Ted Talks | Week 10

Hello, Friends! Back again!

Now I will discuss another Ted Talk. Overall, these are super fascinating, and I am glad we had the opportunity to discuss them in class. I will now look at Drew Curtis and his discussion of patent trolls. 

Last year, Drew’s company was sued along with MSN & Yahoo by a patent troll- Gooseberry Natural Resources. They owned a patent for news releases via email. It may seems strange, but it can be patented. Take something that is already done and patent it. The problem is that the mechanisms are obscure and most of these lawsuits are settled and disclosed. 

However, his company was not in violation of this patent. But when you are sued by a patent troll, you have to prove that you don’t infringe on the patent they are suing you with but this takes so long. It costs $2 million and takes 18 months- and this is the best case scenario. No companies infringed on this patent but they still settled. They settled because it was cheaper. It would also constitute major distraction from your company. 

When it finally came around to the discovery phase- Drew asked Gooseberry Natural Resources to send screenshots of his company actually infringing on this patent. However, no such screenshots existed- but all of the sudden they wanted to settle. And wanted to close it out ASAP. His response was “NOTHING”. He didn’t have high hopes for that outcome, but THEY SETTLED! There is no non-disclosure agreement on this case because he took it off.

He learned three things: don’t fight the patent, fight the infringement. Second, make it clear that you have no money or you would rather spend money for your attorney then giving it to them. Thirdly, Make sure you tell them you make this process as annoying and painful as possible- it is generally their policy but use it on them.

Comes down to one thing- don’t negotiate with terrorists (in his words). He says they have done more damage- $500 billion to be exact- to our economy than many other pressing issues. Although, there isn’t a simple solution or a solution- he does have an idea- just do the same! 

Overall, it was a very entertaining and funny talk and it was good to learn that in some cases you can have power in these situations. 

Ted Talks | Week 10

Hi everyone!

This week we discussed in class the Ted talks. Abigail assigned us to analyze two Ted talks. For this first one, I will be looking at Johanna Blakley's talk about fashion. The title of her Ted talk is called lessons from fashion's free culture. 

Johanna starts off with a story about an Italian fashion designer who found a jacket from a little shop in France. She is analyzing and staring at the jacket and while she plans to purchase the jacket, her main objective from purchasing the jacket is to replicate it. The academics in the world may think this is plagiarism, but in fashion- it is genius. 

Is this illegal? 

No, it is not. In the fashion industry there is very little intellectual property protection. There is only trademark protection. It means that anyone can copy anyone and sell it as their own design- they just cannot copy the trademark logo. That is why some companies blast their logo on their items since it is much harder to copy exactly. 

Why?

Long ago the patent offices decided that clothing should not be patented because it is too utilitarian. They did not want designers owning basic blocks of our clothing- but "too utilitarian"- not really. Maybe unnecessary or silly but not too basic.

Argument

Because there is no copy right protection, fashion designers have been able to elevate clothing into something considered art. Because there is not copyright it is very open minded and spurs innovation and growth while also recycling old successful and timeless pieces. The magical side effects of a culture of copying, then there are TRENDS! It is legal for each person to copy one another. If you talk to any designer they say their main inspiration comes from the street and where they get their creative inspiration- making it a both top-down and down-top industry. 

When there are lawsuits, they loose more often than winning because the courts say you do not need protection for clothing. Here is a great example of two brands- one the original creation and the second- the knock off. 

Makes you think- how do the expensive brands stay in business?! A famous designer said that he found after research that the counterfeit customer is not the high end designer. They are appealing to very different demographic. There is status, brand, titles. Therefore, the copy designer is not taking anything (in terms of customers) from the high-end brand. Because of this, the higher-end become more innovative and different making it harder to copy. 

Overall, this was incredibly interesting. I have never thought about it but I often see "cheaper" versions of clothing, accessories, etc. When I go shopping next I will see and compare the different items and see how innovative each item actually is. 

Silly Patents Part 2 | Week 9

Hello again!

Welcome back to my blog post. So far, I am really enjoying looking up these silly patents. There are many patented technologies or ideas that I would never think would have been patented. For this post I focused on patents of items or technologies that I never knew existed. This was a great way for me to not only learn why these patents were silly but also learn about new items that I never knew were even thought about! Hope you enjoy, and I am looking forward to reading your comments! 

Patent 6929164 | Neck Wrap/Brace Organizer

The idea of this product is a neck wrap that holds items and a belt article that also carry things similar to the neck wrap as it is wrapped around the neck of a person. The idea is that the neck wrap secures together at opposite ends around the person's neck. On the neck strap, there are special features like a telephone holder, which enables the person to use the telephone in a hands-free manner. The belt article has a belt strap that tightens around the person's waist. 

A medical neck brace similar to the neck wrap

The idea behind this patent is that is allows you to "de-cluttered" the your life. However, there are a few reasons why I believe that this is a silly patent. First, I do not think that this is a very valid invention. Not only is it not fashionable, but I am not sure how socially acceptable it is. A lot of time a neck brace like the one shown in the picture is generally associated with injury. Therefore, I am not sure how practical this is as an item. Second, like I previously stated, the jump to add a few loops to a traditional medical neck brace is not that far of a difference from the neck wrap shown here. For that reason, I am not sure how non-obvious this product is, and in fact I think it is a very obvious and non-novel invention. I do not believe that this should have been patented. However, I am curious to see what you all think- and mostly would you wear one of these around campus? I do agree that it could potentially make life easier but I am pretty confident I would not wear one of these!                                                                                           

Patent D493601 | Edible Business Cards 

This product is fairly straight forward. They are business cards that are edible. I definitely did not know that this product existed. They are made out of a chocolate base and then they have edible colorful ink outlining the details. However, the practicality of these cards are in question since it seems counter intuitive. The purpose of business cards are to give people information and so they can keep your information and get in contact with one another. However, if the card is edible then they are going to eat it and the information will be lost. Therefore, I would not use edible business cards, although it seems to be a fun idea. 

Additionally, the edible business card is just a version of the regular business card- there is clearly prior art in this situation so it is not novel that there are edible business cards. 

Overall, I found these inventions to be very interesting because I did not know that these inventions were in existence. However, at the same time, once I learned about them, they did not seem non-obvious in any way. Hope you enjoy this post- looking forward to your thoughts and comments!

Silly Patents Part 1 | Week 9

Hello everyone!

This week the professor asked us to search silly and crazy patents and analyzing why they are considered silly! I have looked up two patents that are very interesting to me mainly because the concepts seems so simply and obvious. I am even surprised that the Patent office approved these patents. Let me know what you guys think! 

Patent 5443036 | Method of exercising a cat

The first patent I want to focus on is patent 5443036, which was a patent that detailed how to exercise a cat. Essentially this patent was a method for inducing cats to exercise which mainly consisted of directing a beam of light (a laser light) from a held hand device onto the floor and wall. Additionally, the patent detailed moving the laser so to cause an irregular way of fascinating cats and other animals who case on instinct. I believe that this is a silly patent because the idea of this was probably long thought of before making the idea not novel. There was actually a book "One Hundred and Eighty-Seven Ways to Amuse a Bored Cat" that entail the exact same idea but using a flashlight. Although this patent has a slight variation, it is still an obvious switch to using a laser instead of flashlight. Therefore, the patent should have never been issued but it was pointed out that United States Patent and Trademark Office has actually issued the same patent or similar patents multiple times. 

Patent 6368227 | Method of swinging on a swing

The priority date on this patent is November 17th, 2000. Essentially this patent details the way that the user would be positioned on the swing. It says that a user would be positioned on a standard swing suspended by two chains from horizontal tree branch and has a side to side motion by alternately pulling on one chain and then the other. 

On the technical side of this patent, it says that the method of swinging on a swing is the technical part. However, the concept of a swing has been around for generations. Although this swing is placed on a tree branch, it in no way is novel from a regular swing set or non-obvious in any regard. Therefore, it is just a variation of a past invention, and in my mind should not have been patented. Additionally, it is clear there is prior art for this invention which again, does not make sense as to why it was patented. Another thing to think about is that any person can make a swing on a tree branch- therefore, would the people who patented this invention charge a royalty every time someone made this swing? It is a pretty funny invention since they have had swings around for a good amount of time now. 

Thank you for reading my blog post. I look forward to reading your comments!