Intangiblia™

A live show can be thrilling for one person and terrifying for another, especially when the room offers only vague warnings like “flashing lights.” We sit down with composer, writer, and inventor Helen Epega (The Venus Bushfires) to unpack how synesthesia shapes her world, why it can feel magical and overwhelming at the same time, and how that lived experience becomes a blueprint for better accessibility in the arts.

We ...

“Art feeds the soul” is true, and it’s also incomplete. When we treat creative work as something above commerce, we end up normalizing unpaid labor, weak bargaining power, and policies that make it harder to build a life as an author. We sit down with John Deegan, CEO of the Writers Union of Canada and chair of the International Authors Forum, to get honest about what it takes to sustain professional cultural work...

Most readers never notice the translator’s name, yet translation is the difference between a book that merely “sounds correct” and a book that actually lives in a new language. We sit down with Cécile Deniard, a literary translator of around 60 books and a longtime leader in European translator advocacy, to show what the job really demands: deep reading, seven or more revision passes, research that can span prison...

What if the most reliable path for a Caribbean author isn’t a viral post or a distant platform, but a seat at the library table and a place in the classroom? We sit down with Feline Keetano—author, librarian, and filmmaker—to map the practical steps that move a book from a local print run into the hands of real readers. From legal deposit to cataloging, from national systems that buy for multiple branches to libra...

What happens when a writer who cracked the code at four grows up to lead a nation’s authors in a rapidly changing book economy? We sit down with Mikaela, president of the Society of Swedish Authors in Finland, to explore how love of language becomes both a creative engine and a shield for cultural diversity. From her early sense of writing as a private room for thinking to the public work of advocacy, she opens up about balan...

We’re joined by Serena Barone from the International Artists Forum, an international organization built to connect author groups worldwide and strengthen the push for authors’ rights across borders. If you care about copyright, intellectual property, creator advocacy, and how culture gets protected, this season is for you.

We dig into why the International Artists Forum was founded in the first place. Serena expl...

We’re in London at the INTA 2026 Annual Meeting, but we’re not doing a standard conference recap. We wanted to show how intellectual property work can be creative, inventive, and even fun, so we built THE INVENTIVE MINDSET GAME, a scenario game, and handed real IP lawyers a stack of tricky client prompts.

Each prompt forces a choice: do you follow the client’s exact instructions, take an inventive counselin...

Somewhere right now, a kid is kicking a ball in the street while a stadium across the world is holding its breath for a final-second win. We love sports because they create instant shared meaning, but the part most fans never see is the structure that makes those moments travel, repeat, and endure. For World IP Day 2026, we’re celebrating “IP and sports” with a playful challenge that lands on a serious point: inte...

A company can vanish from your pocket and still show up in court and that is not a metaphor. We take a hard look at the afterlife of innovation and the real business question behind it: can intellectual property outlive the company that created it, and if so, what legal structures make that possible?

We trace six vivid case studies that turn “failed products” into ongoing value. BlackBerry shows how patent moneti...

A chocolate bunny wrapped in gold foil should not be a legal thriller and yet it is. We follow the Lindt Easter Bunny across Europe’s courtrooms as judges wrestle with a high-stakes branding question: when does a familiar seasonal design stop being decoration and start functioning as a trademark that signals source, trust, and reputation?

We break down how trademark law can protect more than names and logos, including ...

You can walk into a negotiation thinking you only need a number, a percentage, a quick yes. Then it turns into a psychological chess match where “standard terms” and sudden urgency start rewriting the value of what you built. We step back and treat negotiation the way innovators and creators need to treat it: as a moment where strategy, judgment, and intellectual property protection collide.

We share a simple fra...

Video episode!

Start Summit 2026, an event organized by students in Switzerland. Featuring an elevator and a challenge every entrepreneur knows well: explain a complex idea in 60 seconds without losing what truly matters.

From Start Summit 2026 in St. Gallen, we recorded an Intangiblia Flash episode capturing the energy of a place where investors, founders, and inventors come together to accelerate, expand, and turn real technology i...

A baseball game is 90 feet between bases and a lifetime of stories in the box score, but the biggest action often happens off the field. We’re looking at the invisible game that keeps baseball’s culture and business running: intellectual property law. From broadcast rights to team branding, we connect the dots between trademarks, patents, copyright, and licensing, and we show how those tools can protect creativity witho...

What if the modern world looked different because the credits finally did too? We set out to restore names to the ideas that power daily life, sharing sixteen stories of women whose discoveries span DNA’s double helix, nuclear fission, pulsars, parity violation, microbial genetics, and the X/Y blueprint of sex determination. From there we move through materials and medicine—Kevlar’s lifesaving strength, Scotchgard...

Arcades roar, quarters clatter, and a cartoon ape climbs into legal history. From that moment, we trace how Nintendo turned courtroom battles into a durable framework that protects creativity, sustains markets, and shapes how gaming IP is enforced worldwide. We walk you through the legendary Donkey Kong versus King Kong fight, the NES lockout wars with Atari Games, and the surprising Game Genie ruling that carved out space for temp...

Feel the chill of the Winter Games—and the heat of the lab—where medals are measured in milliseconds and built on decades of design. We pull back the curtain on the quiet inventions that make elite sport possible, from fluid-dynamic swimsuits to carbon-plated marathon shoes, from the hinged brilliance of the clapskate to the high-speed vision of tracking and timing systems. The story isn’t scandal; it’s stru...

Valentine’s Day feels effortless on the surface—red hearts, last‑minute roses, a playlist called “forever.” Pull back the foil, and you’ll find contracts, case law, and platform rules deciding which colors, words, motifs, and links reach your eyes first. We walk through 14 “love battles” where romance collides with intellectual property: Cadbury’s Pantone 2685C fight over color marks,...

Bright lights, louder headlines, and a legal backbone strong enough to hold the biggest cultural moment of the year. We take you past the scoreboard and into the systems that make the Super Bowl work: broadcast rights that cross borders, trademarks that protect trust, and licensing strategies that turn 15 minutes of halftime into global memory. Along the way, we unpack the real moves behind “The Big Game,” from satellit...

Think a lost patent ends the story? We unpack how Lego turned a single technical invention into a platform for decades of innovation, brand power, and adult creativity. Starting with the 1958 stud-and-tube coupling, we explain what the original brick patent really covered, why its expiry didn’t sink the company, and how modern patents protect motion, mechanisms, and programmable systems rather than basic interlocking. From th...