Posts in Podcasts

In the latest episode of IP Goes Pop!, co-hosts Michael Snyder and Joseph Gushue dive into the first part of a series on the world of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its potential impact on, not only the world, but copyright, trademarks and patents. They examine examples of AI in pop culture, and how they reflect the broader trends and concerns surrounding AI in our society. Artificial intelligence (whether tied to robots or otherwise) has always been a popular trope in movies, television shows, and books, from Isaac Asimov’s “I Robot” seminal book series, to the classic “Terminator” movies, to the more recent “Ex Machina” and “M3GAN”. Rapid advancements in technology have now enabled AI to become part of our daily lives which raises not only important legal questions, but also ethical considerations for humans when developing AI technologies.

Lucky or that good? David Jones’ time as Executive Director of the High-Tech Inventors Alliance (HTIA), which advocates on patent policy issues on behalf of some of the largest tech companies in the world, suggests that he’s both when it comes to shaping America’s patent system. However, he’s way too modest and strategically wise to take credit or even accept the premise of that question. “I appreciate you saying we’ve had a winning streak. It doesn’t quite feel that way. To me, it feels to me like we’ve kind of clawed our way back to approaching neutral,” Jones says on the latest episode of Clause 8.

Many people do not understand what intellectual property rights mean, let alone how to use them. This is at least partly due to the absence of intellectual property rights in the classroom. Few undergraduate students learn about IP as part of their required or elective coursework. When IP is taught, it is typically approached from a legal as opposed to business or entrepreneurial perspective — think case law. IP strategy, on the other hand, is largely absent from university departments that are likely to generate new ideas, including engineering, business, art, and medicine. As a result, many creators are unaware that they can use the intellectual property system to help capture the value of what they create — and in the process, benefit themselves, their affiliation and others. To learn about the current state of IP education, Bruce Berman interviewed two longtime university IP educators for Episode 9, Season 2 of his podcast “Understanding IP Matters.” They explore how IP education has evolved, who is doing it, and the tension between the business and the legal side of teaching IP.

On the latest episode of The Briefing by the IP Law Blog, Scott Hervey and Josh Escovedo discuss the lawsuit filed earlier this year by global visual content creator Getty Images against startup technology company Stability AI for allegedly scraping over 12 million photographs from Getty’s portfolio without consent or compensation. Getty Images claims that Stability AI copied its photographs and associated text and metadata to train its Stable Diffusion model, which uses AI to generate computer-synthesized images in response to text prompts.

Petitions are sort of like pleading practice before the Office over issues that do not necessarily have to do with the patentability of your claims. The Office of Petitions will receive your petition where it will be decided on not the examiner, but an administrator in the petitions office. As a rule of thumb, objections from the Office are petitionable and rejections from the Office are appealable. Rejections under Sections 101, 102 and 103 involve questions of law and therefore have to be appealed to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) as an ex parte appeal. But for everything else, if you have a dispute with the examiner that’s not going anywhere and the examiner isn’t withdrawing the objection – you petition those matters.

Over the course of the past couple of months, Dr. Ashley Sloat and I had the opportunity and honor to host conversations with thought leaders across the patent world. Working from their insights, this episode explores the biggest problems plaguing patenting and how those problems impact the innovation economy that so very tightly depends on strong, predictable, and reliable patents. Building on that understanding, we work toward getting a more complete view of the legislative, judicial, and educational solutions needed to get back to the gold standard patent system. In doing so, we not only talk with our guests about their support for the proposed solutions on the table, but we also explore the strongest criticisms.

The patent community often treats the Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) as the person responsible for setting and changing an administration’s patent policy. On this episode of the Clause 8 podcast, former USPTO Commissioner for Patents, Robert Stoll, says that’s a mistake. “The autonomy of the Director is not what people think it is on the outside who are not familiar with it,” he emphasizes. “It’s not your own voice. Any Director of the PTO has to work in their administration and carry forward what becomes the policy of the President. So, they’re not free hands with respect to implementing their ideas, and you just have to recognize that.”

Israel is known as the land of milk and honey, the Holy Land, and the Startup Nation. And it consistently ranks in the top five countries for number of Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) patent applications filed per capita. But due to its relatively small size, it’s understandably not known as a hotbed of major patent deals. Yet, surprisingly, the person responsible for making many of the biggest patent deals in the world happen is an unassuming lawyer based in Tel Aviv, Lillian Shaked.

The United States Supreme Court is set to hear opening arguments in Amgen Inc. v. Sanofi on March 27. This is a case that could have profound impacts both on the invention enablement issues that have been plaguing life science patenting, but also more broadly on defining the contemporary role that the patent system will play in our innovation economy going forward. Specifically at issue will be the question of what genus claims require from an enablement perspective. Will the enablement standard be governed by the black and white, codified Section 112 statutory requirement that the specification must only teach those skilled in the art how to “make and use” the claimed invention? Or will the Supreme Court lean on lower court-based additions to the standard that the specification must enable those skilled in the art “to reach the full scope of claimed embodiments” without undue experimentation?

The 1950 case Desny v. Wilder set the ground rules for an idea theft/implied contract case in California. In Desny, the plaintiff Victor Desny wrote a script depicting the real-life story of Floyd Collins, a boy who made headlines after he was trapped in a cave 80 feet underground. In an effort to market his script, Desny called Billy Wilder, a writer, producer and director at Paramount Pictures. Desny could not get through to Wilder and subsequently stripped his script to the bare facts so that Wilder’s secretary could copy it in shorthand over the phone. After reading his synopsis, Desny told Wilder’s secretary that Wilder and Paramount could use the script only if they paid him a reasonable amount for doing so. Shortly thereafter, Wilder created his own movie script mirroring Desny’s. Because Desny’s script was based on historical facts, and because Desny only conveyed the bare minimum of those facts to Wilder’s secretary, both parties conceded for the purpose of the appeal that the synopsis was not sufficiently original to form the basis of a federal copyright claim. The court, however, held that Desny stated sufficient facts to establish the existence of an implied-in-fact contract between the parties.

The copy writes itself: “Five-Time Woman World Jump Rope Champion Transforms Fitness Industry after Securing Patents.”  However, you’re unlikely to find a glowing profile of Molly Metz on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) website anytime soon. That’s because, after the fitness industry embraced Molly’s invention as the gold standard for speed jump ropes, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) of the USPTO invalidated the claims of the patents based on prior art from 1978 and 1979. 

Intellectual property is the primary reason most companies are valuable today, but making investments in inventions and patents isn’t well-understood. As creators develop a roadmap for profiting from their output, understanding the mechanisms for valuing and monetizing intellectual property is crucial. To tease out the intersection of startup funding, intellectual property and litigation, in Episode 8 of Season 2 of his podcast “Understanding IP Matters,” Bruce Berman interviews Efrat Kasznik, president of Foresight Valuation Group, and Adam Gill, founder and managing director of Chicago-based GLS Capital, who are leaders in the field of IP valuation, monetization and litigation funding.

Foreign filing licenses – they’re surprisingly sneaky and easy to overlook, but can come with significant consequences if you do. Many countries, including the United States, require inventors to receive special permission to file with patent offices outside of the inventor’s …or invention’s… country. A foreign filing license is a government issued document that represents this permission for inventors and companies to file in foreign countries. Failing to receive this permission can come with serious ramifications including fines, patent revocation, and even imprisonment! Why so serious? Well, like with most matters of foreign export compliance, it comes down to each nation’s strong desire to protect its own security and economic interests. Allowing ideas to cross borders comes with the risk of the unauthorized exportation of technologies and sensitive information that could have implications for military applications, national security, and state secrets.

Bruce Berman, the PR guru of the IP world, is the CEO of Brody Berman Associates, a communications firm that helps tell patent stories. Berman has implemented marketing and business development programs on behalf of more than 200 IP portfolios and businesses. And, in 2016, he founded the Center for Intellectual Property Understanding, an independent nonprofit that raises awareness of the use and impact of intellectual property on individuals and businesses. He is also the host of the Understanding IP Matters podcast. In the latest episode of the Clause 8 Podcast, Berman delves into the who, what, when and how of telling IP stories to help promote causes in the patent world.