WEBVTT - How Intellectual Property Works 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:07.760 Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.200 --> 0:00:13.480 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's 0:00:13.600 --> 0:00:17.279 Chuck and Jerry's here and this is the Don't turn 0:00:17.320 --> 0:00:20.119 it off. It's actually more interesting than it sounds. 0:00:20.280 --> 0:00:24.320 Edition. Yeah. Can I just write off the bat shout 0:00:24.320 --> 0:00:28.960 out Olivia? Uh, this was a I don't know, it's 0:00:28.960 --> 0:00:31.720 not the most fun topic. But she really dug in 0:00:31.760 --> 0:00:32.320 and it's great. 0:00:32.600 --> 0:00:36.680 Yeah. Yeah, she's amazing at it actually, And this is yeah, 0:00:36.960 --> 0:00:40.560 she figured it out, like there is something interesting in 0:00:40.560 --> 0:00:42.800 intellectual property and she found it so. 0:00:43.400 --> 0:00:45.200 Uh great, hudos, Ip. 0:00:45.720 --> 0:00:49.200 Yeah, we are talking about intellectual property today. Everybody's heard 0:00:49.200 --> 0:00:51.480 that term. You have to have been living under rocks 0:00:51.479 --> 0:00:53.840 and not heard it. But we'll still tell you what 0:00:53.920 --> 0:00:57.160 we're talking about, because we're those kind of people. I'm 0:00:57.200 --> 0:00:58.280 just teasing everybody. 0:00:58.720 --> 0:01:01.600 We're not talking about the Great Book The Yellow River 0:01:01.680 --> 0:01:04.800 by Ip Freely no, no. 0:01:04.680 --> 0:01:09.440 Okay no, or a building by Impay, nothing like that, 0:01:09.640 --> 0:01:12.640 although that would fall under I'm sure some sort of 0:01:13.319 --> 0:01:18.480 intellectual property protection. Intellectual property is basically the fruit of 0:01:18.520 --> 0:01:21.520 your mental labor. It can be an invention, it can 0:01:21.600 --> 0:01:22.560 be a. 0:01:22.680 --> 0:01:26.120 Slogan, yeah, screenplay, song. 0:01:26.319 --> 0:01:28.160 Yeah, yeah, it can be a movie you wrote, it 0:01:28.160 --> 0:01:32.080 could be a way to do business like business methods. 0:01:32.480 --> 0:01:37.960 It's gotten so crazy now that types of strains of 0:01:38.080 --> 0:01:44.040 certain kinds of bacteria can be protected. 0:01:44.600 --> 0:01:45.920 And the whole algorithm. 0:01:46.120 --> 0:01:48.640 Yeah, that's another one, Like it just keeps going and going. 0:01:48.640 --> 0:01:50.920 But anything that you can imagine, it doesn't even have 0:01:50.960 --> 0:01:53.880 to be a tangible thing, Like an algorithm is not tangible. 0:01:54.080 --> 0:01:56.840 Even when you put it down into code. It's not tangible. 0:01:56.880 --> 0:02:00.000 It's an idea that you can make a computer you 0:02:00.240 --> 0:02:04.800 to do really neat tricks with, but it's intangible. And again, 0:02:05.120 --> 0:02:07.840 coke is it. It's a slogan that's not at all tangible, 0:02:08.040 --> 0:02:11.800 and yet it's treated in most developed countries in the 0:02:11.800 --> 0:02:17.040 world or most industrialized countries in the world as the 0:02:17.080 --> 0:02:19.520 same thing as a property like your car or your 0:02:19.520 --> 0:02:24.240 house or your wedding ring. Like it's protected, and the 0:02:24.280 --> 0:02:28.440 way that it's protected is in really weird ways. Intellectual 0:02:28.480 --> 0:02:32.720 property and intellectual property law are a very unique animal. 0:02:33.120 --> 0:02:35.320 But what they all boil down to, Chuck is that 0:02:36.080 --> 0:02:39.079 if you get some sort of protection for your slogan, 0:02:39.320 --> 0:02:44.680 for your invention, for the screenplay you wrote, the government 0:02:44.760 --> 0:02:48.760 says that's yours. You are the only person who has 0:02:48.880 --> 0:02:52.160 any claim to it for X number of years, and 0:02:52.880 --> 0:02:56.200 congratulations on the thing you came up with using your creativity. 0:02:56.600 --> 0:03:01.280 And the whole purpose of having protection for intellectual property 0:03:01.880 --> 0:03:06.080 is to spur creativity, to spur discovery, to spur invention, 0:03:06.200 --> 0:03:09.280 to get it going. Because if you if you incentivize that, 0:03:09.800 --> 0:03:12.280 if you say, hey, if you come up with the screenplay, 0:03:12.840 --> 0:03:14.520 we're gonna make it so that no one else can 0:03:14.560 --> 0:03:17.000 just come along and make the movie that you wrote, 0:03:17.360 --> 0:03:20.440 that's yours, it's gonna make you want to keep pursuing 0:03:22.160 --> 0:03:25.200 a career of writing screenplays. But if you wrote a 0:03:25.200 --> 0:03:28.720 screenplay and you wrote it and it just didn't belong 0:03:28.760 --> 0:03:30.960 to you from the moment you finished the last sentence, 0:03:31.320 --> 0:03:33.360 and anybody could come along and make the movie and 0:03:33.400 --> 0:03:37.120 not give you a dime for your creativity, for your labor, 0:03:37.400 --> 0:03:40.240 you probably wouldn't do that, And so the public domain, 0:03:40.520 --> 0:03:43.480 the cultural public domain, would suffer as a result. We 0:03:43.480 --> 0:03:46.480 wouldn't have movies, we wouldn't have algorithms, we wouldn't have 0:03:47.040 --> 0:03:50.560 coca is it amazing? Slogans like that. We would be 0:03:50.920 --> 0:03:55.280 culturally bereft. If it were not for intellectual property protection, 0:03:55.360 --> 0:04:00.440 and yet it is one of the most insidious legal 0:04:00.520 --> 0:04:04.480 protections around today because it's been so thoroughly perverted from 0:04:04.480 --> 0:04:06.600 its original intent. 0:04:07.480 --> 0:04:09.800 Wow, it's been a while since who had one of those. 0:04:10.600 --> 0:04:12.160 I feel pretty strongly about IP. 0:04:14.680 --> 0:04:17.040 Here's a stat that LVIA found for US, which I 0:04:17.040 --> 0:04:19.359 think is pretty interesting as far as like how big 0:04:19.520 --> 0:04:23.040 IP is. And I think that this is from the 0:04:23.120 --> 0:04:27.440 US Patent and Trademark Office, And things have been ticking 0:04:27.520 --> 0:04:30.599 up as far as IP and how valuable it is 0:04:30.640 --> 0:04:34.479 and how you know how much people are registering IP 0:04:34.720 --> 0:04:39.159 and buying up IP since the nineties, and the US 0:04:39.400 --> 0:04:42.800 PTO said by twenty nineteen says a few years old 0:04:42.839 --> 0:04:47.880 that IP intensive industries accounted for forty one percent of 0:04:47.920 --> 0:04:50.800 the US gross domestic product. That's great, and thirty three 0:04:50.839 --> 0:04:55.000 percent of all employment was IP based. Yeah, that's startling. 0:04:55.240 --> 0:04:57.720 We used to invent things. We used to make machines, 0:04:57.760 --> 0:05:01.440 we used to develop airplace and cars and stuff like that. 0:05:03.080 --> 0:05:06.520 But now we invent ideas. Although we still invent stuff too, 0:05:06.720 --> 0:05:09.920 sure of course, but for the most part, that really 0:05:10.000 --> 0:05:11.760 kind of goes to show you like we have come 0:05:11.800 --> 0:05:14.120 to say, like, no, we're trading in ideas, and those 0:05:14.120 --> 0:05:16.760 things are very valuable, and you can build an entire 0:05:16.960 --> 0:05:20.679 industry around certain kinds of ideas, which is pretty nuts 0:05:20.720 --> 0:05:22.479 if you think about it totally. 0:05:22.960 --> 0:05:24.839 So if you're talking about US law, there are four 0:05:24.920 --> 0:05:29.279 kinds of ip that law covers, and we've talked about 0:05:29.360 --> 0:05:30.840 some of these here and there. I think we did 0:05:30.880 --> 0:05:33.320 a whole episode on patents in me. Well. If we haven't, 0:05:33.360 --> 0:05:36.400 we will. Patents are granted by the government, and everyone 0:05:36.560 --> 0:05:38.200 kind of knows what a patent is. I think that's 0:05:38.240 --> 0:05:43.160 when you invent an idea or a process or a design, 0:05:43.760 --> 0:05:45.640 and you can get different kinds of patents. You can 0:05:45.640 --> 0:05:49.440 get design patents or utility patents things like that. If 0:05:49.480 --> 0:05:52.560 you're like if you invented the rebox pump mechanism for 0:05:52.600 --> 0:05:55.440 the rebox shoe that we talked about, you would get 0:05:55.680 --> 0:05:58.479 maybe a design patent and a utility patent that says 0:05:58.839 --> 0:06:00.600 no one else can put an another pump and a 0:06:00.640 --> 0:06:03.839 shoe that kind of thing. So it has to be novel, 0:06:03.960 --> 0:06:07.720 which is the real key, useful and non obvious. If 0:06:07.720 --> 0:06:10.880 it qualifies, and you're generally it depends, but you're going 0:06:10.920 --> 0:06:14.120 to get about twenty years out of that patent. And 0:06:14.160 --> 0:06:16.440 you got to pay for it to get it, and 0:06:16.600 --> 0:06:18.080 it's not cheap to get a patent. You have to 0:06:18.080 --> 0:06:20.160 pay an attorney to do all the legwork and that's 0:06:20.160 --> 0:06:21.440 never cheap. Right. 0:06:21.680 --> 0:06:25.120 The next one, Chuck, is trademarks, which everybody knows what 0:06:25.160 --> 0:06:27.040 a trademark is, especially if you grew up in the 0:06:27.040 --> 0:06:30.160 second half of the twentieth century. That's when trademarks were 0:06:30.200 --> 0:06:33.560 everywhere and kind of what we wore on our T 0:06:33.680 --> 0:06:35.880 shirts and stuff. Right, Coke, is it who didn't have 0:06:35.960 --> 0:06:39.640 that T shirt or a bud Light T shirt with 0:06:39.640 --> 0:06:41.280 Spuds Mackenzie surfing on it? 0:06:42.040 --> 0:06:43.320 I had has puts mckenzy shirt. 0:06:43.480 --> 0:06:47.240 So trademark is basically a brand name, kim be a slogan, 0:06:47.960 --> 0:06:50.760 and it is something that you specifically associate with a 0:06:50.839 --> 0:06:55.039 specific company or a specific brand. Yeah, and you actually 0:06:55.120 --> 0:06:58.280 don't even have to trademark or register your trademark just 0:06:58.279 --> 0:07:03.000 from using you know, the Spuds Mackenzie drawing that you 0:07:03.080 --> 0:07:08.000 see everywhere are used to you're exercising your right to 0:07:08.080 --> 0:07:12.520 use that trademark and you can actually enforce in action 0:07:12.640 --> 0:07:15.520 against infringement on it. So if you haven't registered something, 0:07:15.520 --> 0:07:18.240 you'll see the TM That means that hey, this is 0:07:18.280 --> 0:07:20.400 our trademark. Don't mess with it. We haven't gone to 0:07:20.400 --> 0:07:23.000 the trouble of registering it. A registered trademark is that 0:07:23.160 --> 0:07:25.320 a capital are in a circle. 0:07:25.760 --> 0:07:26.560 That means that they. 0:07:26.440 --> 0:07:28.720 Actually did go to the trouble of registering it, and 0:07:28.760 --> 0:07:30.280 you really better not mess with them. 0:07:30.880 --> 0:07:33.320 Yeah. Like an example is when you've seen court cases 0:07:33.320 --> 0:07:35.560 plenty of times where you'll see a company go in 0:07:36.080 --> 0:07:39.720 and say, here are one hundred and fifty examples of 0:07:39.760 --> 0:07:42.400 where we used this over the years. That's people trying 0:07:42.440 --> 0:07:45.559 to argue that they that's their trademark because they didn't 0:07:45.600 --> 0:07:47.560 copyright it or they didn't trademark it. 0:07:47.760 --> 0:07:51.320 That's why McDonald's had a legitimate case against McDowell's. 0:07:51.880 --> 0:07:56.040 Right. Oh man, great movie. 0:07:56.200 --> 0:07:59.040 There is also copyrights. That's another big one. I think 0:07:59.080 --> 0:08:03.080 everybody's pretty familiar with that. But that screenplay that you wrote, 0:08:03.120 --> 0:08:05.720 or the computer program that you came up with that 0:08:05.760 --> 0:08:12.680 you coded essentially a creative work, and you, as the 0:08:12.680 --> 0:08:16.000 copyright owner, you as the creator, have the sole right 0:08:16.440 --> 0:08:20.160 to do as you please with that, to turn that 0:08:20.240 --> 0:08:23.520 software into something that you sell over and over and 0:08:23.560 --> 0:08:26.600 over again, turn that screenplay into a movie. Like it's 0:08:26.680 --> 0:08:28.840 totally up to you, and nobody else can do it 0:08:29.080 --> 0:08:31.720 while you hold that copyright, and copyrights are the ones 0:08:31.760 --> 0:08:33.720 that last the longest. I don't know if we said 0:08:33.720 --> 0:08:34.960 trademarks never run out. 0:08:34.920 --> 0:08:36.880 Right, we didn't say it. 0:08:36.960 --> 0:08:39.600 As long as you're using as a trademark, you never 0:08:40.480 --> 0:08:43.840 your exclusivity never runs out. With patents, like you said, 0:08:43.920 --> 0:08:49.000 I think twenty years. With copyrights, it's seventy plus years 0:08:49.400 --> 0:08:50.240 after creation. 0:08:50.400 --> 0:08:54.720 Typically, I think it's seventy years after the death of 0:08:54.760 --> 0:08:55.320 the creator. 0:08:55.559 --> 0:08:59.280 Right, that's plus the creator's life is ensconced in that 0:08:59.320 --> 0:08:59.920 plus symbol. 0:09:00.280 --> 0:09:02.680 All right, Okay, I got you, and we'll talk about 0:09:02.679 --> 0:09:05.520 that later. That came from nineteen seventy eight. As far 0:09:05.559 --> 0:09:08.280 as screenplays and stuff, I think you can get a copyright, 0:09:08.720 --> 0:09:11.720 but the WGA has registration methods. You can register your 0:09:11.720 --> 0:09:14.080 script but you don't even have to do that stuff. 0:09:14.720 --> 0:09:17.680 But you would be wise too, because then you would 0:09:17.720 --> 0:09:19.280 have to if you haven't, you would have to prove 0:09:19.880 --> 0:09:22.880 that it was your id for idea first and someone 0:09:22.920 --> 0:09:23.680 didn't rip it off. 0:09:23.960 --> 0:09:25.959 Yeah, there's that other way to do, which is mail 0:09:26.000 --> 0:09:28.480 it to yourself in a sealed world. I don't know, 0:09:28.520 --> 0:09:29.920 but it seems like if you don't have to go 0:09:30.000 --> 0:09:32.319 to the trouble of registering it. That would help your 0:09:32.320 --> 0:09:33.200 claim quite a bit. 0:09:33.520 --> 0:09:36.559 Yeah, the poor person's copyright. I've heard that before. Sure. 0:09:37.679 --> 0:09:42.079 And what else? We got trade secrets and that's recipes, strategies, 0:09:43.080 --> 0:09:47.920 customer customer information, which is big any kind of process, 0:09:47.960 --> 0:09:51.160 like industrial process that you don't want another competitor to 0:09:51.200 --> 0:09:53.800 know about. And I don't think you need to register 0:09:53.960 --> 0:09:56.960 these either. No, And I meant to look up whether 0:09:57.040 --> 0:10:00.320 or not that's an actual downside because then you have 0:10:00.320 --> 0:10:01.480 to disclose things. 0:10:02.040 --> 0:10:04.920 No, you, oh, if you, if you registered it, that 0:10:05.000 --> 0:10:06.839 might be why you don't have to register it, because 0:10:07.000 --> 0:10:09.080 I wonder if we said or not. One of the 0:10:09.120 --> 0:10:12.800 reasons that patents are so beneficial is because you have 0:10:12.840 --> 0:10:16.080 to disclose exactly how that thing works, so that after 0:10:16.120 --> 0:10:18.719 your patent runs out, somebody can come along and make 0:10:18.760 --> 0:10:22.320 the same thing from your your patent. Trade secrets, Yeah, 0:10:22.320 --> 0:10:23.920 you would not want to do that because they never 0:10:24.000 --> 0:10:27.000 run out. Just like trademarks, they're your secrets for as 0:10:27.000 --> 0:10:30.960 long as you actively work to keep them secret, like 0:10:31.000 --> 0:10:35.000 you make employees and sign NDA's remember that episode that 0:10:35.040 --> 0:10:38.600 was a good one. Yeah, or you you keep the 0:10:38.760 --> 0:10:43.760 recipe to Kentucky Fried Chicken's original chicken like under lock 0:10:43.760 --> 0:10:46.840 and key with armed guards standing outside. That would be 0:10:46.840 --> 0:10:51.559 a pretty pretty good demonstration of actively protecting your trade secrets. 0:10:51.960 --> 0:10:54.000 Yeah, they don't need to register it. They have guns. 0:10:54.240 --> 0:10:56.719 Exactly exactly where this. 0:10:56.720 --> 0:10:59.320 All started is pretty interesting. We'll kind of quickly go 0:10:59.400 --> 0:11:03.280 through the history. It could go as back as far 0:11:03.320 --> 0:11:06.360 as ancient Greece, but as far as ip as we 0:11:06.400 --> 0:11:08.520 think of it today. You can point to fourteen twenty 0:11:08.520 --> 0:11:12.160 one in the Republic of Florence and June nineteenth of 0:11:12.200 --> 0:11:18.640 that year when the government said, hey, Filippo brune Shelley, Nope, 0:11:18.760 --> 0:11:20.920 Brune Leschi ski ski. 0:11:21.080 --> 0:11:25.320 Remember it's is it really sound with the ch in Italian? 0:11:25.880 --> 0:11:31.120 Filipo brune Leski There you go. Okay, I'm doing the accent, 0:11:31.120 --> 0:11:33.760 you guys. We heard from Italians it said, keep doing it. 0:11:34.080 --> 0:11:34.480 There you go. 0:11:36.559 --> 0:11:39.280 Filippo was an architect and had a patent for a 0:11:39.320 --> 0:11:43.240 technique to move marble over a barge, and they said, hey, 0:11:43.360 --> 0:11:45.880 this was really smart and you should make money off 0:11:45.920 --> 0:11:48.719 this and only you, and that kind of kicked the 0:11:48.760 --> 0:11:51.160 whole thing off and over the next you know, one 0:11:51.200 --> 0:11:54.800 hundred years or so, governments across Europe started sort of 0:11:54.840 --> 0:11:58.760 doing the same things and getting together these ideas that 0:11:58.800 --> 0:12:02.800 you should be able to patent and own processes and ideas, 0:12:03.200 --> 0:12:07.480 including the Venetian Patent Statute of fourteen seventy four yeah, 0:12:07.559 --> 0:12:10.480 which said, hey, it's up to us and our government 0:12:10.640 --> 0:12:13.679 can grant you a ten year monopoly on the use 0:12:13.679 --> 0:12:16.120 of a technology that you have made up, and if 0:12:16.120 --> 0:12:18.679 you violate it, you can get fined or you can 0:12:18.720 --> 0:12:20.000 get like a public citation. 0:12:20.440 --> 0:12:26.840 Yeah. And again, by using government power to protect people's 0:12:26.880 --> 0:12:32.280 inventions and ideas help spur creativity and discovery and new inventions. 0:12:33.160 --> 0:12:36.040 And it wasn't just the Venetians who figured this out. 0:12:36.760 --> 0:12:40.680 About one hundred and fifty years later, England said hey, 0:12:40.720 --> 0:12:44.360 we're going to pass our Statute of Monopolies and it 0:12:44.400 --> 0:12:49.440 basically said that if you have a new invention, you 0:12:49.600 --> 0:12:52.840 have a monopoly to it for a certain period of time, 0:12:53.000 --> 0:12:55.560 very similar to what we have now for patents. But 0:12:55.640 --> 0:12:59.280 what's interesting about that is that that actually rolled back 0:13:00.160 --> 0:13:03.760 even more draconian law where basically the king could hand 0:13:03.760 --> 0:13:07.000 out patents or sell patents exactly to whoever they wanted, 0:13:07.120 --> 0:13:10.800 and you could get a patent on vinegar, so like 0:13:10.840 --> 0:13:13.200 there existing stuff. If you were a friend with the king, 0:13:13.320 --> 0:13:16.200 you could be the sole producer of vinegar if the 0:13:16.280 --> 0:13:20.200 king gave you a patent for vinegar. And the Parliament said, 0:13:20.200 --> 0:13:25.839 this is actually stifling progress and discovery. We're going to 0:13:25.880 --> 0:13:28.640 say this is limited to new inventions and for a 0:13:28.679 --> 0:13:33.000 limited period of time, which were two really good kind 0:13:33.000 --> 0:13:35.240 of points to add to that whole idea. 0:13:35.320 --> 0:13:39.040 Totally well, and it prevented you know, they were definitely 0:13:39.040 --> 0:13:43.760 getting kickbacks and or just outright selling stuff, right, the 0:13:43.840 --> 0:13:47.800 king selling Yeah, the king was so here. In the US, 0:13:47.920 --> 0:13:52.600 our Constitution's Patent and Copyright clause gives Congress the power 0:13:53.000 --> 0:13:56.120 to quote promote the progress of science and useful arts 0:13:56.120 --> 0:13:59.640 by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the 0:13:59.640 --> 0:14:04.600 excls right to their respective writings and discoveries. This was, 0:14:05.160 --> 0:14:07.280 I think past. I think the first patent was in 0:14:07.640 --> 0:14:12.160 seventeen ninety granted to one Samuel Hopkins, who is producing 0:14:12.160 --> 0:14:17.120 it had a method of producing potash. And they're like, hey, congratulations, 0:14:17.200 --> 0:14:18.640 you are patent number one. 0:14:18.920 --> 0:14:22.360 He said, wow, gee, that's amazing. I've never been first 0:14:22.400 --> 0:14:23.000 at anything. 0:14:23.600 --> 0:14:24.080 That's right. 0:14:24.200 --> 0:14:26.080 He's done his shoelaces, that's right. 0:14:26.120 --> 0:14:28.320 He was first on the internet, commenting all the time, 0:14:28.360 --> 0:14:29.480 but no one counts that. 0:14:30.320 --> 0:14:32.240 So this whole thing, if you, if you stop and 0:14:32.240 --> 0:14:34.840 think about it's all legal fiction. Like the government is 0:14:34.840 --> 0:14:37.800 saying you have a monopoly on it, but that's that 0:14:37.960 --> 0:14:42.440 doesn't there's no actual concrete anything going on here. They're 0:14:42.480 --> 0:14:45.040 just saying nobody else can use this thing that you 0:14:45.120 --> 0:14:48.120 came up with. We're the government, we're saying so. But 0:14:48.720 --> 0:14:53.680 the whole concept of protecting intellectual property actually is rooted. 0:14:53.760 --> 0:14:58.000 It has a philosophical basis. There's a few different justifications 0:14:58.040 --> 0:15:01.240 for it. The first came from well, I don't know 0:15:01.280 --> 0:15:03.040 if it's the first, but the first in this list 0:15:03.160 --> 0:15:07.800 came from Hegel, the German philosopher, who said that intellectual 0:15:07.840 --> 0:15:11.960 property is an extension of you. Like if you go 0:15:12.080 --> 0:15:14.920 out and you buy some seeds, and you buy some land, 0:15:15.240 --> 0:15:19.040 and you grow crops from those seeds on that land, 0:15:19.280 --> 0:15:22.320 those are your crops. You mixed your labor with your 0:15:22.360 --> 0:15:26.560 own resources and created something, and that's yours. Why would 0:15:26.560 --> 0:15:30.120 it be any different for your ideas? You used your resources, 0:15:30.160 --> 0:15:34.280 say schooling or inspiration, and you used your brain power 0:15:34.480 --> 0:15:38.960 to turn it into an idea or a thought. That 0:15:39.000 --> 0:15:42.360 you could tell other people. I can't do that, but 0:15:42.520 --> 0:15:45.120 you know other people can. According to Hegel, why would 0:15:45.200 --> 0:15:47.440 you not own that as well just as you would 0:15:47.520 --> 0:15:48.160 those crops. 0:15:49.080 --> 0:15:51.280 Now, what's the difference between that and Lockian? 0:15:53.360 --> 0:15:58.480 Lockian is there's actually not a lot of difference, to 0:15:58.560 --> 0:15:59.400 tell you the truth. 0:16:00.240 --> 0:16:03.640 So that's just another, you know, similar school of thought 0:16:03.680 --> 0:16:04.640 from another philosopher. 0:16:04.720 --> 0:16:07.600 Yeah, an earlier philosopher too, by a couple hundred years, 0:16:07.600 --> 0:16:10.040 I think, But it's essentially the same thing from what 0:16:10.080 --> 0:16:10.640 I can tell. 0:16:11.400 --> 0:16:15.040 Well, there's also a utilitarian which means your INCENTIVI is 0:16:15.160 --> 0:16:18.280 to create something, which is what you've been talking about, 0:16:18.360 --> 0:16:20.400 and the fact that you know, no one's going to 0:16:20.400 --> 0:16:21.920 spend a lot of time doing this stuff. If that 0:16:21.920 --> 0:16:23.520 they it's all about money. If you don't have the 0:16:23.560 --> 0:16:28.280 incentive eventually of fortune, then you're not going to spend 0:16:28.320 --> 0:16:29.080 your time doing it. 0:16:29.120 --> 0:16:32.360 Probably, yes, And I understand the difference now if I 0:16:32.800 --> 0:16:35.040 kind of make correct myself. Locke was the one who 0:16:35.080 --> 0:16:38.480 is essentially saying, you just like mixing seeds with land 0:16:38.760 --> 0:16:42.120 and growing crops. You same thing with your thoughts. Hagel 0:16:42.200 --> 0:16:45.480 was saying, like, you own your thoughts just as much 0:16:45.520 --> 0:16:48.000 as you own your body, you own your thoughts, and 0:16:48.040 --> 0:16:50.800 that they're your thoughts and they should belong to you. 0:16:51.000 --> 0:16:54.680 So there's definitely a distinction between the two. I was confused. 0:16:55.120 --> 0:16:56.760 Has happened sometimes. 0:16:57.800 --> 0:17:02.120 So let's take a break, good idea. All right, we'll 0:17:02.160 --> 0:17:24.040 be right back. All right, we're back everyone, and we're 0:17:24.080 --> 0:17:26.600 here to talk about some criticisms of the whole concept 0:17:26.640 --> 0:17:30.159 of IP. And things have really changed a lot since 0:17:30.960 --> 0:17:33.560 the Internet age and the tech boom as far as 0:17:33.680 --> 0:17:36.359 IP goes, things really really ramped up and took off. 0:17:36.800 --> 0:17:42.080 And there's a legal philosopher named Samir Chopra and Livia 0:17:42.080 --> 0:17:47.119 found this article in aon and basically said that, you know, 0:17:47.359 --> 0:17:49.479 kind of grouping all this stuff together and it's not 0:17:49.520 --> 0:17:52.000 just choprah like other critics will argue the same thing. 0:17:52.480 --> 0:17:55.280 If you say trademarks and copyrights and patents and trade 0:17:55.320 --> 0:17:58.840 secrets and everything is all the same thing, which is IP, 0:17:59.520 --> 0:18:02.840 it really just sort of diminishes each one's specific purpose 0:18:03.720 --> 0:18:07.360 because they all have a specific purpose. And calling it 0:18:07.440 --> 0:18:11.680 just intellectual property, you like, using the word property even 0:18:12.800 --> 0:18:16.199 makes it sound like you're a thief, that you're taking 0:18:16.240 --> 0:18:19.760 something tangible, when in fact it still exists, Like you, 0:18:20.920 --> 0:18:23.960 if you download a song for free, you're not taking 0:18:24.000 --> 0:18:27.080 that song from the artist. You're just getting that song 0:18:27.119 --> 0:18:29.399 for free, and that song still exists and the artist 0:18:29.400 --> 0:18:30.000 still owns it. 0:18:30.280 --> 0:18:32.399 Yeah. That was a big part of Chopra's point that 0:18:34.200 --> 0:18:38.080 calling it intellectual property theft or crime makes it a 0:18:38.160 --> 0:18:41.200 moral thing, whereas if you just call it copyright infringement, 0:18:41.200 --> 0:18:44.480 it sounds like a bureaucratic issue, you know what I mean. Yeah, yeah, 0:18:44.520 --> 0:18:47.000 that makes sense, and that that's unfair semantically to kind 0:18:47.000 --> 0:18:48.960 of put it all together. But even more so, they 0:18:49.040 --> 0:18:51.600 don't all really relate to one another as easily as 0:18:52.560 --> 0:18:55.439 you would think by being all lumped together under one term. 0:18:56.000 --> 0:19:01.240 And so, like most legal protection and probably all legal 0:19:01.240 --> 0:19:05.359 protection of intellectual property around the world, they say, well, 0:19:05.359 --> 0:19:08.320 there's actually we'll put some limitations on here. One of 0:19:08.359 --> 0:19:11.800 the big ones is that there's a time limitation on it. Yeah, 0:19:12.040 --> 0:19:14.680 And again the reason why is because they're they're saying, 0:19:14.760 --> 0:19:17.840 there's a very difficult balance that's being struck here. One 0:19:17.920 --> 0:19:22.760 is that you want to foster discovery. You want to 0:19:22.760 --> 0:19:24.960 incentivize people to go out and invent new things and 0:19:25.000 --> 0:19:27.600 come up with new ideas, because everyone benefits from that. 0:19:28.280 --> 0:19:31.280 But at the same time, you don't want to incentivize 0:19:31.280 --> 0:19:34.639 it so much that you actually disincentivize it by giving 0:19:34.680 --> 0:19:37.000 people too long of a monopoly. So you give them 0:19:37.040 --> 0:19:39.359 twenty years for a patent or something, right, which works 0:19:39.400 --> 0:19:41.880 out because you know, I think about it, Think about 0:19:41.920 --> 0:19:46.880 if the first mobile phone had like a seventy year 0:19:46.960 --> 0:19:50.399 patent where we be right now? You know, so twenty 0:19:50.480 --> 0:19:53.359 years seems fair, I guess in that context. 0:19:53.880 --> 0:19:56.440 Well, also that gives you that's basically saying like, you 0:19:56.520 --> 0:19:58.119 got this amount of time to do something with it. 0:19:58.560 --> 0:20:01.240 M yeah, go, nobody else is going to do it, Yeah, 0:20:01.320 --> 0:20:02.520 should do it for sure. 0:20:03.440 --> 0:20:06.840 There's also like with copyright law as well, there's like 0:20:06.920 --> 0:20:09.520 fair use, like we talked about in the Mad episode 0:20:10.320 --> 0:20:14.199 how parodies allowed, or you can comment on it that 0:20:14.240 --> 0:20:17.760 there's there are some exceptions to the rule. It's not 0:20:17.880 --> 0:20:20.800 just like ironclad, and for good reason, because again, this 0:20:20.880 --> 0:20:22.800 is a very difficult balance to strike. 0:20:23.560 --> 0:20:25.600 Yeah, and we've had our struggles with that over the 0:20:25.680 --> 0:20:30.000 year in our own show when we're doing an episode 0:20:30.040 --> 0:20:32.639 on something where it would be like hip hop or something, 0:20:32.680 --> 0:20:36.520 or record scratching, like those really lend themselves to playing 0:20:36.560 --> 0:20:41.920 examples and we've never been super clear on the actual law. 0:20:42.320 --> 0:20:45.080 We could probably get away with it, but we different 0:20:45.080 --> 0:20:47.439 companies we've worked for over the years had different tolerances 0:20:47.480 --> 0:20:51.320 for just getting you know, even having to suffer through 0:20:51.320 --> 0:20:54.280 the hassle legally of seeing if it's okay to do that, 0:20:54.400 --> 0:20:56.439 So we've always just not done it generally. 0:20:56.560 --> 0:20:59.359 Yeah, I mean we have a few times, like I 0:20:59.359 --> 0:21:02.800 think the Disco episode we did, but we were clearly 0:21:02.840 --> 0:21:05.879 commenting on the stuff. We weren't just using it for fun, like. 0:21:06.119 --> 0:21:08.120 Yeah, and there's also a time limit that we were 0:21:08.160 --> 0:21:10.639 never sure, like you can play so many seconds, you 0:21:10.720 --> 0:21:14.200 have to comment on it. And Jerry was always the 0:21:14.240 --> 0:21:17.320 fun killer. You know, Mom had to come in and say, guys, 0:21:17.400 --> 0:21:21.000 you can't do that. And not a great position for 0:21:21.119 --> 0:21:21.760 Jerry to be in. 0:21:22.080 --> 0:21:25.520 No, but a highly natural one. It felt right. 0:21:27.680 --> 0:21:30.000 The other thing we should talk about is the cost 0:21:30.080 --> 0:21:34.800 to consumers, which is there are people that say, and 0:21:34.840 --> 0:21:36.680 of course this is when we're going to talk about 0:21:36.680 --> 0:21:39.520 pharmaceuticals because that's a big part of IP. But there's 0:21:39.520 --> 0:21:42.959 an econoistman named Dean Baker and others who say, like, 0:21:43.440 --> 0:21:45.720 you know, the effect of this IP law is really 0:21:46.080 --> 0:21:50.400 making the one percent just even more rich, and there's 0:21:50.440 --> 0:21:52.679 a transfer of wealth to the tune of about a 0:21:52.880 --> 0:21:58.399 trillion dollars a year because largely because of pharmaceutical companies, 0:21:58.440 --> 0:22:00.760 they're a big chunk of that trillion dollar. When you 0:22:02.440 --> 0:22:06.560 grant a monopoly on a drug, and sometimes even the 0:22:06.600 --> 0:22:09.720 government funds that to help make it happen. But then 0:22:09.800 --> 0:22:12.760 this one company has this drug and they can charge 0:22:12.800 --> 0:22:14.920