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? I am recovering still little,
Speaker 1: you know, raspy, But here we go the show. They
Speaker 1: say it must keep on happening. I think I think
Speaker 1: that's the saying. And today I thought I would talk Uh,
Speaker 1: this is kind of a weird mishmash of a show,
Speaker 1: but I thought I would talk about a few inventors
Speaker 1: who created stuff. Some of that stuff would become insanely popular,
Speaker 1: and yet these inventors were never really able to fully
Speaker 1: capitalize on their innovation for one reason or another. Uh.
Speaker 1: But the reason why I wanted to do that is
Speaker 1: because there's this narrative, particularly here in the United States,
Speaker 1: that if you've got ingenuity and elbow grease, you can
Speaker 1: work your way to the top. You can smash through
Speaker 1: economic and social barriers that you know otherwise constrain us.
Speaker 1: So here in the US, all that gets wrapped up
Speaker 1: in what we call the American dream. Unfortunately, sometimes you
Speaker 1: can do everything right and still lose out. And so
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about some of those cases. We're also
Speaker 1: going to talk a lot about patents, and I've talked
Speaker 1: about patents before, but let's go over it again kind
Speaker 1: of as a reminder. To receive a patent is to
Speaker 1: get some authorities assurance that that authority recognizes you as
Speaker 1: the inventor of something. Typically we're talking about a government office,
Speaker 1: some office that has been authorized by the government to
Speaker 1: do this, like the U. S. Patent Office. So to
Speaker 1: secure a patent, and inventor has to submit a patent
Speaker 1: application and also pay fees in order to have it considered.
Speaker 1: The application has to explain at least in some detail
Speaker 1: what the invention does and how it works, and that
Speaker 1: description needs to be at least somewhat specific. If you
Speaker 1: get really vague in general with your patent application, you're
Speaker 1: less likely to be granted a patent by the office,
Speaker 1: because if you're not really describing how your invention works,
Speaker 1: then that creates this this huge bubble you can use
Speaker 1: to attack anyone who makes anything remotely similar to your invention. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: the whole idea of a patent is that it protects
Speaker 1: your idea, your invention. But if you are so vague
Speaker 1: with the way you word how your invention works, anyone
Speaker 1: who makes anything even remotely similar you could argue as
Speaker 1: infringing on your patent, when really the problem is you
Speaker 1: never explained how your invention works properly. Patent applications and
Speaker 1: patents themselves are a matter of public record, and that
Speaker 1: means anyone can pull up your patent and see how
Speaker 1: your invention works. You can do this right now. You
Speaker 1: go to the internet, go to a web page, uh,
Speaker 1: Patent office web page, and start searching patents. You can
Speaker 1: read all you want. They get pretty technical and filled
Speaker 1: with like jargon and legal ease, largely too kind of
Speaker 1: obfu skate what's happening uh, And that does make it
Speaker 1: a little tricky to read. Uh. You also get a
Speaker 1: lot of this kind of flowery language that has been
Speaker 1: adopted as being standard in patents. But you can do it.
Speaker 1: You can check it out and you can see exactly,
Speaker 1: or at least generally, how various inventions work. But the
Speaker 1: patent also grants protection for the invention. So if you
Speaker 1: discover that some ne'er do well out there has been
Speaker 1: copying your invention, you can take that person or you know,
Speaker 1: entity to court and you could say, you know, they
Speaker 1: sue them for patent infringement. If you can prove that
Speaker 1: they were using your patented approach without first getting your
Speaker 1: permission to do it, then you can frequently get some
Speaker 1: decent damages out of them and shut their illegal operations down.
Speaker 1: Often these end up going to settlement before it goes
Speaker 1: all the way through the court system. Court cases are expensive,
Speaker 1: and if a company is already kind of feeling like
Speaker 1: they're not gonna win out on a on a case,
Speaker 1: they might choose to settle rather than draw things out,
Speaker 1: pay the high price of legal fees on top of
Speaker 1: whatever damages they end up getting thrown their way as well.
Speaker 1: Now we're going to get back to this idea about
Speaker 1: you know, permissions and patents and licensing and all that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, because I am oversimplifying here. Now, patents
Speaker 1: have a shelf life, and here in the United States,
Speaker 1: a utility patent has twenty years. Uh. There is an
Speaker 1: asterisk here. However, in order to have the full protection
Speaker 1: of a patent, then the applicant has to pay occasional
Speaker 1: fees in order for the patent to be enforceable. So
Speaker 1: it's really a maximum of twenty years. But that maximum
Speaker 1: is determined by whether or not the applicant has actually
Speaker 1: continued to pay uh those those regular fees. So after
Speaker 1: twenty years, a patent expires, and anyone can make use
Speaker 1: of that patented technology. However, they like folks can copy
Speaker 1: your invention and it's totally legal. They can make their
Speaker 1: own version of whatever invention you created. However, you know,
Speaker 1: the thought is, after twenty years, whatever the technology is
Speaker 1: is going to be so out of date, then at
Speaker 1: that point you will have moved on to other stuff. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: some folks might get inspired by your old patented invention
Speaker 1: and they might use that as a springboard to create
Speaker 1: something entirely new. So, in other words, patents have an
Speaker 1: expiration date, both because governments want to strike a balance
Speaker 1: between protecting inventions and inventors as well as encouraging innovation.
Speaker 1: That's always like the other side of the coin, right,
Speaker 1: the idea of protecting ideas can often come at the
Speaker 1: cost of innovation. If someone else sees an idea someone
Speaker 1: had and thinks that's great, I know how to make
Speaker 1: it better, but they're prevented from making it better because
Speaker 1: there's a patent in the way. That could be a problem. Now,
Speaker 1: There's also an alternative to patenting your invention, and that's
Speaker 1: you know, just trying to keep it secret, keep it safe.
Speaker 1: But that runs a pretty big risk. If someone figures
Speaker 1: out how you did whatever it was your invention does,
Speaker 1: and then they copy you and you don't have a patent,
Speaker 1: well it's gonna be a lot harder for you to
Speaker 1: stop them from doing that and seeking out damages. If
Speaker 1: you're super careful and secretive and your invention is not
Speaker 1: easy to reverse engineer, well you might be able to
Speaker 1: dominate the market. But if someone does reverse engineer your work,
Speaker 1: you know that is, if they see what your invention
Speaker 1: does and then they work backward to figure out how
Speaker 1: the invention doesn't, well, you could be opening yourself up
Speaker 1: to unexpected competition. Now I should add that lots of
Speaker 1: folks will reverse engineer patented inventions even with the patent
Speaker 1: being publicly available. So a patent is supposed to explain
Speaker 1: how an invention works, and it's supposed to be specific
Speaker 1: enough so that it can be an enforceable patent, But
Speaker 1: that's still not quite the same thing as like having
Speaker 1: an instruction manual on how to build the darn thing,
Speaker 1: or a manual explaining how it actually works in practice.
Speaker 1: So sometimes you'll have competitors who will take a product
Speaker 1: that someone else made and they will reverse engineer that
Speaker 1: patented device, And they might do that not just to
Speaker 1: figure out how the competition is doing what they do,
Speaker 1: but also to figure out maybe there's an alternative way
Speaker 1: to get the same end result that doesn't depend upon
Speaker 1: the patented technology. Let's use an example, because this is
Speaker 1: getting kind of esoteric, I guess. So let's say that
Speaker 1: you have invented a machine and that machine makes cookies,
Speaker 1: and you've created an innovative cookie dough extractor thing about Bob,
Speaker 1: and you patented it, and your arch nemesis in the
Speaker 1: cookie world has purchased one of your cookie machines and
Speaker 1: then taken it apart, and then they build their own
Speaker 1: cookie machine, and they make sure that they use an
Speaker 1: alternative approach that accomplishes the same goal. It still makes cookies,
Speaker 1: but it does it in a way that's fundamentally different
Speaker 1: from the way your machine makes cookies. And the two
Speaker 1: cookies that are produced minded up being really really similar,
Speaker 1: but the processes are different. That means that if you
Speaker 1: were to take that other you know, arch nemesis to court.
Speaker 1: The court would say, well, I would probably say anyway,
Speaker 1: you can never guarantee these things. But the court would
Speaker 1: probably say, well, yeah, they're using a cookie making machine,
Speaker 1: but clearly they're using a different process than your cooking
Speaker 1: making machine does. Therefore, their cooking making machine does not
Speaker 1: infringe upon your patent. So the alternatives are you either
Speaker 1: have to purchase stuff from who whoever holds the patent,
Speaker 1: and that's assuming that the patent holder is actually making
Speaker 1: the invention they patented in the first place, or you
Speaker 1: have to license the patented designed from from the patent holder.
Speaker 1: There are companies out there that hold hundreds or thousands
Speaker 1: of patents, and these companies make money not by manufacturing something.
Speaker 1: They're not actually making the inventions that the patents cover. Instead,
Speaker 1: they license those patents to other companies that do make stuff.
Speaker 1: So these companies are just making money by licensing out
Speaker 1: the patented inventions to other companies that make the thing,
Speaker 1: and that's how they make a profit, and that's perfectly legal.
Speaker 1: But then there are also patent trolls. All right, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna talk about patentrols more in just a second, but
Speaker 1: first let's take a quick break. Okay, before the break,
Speaker 1: I mentioned patent trolls, and I've done episodes about these
Speaker 1: as well. But it's important for us to remember what
Speaker 1: a patent troll is. That is, a person or an
Speaker 1: entity that holds one or more patents and doesn't make
Speaker 1: any use of it other than as kind of a weapon.
Speaker 1: So patent trolls look out for anyone who's making any
Speaker 1: kind of product or service that could infringe upon a
Speaker 1: patent that the patent trolls hold. Then they threatened legal
Speaker 1: action against that that person or company. So the trolls
Speaker 1: goal ultimately is to coax out a big, juicy settlement
Speaker 1: payment from that targeted entity. The troll has no intent
Speaker 1: on making use of the patent, nor is it necessarily
Speaker 1: even licensing out the patent. It's just lying in wait.
Speaker 1: It's like a trap that's been set. It's just waiting
Speaker 1: to spring into action as soon as it detects that
Speaker 1: someone in fact is making a technology that could conceivably
Speaker 1: be said to infringe upon a patent that the troll holds.
Speaker 1: They're generally regarded by the rest of the text sphere
Speaker 1: as odious entities. Anyway, patents will pop up a couple
Speaker 1: of times in this episode, so I thought it was
Speaker 1: a good idea to that quick cliffs notes version of
Speaker 1: what they are and why they exist. We're gonna be
Speaker 1: coming back and talking about specific things about patents as well.
Speaker 1: But before we get into all that, let's start off
Speaker 1: with an actual inventor who came up with an idea.
Speaker 1: She filed a patent for this idea, she received a
Speaker 1: patent for it, and yet failed to be recognized for
Speaker 1: her work and did not make money off of her idea.
Speaker 1: And it was an idea that, for a short while,
Speaker 1: was nothing short of a global sensation. All right, So
Speaker 1: they aren't really a thing anymore, at least not anything
Speaker 1: that anyone talks about. It's kind of a thing that,
Speaker 1: you know, you might joke about if you were, for
Speaker 1: some reason joking about the year two thousand seventeen. But
Speaker 1: do you remember fidget spinners? Do you remember when fidget
Speaker 1: spinners became huge, like unavoidably huge. Everyone was selling different
Speaker 1: kinds of fidget spinners. You had some that would light up,
Speaker 1: You had some that were had you know, logos on them.
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works had a few How stuff Works branded
Speaker 1: fidget spinners. I actually have a few at my house. Uh.
Speaker 1: The toys in case you're not familiar with fidget spinners,
Speaker 1: and it just means that you weren't awake during two
Speaker 1: thousand and seventeen, if that's the case. But the toys
Speaker 1: have a ball bearing in the center of them, and
Speaker 1: around the ball bearing is kind of a lobed structure,
Speaker 1: and typically you had like three lobes surrounding the ball bearing,
Speaker 1: and the lobes can spin freely along the axis of
Speaker 1: the ball bearing with just a little tap and you
Speaker 1: could spin them. You could flick them and and it
Speaker 1: would spin around it's it's ball bearing center. And like
Speaker 1: I said, they became popular and then ultimately became unavoidable
Speaker 1: in two thousand seventeen. Then not long after that they
Speaker 1: kind of fizzled out like it was a flash in
Speaker 1: the pan kind of fad. Uh. No telling if they're
Speaker 1: ever going to make a comeback. You know, we've seen
Speaker 1: other toys have this kind of reaction where they get
Speaker 1: huge and they go away and then years later they
Speaker 1: come back again. The yo yo, fittingly enough, a toy
Speaker 1: that goes down on the string and that ultimately comes
Speaker 1: back up again if you're doing it right. The yo
Speaker 1: yo does that, it gets really popular, and then it
Speaker 1: essentially disappears, and then years later it gets really popular again.
Speaker 1: Well anyway, the genius behind the fidget spinner was Catherine Hettinger,
Speaker 1: and I think for a lot of people, Hettinger is
Speaker 1: not the type of person who springs to mind when
Speaker 1: you use the word inventor, but that's exactly what she is.
Speaker 1: She is an inventor. She invented the fidget spinner concept
Speaker 1: back in the nineteen nineties while she was taking care
Speaker 1: of her daughter. Hettinger had a medical condition that limited
Speaker 1: her ability to really be active and to actively play
Speaker 1: with her kid, so she turned her innovation toward finding
Speaker 1: a toy that could help out, and she designed the
Speaker 1: fidget spinner and patented her invention back in nine seven,
Speaker 1: twenty years before the fidget spinner would become a phenomenon.
Speaker 1: She entered into talks with Hasbro, the toy company, but
Speaker 1: ultimately those talks didn't go anywhere, and in two thousand five,
Speaker 1: she was faced with a four hundred dollar renewal fee
Speaker 1: for her patent and she was strapped for cash. She was,
Speaker 1: you know, just trying to make ends meet, so she
Speaker 1: chose to let the patent expire because the one deal
Speaker 1: she had with a toy company had fallen through, so
Speaker 1: she didn't have the money to just keep this patent
Speaker 1: going for no real reason. And then more than a
Speaker 1: decade after that, the fidget spinner would pop up and
Speaker 1: become a craze. Hettinger didn't benefit from that at all,
Speaker 1: although I should say in interviews it seems like she's
Speaker 1: really pleased that people found her invention interesting and entertaining,
Speaker 1: like she has a really good attitude about it. Now,
Speaker 1: many articles point out that even if Hettinger had kept
Speaker 1: the patent on fidget spinners, and even if the craze
Speaker 1: had happened before the patent expired, because remember she she
Speaker 1: filed for the patent in nineties seven. Um, I think
Speaker 1: she was awarded it a couple of years later, so
Speaker 1: she was getting real close to that patent expiring just
Speaker 1: even on its own. Um. You know, the patent expires
Speaker 1: from the date it was issued, not the date it
Speaker 1: was applied for, so she still had a little bit
Speaker 1: of wiggle room. But even with that, she might have
Speaker 1: still been out of luck and when it came to
Speaker 1: profiting off her idea. And that's because most fidget spinners
Speaker 1: were coming out of Chinese manufacturing companies, a small to
Speaker 1: medium sized companies that aren't particularly concerned about following rules
Speaker 1: when it comes to patents. The fidget spinner is such
Speaker 1: a relatively simple design and it's so inexpensive to manufacture
Speaker 1: that it represented a very low bar to meet in
Speaker 1: order to get in on the craze. Like if you
Speaker 1: saw that these were starting to get popular, then it
Speaker 1: didn't It didn't require much for you to start making
Speaker 1: them yourself if you had the manufacturing capabilities. And because
Speaker 1: the company is making these things are in China, it's
Speaker 1: pretty much impossible for the U. S. Patent Office to
Speaker 1: enforce any patents that are being violated there, Like it's
Speaker 1: just there the lad the jurisdiction does not extend all
Speaker 1: the way out to China. And I don't know about you,
Speaker 1: but I find Hettinger's story pretty frustrating because I think
Speaker 1: folks should get compensated for their work and for their ideas. Again,
Speaker 1: Hettinger herself seems to be, you know, really fine with everything,
Speaker 1: but I'm I'm of the opinion that someone should at least,
Speaker 1: you know, send a truckload to cash her way for
Speaker 1: the fact that her invention became one of the uh
Speaker 1: iconic things to come out of two thousand and seventeen.
Speaker 1: Speaking of the threat of Chinese companies, let's talk about
Speaker 1: another and ventor who was affected by that. I'm talking
Speaker 1: about Shame Chen, who created another piece of tech that
Speaker 1: had a heck of a rise to popularity followed by
Speaker 1: some crash and burns literally though that wasn't necessarily Chen's fault.
Speaker 1: So Chen was born in China, but he immigrated to
Speaker 1: the United States back in the nineteen eighties, and he
Speaker 1: founded a couple of different companies, and he was creating
Speaker 1: interesting technology in different fields, including tech for the agricultural industry.
Speaker 1: So he has had a hand in inventing lots of
Speaker 1: different stuff. However, the invention that he created that the
Speaker 1: mainstream would really become aware of was the hoverboard. Now
Speaker 1: not talking about the fictional technology used in Back to
Speaker 1: the Future too, and to some extent and Back to
Speaker 1: the Future three, that kind of hoverboard doesn't exist. Despite
Speaker 1: the fact that Robert Zemeckis shot some cheeky behind the
Speaker 1: scenes footage that supposed least that that hoverboards do exist,
Speaker 1: they don't. Now I'm talking about the two wheeled platforms
Speaker 1: that you stand on and use kind of like a
Speaker 1: segue in order to roll around. He also patented the
Speaker 1: solo wheel, which is an electric unicycle that's self balanced.
Speaker 1: Back when I was walking to the office, I often
Speaker 1: saw this one dude cruising down the belt Line, which
Speaker 1: is a big pedestrian and bicycle lane that goes through
Speaker 1: a lot of Atlanta, and he was on his solo
Speaker 1: wheel and he looked kind of like a hipster robot.
Speaker 1: That's not a judgment, it's just kind of a description
Speaker 1: of what he looked like. For the record, I actually
Speaker 1: invied his wheeled transportation, but I had a very strong
Speaker 1: feeling that I probably would wipe out if I were
Speaker 1: to try it myself. It doesn't matter how self balancing
Speaker 1: that unicycle is. I will find a way. But anyway,
Speaker 1: Chen filed a patent for his hoverboard invention, which was
Speaker 1: actually called the hover tracks t R A x UH.
Speaker 1: This was back in two thousand twelve when he filed
Speaker 1: for the patent. He received a patent in two thousand fourteen.
Speaker 1: Patent office takes a while to process these things because
Speaker 1: the office gets flooded with patent applications and has to
Speaker 1: go through them and make you know, careful judgment about
Speaker 1: whether or not a patent is warranted. Uh. So it
Speaker 1: does take time for that to happen. So Chen's version
Speaker 1: of the technology was really expensive. His product was not cheap. Uh.
Speaker 1: It costs around a thousand dollars to get an official
Speaker 1: hover tracks device. Meanwhile, you have these Chinese companies that
Speaker 1: were starting to churn out inexpensive clones of the hover tracks,
Speaker 1: and consumers started to flock to these cheaper alternatives. It
Speaker 1: was clear that people found the hover tracks technology really intriguing,
Speaker 1: but the price tag was too steep for a lot
Speaker 1: of people, so they turned to the cheaper versions. But cheaper,
Speaker 1: ironically comes at a cost. The designs weren't necessarily as
Speaker 1: sophisticated or effective as Chen's was, and certainly the companies
Speaker 1: were skimping on the batteries, and there were numerous reports
Speaker 1: of folks discovering that their hoverboard devices were catching on
Speaker 1: fire like explusively. The problem was serious and bad enough
Speaker 1: to prompt airlines to make announcements that they would not
Speaker 1: allow any hoverboard devices on flights. I'll talk a bit
Speaker 1: more about what was behind the exploding hoverboards after we
Speaker 1: come back from this quick break. Okay, so why hoverboards explode?
Speaker 1: Maybe while the issue was with the batteries in these machines.
Speaker 1: Lithium ion batteries can be extremely dangerous if they are
Speaker 1: poorly made or if they are damaged. If the various
Speaker 1: layers inside the battery are made to come into direct
Speaker 1: contact with one another, then it forms a direct path
Speaker 1: called a short circuit. Now, normally, the electrons that these
Speaker 1: batteries generate would have to flow out of the negative
Speaker 1: terminal of the battery into a circuit. They would then
Speaker 1: do work along the way of the circuit, and ultimately
Speaker 1: they would re enter the battery through the positive terminal.
Speaker 1: But if you were to compress or pierce the battery
Speaker 1: and cause layers to come into contact to each other, uh,
Speaker 1: then it creates a shortcut for the electrons. It creates
Speaker 1: a short circuit. Electrons would flow freely from negative to
Speaker 1: positive as fast a rate as it could possibly do,
Speaker 1: as as was physically possible, and the battery would start
Speaker 1: to heat up and heat up and heat up, and
Speaker 1: eventually would get hot enough to combust, which could in
Speaker 1: fact be explosive because the materials inside the battery and
Speaker 1: the fact that they're under incredible pressure. Um, We've seen
Speaker 1: these issues with other technologies too, like smartphones, right, We've
Speaker 1: seen where a poorly made batch of batteries have led
Speaker 1: to massive fire and recalls and and agencies and UH
Speaker 1: and organizations like airlines having to respond to it because
Speaker 1: they represented really massive danger. So Chen's business, remember Chen
Speaker 1: was the guy who created the hover tracks that kind
Speaker 1: of spawned all this. His business was undercut by these
Speaker 1: Chinese companies, and the technology itself got a bad name,
Speaker 1: mostly due to these cheaper devices that were catching on fire.
Speaker 1: And it's a real shame because Chen's versions would likely
Speaker 1: have come down and cost over time, as early adopters
Speaker 1: would help fund improvements in manufacturing and sourcing, and then
Speaker 1: folks would actually have access to a more affordable hoverboard
Speaker 1: that you know, would be less likely to explode because
Speaker 1: it wasn't being rushed out of uh A manufacturing center
Speaker 1: in China. Now. Sometimes inventors choose not to patent something,
Speaker 1: either because they are elnisie guarding their trade secrets and
Speaker 1: they don't want to let those out because again patents
Speaker 1: are public, or because they actually want people to go
Speaker 1: out and make the invention In other words, they don't
Speaker 1: want to patent it because they don't believe that the
Speaker 1: invention belongs to them, or sometimes they don't try to
Speaker 1: file a patent because they figured their chances of getting
Speaker 1: a patent are slim for whatever reason. For example, let's
Speaker 1: talk about Jonas Salk, the doctor who came up with
Speaker 1: a polio vaccine. Often he is lauded as someone who
Speaker 1: generously gave the the invention of a vaccine for polio
Speaker 1: to the world in an effort to make the world
Speaker 1: a better place. Polio was a global problem, and salks
Speaker 1: vaccine made it possible to all but eradicate the disease. Now,
Speaker 1: typically we think Salk's decision not to patent his vaccine
Speaker 1: was done as an altruistic choice that he wanted uh
Speaker 1: to help the world and he didn't feel it was
Speaker 1: morally right to patent something and then make people pay
Speaker 1: for the privilege of not dying a polio Now, in fact,
Speaker 1: the Salk Institute actually considered filing a patent for the vaccine.
Speaker 1: It's just that the institute figured that the patent would
Speaker 1: be denied on the basis of prior art. So I
Speaker 1: should probably explain what that is really quickly. Prior art
Speaker 1: means that the invention you're describing already exists. So I
Speaker 1: couldn't patent a flathead screwdriver because flathead screwdrivers already exist.
Speaker 1: That is an existing invention. I can't claim it as
Speaker 1: my idea. It predates my life, not just my application.
Speaker 1: But if I came up with a crazy new screwdriver invention,
Speaker 1: I could be able to patent that, but my application
Speaker 1: would likely reference all the inventions that came before it
Speaker 1: that inspired or influenced my creation. Like that's typically a
Speaker 1: good hack is that you acknowledge inventions that came before
Speaker 1: that resemble or affect your own invention. So prior art
Speaker 1: is a way to prevent someone from trying to cash
Speaker 1: in on an idea that already exists. So one patent
Speaker 1: lawsuit in which prior art played a big role was
Speaker 1: when a company called Personal Audio ll C was pursuing
Speaker 1: lawsuits against various podcasts and podcast networks, including how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works back in the day, and the company was claiming
Speaker 1: that it held a patent on the distribution of online
Speaker 1: serialized audio content a k a. What we would call podcasts.
Speaker 1: So in various lawsuits, defendants attempted to show that there
Speaker 1: existed examples of such serialized audio content before Personal Audio
Speaker 1: LLC's patent application, and that would be an example of
Speaker 1: prior art. If you said, no, wait, people were doing
Speaker 1: this already before you tried to patent, then you can't
Speaker 1: claim that you invented it because it existed before you
Speaker 1: you were even filing a patent for it, So you
Speaker 1: didn't invent it. It existed already. So that prior art
Speaker 1: was actually enough for courts to consider the associated patents invalid.
Speaker 1: They could not be a valid patent because the invention
Speaker 1: had already existed by the time of the filing. So
Speaker 1: that's another thing I need to mention. Even if a
Speaker 1: patent office awards a patent, subsequent legal cases can lead
Speaker 1: to a court declaring the patent invalid for various reasons.
Speaker 1: One wicked famous example of that in tech history was
Speaker 1: the patent for radio. So initially Nicola Tesla received patents
Speaker 1: relating to radio technology, but then these would be rescinded
Speaker 1: and the patent office would award patents to Tesla's rival, Marconi.
Speaker 1: And the story goes that Marconi's influential, so in other words,
Speaker 1: wealthy and well connected family had had a lot to
Speaker 1: do with that decision that they were able to kind
Speaker 1: of grease the wheels and get the patent office to
Speaker 1: reverse its decision and give the patents to Marconians to
Speaker 1: have Tesla. Now many years later, in fact, six months
Speaker 1: after Tesla had died and six years after Marconi had died,
Speaker 1: the U. S. Supreme Court would rule that Marconi's patents
Speaker 1: were invalid and that credits should in fact revert to Tesla,
Speaker 1: which you know, a little late there everyone's dead. Also,
Speaker 1: that story gets way more complicated. It sounds like, oh,
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court wanted to address an injustice. No, that's
Speaker 1: that's not really what that was about. There were other
Speaker 1: elements at play here, elements like politics and war factoring
Speaker 1: into the decision to file legal cases and reverse decisions.
Speaker 1: I should probably do a full episode describing exactly what
Speaker 1: happened there, because you have the tech on one side,
Speaker 1: like the actual who was it that came up with
Speaker 1: the technology? Was there a first? Did that person influence
Speaker 1: the other? Like would it have been possible for them
Speaker 1: to both independently come to that invention? And there was
Speaker 1: no cross contamination that kind of thing, because that does happen, right, Like,
Speaker 1: there are times where people will invent the same sort
Speaker 1: of thing in different parts of the world and they
Speaker 1: have no connection with each other, and that becomes a
Speaker 1: real headache for patent offices to figure out, well, who
Speaker 1: do we award the patent to write? If both came
Speaker 1: up with an invention and the inventions are similar enough, um,
Speaker 1: and they are independently, you know, have come to these inventions,
Speaker 1: how do you figure out who gets the patent? So
Speaker 1: I might have to do a full episode about the
Speaker 1: Marconi Tesla situation, because it's full of intrigue. It's not
Speaker 1: just about technology and influence and wealth and all that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. It has to do with politics, has
Speaker 1: to do with spn age, has to do with paranoia.
Speaker 1: There's so much in that. So I may do an
Speaker 1: episode about that in the future. I have talked about
Speaker 1: Marconi and Tesla before, but come on, that story is
Speaker 1: just a juicy one. It's a really fun one to
Speaker 1: dive into. Now. Sometimes inventors create something on behalf of
Speaker 1: a client, and the inventor doesn't patent their invention because
Speaker 1: the work they're doing is for someone else, not for themselves.
Speaker 1: Such was the case with Ron Klein, who actually invented
Speaker 1: lots of different stuff and was quite successful, so successful
Speaker 1: that he actually retired three different times. He kept the
Speaker 1: retirement wouldn't stick, and the very first time he retired
Speaker 1: he was at the tender age of thirty four. So
Speaker 1: you know someone's really got things going when they can
Speaker 1: afford to retire at age thirty four. Anyway, Klein's invention
Speaker 1: that I wanted to talk about this episode was a
Speaker 1: really useful one. He's the guy who came up with
Speaker 1: the idea of storing credit card information on a strip
Speaker 1: of magnetic tape glued to the back of a credit card.
Speaker 1: So before that, merchants had a devil of a time
Speaker 1: sussing out if a customer's credit card was linked to
Speaker 1: them being a credit risk or not. And here's how
Speaker 1: things used to work back in the day. Credit card
Speaker 1: companies would maintain a list of card numbers that represented
Speaker 1: credit risks, and they would send these lists out to
Speaker 1: various merchants and it would be, you know, the merchants
Speaker 1: who accepted whatever that credit card was. So customer comes
Speaker 1: in and wants to purchase something on credit, they hand
Speaker 1: over their credit card. The merchant would then have to
Speaker 1: get out this list and cross reference to see if
Speaker 1: the card on the that the customer had, like if
Speaker 1: their number was on that list. And that was a
Speaker 1: tedious and time consuming process, very easy to make mistakes too.
Speaker 1: So client tapped in with a solution. Now he knew
Speaker 1: about magnetic tape, like the ability to store information by
Speaker 1: using an electro magnet to rearrange magnetic uh fibers filaments
Speaker 1: really um little tiny pieces of material on tape, and
Speaker 1: by aligning them in one way or another, you could
Speaker 1: represent different kinds of information. You could make it audio,
Speaker 1: or you could just make it data. So he knew
Speaker 1: about this, like real to real tape was a thing
Speaker 1: at this point. So he figured if you encoded a
Speaker 1: credit card number onto magnetic tape, and then you attach
Speaker 1: that to the credit card, and then you also had
Speaker 1: a database that was filled with credit risk numbers also
Speaker 1: stored on a magnetic medium, you could compare the two
Speaker 1: electronically and do it much faster than you would do
Speaker 1: if you had to do it by hand, and it
Speaker 1: would be much more reliable, less likely to have errors.
Speaker 1: It required creating a device that would be able to
Speaker 1: read the magnetic strip, and he figured that if you
Speaker 1: just physically inserted and then quickly removed a card from
Speaker 1: such a device, that motion, that physical motion of pulling
Speaker 1: the tape across the device was a lot like a
Speaker 1: real to real tape player moving tape across a red head,
Speaker 1: you know, a little electro magnetic head that can detect
Speaker 1: how the magnetic particles are aligned on a piece of
Speaker 1: magnetic tape. So it's a lot like a cassette player
Speaker 1: in a way, except it was a stationary device and
Speaker 1: you were just physically moving the tape past it and
Speaker 1: it worked. So Klein made this system for his client
Speaker 1: and didn't patent it, and before you knew it, all
Speaker 1: these different credit card companies had adopted that technology. Uh
Speaker 1: so you know, that just became a universal tech without
Speaker 1: client getting real finance credit for it. Although again, like
Speaker 1: he did just fine with all of his other inventions,
Speaker 1: and there are tons of other examples we could talk about,
Speaker 1: but men to wrap this up with one that's near
Speaker 1: and dear to my heart, and this comes to us
Speaker 1: courtesy of a drummer, a guy named Duke in a way,
Speaker 1: I'll just call him Daisuke, and I'm certain I am
Speaker 1: butchering the pronunciation of the name, and my sincerest apologies
Speaker 1: for that. But Duke kind of sort of invented karaoke machines. Now,
Speaker 1: I say kind of sort of because there appear to
Speaker 1: at least be a few other examples of early karaoke
Speaker 1: style machines. But a lot of people credit Daisuke for
Speaker 1: really getting the ball rolling, for making this something that
Speaker 1: became a phenomenon. So Daisuke made his living playing drums
Speaker 1: in bar bands, and one of the things they would
Speaker 1: do is they would let business folks businessmen. Really, let's
Speaker 1: be let's face it, its nineteen seven. These japan businessmen
Speaker 1: get a little inebriated and they'd want to come up
Speaker 1: on stage and sing songs, and the band would back
Speaker 1: the person singing them, essentially you know, live karaoke. Now,
Speaker 1: there are a couple of versions of this story. Some
Speaker 1: of them say that a customer, maybe it was a
Speaker 1: bar owner, asked Daisuke to actually record some backing tracks
Speaker 1: so that they would just have them on tape. Others
Speaker 1: say that Daisuke more or less came up with this
Speaker 1: idea on his own, but in any case, the whole
Speaker 1: idea was record the backing music onto eight track tapes
Speaker 1: just kind of like a precursor to cassette tapes, and
Speaker 1: then use an eight track player with a microphone to
Speaker 1: allow inebriated businessman to sing even if there were no
Speaker 1: backing band available to play live behind them. And it
Speaker 1: would also mean ultimately you wouldn't have to pay a
Speaker 1: band at all, like you would have the benefits of
Speaker 1: this service without having to pay a band. Sod Suke
Speaker 1: would rent out the tapes he recorded. He would rent
Speaker 1: out those tapes to bars, so he was savvy enough
Speaker 1: to not just hand the tapes over to bars because
Speaker 1: he would invent his way out of a living. He
Speaker 1: also created an eight track jukebox player that had a
Speaker 1: microphone attached to it and it was operated via coin slot,
Speaker 1: so you had to put money in in order to
Speaker 1: actually select a song and sing to it, so it
Speaker 1: was an early standalone karaoke machine. However, he did not
Speaker 1: patent this idea uh and again that might not have
Speaker 1: gone over anyway. It does seem like there were a
Speaker 1: few other people who had made similar types of devices
Speaker 1: not long before Daisuke did, so you could make a
Speaker 1: prior art argument that Daisuke would have no right to
Speaker 1: a patent right, But he was the one who kind
Speaker 1: of got this moving so that other bars really took notice,
Speaker 1: and before long you had these bars and other types
Speaker 1: of companies that were making their own versions of the
Speaker 1: carry okay machine, and karaoke has a pastime would really
Speaker 1: take off and become a phenomenon. Now, by the way,
Speaker 1: in case you're wondering, what are the my go to
Speaker 1: songs when I'm doing karie okay back when you know
Speaker 1: I actually have a voice, Those songs include Prince's song
Speaker 1: seven that's not one of his best known or most
Speaker 1: popular ones, but it's the one I can do, or
Speaker 1: Um s O B by Nathaniel Rateliff in the Night
Speaker 1: Sweats great song Warren Zevans Werewolves of London also a
Speaker 1: favorite one of my go two's. Uh so, have you
Speaker 1: ever seen karaoke with me? Chances are you gonna hear
Speaker 1: me do at least one of those now, Like I said,
Speaker 1: this was really just a very tiny list of some
Speaker 1: of the people who invented things but didn't become filthy,
Speaker 1: stinking rich off those inventions. There are, of course, plenty
Speaker 1: of other stories that we could talk about. We can
Speaker 1: even talk about cases in which someone like a business owner,
Speaker 1: insisted on have their name appended to every patent application,
Speaker 1: even if the business owner had no direct hand in
Speaker 1: that invention. That's something that has been part of the
Speaker 1: tech industry for more than a century. Edison did it
Speaker 1: all the time. Steve Jobs did it all the time.
Speaker 1: You know, It's not an uncommon thing to see where
Speaker 1: you get someone who is essentially the money you know,
Speaker 1: or the leader, uh, making sure that their name is
Speaker 1: on the patent even if they had no direct you know,
Speaker 1: impact on the development of the technology or the invention. However,
Speaker 1: I feel we can leave all that off for now.
Speaker 1: If you have suggestions for topics I should cover in
Speaker 1: future episodes of tech Stuff, there are a couple different
Speaker 1: ways you can reach out to me. One way is
Speaker 1: you can go download the I Heart radio app, which
Speaker 1: is free, and you can navigate over to the tech
Speaker 1: Stuff section. You can use a little microphone icon to
Speaker 1: record a voice message up to thirty seconds for me. UH.
Speaker 1: You can do that either just on the tech Stuff
Speaker 1: general page, or you can go into specific episodes and
Speaker 1: leave a message on a specific episode if you want
Speaker 1: to comment on something that I've said and UH, if
Speaker 1: you let me know that I can use the audio.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'll use the audio in a future episode. Just
Speaker 1: let me know when you do that, because I'm all
Speaker 1: about opt in, not opt out. The other way to
Speaker 1: reach out to me, of course, is on Twitter. The
Speaker 1: handle for the show is tech Stuff hs W. I
Speaker 1: hope all of you are well. I'm I'm getting there,
Speaker 1: feeling a whole lot better than I was last week.
Speaker 1: Thanks again to everyone who kind of reached out and
Speaker 1: was concerned. I really appreciate it, and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.