
So, so that has, I do have a, I don'twant to say too long cause I know we
have a limited time and I have someother questions I want to kind of pivot
to, but there's this copyright issue.
So there's something that comes up,especially in this age of content
creation, everybody's a content creator,everybody's filming TikToks and Instagrams
(22:58):
and X spaces and, you know, videos,podcasts, like we're doing right now.
In that space, if I want to secure myself,I know people say, well, can I just.
File a copyright formy, films and my content.
And then can I join one of these, creative comments or something like that?
What is something that I can do if Idon't want to, I want to keep my expenses
(23:19):
low, but I also want to make sure thatI have some maintenance or copyrights.
The questions that I often get when Italk about content creation is about
rights free images or rights freemusic, or repurposing that content
without getting a takedown from YouTube.
I know this, this is, I'm tryingto put all this into one question
but as a content creator, You know,which is a lot of the entrepreneurs
(23:43):
today are content content creators.
What would you tell them to do ifthey don't want to be overwhelmed
by this and end up paying a wholelot to lawyers or law firms?
What are some some simple smartstrategies they can use to keep
themselves fundamentally protected?
It's a great question.
And because the way the modern world ofthe Internet and technology is moving,
(24:09):
there's a lot of informality involved.
But the real key in copyright is theeconomic value of what you create.
Now, I was, I've been takingsome notes while we talk.
Legally, my notes are copyrighted,because I wrote them, right?
(24:33):
But is anybody going to pay for these?
No, nobody would care.
So in most cases, The issue doesn'tarise because there's not enough economic
value in the work created for someoneelse to get worried about who owns what.
So basically, we've accepted theinformality of the system and
(24:58):
that the copyright law is reallybeing used to protect the economic
value of works that are known tohave value, like a work of art.
Thank you very much.
Like a book, like a song, so ifyou create, if you, like this video
that you're doing, this podcast, ifyou, if this podcast is something
(25:22):
that you monetize, and you chargea dollar, I'm making that up, for
people to watch the podcast, But 10,000 people watch it, then you've got
10, 000, that's an economic value.
If someone else says, I want todown, I want to stream the content,
(25:43):
and I'm going to show it to peoplethat I want to show it to, and I'll
charge them 50 cents, well, they'reinfringing something of value of yours.
So you'd have to decide, do I want to filethe copyright, um, application to get a
copyright Registration in the copyrightoffice, because if I do, then I can go to
(26:04):
court and tell the guy you owe me money.
Does this, have I answeredyour question reasonably?
Yeah, you definitely did.
I think I want to shift gears alittle bit because I think what you're
doing in your work, I mean, to be,I want to make sure we hit AI and
also get into genetics a little bit.
(26:26):
Your work today is focused onusing genetic data to lower injury
risk for athletes through yourcompany, Golden Thread Technology.
Tell us more about how you got into thatand then what role intellectual property
plays in protecting that innovation.
That's a great question.
I got into this because of myteaching at Johns Hopkins University
(26:50):
in the biotechnology master'sprogram, where I taught the business
courses, not the science courses.
So I taught the economics ofbiotechnology, which is one of the
things intellectual property touches on.
Um, uh, managerial finance,which also touches on IP.
(27:10):
ethical, legal, regulatory issues,and biotech, also touches on IP.
So I would be teaching these courses andmy students, uh, in the late 90s said,
we finished the human genome project.
And I said, well, now it's time to bringgenetics out of the darkness of disease.
(27:31):
Into everyday life becausepeople want to make life better.
They don't want to worryabout avoiding what they're
going to die from in 10 years.
And then in 2018, a bunch of mystudents came to me and said, you have
to see this paper out of Stanford.
They gave 14 triathletes or genetic dataand their injury rate went down 44%.
(27:53):
Wow.
I said, home run, don't need it anymore.
I said, but there's aproblem with the study.
They said, what's the problem?
I said, you're from Stanford.
I said, if you're from MIT, Stanford, andCaltech, everybody understands science,
but if you're an ordinary person, youhave to have the science put into a form
you can use without becoming a scientist.
(28:17):
And one of my students said,well, who's ever done that before?
I said, Google Maps.
With Google Maps, you don'thave to read a map anymore.
Just listen to them say, turnleft at the second light.
That's the same thing we need todo with the science of genetics.
You shouldn't have to study thisto figure out what you should be
(28:37):
eating, or doing, or playing ball.
You should be able to have a script foryou that says, here's what you need to
do in the next two hours to lower yourchances of something bad happening.
Wow.
So genetics can, like,I've heard about this.
Um, and I got to be honest, forme, I heard about it from somebody
(28:58):
who was trying to sell me some,some genetic, and Vitamins or
whatever, like I get the right.
Yeah, so that's it's comingto me from that perspective.
I haven't heard fromthis perspective about.
So how, how were you able to apply this?
I mean, you got a patent here.
So the system and methodfor evaluating right
nutritionomic data.
(29:20):
So how, how, what's the idea behind that?
Well, my patent went after my studentstold me about the Human Genome Project.
I had also spent a number of yearsin the supplement field and the
weight loss field in the 90s.
So I had some insight into what goeson in people's minds and behavior.
And I said, wait a minute, if you want tolose weight, We're genetically different.
(29:47):
The foods are different.
Why don't we match the ingredientsof what you're putting in your body
against your DNA to improve the outcomesthat you get, like losing weight
or feeling better, whatever it is.
And that's what the patent is.
It's matching the ingredients of a foodor supplement against your DNA to improve
(30:08):
well being or lower the risk of disease.
And you've put it up here on the thing.
It's basically making scienceuseful, in a way that applies to each
person uniquely and individually.
And ironically, that's exactlywhat intellectual property does.
(30:28):
Because it's your copyright.
It's your creation.
You patent something, it's your invention.
It's not the universe's.
IP is protecting what we can create.
And it's important to be able to do thatinternationally, because if we don't,
(30:51):
it'll, it'll, it'll make it less powerfulfor people to want to create things.
So what are some outcomes, Iguess, of that of that tech
with your, with your patent.
So you're taking yourpersonalizing supplementation
to improve athletic performance.
(31:14):
Yes.
Well, here's an example.
One of the things we know is that therisk of a kid breaking a bone when
they fall is inversely related to theamount of vitamin K in their body.
So, if you have a little kid, 5, yearsold, you need to feed them vitamin K
(31:35):
so that when they fall, they're lesslikely to break a bone in their arm.
But here's the thing.
There are genes that impact howfast you metabolize vitamin K.
So if you've got two kids, Michael andSusan, and Michael's a fast metabolizer
and Susan's a slow metabolizer, whichone needs more vitamin K in their diet?
(31:57):
Duh, Michael.
Michael, right.
Okay.
Where you're hearing me say thisis, We don't have to make it so
complex that an ordinary personcan't figure out what to do.
We have to make it so that if youknow, like one of the people I
(32:18):
tested in my, my test, a woman whowas overweight in her 60s, and she
said, I was born to love sugar.
We tested a gene for sugar craving.
It was negative.
And she said, Oh, Maybe I learned tolike sweets because my parents didn't
(32:40):
let me eat them when I was a kid.
Boom!
I learned to like them.
I could learn to unlike them.
To me, that's the practicalbenefit of looking at genetics.
And it's not about, to me,it's not about disease.
I don't want, if you want to look andsee whether you're going to get heart
(33:03):
disease or cancer, that's your choice.
But I don't do that, and I have another,I'll tell another story of why I decided
to focus on normal instead of disease.
I was in a meeting in New YorkCity around Christmas in 1976.
With MIT Sloan's, I was one of them,and we met with CEOs, and we met with
(33:26):
the CEO after lunch, and he gave histalk, and then you got to ask questions,
I put my hand up, he calls on me, Iget up, I introduce myself, I'm Dr.
Fredric Abraham, stop right there,do you know what the problem
with the American people is?
And I shook my head, no.
They want to die healthy.
Wow, that's the home run statement.
(33:48):
Because dying healthy isnot the same as living well.
But Tariq, here's the punchline, he wasCEO of Philip Morris Cigarette Company.
Very ironic, yeah.
But you appreciate the irony, right?
But to me, this is the thing.
(34:09):
Genetics is a tool.
We are all individuals.
Let me, can I share one moregenetic example to give people
more insight into what they do?
Okay, there's a diseasecalled Huntington's disease.
It is a neurologic disorderonset in your late 40s.
(34:30):
Once it starts, you're outof the game pretty quickly.
It is a single gene disorder.
One copy autosomaldominance, let's call it.
Woody Guthrie, by the way, thefolk singer, had Huntington's.
Well, in classic genetics, if youand I were identical twins and
you're diagnosed on Thursday asHuntington's, I'd be diagnosed on
(34:54):
Friday because we're identical, right?
Right.
But my ex wife, Ruth, who's also a humangeneticist, is an expert on Huntington's.
Right.
Right.
and worked on identical twins anddiscovered the age of onset for
Huntington's disease in identicaltwins could vary up to eight years.
(35:17):
Well, what's going on?
It isn't the gene, it'sthe environment they're in.
That means that we are not simplypassengers on the game of life.
on the ship of life.
We can make decisionsto make our life better.
And to me, one of the core elementsto make good decisions is good
(35:38):
data and good information, whetherit's going to a movie, going to
a restaurant, or understandinghow your genes impact your life.
Let me ask you, so you think thatthat this is leading to like one
of these futuristic sci fi movieswhere I can do a cheek swab at home?
And it's sitting in my, my computerand it's going to tell me, give
(35:59):
me a gene, analysis and tell mewhat it is my diet should be.
, to optimize, let's say I want to,
I'll take it a step further.
You'll be able to do a cheek swaband feed it into a system and a
3D printer will print the food youwant exactly to match your genes.
(36:21):
Wow.
3D printed fruit.
I've seen it.
I've seen 3D printed meat,
well, Nestle, the company Nestleis working on 3D printing of food.
Yeah.
Wow I have to wrap my head around that.
I don't know.
I kind of want my food to have some,some earth connection, some sunlight.
It's just, it just showswhere things are going.
It's a, it's world.
(36:43):
Innovation is really critical.
And innovation is drivenby intellectual property.
And so if you create something, ifit has value, take the steps to make
sure that you actually own what itis, where you've assigned it to, got
the assignment the right way, and thatit's enforceable in a reasonable way.
(37:06):
When if something comes, youknow that that you're getting
kind of cheated out of something,
and that's that's something I wanted.
I don't want to tap, you know,pivoted a little bit to AI.
Dovetailing what you just stated, how doI know as a startup or founder that I do
have something that has economic value.
(37:27):
I mean, initially, I know I mayhave a problem trying to solve.
It's interesting to me.
I may have done beta testing andgotten some insight from, you
know, a test group or focus group.
I might have even gotten some seed moneyor won a pitch competition, but how do
I know that I have something, even ifI've done all that, that still may not be
economic value to have option protection.
(37:49):
What is the metric?
How should I make that decision?
It's a great question, Tariq.
And I, I learned this in thebusiness world and music and retail
sales and the software industry.
You got to talk to customers.
(38:09):
I have a presentation for GoldenThread that I've shown the
1500 people around the world.
And I show it three minuteslong and I show it to them.
And when it finishes, I say.
Is this something you would want to do?
Yes or no?
And if they say yes, I say, wouldyou pay this amount of money for it?
(38:30):
Yes or no?
And, and I say, and why wouldyou do it if they say yes?
And that answer I'll share with you, theyall say it's because I know it's about
me as a person, because it's my DNA.
But I, in the software field, I sawpeople building things that were for
themselves, but not for a market.
(38:52):
But I will share a story thatrelates precisely to your point.
How do you know whatyou're doing makes sense?
And also, what happens whensomebody else tells you it's stupid?
So, in the late 1970s, early 80s,I was in San Francisco at the
Del Carnado Hotel for a softwaremeeting, a national software meeting.
(39:16):
And I am in line for lunch, andI'm talking to this guy, just
like you and I are talking.
And I said to him, so what are you doing?
He said, I'm writing software tohelp women balance their checkbook.
I said, what?
He said, yeah, they, they screw it up.
They get in fights with theirhusband, leads to divorces.
(39:37):
I said, you gotta be kidding me.
He said, no, I'm going tocall it Quicken, which became
QuickBooks, which became Intuit.
Wow.
That's the answer.
If you talk to the people that you'rebuilding it for, and they like it,
you have a shot at making a market.
(39:59):
But if you build it by sitting inyour basement thinking, I know people
will love it, then it's a crapshoot.
I think I definitelythink that's the case.
I have, um, a couple of questionsthat I kind of want to leave it for
you to, if you have any reflection.
So one thing, I mean, you're.
(40:20):
your career, you, you, from the epitomeof science to business, to music, uh,
even to, to software, having gotten intosoftware at the beginning of computers.
I mean, with, with, with thebreadboards, the cards, I mean, I
learned some of that stuff, COBOL.
And, you know, when I was coming throughschool, we had to learn these things.
(40:42):
So they were legacy machines and we had tomake sure that we could work these things.
And that's just understanding, seeing.
Software or computing from thereand seeing today where we have
things like large language models,chat GPT, we have all of these
things in artificial intelligence.
How do you look at that?
And how do you see that?
Otherwise it's like, I'm seeing, youknow, we're seeing lawsuits with the
(41:05):
New York times and other, they're sayingthat you're just taking public domain
stuff and plagiarizing, which is whatthe argument is, but also you've seen
very powerful creations based on theselarge language models, how do you see
AI today and its impact on the future?
It's a tool.
(41:26):
When I learned computing writingsoftware in the sixties, it
was a tool to solve problems.
And so one of the problems that I wasgiven early on was to analyze, to identify
the rate of spontaneous abortion orspontaneous fetal death in pregnancies,
(41:49):
because the literature was filledwith all this conflicting information.
So I was able to get 360, 000 pregnancyrecords from New York City, and I
had to develop a new mathematics,but I had a computer to do this all.
I was writing in four Trade and then thenumber that came out was closer to 75%.
(42:14):
It's not the number.
It's the fact that I was able to usethe technology, but look at an a, a
population size that was so big thatbefore a computer you couldn't do it.
And I was able to use computersto develop new mathematics.
Actually look at the problem in a new way.
(42:36):
Well, you come downstream 60 years and AIis letting us look at things in a new way.
AI won't be perfect.
You can put something in and it will getit wrong, but it can help you understand
your world in a way that three yearsago, you'd be doing Google searches.
(43:00):
And 20 years ago, you'd have togo to your local library to get a
book to see if there's a book on.
Right.
Now, there, I know there's arguments aboutwho owns what with AI developed material.
And that's an interesting argumentbecause clearly AI is not a human being.
(43:21):
And the most laws of copyrightrequire a human have some role in it.
But from my point of view, if you wrotea song in AI, and then you sat down at
the piano and started editing it andworking it, and you worked it out, I think
by then you own the rights to the song.
(43:43):
I can see it opening a lot of different,a panacea when it comes to IP, I mean they
have They're creating voices mimickingvoices of other, you know, singers or
rappers or performers creating music intheir style videos that are mimicking
film, you know, it's, it opens a lotof a lot of interesting infringement
(44:09):
conversations as well as just just,
yeah, if it's if it's a 10 yearold kid doing it for his sister's
birthday party, who cares.
so much.
But if it's a 30 year old woman doingit because she wants to put it on the
internet and make money, then you care.
So, yeah, does this makesense to you, Tariq?
(44:29):
It makes sense.
I think, um, as we kind of close there,there's one question I want to ask from
a previous conversation that we had.
You talked about the power of copyright.
As it relates to, you know, sometimespeople say, well, I have a mention, I
have a product, a patent is the way to go.
And a patent is limitedin scope for 20 years.
(44:50):
Copyright, you know, has a muchlonger life, 70 or even longer.
It's the life of the author plus time.
Well, you talked about how, there'sa strategy to use copyrights in a
much more powerful way and robust way.
That's something that's not talkedabout, I guess, or not the strategy
that's sold to us in the IP field today.
Why do you, you know, what,what are your thoughts on that?
(45:14):
I think copyright, since it startswith, it protects the work of creation
at the moment it's created, and itprotects the creator, or creators,
if it's a collaborative work.
So, but, that's the technical legal issue.
The pragmatic issue is, who cares?
(45:40):
And caring means, That doesn't havetranslate into some economic value.
And if it does, then you want to takesteps to make sure you control how it's
distributed, how it's used and so on.
I mean, if you if you create a websitefor somebody, and it's really amazingly
(46:03):
creative, you can write in theagreement that I've assigned it to you.
For you to use, but I can put in it.
You do not have the right to redistributeit to any other third person.
You don't need the right to letsomebody else copy it for their purpose.
Now, enforcing it is a pain.
(46:27):
You want lawyers to go to court?
You're talking thousandsand thousands of dollars.
That's why it's the economic issue.
But by and large, most things that arecreated, the people create them can
use them make money from them, and noone else in the world is going to want
to copy it or use it against the todiminish the market of of the creator.
(46:56):
I agree.
I think, mean, Dr.
Abramson, it's been an absolutepleasure having you on the show
today, as we, I mean your insightsabout Copyright law, idea, ownership.
And really what I takeaway is the economic value.
I think this is one, something that getsleft out of the IB conversation a lot,
a lot of times it's driven by sales.
I mean, you need a trademark, youneed a patent, you need a copyright.
(47:18):
You need, and you know, that's, that'snever been part of our business.
We always try to tell people, youknow, if, if you need it, I'll, I'll
do a patent search in a minute, butI'm not going to say that you need a
patent unless the search reveals that.
Or.
You know, if you're a startup and I'madvising you through, through Tedco,
one of these other , startup grind.
What is other accelerated programs?
(47:40):
It's based on where you are.
If you don't have aproduct, you have an idea.
You might want to minimizeinvestment in any IP.
You want to make sure you have something.
Let's do a focus group.
Talk to customers.
Get some feedback.
After you've done that, you know, so
I think you've touchedon the core element.
It really boils down to the economics.
(48:00):
And a really example of that is theissue of trademark, which you mentioned.
Trademark protects the image.
You know the brand, but if yourbrand doesn't have any value.
What does it make of somebodyelse uses the brand for
themselves in some other way.
Right.
(48:21):
So I would, I would open up tothis to see, again, I could talk
to you in your stories, especiallybeing IP geek like myself, really.
Enjoy your insights and connectivity.
I think one thing I always get into toIP really understanding it from music
because, you know, hip hop music,there's this sampling where you're
(48:42):
taking, and I have, I have, you know,aunts and uncles and relatives that
have been in the music field prominentin the sixties and seventies, and so.
You know, they're still making aliving, some of them, because they
produced this music and it's beingreused and hip hop and re sampled.
so I always, when you talkedabout music and that, that
always comes to, to my mind.
(49:02):
But I think looking back at your wholecareer, like from, from then, from
the music, rock and roll, to Sam Cookeand Jerry Lee Lewis, and all the way
to software and, you know, teachingat Hopkins, going to law school.
Is there one thing, I guess, thathas kind of stood out to you about
(49:22):
intellectual property or something thatyou would like to see changed or done
differently or even just your insightinto where things are going, you know,
looking back at it, because it seemslike it's a connectivity from all of
it, you know, kind of a common thread.
Well, I know it's an interesting question.
And the lesson I've learned isthat IP law, like other areas of
(49:46):
law, constantly will evolve as theworld and the technology evolves.
But the core will always remain the same.
We want to protect creativeact work that has value.
Patents are a certain level of creativity.
(50:09):
In which it's a thing that canbe touched and felt and used.
Copyright is created out of thebrain in usually an artistic form.
Trademark is creativity in creatingan image for someone so that
it's easy for them to recognize.
(50:31):
The Nike swoosh.
Everyone knows if they see a shoe withthat swoosh on it, that it's made by Nike.
So the law will evolve.
It will make mistakes.
It will not please everyone.
And when you mention things likeartificial intelligence, I don't
know that I have any specialinsight into where it's going to go.
(50:55):
Clearly, the courts around theworld and the legislatures will
have to make decisions about wherethey want that boundary to be, of
what's protectable and what's not.
I think that insight, is very,very potent especially for startups,
founders, content creators, thosetoday who are looking at a theme.
I think that really wraps it up nicely.
(51:18):
And I know we're just scratchingthe surface of what's possible,
especially when it comes to AI andmachine learning, even with the
genetic data that you're dealing with.
We're just scratching thesurface of what's possible, , I
want to say that it, Dr.
Abramson, it was an absolute pleasurehaving you on the show today.
Your insights, again, into copyrightlaw, into ownership, and even, into
(51:39):
genetics and AI, it's invaluable.
I wanted to ask, where canour listeners learn more about
your work and connect with you?
Well, one easy one, I'm on LinkedIn,and if they type my name, as it's
seen on the screen here, with, withFredric without an E and without a K,
I'll be the only one that shows up.
(52:01):
They can also, if they want, send mean email to my email address, f as in
Fredric, d as in David Abramson, at goldenthread, the stuff you sew with, tech, t e
c h dot com, And you know, I'll respond.
I'd like to acknowledge email that comes.
It's not spam.
(52:23):
Yeah, definitely.
If they were interested ingolden thread technology?
What?
How can they reach you there?
Well, they could send me an email.
We're, we're working to get the websiteredesigned so we could launch our basic
prototype and minimum viable productbecause we want to start getting it out to
the world to let people interact with it.
(52:44):
That's another lesson, by theway, from the music business.
It doesn't matter whatyou do in the studio.
It's when you get on stage and youwant to show it to the audience.
That's when you know whether yougot something worth working with.
Definitely.
that's, that's fantastic.
Dr.
Abramson, thank you again.
(53:04):
And to our listeners, I hope youenjoyed this deep dive into IP
strategy and its impact on technology.
until next time, keep thinking abouthow to protect your ideas because your
IP can be your most valuable asset,especially if it provides economic value.
remember to, to subscribe,leave us a review.
, On your favorite podcast platform,and you can follow us on social media,
(53:25):
Patent Insider Secrets, Patent Insider.
Stay tuned for, for more expertinsights and IP strategies right
here on Patent Insider Secrets.
Thank you for a wonderful experience.
Um,
Um,
Greetings and welcome backeveryone to Patent Insider Secrets.
I'm your host Tariq Najee-ullah, andwe're diving into another exciting episode
(00:22):
where we break down intellectual propertystrategies into their five core pillars.
Today, I'm thrilled to introduce a pioneerin the field of genetics, artificial
intelligence, and biotechnology, Dr.
Fredric Abramson.
Dr.
Abramson has not only built groundbreakingsolutions in DNA analysis to lower
athletic injury risk, but but hasalso held an impressive range of
(00:43):
roles in business, law, and academia.
Dr.
Abramson, welcome to the show.
Thank you very much, Tariq.
We're happy to be here,happy to share thoughts.
Okay, I definitely, really appreciativeof you being here and welcome.
So I'm going to get a little bit moreinto your background just to share, , you
are one of our experts when it comesto intellectual property and not, in
(01:05):
addition to being a visionary leaderat the intersection of genetics,
technology, and intellectual property law.
You are the founder and CEOof Golden Thread Technology.
You've pioneered the use of data analysisto help athletes reduce risk injury
to personalize insights powered byartificial intelligence and your work
spans decades of innovation with a patentfor a system and method for evaluating
(01:27):
and providing nutrigenomic data.
Information and advice, , whichrevolutionizes the way that genetic data
is applied to improve health outcomes.
You have, this is super impressive, fiveadvanced degrees, including a PhD in human
genetics from the University of Michigan,a JD, a Juris doctorate in intellectual
property law from American University.
(01:48):
You have a parallel breadth of expertise.
Your career has been shaped by rolesas a biotechnology professor at Johns
Hopkins University, a business technologyattorney, and a consultant on the
European Union's Fifth Framework Fund.
On Nutria Genomics, you have what itlooks like from your courses of study
in your experience that you have aunique ability to combine scientific
(02:10):
research, AI driven technology andpractical business solutions, you
know, earning you the reputation ofan intellectual omnivore, a testament
to your dynamic and multidisciplinaryapproach to solving complex problems,
both for health and business.
So, That's again super impressivebackground to kind of kick things off.
(02:33):
, you know what Patent Insider Secretswe do focus on the five pillars of IP
strategy, which we do that in a wayto kind of teach our audience, and we
break it down to an IP asset mindset.
An IP asset development and fortificationis taking whatever IP assets you have
identified and put in the proper legaltool or form, , to fortify the asset.
(02:57):
And then we have IP enforcementand defense as the third pillar.
Once you, , had the asset in place and howdo you defend it or enforce your rights?
We also have IP commercialization.
And then the fifth pillar, isgreat when we focus on long term.
Long view of intellectualproperty is not an instant.
it has to take some time.
in our previous discussion, you talkedabout, your experience in your
(03:21):
background, , you really think IP assetmindset is something that's always
been kind of emphasized or developed.
how has that been partof your experience?
Well, I think part of my introduction tothe importance of IP came from my early
(03:42):
days when I was in the music industry.
Um, when I was a young person, I workedin the rock and roll field and I used
to produce records and put on rock androll shows in Philadelphia and New York.
I knew Sam Cooke and Jerry Lee Lewis,which tells you how far back I go, but
(04:06):
I was able to be part of an experience.
Of watching people create things andthat began that journey to understand
what it is to be creative at a very, inthis case, practical level because if
you create a song and nobody listens toit doesn't matter that you created it.
(04:29):
Right.
So that I mean a music businessI think that's, that's full of.
I mean, we always hear about the starvingartists artists getting the raw deal.
So, what was In that, in that industry,what are some things or some insights
that you, that you gained when itcomes to intellectual property and
understanding idea ownership, especiallyas it relates to artists and creatives?
(04:55):
Well, it's interesting question.
I think the thing I learned, whichmoves a little beyond the intellectual
property itself, is that when you createsomething that nobody cares about,
It doesn't matter what intellectualproperty rights there are, and that if,
(05:19):
if someone creates a song that nobodylistens to, who cares who owns it?
So it's only when you create something theother people go, wow, that's neat that you
get into the issue of who can play it, whocan perform it, what happens when you make
the record, how do you put it on the air?
(05:39):
Because obviously on the, in the, in thosedays, I think it's still true in the,
in the, in the radio industry when thesong is played, a small amount of money
had to be paid to ASCAP and, and to theintellectual property people as part of,
of being, performing a song on the radio.
(06:00):
So, and this is, I think thiskind of gets into one of our.
Risk areas, especially when itcomes to content creation, , and
songwriting cold, even thoughit's AI, , it's a big thing about
infringement, copyrights and ownership.
So, you know, I know you, you mentionedthat it's something that you're
passionate about knowing who ownswhat and when, but also demand is very
(06:26):
important if you have something thatnobody wants to listen to or nobody
cares about, or doesn't, it's not used.
What, what kind of insights do you haveon that in terms of your experience?
Like what is.
What's the importance of copyrightsand ownership when it comes to IP?
Well, it's a great question.
And a lot of my interest moved from themusic side to the computer side because I
(06:48):
started writing computer software in 1965.
And so I began to observe thatthe creative process of writing
software translated into protection.
And then in the 80s and90s, I was in the industry.
And the question of who owns what becomesreally critical when it comes to software.
(07:12):
That's why I ended up going to law schoollater in my life, in my 40s, because
what I discovered was that a lot ofpeople were confused about who owns what.
And what I realized is that if you haveclarity about what ownership means and
(07:34):
what rights transfer with that, You havethe beginning of, of the opportunity
to know what to do with what you have.
Does that make sense?
It makes sense.
And I'll share one quick story,uh, because it relates in 1980.
Obviously, this isbefore I learned the law.
(07:56):
My wife and I were in Manchester,New Hampshire at the Holiday Inn to
give a workshop the day after RonaldReagan won the New Hampshire primary.
Okay, so that night we were in thelittle ballroom where he got up and
said, we want a New Hampshire primary.
Why am I telling that the nextday when I, we went in to do the
(08:18):
workshop, there was a canvas bag inthe corner with a tape recorder and
tapes in it, but no identification.
And they were tapes of RonaldReagan on the campaign trail.
So I took it to the desk andthey said, give it to us.
I said, no, have the person contactme, but apparently they never did.
It was press.
(08:38):
So, interesting question.
Who owns the right, the intellectualproperty rights, to fork tapes of
Ronald Reagan giving extemporaneousspeeches on the campaign trail?
Well, clearly, Ronald Reaganhas rights to it, or is a state.
But so does the owner of the tapes,because they're two independent things.
(09:02):
curious thing about the law, but I justthought I'd share that little story
with you because sometimes you stumbleinto something and it's so good to
know whether you have anything goingwith you when you stumble into it.
I think I've seen something similarto that like when there sometimes be
like musicians or famous artists thatlet's say they go to New York Fashion
(09:25):
Week and they're photographed andtheir photograph is in a newspaper or
magazine and it's a famous photograph.
I think I read something where itwas, , A rapper he was photographed
and then he got sued because he putthat image on a t shirt and sold the
t shirt But the photographer sued himbecause he owned the rights to the image
(09:47):
out as a as a creative or, ideaauthor, how do you how do you protect
against these types of things?
How can so how is it possible that yourimage and likeness can be used by somebody
from a practical point of view, giventhe world today, particularly with the
Internet, And the ability to createthings to make a copy of things.
(10:11):
And of course, with AI, we havepeople creating things that
you know, never existed before.
There's no way to stop somebody from usingyour image or what you do somewhere else.
The key element is.
Is what you have had doesn't have economicvalue and can you move forward and
(10:39):
enforce your rights in a reasonable way.
So if if a teenager in New Yorkcopy something for of yours.
And puts it out there and yousay I'm going to sue them.
Well, they don't have any money anyway.
So what are you going to sue them for?
(11:01):
But if it's someone who's got a lotof resources and they misuse what you
own, you at least can recover somethingof value from them when in a lawsuit,
but lawsuits are a pain in the ass.
That's the thing youreally don't want to do.
The other thing is that is, and thisis true for the transactional side.
(11:26):
It's important in my mind for peoplewho are in business or creative areas to
actually understand the legal frameworkinternationally that is what copyright is
structured around, because that impactshow you enforce things, where you enforce
(11:48):
it, and what rights, who has what rights.
So, I'll let you ask your next question,but that's leading to an area that I
think you know we're going to talk about.
how do you navigate complexity,especially if we talk start talking
about jurisdictions or internationally,you know, it seems like ownership issues
can be very tricky, especially when itcomes to international laws, especially
(12:13):
when there's conflicts and you said,you know, law lawsuits can be a pain.
Do you have any instances?
I know we talked before about somethingthat happened in Germany or courtroom.
How have you navigated this successfully?
Let me share the story andthen I'll give a couple of easy
things that people can remember.
(12:34):
Okay.
If you know the rule,keep it simple, right?
Right.
But in the late 80s, I was being an expertwitness in a copyright infringement case.
being heard in Chicago.
Now in the United States, allcopyright cases must be heard in a U.
(12:56):
S.
federal court.
State courts have nojurisdiction over copyright.
The second thing to know about U.
S.
law is that there's a ticket ofadmission to get into the court, and
the ticket is a registration in the U.
S.
Copyright Office.
Now the fact is, The registrationis a step beyond the existence of
(13:24):
copyright, when this tape that you'remaking now is, has a copyright attached
to it, because you're creating it.
So arguably this is yourintellectual property.
Now, you wouldn't want to go down to thecopyright office and spend, uh, whatever
(13:44):
the fee is these days, to register it.
Because the only time there'sa worry about registering it is
somebody steals it and uses it fortheir own financial gain, right?
Then, if someone does that, you can goto the copyright office and say, I'm
filing for a copyright application,and then the copyright office says
(14:08):
yes, and now you can go to court.
So I'm in the federal court inChicago, and a lawyer asked me
some question, and I said, well, U.
S.
law and German law applies.
And the judge said, what did you say?
I said, U.
S.
law and German law apply.
She said, why does German law apply?
I said, well, under the internationaltreaty called the Berne Convention,
(14:32):
and that's B E R N E for thosewho want to look up the city,
200 countries signed this treaty.
And the treaty says that the applicablelaw of copyright that applies to any
work created depends on two things,the location where the work is created,
(14:54):
and the nationality of the creators.
So this work, I said, was createdin New York City, and one of the
creators is a German national.
So German law applies.
And then the judge turned aroundto the two lawyers and said,
I'm stopping the case here.
You're going downstairsand settling this case.
(15:16):
We're not having German law in this court.
But that's the important thing.
So
when you create something, and you're inanother country, or someone where you're
working with a national of that country,you have to learn that country's law too.
Now, why does it make a difference?
(15:38):
Here's a good example.
The law of France
has certain protectionsfor creative people.
One of them is that your name has to beassociated with the work all the time.
There's no way, you can't beanonymous unless you choose to be.
(16:00):
The second is that even when you sellthe work to somebody else, they can't
change it without your permission, right?
Now, how is that important?
Here's an interesting little from me.
This is what I learned in law school.
Have you heard of the artist named BernardBuffet, a French artist from the 50s?
(16:23):
No.
If people look him up inGoogle, it's B U F F E T.
It's his last name.
Very stylistic.
He had children with big eyes and so on.
But here's the story.
He died and a French couplebought his refrigerator and he
(16:45):
had painted his refrigerator.
Now, in the old days, the refrigeratorshad handles on them that you had
to pull down and kids would crawlinside and they would close the
refrigerator door and they'd suffocate.
So the owners of the refrigeratortook the door off so kids wouldn't
crawl in and get and resuffocated.
(17:06):
The French government sued them andsaid, you've mutilated his work.
You have to put the door back on.
That's an example.
Yeah, this is, this issome of his work here.
Oh, yeah.
Look at that.
Yeah.
Fascinating artist.
(17:27):
You know, very stylized.
So you can only imagine whathe painted his refrigerator.
But, but that's the key.
The other key element.
And, and this is true in U.
S.
law.
And again, I try to keep itrelatively understandable.
(17:49):
In the U.
S.
statute, the phrase they use,Congress wrote is, a work made for
hire is owned by the hiring party.
Now, if I say that to you, that youprobably think, well, if I paid you to
do this thing, then I own it, right?
(18:10):
No, not quite.
What they were referring to was,if you're a W 2 employee, and the
work that you create is part of youremployment, the employer owns it.
But if the person's acontractor, they own it.
What does that mean in the world of theinternet and new websites and so on?
(18:32):
If I hire you to do my website in myagreement, it could be on a napkin.
It has to say, I, Harik, Najula, assignmy rights and copyright to Fredric
Abramson for the work he's paying me for.
Is this, this is a workfor hire agreement?
(18:52):
That's a work for hire.
But the fact that someone paidyou doesn't mean you own it.
I think that's, that's quite confusing,especially in an age of freelancers.
, I can get a, and I think even whenwe get into AI, and that's one of my,
my later questions, we get into AI,especially when it comes to your work.
(19:14):
The idea of ownership though, what canI do like this is this is something
that happens and I'm saying yourexperience, what, what can we do if
we didn't, you know, oftentimes starta company we didn't start off right.
We didn't do everything,dot our I's cross our T's.
We don't have a copyright.
We didn't get trademarks or patents.
(19:35):
We hired contractors to do all of ourlogos and websites and everything.
How can we correct that?
Or what's what strategies, work
that's a great question.
And first of all, for 99.
9 percent of the people who you hireto do websites and so on, they don't
think of themselves as the owner there.
(19:56):
They, they think thatyou, you, you paid me.
So you own it.
But if you wanted to really getinto the details of things, then
I would go to the person who didthe website and say, look, U.
S.
law has got this interesting littlenuance in it that you have to say in
a written document, I give FredricAbramson my rights and copyright
(20:22):
for the website I created for himand sign your name and date it.
That means that as the guy paying, Inow own the rights to the copyright.
Now, if it happens that you'reFrench, and you're living from
Paris, but you're living in New York.
then I can't change the sitewithout your permission because
(20:45):
French law still applies.
Right.
Well, if I'm not a French national, ifI'm not working with someone from France,
and that's the other thing, like, so a lotof times people will get freelancers on,
on these websites, and these freelancersare from other countries, like say India.
I had a guy, I did a project one time, Ihad a guy from the Philippines and from
(21:05):
India and the Ukraine all work on it.
So I did have a work for hire, but.
Mostly where you just, you feellike if you pay through this
website, then it's mine, right?
Yes, but legally it's not.
So, but in the world, everything is soinformal on the internet these days.
(21:26):
That people don't do it that reallyit if someone came if I hired you
and you came up with this amazinglycreative design, I'm not your
socks off one in a lifetime design.
I don't want someone else copyingthat and using the same design.
So I'd want you to give me the rights.
(21:48):
Assign me the rights to the copyright,and that would mean that someone can't
create what's called a derivative work.
They can't take the site andadjust it to their own use.
But in a world where people are informalabout stuff, the specifics of copyright
ownership aren't going to rise up to thelevel of monetization or value unless
(22:14):
something really important is created.
And then you got to make sure your I'sare dotted, your T's are crossed, and all
the contractors are signing the rights.
And it's a whispering battledown the lane, by the way.
If I hire someone in New York who hiresa subcontractor in Germany who hires
a subcontractor in Ukraine, everybodyin the chain has got to assign the
(22:37):
rights all the way up to the top.
Wow.
So, so that has, I do have a, I don'twant to say too long cause I know we
have a limited time and I have someother questions I want to kind of pivot
to, but there's this copyright issue.
So there's something that comes up,especially in this age of content
creation, everybody's a content creator,everybody's filming TikToks and Instagrams
(22:58):
and X spaces and, you know, videos,podcasts, like we're doing right now.
In that space, if I want to secure myself,I know people say, well, can I just.
File a copyright formy, films and my content.
And then can I join one of these, creative comments or something like that?
What is something that I can do if Idon't want to, I want to keep my expenses
(23:19):
low, but I also want to make sure thatI have some maintenance or copyrights.
The questions that I often get when Italk about content creation is about
rights free images or rights freemusic, or repurposing that content
without getting a takedown from YouTube.
I know this, this is, I'm tryingto put all this into one question
but as a content creator, You know,which is a lot of the entrepreneurs
(23:43):
today are content content creators.
What would you tell them to do ifthey don't want to be overwhelmed
by this and end up paying a wholelot to lawyers or law firms?
What are some some simple smartstrategies they can use to keep
themselves fundamentally protected?
It's a great question.
And because the way the modern world ofthe Internet and technology is moving,
(24:09):
there's a lot of informality involved.
But the real key in copyright is theeconomic value of what you create.
Now, I was, I've been takingsome notes while we talk.
Legally, my notes are copyrighted,because I wrote them, right?
(24:33):
But is anybody going to pay for these?
No, nobody would care.
So in most cases, The issue doesn'tarise because there's not enough economic
value in the work created for someoneelse to get worried about who owns what.
So basically, we've accepted theinformality of the system and
(24:58):
that the copyright law is reallybeing used to protect the economic
value of works that are known tohave value, like a work of art.
Thank you very much.
Like a book, like a song, so ifyou create, if you, like this video
that you're doing, this podcast, ifyou, if this podcast is something
(25:22):
that you monetize, and you chargea dollar, I'm making that up, for
people to watch the podcast, But 10,000 people watch it, then you've got
10, 000, that's an economic value.
If someone else says, I want todown, I want to stream the content,
(25:43):
and I'm going to show it to peoplethat I want to show it to, and I'll
charge them 50 cents, well, they'reinfringing something of value of yours.
So you'd have to decide, do I want to filethe copyright, um, application to get a
copyright Registration in the copyrightoffice, because if I do, then I can go to
(26:04):
court and tell the guy you owe me money.
Does this, have I answeredyour question reasonably?
Yeah, you definitely did.
I think I want to shift gears alittle bit because I think what you're
doing in your work, I mean, to be,I want to make sure we hit AI and
also get into genetics a little bit.
(26:26):
Your work today is focused onusing genetic data to lower injury
risk for athletes through yourcompany, Golden Thread Technology.
Tell us more about how you got into thatand then what role intellectual property
plays in protecting that innovation.
That's a great question.
I got into this because of myteaching at Johns Hopkins University
(26:50):
in the biotechnology master'sprogram, where I taught the business
courses, not the science courses.
So I taught the economics ofbiotechnology, which is one of the
things intellectual property touches on.
Um, uh, managerial finance,which also touches on IP.
(27:10):
ethical, legal, regulatory issues,and biotech, also touches on IP.
So I would be teaching these courses andmy students, uh, in the late 90s said,
we finished the human genome project.
And I said, well, now it's time to bringgenetics out of the darkness of disease.
(27:31):
Into everyday life becausepeople want to make life better.
They don't want to worryabout avoiding what they're
going to die from in 10 years.
And then in 2018, a bunch of mystudents came to me and said, you have
to see this paper out of Stanford.
They gave 14 triathletes or genetic dataand their injury rate went down 44%.
(27:53):
Wow.
I said, home run, don't need it anymore.
I said, but there's aproblem with the study.
They said, what's the problem?
I said, you're from Stanford.
I said, if you're from MIT, Stanford, andCaltech, everybody understands science,
but if you're an ordinary person, youhave to have the science put into a form
you can use without becoming a scientist.
(28:17):
And one of my students said,well, who's ever done that before?
I said, Google Maps.
With Google Maps, you don'thave to read a map anymore.
Just listen to them say, turnleft at the second light.
That's the same thing we need todo with the science of genetics.
You shouldn't have to study thisto figure out what you should be
(28:37):
eating, or doing, or playing ball.
You should be able to have a script foryou that says, here's what you need to
do in the next two hours to lower yourchances of something bad happening.
Wow.
So genetics can, like,I've heard about this.
Um, and I got to be honest, forme, I heard about it from somebody
(28:58):
who was trying to sell me some,some genetic, and Vitamins or
whatever, like I get the right.
Yeah, so that's it's comingto me from that perspective.
I haven't heard fromthis perspective about.
So how, how were you able to apply this?
I mean, you got a patent here.
So the system and methodfor evaluating right
nutritionomic data.
(29:20):
So how, how, what's the idea behind that?
Well, my patent went after my studentstold me about the Human Genome Project.
I had also spent a number of yearsin the supplement field and the
weight loss field in the 90s.
So I had some insight into what goeson in people's minds and behavior.
And I said, wait a minute, if you want tolose weight, We're genetically different.
(29:47):
The foods are different.
Why don't we match the ingredientsof what you're putting in your body
against your DNA to improve the outcomesthat you get, like losing weight
or feeling better, whatever it is.
And that's what the patent is.
It's matching the ingredients of a foodor supplement against your DNA to improve
(30:08):
well being or lower the risk of disease.
And you've put it up here on the thing.
It's basically making scienceuseful, in a way that applies to each
person uniquely and individually.
And ironically, that's exactlywhat intellectual property does.
(30:28):
Because it's your copyright.
It's your creation.
You patent something, it's your invention.
It's not the universe's.
IP is protecting what we can create.
And it's important to be able to do thatinternationally, because if we don't,
(30:51):
it'll, it'll, it'll make it less powerfulfor people to want to create things.
So what are some outcomes, Iguess, of that of that tech
with your, with your patent.
So you're taking yourpersonalizing supplementation
to improve athletic performance.
(31:14):
Yes.
Well, here's an example.
One of the things we know is that therisk of a kid breaking a bone when
they fall is inversely related to theamount of vitamin K in their body.
So, if you have a little kid, 5, yearsold, you need to feed them vitamin K
(31:35):
so that when they fall, they're lesslikely to break a bone in their arm.
But here's the thing.
There are genes that impact howfast you metabolize vitamin K.
So if you've got two kids, Michael andSusan, and Michael's a fast metabolizer
and Susan's a slow metabolizer, whichone needs more vitamin K in their diet?
(31:57):
Duh, Michael.
Michael, right.
Okay.
Where you're hearing me say thisis, We don't have to make it so
complex that an ordinary personcan't figure out what to do.
We have to make it so that if youknow, like one of the people I
(32:18):
tested in my, my test, a woman whowas overweight in her 60s, and she
said, I was born to love sugar.
We tested a gene for sugar craving.
It was negative.
And she said, Oh, Maybe I learned tolike sweets because my parents didn't
(32:40):
let me eat them when I was a kid.
Boom!
I learned to like them.
I could learn to unlike them.
To me, that's the practicalbenefit of looking at genetics.
And it's not about, to me,it's not about disease.
I don't want, if you want to look andsee whether you're going to get heart
(33:03):
disease or cancer, that's your choice.
But I don't do that, and I have another,I'll tell another story of why I decided
to focus on normal instead of disease.
I was in a meeting in New YorkCity around Christmas in 1976.
With MIT Sloan's, I was one of them,and we met with CEOs, and we met with
(33:26):
the CEO after lunch, and he gave histalk, and then you got to ask questions,
I put my hand up, he calls on me, Iget up, I introduce myself, I'm Dr.
Fredric Abraham, stop right there,do you know what the problem
with the American people is?
And I shook my head, no.
They want to die healthy.
Wow, that's the home run statement.
(33:48):
Because dying healthy isnot the same as living well.
But Tariq, here's the punchline, he wasCEO of Philip Morris Cigarette Company.
Very ironic, yeah.
But you appreciate the irony, right?
But to me, this is the thing.
(34:09):
Genetics is a tool.
We are all individuals.
Let me, can I share one moregenetic example to give people
more insight into what they do?
Okay, there's a diseasecalled Huntington's disease.
It is a neurologic disorderonset in your late 40s.
(34:30):
Once it starts, you're outof the game pretty quickly.
It is a single gene disorder.
One copy autosomaldominance, let's call it.
Woody Guthrie, by the way, thefolk singer, had Huntington's.
Well, in classic genetics, if youand I were identical twins and
you're diagnosed on Thursday asHuntington's, I'd be diagnosed on
(34:54):
Friday because we're identical, right?
Right.
But my ex wife, Ruth, who's also a humangeneticist, is an expert on Huntington's.
Right.
Right.
and worked on identical twins anddiscovered the age of onset for
Huntington's disease in identicaltwins could vary up to eight years.
(35:17):
Well, what's going on?
It isn't the gene, it'sthe environment they're in.
That means that we are not simplypassengers on the game of life.
on the ship of life.
We can make decisionsto make our life better.
And to me, one of the core elementsto make good decisions is good
(35:38):
data and good information, whetherit's going to a movie, going to
a restaurant, or understandinghow your genes impact your life.
Let me ask you, so you think thatthat this is leading to like one
of these futuristic sci fi movieswhere I can do a cheek swab at home?
And it's sitting in my, my computerand it's going to tell me, give
(35:59):
me a gene, analysis and tell mewhat it is my diet should be.
, to optimize, let's say I want to,
I'll take it a step further.
You'll be able to do a cheek swaband feed it into a system and a
3D printer will print the food youwant exactly to match your genes.
(36:21):
Wow.
3D printed fruit.
I've seen it.
I've seen 3D printed meat,
well, Nestle, the company Nestleis working on 3D printing of food.
Yeah.
Wow I have to wrap my head around that.
I don't know.
I kind of want my food to have some,some earth connection, some sunlight.
It's just, it just showswhere things are going.
It's a, it's world.
(36:43):
Innovation is really critical.
And innovation is drivenby intellectual property.
And so if you create something, ifit has value, take the steps to make
sure that you actually own what itis, where you've assigned it to, got
the assignment the right way, and thatit's enforceable in a reasonable way.
(37:06):
When if something comes, youknow that that you're getting
kind of cheated out of something,
and that's that's something I wanted.
I don't want to tap, you know,pivoted a little bit to AI.
Dovetailing what you just stated, how doI know as a startup or founder that I do
have something that has economic value.
(37:27):
I mean, initially, I know I mayhave a problem trying to solve.
It's interesting to me.
I may have done beta testing andgotten some insight from, you
know, a test group or focus group.
I might have even gotten some seed moneyor won a pitch competition, but how do
I know that I have something, even ifI've done all that, that still may not be
economic value to have option protection.
(37:49):
What is the metric?
How should I make that decision?
It's a great question, Tariq.
And I, I learned this in thebusiness world and music and retail
sales and the software industry.
You got to talk to customers.
(38:09):
I have a presentation for GoldenThread that I've shown the
1500 people around the world.
And I show it three minuteslong and I show it to them.
And when it finishes, I say.
Is this something you would want to do?
Yes or no?
And if they say yes, I say, wouldyou pay this amount of money for it?
(38:30):
Yes or no?
And, and I say, and why wouldyou do it if they say yes?
And that answer I'll share with you, theyall say it's because I know it's about
me as a person, because it's my DNA.
But I, in the software field, I sawpeople building things that were for
themselves, but not for a market.
(38:52):
But I will share a story thatrelates precisely to your point.
How do you know whatyou're doing makes sense?
And also, what happens whensomebody else tells you it's stupid?
So, in the late 1970s, early 80s,I was in San Francisco at the
Del Carnado Hotel for a softwaremeeting, a national software meeting.
(39:16):
And I am in line for lunch, andI'm talking to this guy, just
like you and I are talking.
And I said to him, so what are you doing?
He said, I'm writing software tohelp women balance their checkbook.
I said, what?
He said, yeah, they, they screw it up.
They get in fights with theirhusband, leads to divorces.
(39:37):
I said, you gotta be kidding me.
He said, no, I'm going tocall it Quicken, which became
QuickBooks, which became Intuit.
Wow.
That's the answer.
If you talk to the people that you'rebuilding it for, and they like it,
you have a shot at making a market.
(39:59):
But if you build it by sitting inyour basement thinking, I know people
will love it, then it's a crapshoot.
I think I definitelythink that's the case.
I have, um, a couple of questionsthat I kind of want to leave it for
you to, if you have any reflection.
So one thing, I mean, you're.
(40:20):
your career, you, you, from the epitomeof science to business, to music, uh,
even to, to software, having gotten intosoftware at the beginning of computers.
I mean, with, with, with thebreadboards, the cards, I mean, I
learned some of that stuff, COBOL.
And, you know, when I was coming throughschool, we had to learn these things.
(40:42):
So they were legacy machines and we had tomake sure that we could work these things.
And that's just understanding, seeing.
Software or computing from thereand seeing today where we have
things like large language models,chat GPT, we have all of these
things in artificial intelligence.
How do you look at that?
And how do you see that?
Otherwise it's like, I'm seeing, youknow, we're seeing lawsuits with the
(41:05):
New York times and other, they're sayingthat you're just taking public domain
stuff and plagiarizing, which is whatthe argument is, but also you've seen
very powerful creations based on theselarge language models, how do you see
AI today and its impact on the future?
It's a tool.
(41:26):
When I learned computing writingsoftware in the sixties, it
was a tool to solve problems.
And so one of the problems that I wasgiven early on was to analyze, to identify
the rate of spontaneous abortion orspontaneous fetal death in pregnancies,
(41:49):
because the literature was filledwith all this conflicting information.
So I was able to get 360, 000 pregnancyrecords from New York City, and I
had to develop a new mathematics,but I had a computer to do this all.
I was writing in four Trade and then thenumber that came out was closer to 75%.
(42:14):
It's not the number.
It's the fact that I was able to usethe technology, but look at an a, a
population size that was so big thatbefore a computer you couldn't do it.
And I was able to use computersto develop new mathematics.
Actually look at the problem in a new way.
(42:36):
Well, you come downstream 60 years and AIis letting us look at things in a new way.
AI won't be perfect.
You can put something in and it will getit wrong, but it can help you understand
your world in a way that three yearsago, you'd be doing Google searches.
(43:00):
And 20 years ago, you'd have togo to your local library to get a
book to see if there's a book on.
Right.
Now, there, I know there's arguments aboutwho owns what with AI developed material.
And that's an interesting argumentbecause clearly AI is not a human being.
(43:21):
And the most laws of copyrightrequire a human have some role in it.
But from my point of view, if you wrotea song in AI, and then you sat down at
the piano and started editing it andworking it, and you worked it out, I think
by then you own the rights to the song.
(43:43):
I can see it opening a lot of different,a panacea when it comes to IP, I mean they
have They're creating voices mimickingvoices of other, you know, singers or
rappers or performers creating music intheir style videos that are mimicking
film, you know, it's, it opens a lotof a lot of interesting infringement
(44:09):
conversations as well as just just,
yeah, if it's if it's a 10 yearold kid doing it for his sister's
birthday party, who cares.
so much.
But if it's a 30 year old woman doingit because she wants to put it on the
internet and make money, then you care.
So, yeah, does this makesense to you, Tariq?
(44:29):
It makes sense.
I think, um, as we kind of close there,there's one question I want to ask from
a previous conversation that we had.
You talked about the power of copyright.
As it relates to, you know, sometimespeople say, well, I have a mention, I
have a product, a patent is the way to go.
And a patent is limitedin scope for 20 years.
(44:50):
Copyright, you know, has a muchlonger life, 70 or even longer.
It's the life of the author plus time.
Well, you talked about how, there'sa strategy to use copyrights in a
much more powerful way and robust way.
That's something that's not talkedabout, I guess, or not the strategy
that's sold to us in the IP field today.
Why do you, you know, what,what are your thoughts on that?
(45:14):
I think copyright, since it startswith, it protects the work of creation
at the moment it's created, and itprotects the creator, or creators,
if it's a collaborative work.
So, but, that's the technical legal issue.
The pragmatic issue is, who cares?
(45:40):
And caring means, That doesn't havetranslate into some economic value.
And if it does, then you want to takesteps to make sure you control how it's
distributed, how it's used and so on.
I mean, if you if you create a websitefor somebody, and it's really amazingly
(46:03):
creative, you can write in theagreement that I've assigned it to you.
For you to use, but I can put in it.
You do not have the right to redistributeit to any other third person.
You don't need the right to letsomebody else copy it for their purpose.
Now, enforcing it is a pain.
(46:27):
You want lawyers to go to court?
You're talking thousandsand thousands of dollars.
That's why it's the economic issue.
But by and large, most things that arecreated, the people create them can
use them make money from them, and noone else in the world is going to want
to copy it or use it against the todiminish the market of of the creator.
(46:56):
I agree.
I think, mean, Dr.
Abramson, it's been an absolutepleasure having you on the show
today, as we, I mean your insightsabout Copyright law, idea, ownership.
And really what I takeaway is the economic value.
I think this is one, something that getsleft out of the IB conversation a lot,
a lot of times it's driven by sales.
I mean, you need a trademark, youneed a patent, you need a copyright.
(47:18):
You need, and you know, that's, that'snever been part of our business.
We always try to tell people, youknow, if, if you need it, I'll, I'll
do a patent search in a minute, butI'm not going to say that you need a
patent unless the search reveals that.
Or.
You know, if you're a startup and I'madvising you through, through Tedco,
one of these other , startup grind.
What is other accelerated programs?
(47:40):
It's based on where you are.
If you don't have aproduct, you have an idea.
You might want to minimizeinvestment in any IP.
You want to make sure you have something.
Let's do a focus group.
Talk to customers.
Get some feedback.
After you've done that, you know, so
I think you've touchedon the core element.
It really boils down to the economics.
(48:00):
And a really example of that is theissue of trademark, which you mentioned.
Trademark protects the image.
You know the brand, but if yourbrand doesn't have any value.
What does it make of somebodyelse uses the brand for
themselves in some other way.
Right.
(48:21):
So I would, I would open up tothis to see, again, I could talk
to you in your stories, especiallybeing IP geek like myself, really.
Enjoy your insights and connectivity.
I think one thing I always get into toIP really understanding it from music
because, you know, hip hop music,there's this sampling where you're
(48:42):
taking, and I have, I have, you know,aunts and uncles and relatives that
have been in the music field prominentin the sixties and seventies, and so.
You know, they're still making aliving, some of them, because they
produced this music and it's beingreused and hip hop and re sampled.
so I always, when you talkedabout music and that, that
always comes to, to my mind.
(49:02):
But I think looking back at your wholecareer, like from, from then, from
the music, rock and roll, to Sam Cookeand Jerry Lee Lewis, and all the way
to software and, you know, teachingat Hopkins, going to law school.
Is there one thing, I guess, thathas kind of stood out to you about
(49:22):
intellectual property or something thatyou would like to see changed or done
differently or even just your insightinto where things are going, you know,
looking back at it, because it seemslike it's a connectivity from all of
it, you know, kind of a common thread.
Well, I know it's an interesting question.
And the lesson I've learned isthat IP law, like other areas of
(49:46):
law, constantly will evolve as theworld and the technology evolves.
But the core will always remain the same.
We want to protect creativeact work that has value.
Patents are a certain level of creativity.
(50:09):
In which it's a thing that canbe touched and felt and used.
Copyright is created out of thebrain in usually an artistic form.
Trademark is creativity in creatingan image for someone so that
it's easy for them to recognize.
(50:31):
The Nike swoosh.
Everyone knows if they see a shoe withthat swoosh on it, that it's made by Nike.
So the law will evolve.
It will make mistakes.
It will not please everyone.
And when you mention things likeartificial intelligence, I don't
know that I have any specialinsight into where it's going to go.
(50:55):
Clearly, the courts around theworld and the legislatures will
have to make decisions about wherethey want that boundary to be, of
what's protectable and what's not.
I think that insight, is very,very potent especially for startups,
founders, content creators, thosetoday who are looking at a theme.
I think that really wraps it up nicely.
(51:18):
And I know we're just scratchingthe surface of what's possible,
especially when it comes to AI andmachine learning, even with the
genetic data that you're dealing with.
We're just scratching thesurface of what's possible, , I
want to say that it, Dr.
Abramson, it was an absolute pleasurehaving you on the show today.
Your insights, again, into copyrightlaw, into ownership, and even, into
(51:39):
genetics and AI, it's invaluable.
I wanted to ask, where canour listeners learn more about
your work and connect with you?
Well, one easy one, I'm on LinkedIn,and if they type my name, as it's
seen on the screen here, with, withFredric without an E and without a K,
I'll be the only one that shows up.
(52:01):
They can also, if they want, send mean email to my email address, f as in
Fredric, d as in David Abramson, at goldenthread, the stuff you sew with, tech, t e
c h dot com, And you know, I'll respond.
I'd like to acknowledge email that comes.
It's not spam.
(52:23):
Yeah, definitely.
If they were interested ingolden thread technology?
What?
How can they reach you there?
Well, they could send me an email.
We're, we're working to get the websiteredesigned so we could launch our basic
prototype and minimum viable productbecause we want to start getting it out to
the world to let people interact with it.
(52:44):
That's another lesson, by theway, from the music business.
It doesn't matter whatyou do in the studio.
It's when you get on stage and youwant to show it to the audience.
That's when you know whether yougot something worth working with.
Definitely.
that's, that's fantastic.
Dr.
Abramson, thank you again.
(53:04):
And to our listeners, I hope youenjoyed this deep dive into IP
strategy and its impact on technology.
until next time, keep thinking abouthow to protect your ideas because your
IP can be your most valuable asset,especially if it provides economic value.
remember to, to subscribe,leave us a review.
, On your favorite podcast platform,and you can follow us on social media,
(53:25):
Patent Insider Secrets, Patent Insider.
Stay tuned for, for more expertinsights and IP strategies right
here on Patent Insider Secrets.
Thank you for a wonderful experience.
Um,
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