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