 Recording is enabled. Hello, everybody. We are starting now. Can everyone hear me now? We only have a few people online. That's fine. I assume the rest will watch later. Annie, Gwendolyn, Carl, can everyone hear me? All right. Oh, good. Okay. I had the wrong window open. Hold on a second. This is our first time using this WebEx and you guys are guinea pigs. But I think you'll benefit from it because I think that we'll have no crashes and dropouts like we've had in the past. You can turn that other light on here, please. Turn the other bright light on. Donald Cost says he cannot hear. Let me see if I can add you, Donald. Okay, Donald, can you hear me now? Can everyone hear me now? Donald, can you hear restart? I'll restart audio for a second. Okay, I restarted now. Donald, can you hear me? Can everyone hear me now? I see a little. Okay, now I see the earphone symbol and Donald. Donald, can you hear now? Donald, hello. Oh, good. Good. Okay. Danny, if you see anyone joined that I'm not noticing, we have that I need to add as a panelist. Let me know. Because I might not notice it. Welcome everybody. Glad to have you all online. This course is, I think we have about 17, 18 students. We may have a few more joined during the week. This is a smaller course. So this may give us more time to address questions, which is perfectly fine with me. We had around 70 or 80 the first go around for this course. And my last course of libertarian legal theory, which just ended a couple weeks ago. We had 100 and something students. So this is a smaller course. So maybe we'll have more intimate setting. And we've had some technical problems with the previous service we use. We're trying something new this time. This is the first time we've used it. So in the chat session, I'm going to say hello right now. We'll see that my name shows as Danny Sanchez and so does Danny. So we'll get that fixed for next time. But Danny's our sort of technical host supporter here. He's a TA kind of guy and runs the whole music academy. So you'll see he's here and so am I. Anyway, it's good to be here. Since we have such a small class this time, I'd be glad to answer questions as we go if they are on point. I will stop and read them for people that are listening later or in audio only. Okay, so tonight is lecture one of the course and tonight's topic is history and the law, the law of IP and the history of IP. Go to slide one. Just a brief introduction to myself. Some of you already know me from the previous course. Jock codes who's not here now I guess jockels listen remotely later to the students or friends of mine jock who did the audio narration for my Against intellectual property book and john McGinnis who I've known for maybe 1520 years he was a Professor at a local economics college in Pennsylvania when I used to live in Philadelphia. So be glad to interact with john to Before we go on Danny, I see that there's an X. Next to Carl Fielding's name. I'm not sure that means Carl, can you hear me okay, you're there all right. Hello. Okay, I don't know what the X means. So, I just want to explain who I am I'm a patent attorney. Now this course is not about me but just to give you an idea for your professor is where I'm coming from. I'm a patent lawyer. I'm also a libertarian scholar and writer. I was influenced heavily by Iran, initially my thinking and then later on by more Austrian and anarchist thinkers like rock bar and others. As I said, I'm a lawyer, and I've had about 18 year law firm career with law firms in Houston and Philadelphia practicing in law for property law, including patent law. Thank you. My main influences and I'll draw on these a lot in this course are going to be the Austro Misesian rock guardians for primarily Mises, rock bar and humbuck. And you'll see as we go on how I draw on them. I'm going to slide for a brief overview of the course and I've done this once already so I actually re listened today to my first lecture that I'm giving now. So, some of this I may streamline a bit because I realize now some of it I can speed up. I tended to go over my time and have less time for Q&A. I think we can streamline it a little bit better this time, but just a quick overview of the course we're going to have six lectures and today's lecture number one is the history and law of IP and overview of modern IP law. I'm going to talk about its historical origins. And actually what the types of IPR and given overview of its justifications. The reasons people have given to explain why they think they think we should have IP law. And just to be clear, I'm not going to go into IP law and enough legal detail to enable you guys to practice this. This is not a law school course. And that would be kind of boring anyway. Donald has lost the video window. I'm not sure how he gets it back. Maybe you can advise Donald costs how to get his video window back. He emailed me privately about that Donald I'm not sure he can be quiet baby. Okay, so next next week's lecture we'll talk about properties cares to the ideas. Sort of a general overview of this aspect of IP. And then, number three, we'll talk about the utilitarian case for IP. Number five, we're going to talk about how to number four, we're going to examine right space arguments for property. Number five, we're going to try to integrate the ultra property theory with Austrian economics and the material theory. And then in the final lecture of the course, we're going to talk about different reforms that are proposed what's what's coming up, things we can do, and how a non IP world will work. And also the future of open versus closed. So let's go and jump right into lecture one. Let me just, I'm going to emphasize here, there are two books, resources that will refer to a lot in this course. Excuse me. Let's just hold on second Donald calls is having a little bit of a problem here. Let's take a quick break. Hey, let's just take a, let's take a two minute break. While Donald and Danny try to get Donald back online. I'll be right back and grab some more water. Okay. Let's resume and I'm hoping Donald can catch up and you guys get your problem solved, but let's keep going to avoid delaying the lecture too much. So the two main texts for the course will be my monograph against and lesser property, which I'm going to call a IP here, which is available online, and there's links on the course materials for this. So the book against intellectual monopoly by Boulder and Levine. So my book is more of an Austrian libertarian principle approach, and the book by Boulder and Levine is more of an economic and peripheral approach. They compliment each other well, I believe. Anyway, I have here on slide five, sort of the list of the resources that are relevant to today's lecture. I'll talk about that later or on the resources for the first page for today. Okay, so what we're going to talk about first is the main question for. I'm going to minimize the chat session because this is distracting me for it now. Okay, so the main question that we have to face is what is in most property and is it a type of property. I'm aware that there's a type of property called real property. And this is in the common law system real property is land. Okay. In the civil law systems of the world, which is second major legal system of the world, which is most of Europe, Quebec and Canada, and Louisiana and America, Puerto Rico, etc. In the civil law systems, we would call this immovable property. So that's one type of property. Then a second type of property is personal property. These are movable things which is what you call them in civil law systems movable things. Cars, apples or gold, or even your body, although your body is held to be a special type of property. So then the question is, is intellectual property, a legitimate type of property. So then the question is, what is intellectual property. Okay, long slide seven now. So here, let me just give a definition I'm going to try to have a calm, just don't freak out about this because IP is hard to understand first. It's hard to understand in purpose, because of purposeful sort of over overly complex ways, describing the law by lawyers and specialists right it's sort of our domain. And so we have our own jargon we have our own lexicon, etc. So it seems alienating and highly technical, but basically the word IP is a fairly modern concept. It's adopted for propaganda purposes, which we'll learn later. But it basically is a term that covers several types of, excuse me, legally recognized rights. Okay, now they all they're all lumped together they're all different. They have some things in common. They're lumped together is what's called an umbrella term. It's a concept that covers several different types of legal rights, and they all have something to do with intellectual creativity, right or something that's valuable that's not really a material scarce thing, something that's valuable because of what your mind has done. He writes or writes to intangible or what you could say immaterial things that is to ideas. Okay, as expressed, or as embodied in practical limitations. Okay. Tom Palmer, who's one of the intellectual property philosophers who had influenced me, he refers to intellectual property as being a right to ideal objects. Okay, so in other words, if you imagine you have a certain type of idea. And the right to an IP is not just to the the particular thing that that's instantiated in, but it's that it's a right to that idea itself, and therefore it's a right to everything is instantiated. So for example, a copyright is a right to a novel, for example, but novel is not just a physical book that you might be holding it's a right to that ideal object. And so what the influence says is it like a play conical deal. I think it actually is like a conical deal. And as we'll see later as we look at this at the implications of this. You can't really protect legally a right to a tonic ideal. The only way you can protect it is to actually resolve that in terms of some kind of rights in material goods in the real world. Really, the entire idea of property rights and ideal objects or intellectual property always amounts to some kind of assignment of property rights to material goods or scarce goods in the real world, which is one problem with them, which we'll get to in more detail later. Okay, so what exactly do we mean by intellectual property. And by the way, a lot of the IP abolitionists of which I'm one, some of some of them oppose even using the idea of IP and also property they think that you're giving too much away by using the term of the I understand that complaint, but I think we also have to communicate with people that we're arguing with and disagreeing with and trying to persuade and you know the term that's used now it's intellectual property I mean there's lots of other terms that have been proposed like property or intellectual poverty or intellectual monopoly or pattern privileges. But for now I think we're going to use the word and also property, but it covers disparate sets of legal rights. Now there are four traditional types of IP. And I've got patent and copyright listed here and I've got them bolded because those are the two biggest ones of those two biggest problems. And that's the ones we're going to focus on in this course. So patting copyright also trademark and trade secrets. Now, as a subset of copyright I have moral rights and common law copyright. And as a subset of trademark I have domain name implications. So we have different ways of breaking these things down so let me briefly explain what they are. A patent right is basically a monopoly privilege granted by the state. It's the right to exclude someone else from making or using or selling the practical invention that you have a property right in. Okay, so it can be a gizmo or a process or something like that. So patents cover functional practical useful inventions. Copyright protects the original expression of an idea. So this is what covers artistic creations like novels paintings, and even the way you write a software program not the way it works but the way it's expressed when you actually write it like you think of it like a model. Moral rights, which is more of a European concept is sort of the idea that there's an inalienable right to be recognized as the author of something even if you don't own the rights to the copyrights to it anymore. And it's called it said to be an inalienable because you can't give it away. Someone has to recognize you as the author of a given painting, for example, or movie, even if you have no copyright in it anymore. Common law copyright is talked about on occasion. Most people don't understand it. I don't even understand it quite clearly because it's not really effect anymore. And it's not described very well. Give me a second. There's some newer people that have added I'm going to add you guys as analysts. Okay, everyone's a panelist now. Yeah, all right. So, common law copyright the original idea of common law copyright was a very limited doctrine of the common law which said if you were the author of an unpublished manuscript. So let's say you wrote a novel or a book and it's in your desk drawer and you've never published it. Then if someone takes it from you and tries to publish it, you could use your common law copyright to stop them. So it's a very limited right. Pretty much unrelated to what the modern copyright law does in a way it was more similar to trade secret, which we'll get to next. So trade secret is the simply recognizes the fact that sometimes let's say a company or a businessman has information that he has secret that he keep proprietary to himself, which gives him some kind of competitive advantage. It could be something that could have been a copyrightable it could have been something that could have been patentable, or maybe not, but it's basically something that he keeps secret that gives him an advantage in competition. Trade secret law says if you make reasonable efforts to keep this information secret, then you can go to court and prevent someone else from leaking the information to the world. So long as it's not generally public yet. Now trademark just means a mark that you use in trade or just in commerce to identify the source of your goods or your services. Okay, so basically the root of trademark isn't consumer confusion or fraud. So in a way you can see the trade secret and trademark or not as problematic in their origins as patent and copyright, which we haven't gotten to yet, but the point that you can see already that trade secret basically says you can do something secretly trying to keep secret. And you can stop someone from revealing the secret who has no right to trademark just that you shouldn't deceive consumers about the source of goods. Now there. So these are the big four types of trade of IP rights patent copyright trademark and trade secret. Now there's another classical right called defamation. Well it's actually called reputation rights, but it's protected by what's called defamation, which is the cause of action. Now you've probably heard of libel standard defamation. Let me just give you a quick primer on what these words mean defamation means publicizing some kind of communication about someone that is false and damages a reputation. Now libel is a type of defamation and so is slander libel is the written form of defamate of defamation. And you can remember that because libel and written both have an iron slander is the oral form of defamation. Okay, so basically their defamation. So defamation, the defamation cause of action is based upon the idea of a right in your reputation. You build up your reputation, it has value and you can protect it from being diminished. Now, in my view, this should be classified as a type of IP because it's got the same motivation and it's got the same problems as well. It's not usually called type of IP, but I think it should be. Now there are newer types of IP that have come about, let's say in the last 50, 30, 40 years. One is a database rights, which is not the law in the US yet, but it could be some point. Database rights, let me explain how that arose. Under the copyright law, you have a copyright in original works of authorship that is in the in the original way that that idea is expressed. The problem was there was a Supreme Court case called feist at the ISP maybe 1520 years ago, which said that you cannot have copyright in factual compilations of data. Like a database or a map, for example, or a telephone book, because these are just pure collections of data that have nothing original about them. Now until the feist case, there was a doctrine under US law called sweat of the brow, sweat of the brow. And what that said was, if you put a lot of effort into collecting data that is valuable, then, which is called, you know, sweat of the brow you put a lot of work into it. Then the fact that you labored on it with substitute for the originality requirement. In other words, even though it wasn't really original in the copyright sense, we would count that as original. And it could be subject to copyright. In this case, the Supreme Court said, well, you do that. Sweat of the brow might be worth rewarding, but the copyright law doesn't reward it because it has to reward originality. There's really nothing original in a map because the map of the factual depiction of what the surface of the earth, you know, the roads look like. So it's not original. And this is why some countries, some people have advocated for us to implement a database, right, which would actually give a legislative protection to the things that are not any longer protected in the US anyway by copyright law, and maps and databases and phone books and things like that. I hadn't seen much education for this lately. It was around 10 years ago. I believe there are database rights in some countries. Okay. Some other types of newer IP innovations would include semiconductor mask for protection, which is a unique US law, maybe 30 years old, which protects the way a circuit is laid out. You know, for these integrated circuits that are made by companies like Intel and my company, which is a laser company. There was an amendment to the copyright law, think about 15 years ago, which added both whole or vessel whole designs. So you could actually get a protection on the way the front of a bull hole looks or something like that. That's a very narrow specialized type of IP right, which obviously was passed as a behest of some special interest. And there's continual agitation to add new IP laws, like right now there's agitation to add rights to protect fashion designs. Sometimes some bartenders are asking for copyright in recipes for bartering. Chaps are asking for copyrights and recipes and so on. So this is what the four main types of IP are any questions at this point that I can address. I'll go into some of these in detail right now. If there's any questions feel free to chat them right now to the session I'll be happy to address them right now. And let me check and see if I think there's been some that have joined. Let me make sure and see if there's any to add. Yeah. John just added welcome John and Matt. Let's see you guys here. Okay. So, we're just discussing the types of IP sort of legal overview of what IP consists of. Now copyright is a statutory so there's a huge statutory scheme in the US and in almost every other country. And they're all largely compatible with each other because of what's called a burn convention be or in the burn convention. Copyright is a legal right that's given to authors. The author is the one who writes it creates it of an original work like a book or an article or movie or computer program or a painting. Okay. It's given to you automatically. As soon as you fix it, it's called fixing it in a tangible medium of expression. Let's see if I have that covered on the next slide is not going to detail here. Yeah, I do. Okay, so just I'll deal with that on slide 11. You know, what rights are you given as the author of a copyright the holder of a copyright. Well, you're given the exclusive right to reproduce the work, but also another set of rights called to prepare derivative works and to perform or present the work publicly so it's not just the right to reproduce it which which is what happens. So copyright is more than just the right to authorize the copying work. So copying or reproducing means the literal reproduction of work. Okay, like if you take an MP3 file and you make an exact duplicate that would be literal reproduction. But if you, you know, you look at the Mona Lisa and you paint it yourself. And you have to duplicate it and it's close but it's not exact. That would be a reproduction but not exactly reproduction. But that would also be copyright infringement if the Mona Lisa were still in copyright. Now, if you made Mona Lisa's brother sort of another painting based upon that one. That would be a derivative work. Now you're entitled to do that now because that work is in the public domain, but if it were copyrighted you couldn't without permission of the owner. The work publicly and that's a complicated one that depends upon the situation, whether it's digital, whether it's broadcast, whether it's live, etc. Now you have to remember that copyright protects only the form or the expression of an idea not the underlying idea. The functionality of way something works is protected by say patent perhaps. The way it's expressed is what copyright protects and the way it looks. And what this right does is it basically gives you the right to go to the courts and to ask the court to issue an injunction or to get damages from someone. Basically, it lets you stop someone else from using their own property in a certain way they're so called infringing your copyright. Like if they're rearranging their own property with your pattern of they're making a derivative work with your with your property. So that's what the copyright is. And again, as I said it protects original works of all the stuff that are fixed in the tangible form of expression. So for example, if I think of a new song. And I say it to an audience for the first time, but it's not recorded. There's no copyright yet in that song. It's got to be recorded or fixed in some medium. You've got to write it down or record it or something like that. Okay, as I said, it's a bundle of rights including primarily the right to reproduce which includes literal reproduction and non literal reproduction. That's reproduction that's not very too much the right to prepare derivative works and the right to present to work public. Okay, now copyright last at this current time for the life of the author plus 70 years. Okay, so if you write a novel when you're 30 and you die when you're 90. So that the 60 years of term and then another 70 so 130 years of term. If it's a work for hire, then it lasts 95 years. Now a work for hire basically means it's a statutory category of copyright. What this means is, if the creator of a work makes a written contract with someone else, typically their employer. By which the employer pays them to create these types of works and the contract specifically says in writing that this is a work for hire actually has to say it's a work for hire. In that case, then, not only does the employer own the copyright. Which, which you could do by assignment. For example, I have copyright in materials I've written, I could assign them to someone else tomorrow with an assignment, but I'm just transferring ownership. I'm still the author, but I've assigned the ownership to copyright someone else. The term is the same. It would be my life for 70 years. And it worked for hire. If you have a contract ahead of time, which says it's a work for hire, then the company that basically is the one paying for it is legally the author, legally they are the author. And in that case, the term is 95 years total, usually because it's a corporation, which doesn't have a life. But basically you can think of copyright as having about 100 years life. So it's a very long time. It's the longest of all the IP except well trade secret can last forever and trade marks to be renewed. Definitely. Now, what's important to recognize is that ever since 19, I think it was 82, maybe 78, I can't really say when the US exceeded to the burn convention. Okay. And we changed our copyright law to comply with the burn convention, which is an international treaty, which has copyright standards with every signatory nation is supposed to comply with. You see where any more attendance now need to add. Okay, so what's important to notice is that copyright is automatic. You need to think about this because you will hear people over and over and over again mistake the law. Like, for example, you'll hear people criticize the Mises Institute, or me for hypocrisy. Let's say, well, you're against copyright and yet you copyrighted your, your article or your book. Well, this is a complete confusion. No one copyrights their book. Everyone that writes a book has to copy it in it whether they want it or not. This is completely automatic. It has absolutely nothing to do with whether you put a copyright notice in your book or not has nothing to do with whether you file a copyright registration under the burden convention. It eliminated what's called formalities. That is, in other words, countries may not require formalities before copyright attaches. They can't require you to pay a fee. They can't require you to put notice on your work. They can't require you to register it actively. It has to be automatic. So basically, all these charges that you, why did you copyright your book? Well, I didn't copyright my book. What they're saying is we I see a copyright notice in your book. Therefore, you're hypocritical. Well, but it's true that I have a copyright in my book. The state gives me a copyright in my book, whether I want it or not, whether I say it or not it's there. So I'm just stating the truth and putting the date in there is useful for some purposes and stating that I'm the copyright holders useful because now people know who to come to ask permission to reprint it. So you have to remember that copyright is automatic. It's a very important point that is widely misunderstood by advocates of IP. I think one of my blog posts is sticky. It's really hard to get rid of. Some people say, why don't you just put a notice on the front of your book saying, I hereby get rid of my copyright. Or you could put the notice, but it wouldn't it wouldn't actually have the effect. I mean, what if you put a notice on your body saying I hereby get rid of my human rights. I mean, does that mean you've actually given up your human rights. No, it wouldn't be effective to do that. Personally, the law doesn't even allow you to have an easy way to get rid of your copyrights. Okay, I'm going to skip slide 12. That's kind of a joke here. The point here is on slide 12. It's not a don't think of it as a verb think of it as a noun like you have a copyright but you cannot copyright something. Kevin asks a question. I don't know if he meant to ask this privately seems like a public question. Maybe you should try to change your setting to address everyone. But Kevin asks, does copyright automatically apply to formulations of combination medicines and nutritionals. I'm not quite sure what you're asking but I don't think so I think what you're talking about is what will be covered by a patent copyright covers. Think of it like artistic expression originality. When you formulate medication nutritional that's a functional thing. Okay, has a functional purpose. So that probably would not be covered by copyright copyright covers things like novels, lyrics to a song or the song itself, a painting, a sculpture photographs software. So we have another question here. Gwendolyn asks, when an author claims that their world in which a story takes places copyrighted instead of just the words, and that you can't write anything else in it are they speaking to derivation or trying to assert something they don't actually have. That's a good question I think. Well, they may not understand copyright while they talk like this, but I think they're talking derivative works. So in other words, if you use the same background world that they created that would probably, you know, to do a sequel let's say, that would probably be a derivative work. You know, as the copyright holder they are the ones who have the right to authorize or to prohibit people making derivative works. So that's what they're talking about. It could also be a trademark issue it probably the derivative work of copyright. Matt asks, what about covers of songs, would they be a violation of copyright law. If the cover artist did not ask for permission. Yes, because it would be that would probably be a, it could be either reproduction or derivative work if it was like an attempt to reproduce the song, even though it's not a literal reproduction it's close to it it's a reproduction of the song. Or either that or it's a derivative work either way you have to do permission. Now, let me just say that there is this legislative thing in the US called ASCAP, I forgot what it stands for ASCAP, sort of like a legislative intermediary agency that has established royalty rates for using music commercial music so you can actually use someone's song. If you just paid the established rate in the ASCAP manual or something I really don't understand it. But it's based on copyright in first place. Give me a regular water. Okay. Yeah, that's right one one. Okay. So let's go on to slide 13. This by the way, I won't cast you guys on this, but just take a look at slide 13. This is a flow chart that allows you to determine whether even the copyright expires in a work. You can see it's very complicated. It's even more complicated than this. It just shows you how arcane the statutory legislative systems are. Donald asks, when is copyright obtained? It's certainly when it's published by a publisher. What about works like blogs? If you look at the statute, it says you have a copyright as soon as an original work of authorship is fixed in a tangible medium of expression. So that's when you have it. When you as soon as you write it down, you have copyright. So as soon as you publish a blog, that minute you have copyright. In fact, you probably have it before that when you're drafting it. It'd be hard to prove it, but you have it as soon as you do that. If you think about it doesn't really matter when you have it because it lasts until 70 years after your death. So the starting point is only going to matter once you've made it public really. Now, a patent is a little bit different than copyright because number one, you have to apply for it. You have to have to file a patent application with the United States Pat Office. What the patent covers is it gives you a property right in inventions. That is a device or a process or a combination of materials with a new drug that performs some useful function. What it does, it gives you a limited monopoly on the manufacturer use sale or import of that invention. Now, this is another thing that's hard for non patent attorneys to understand, but patents do not give you the right to practice your invention. They do not. It only gives you the right to stop someone else from practicing your invention. And I'll give an example in a minute of how that works. Now, to get a patent, you have to, as I said, file a patent application and it has to qualify by the rules. And the rules say number one, it has to be the type of thing that you can get a patent for. That's called patentable subject matter. Patentable subject matter, which would be useful invention basically, but excluded are things like the laws of nature, natural phenomena and abstract ideas. So you cannot get a patent on was MC squared. You cannot get a patent on a pure mathematical algorithm. And as of probably next month on this new patent law passes, you can't get a patent on a business method. Or a tax or a tax reduction strategy, you know, things like this. What is the term of patents? Well, they used to be 17 years from the date of issuance. So you file a patent on day one. It might take one year or two years, three years, five years, sometimes 50, 50 years to issue the period between when you file it and when issues of the patents, or when you give up on it, which is called abandonment. It's called prosecution. It's weird. It's a weird word. But it's called prosecution. That's why patent attorneys like me are called patent prosecutors. That means we deal with the patent office to prosecute a patent application. So until 1995, the law was that once the patent finally issued, you had 17 years of term. The law was changed in 1995 pursuant to something yet another another international treaty and WTO negotiations. It was changed to the current system, which is the patent last for 20 years from data filing. Okay, but it doesn't come into force until it issues. So if you take three years forward to prosecute, then you have 17 years left. If you take five years to prosecute it, you have 15 years left. If you only take one year to prosecute, you have 19 years of term. So basically it's still approximately 17 because most patents take about three years to prosecute. One reason for this change was the phenomenon you might have heard of called submarine patents, submarine patents. A submarine patent, that was a metaphor used to explain the effect of some of these patents that you would file a patent, and then you would keep turning it. You could refile it over and over again for years. And in the old law, it was secret. It was kept secret during prosecution. It wasn't published until it was issued. So you would file a patent on day one, let's say 1950, let's say on some intermittent windshield wiper idea or something like that, right? In the meantime, 10 years later, someone else invents the same idea and it starts being used widely in industry. And you've got this patent going secretly the whole time. And you keep it, you keep it churning the whole time so the market gets bigger and bigger so that when you finally let your patent issue, you've got a lot of people you can sue. So the idea was like, you know, 50 years later, 20 years later, all of a sudden this patent would emerge like a submarine that had been hidden and that emerges over submarine patents. And then we just totally floor the entire industry because now this guy could go and extort or extract patent royalties from the entire industry like windshield, intermittent windshield wipers or lots of cases like this. There's a guy named Jerome Lemelson who did this for the notorious. He was an inventor. He had only had like 100, 200 patents. We died. And he was worth like $500 million when he died from all the royalties he had extorted from companies. I think his patent attorney was worth 100 or $200 million himself. I mean, there's this Lemelson Foundation out there. I mean, everyone thinks it's great, but it's really kind of disgusting in my view. Now, if you play that game, the longer you wait during prosecution, you're eating into your patent term. So if you take 10 years to prosecute your patent, then you only have 10 years left. Furthermore, under the new law, most patents are now published 18 months after their file. So even if you file it on day one and you keep it prosecuting for 10 years, it's going to be public for most of that time. So people are aware that it might be coming. Okay, so patents are about 17 years. You can think about it, 20, 17, 20 years. Now, a patent is similar to a copyright. It allows you to go to the court, will allow you to go to a state agency and petition for this monopoly grant. And then you can sue competitors in the state's courts. And again, you can penalize people for infringing your IP right. You can get an injunction in the court just to make them stop or you can get an award from the court, making them pay damages, some of their money to you for violating your so-called IP rights. Now, there are different types of patents. In the U.S., there are utility patents, plant patents, and design patents. Now, almost every patent you've probably ever heard of is a utility patent. That means it has usefulness or function. That's just a regular type of patent. What we call the utility patents. There are also plant patents for asexually reproduced plants. And design patents are these weird hybrid of patents, which covers the ornamental aspect of a design. It's kind of like a hybrid between a patent and a copyright. And to be honest, not many people understand how they work. I don't quite understand how they work. I've never filed a design patent in my life. But the basic patent you're going to hear about is a utility patent. By the way, design patents have a, and I think plant patents do have a different term. They don't last as long as utility patents. They have a shorter term. But the utility patent, let's focus on that, because that's the primary type of patent that is granted. You get the patent by filing a patent application with government agencies. In America, it's the U.S. Patent Office, and most countries have their own Patent Office. By the way, in some of the countries, there's a utility model type of patent application, which has a shorter term. It's a technical difference. So let's not go into it, but there is a U.M. or utility model patent in other countries. But anyway, so if you want to get a patent, you file a patent application with the agency and an examiner examines it and then it issues if he thinks it satisfies all the requirements. It has to be patent subject matter. You have to be the inventor, has to be new or novel, has to be non-obvious, or what's called has to have an inventive step in European countries. And it has to have the utility. That means it has to actually work. So, for example, a patent for an perpetual motion machine will be denied automatically because modern science doesn't believe perpetual motion machines can work. You couldn't get a patent on the car because the car is known already. It's not new. You couldn't get a patent on a car with five wheels because that would be just a non-obvious change to a current four-wheel car, for example. So you have to have all these things. And I already mentioned what rights it gives the holder, the right to exclude others from making this advice. I don't know if I have a slide on this in today's lecture. So let me explain what I said earlier that why the patent does not give you the right to make your invention but only the right to stop others. Let's imagine you were the first person to think of a stool. So you invent a stool, which is a four-legged structure having four legs mounted to a seat member for allowing a person to sit on it. Okay, so you get a patent on the stool. Now, I see this stool and I see people sitting on it and I think, hmm, I could make this stool better if I put it back on it. So I get a patent on a chair, which is a structure having a seat member connected to four legs and with a back member attached to the seat member. Okay, so basically there's a stool with a back. Now, I probably get a patent on that, but I couldn't use it because it would still be a stool. It would still be a device with a seat and four legs. So I wouldn't be able to use a stool or sell the stool. And the guy that sells the stool wouldn't be able to make a chair out of his stool. I wouldn't be able to add it back to it because I have the patent on a device with a seat, four legs, and a chair and a back. He wouldn't be able to do that. So in that case, we would probably make a deal with each other and cross license to each other. Right, we would make them. I'm going to give him permission to make mine. He's going to give me permission to make his or something like that. One of us would buy the other out. If that makes sense to everybody, you have to realize that basically having a patent is not permission to do something. But that's having a patent doesn't guarantee that your device doesn't infringe on someone else's patent. Because it's not, it's not examined for that. The examiner doesn't look at every patent out there to make sure you're not infringing. His job is to make sure your patent is new, not that it's not infringing. And if you think about it, if there's a stool known out there and there's a patent on the stool, adding it back to it could be a new idea, but it doesn't mean that it doesn't get, it's not covered by the stool patent. Okay. I'm going to skip over this is a little bit of inside baseball, but the patent itself has certain parts. It has a title. It tells who the inventor is who the owner is that is different from the inventor has a description of how you make this thing and drawings to illustrate it and then finally it terminates in claims which is what you have a property right in. I have an example here on slide 18 of what a patent looks one of the claims of a patent patent claims are always one sentence. It starts with a number and with the letter a or the or the word a or the and then it ends with a period. It just lays out the elements that you have to have if you want to infringe this patent claim. Now one thing that may be counterintuitive is the longer the patent claim is the narrower the narrower it is, because the more elements that has that has you have to meet to that claim a really short patent like if I had a four word patent or short like if I had a patent claim on, I hear by claim, a device, having a body. I mean that would cover almost everything anyone ever sells right so the shorter it is the broader it is the less words the less elements the broader it is so every element in a claim has to be present in an accused device that is accused to be infringing. There are such a thing as the pending claims which I'll skip over here too because this is kind of technical detail which you really don't need to know. This is the front page of a patent on slide 20 I'm on now. This the front page of a patent which I actually wrote for my company and this on a laser and you can see it's got the front page has the abstract. See if I get my laser pointer going here. No, I'll give up on it. Anyway, that's what the front of a patent looks like. This is some of the drawings that come after the front page. Some of the figures which illustrate how the device operates. And then this is the detailed description with the background and the detailed description of another claims. This is the chart. It's kind of a funny chart called the patents progress based upon. Oh, I got this wrong last time, not Milton. Who is it that did Pat the pilgrims regress. Someone someone tell me anyway there's a, it was either Milton or one of those guys. Anyway, this shows the, you know, the bunion, he might have been funny, but anyway, you can't see the details here but it kind of shows from the beginning all the way to like it's like heaven at the top there when you finally get a patent issue. So this is a patent lawyers sort of way looking at things. This is a flow chart that shows just one minor aspect of patent prosecution process. Okay. And then this is another flow chart. Yeah, I know that I actually read Lewis's pilgrims regress, but I'm trying to remember who did pilgrims with the pilgrims progress. Okay. So, Yeah, I can't remember anyway. This is a chart here on slide 27. It's a flow chart showing how you evaluate when a computer implemented invention is patentable or not. I mean, so I'm just showing you how detailed in our cane. This whole body of law is going to give you a few examples now. I think we'll take a break in about five minutes at the hour and then we'll come back and do a few more slides and I'll steal some questions. This is, I think this is a design patent that I'm not sure but it's basically it's like a bumper guard that shape like the Holy Bible. And I guess the idea is, you know, you would just wait someone from hitting your rear of your vehicle because they would see the Bible there. This is a toe puppet. I'm a slide 29 now. So we've got a patent on actually a toe puppet. This is basically a peanut butter and jelly sandwich without without a crust. The team to utility patent on this slide 31. Someone came up with a patent on pumpkin or jack-o'-lantern, I guess, looking garbage bags. So I guess they figure that there's a functional advantage to having a garbage bag looking like a jack-o'-lantern around Halloween time right. You can put your trimmings or trash outside and you can decorate your yard at the same time. This one is a patent on a Christmas tree stand shaped like Santa Claus. So that it is set up by a tree Christmas tree and water your tree at the same time. This is an initiation apparatus for a pledge for fraternity. This is an old one from 1905. Sorry, I didn't need the numbers right. Now this is a patent, a famous one here, infamous one, using a laser pointer to exercise your cat. This is a method patent. And this is a patent on the back apparatus. So if you're feeling down or need yourself a steam boost, did you just pat yourself on the back with this apparatus? Someone actually has a patent on that. Well, I guess it's expired by now, 86, 96, 06, yes, it's expired right now. I'm going to skip this one here. This is a pooper scooper. Skip. This is a bought a cleavage revealing feature of some jeans. So basically having a hole in the back of your jeans, someone had a patent on that idea. This is an older one. It was a coffin. A coffin attached to a little mechanism where if you wake up inside the coffin, if you're actually buried on, you know, accidentally buried, you could alert people that you're really dead yet. This is like in 1891 when people were buried before they were embalmed and on occasion people will be buried when they're actually so alive. So this is a method for concealing baldness. Here's a method of putting in golf. So anyone, any golfer who uses this grip and they're putting what actually infringes patent. Well, let's see 9707. Yeah, it's still it's probably still in force. This was a way of determining breast size by directly measuring the breast instead of by whatever the other method is. Okay, so let's take a pause here. Let's take a five minute break. It's 901 my time, 1001 New York time. And let's come back about five or six minutes past the hour. We'll resume shortly. Okay, while we're waiting, if anyone online right now but has a microphone, I could test the passing the mic feature, which WebEx has with we didn't have any other see how that would go. So if you have a microphone, you want to try the past the mic feature. Let me know if you'd like to try it. I'll try to pass the mic to you. Okay, let me let me see Carl here. Just Carl, I'm just going to pass the mic to you. Hello, hello, hello. Hello, Carl, can you hear me. Can you say something. Oh, hold on, let me unmute you. No, he's not muted. He has the mic. Carl, are you speaking because I can't hear you. Maybe Carl's muted himself. I don't hear it. Hmm. Who else wanted to try. Lloyd, let me let me try someone else. Let me try Lloyd. Lloyd. Well, I'm trying Lloyd right now. Hello. Hello. Hey. Hey, Lloyd. Hey, maybe Carl had his own mic muted or something. I'm not sure. This is a good feature. We may use this in some of the Q&A sessions to have, you know, brief interchanges between questions from some of the comments from some of the participants. Good. So this sounds okay. Can everyone else hear Lloyd. Hello. Oh, cool. Very good. Okay, we're going to go, let me pass the mic back to myself or see how this works. So, okay, excuse me. Okay, can everyone hear me. I think we should get started just second. I think what we do is this we have a, I'm happy to go a little bit beyond time. I want to go too far beyond time because I'm conscious of the strange time zones of some people here, or the late time zones for them. I'm happy to answer questions for the next half an hour or so. But unless a lot start rolling in what I'll do is I'll keep going on the lecturers, but you can give me your questions at any time and I'll stop and answer them. We'll just see how far we get on the slides. So I'm monitoring the chat. If you have questions, put them in the chat or interrupt me. Otherwise, I'm going to just keep going. I'm going to talk about a few. Okay, here's the first question from Lloyd. Can you enforce a US patent outside the US? No. Patents are geographical. They're state-based or nation-based. So if you want, if you have an invention, you, if you want a patent in China, you need to file a patent in China. So on the US, you have to file on the US. Typically what you do is if you have an important idea, you file it, let's say if you're an American inventor and you file an American patent application. And then within the first year, you file a PCT, the patent cooperation treaty application, which is sort of like a placeholder. That gives you like 30 months of time to decide whether you want to file in other countries claiming the priority through the PCT filing back to the US filing. So for example, on day one, I file in US. Six months later, I file a PCT application. A year and a half later, when I realize the US patent is going great, the invention, I'm going to sell it now and it's doing well in the market. It's worth me to file it in China and Japan and Canada and Europe and Brazil or wherever. So then I might file three or four or five other national or regional applications. So I might file a European, Japanese and Chinese application, for example. Those can be expensive because you have to use a local law firm, you have to pay local filing fees, and you usually have to pay translation fees, especially for Japan and China, which can be more expensive than the filing itself. So you're talking on the order of say roughly $10,000, $20,000 per country for filing for prosecution. If you wanted to cover like, you know, half the globe, it can cost you half a million dollars just from one patent application. Matt says drugs and medical devices are approved by the FDA, but are they also patented? They can be and they usually are. So yeah, usually you'll get a patent and then but like I said, a patent doesn't give you permission to do something only to stop other people. So you have to, if it's covered by the FDA, you have to get FDA permission to. Now there's a process that's built into the patent law, which says if you have an administrative delay caused by the US government, then you can extend your patent term. Now there's a limit on it, but let's so let's say that you have a patent on your drug, but the FDA takes three years to approve it. Well, then you can tack three years on to your patent term because they figured that it's been wasted during the time you're waiting for approval. Gio Olivo, you might be wrong, but you remember seeing a video where I mentioned IP or compatible capitalism. Can I elaborate? Well, I think I'll go into this and other, you know, the further lectures, we have six whole lectures to go. So the first lecture is more to familiarize you with the what IP is, okay, and to the extent we can get to it some of the history, which we can cover briefly next time. But it's not compatible capitalism because it basically they're monopoly grants by the state, which allow you to tell other people how to use their own property rights is that simple really this is the basic problem of patent rights in copyrights. Lloyd says, when people complain about drug patents in Africa, are they actually filing patents in Africa. Well, I'm not sure what complaints you're talking about what you may be. I'm not sure what complaints are what people you mean. Are you saying that the people that are in favor of the Western style drugs patent are complaining that the drugs can be sold or knocked off really cheaply in Africa. That may be what you're talking about. That's only the case because they didn't take the time to apply for a patent application in those African countries, for example. So Lloyd said AIDS drugs, but again, I'm not sure what you mean. I mean, I think the main complaint is that a lot of other countries don't protect patent rights as much. So they can knock off drugs more and other things more easily. Eric Smith trade secrets does the government enforce these or they just secrets. Well, you would think so. Actually, no, they're not just secrets if they were just secrets you wouldn't need a doctrine of law. Oh, what they are is it's a legal right to get the court to stop someone from releasing your secret. So long as it's not widely made public yet. So for example, let's say that. This is probably a bad example because cold formulas apparently not a secret anymore. I think it's apparently a myth that the secret is a trade secret. Apparently it's been known for a long time just people don't want to use it they want to use their own formulas. But anyway, let's assume the Coca Cola secret was a trade secret. All that means is they've taken reasonable steps to keep it secret doesn't mean they can guarantee that it's going to remain secret. So let's say one and let's say someone finds out the secret somehow. Now, if they reveal it to the world they publish it on the internet, then it's no longer secret. So Coca Cola can do nothing except possibly sue that person for some kind of breach of contract or something like that. Let's say they're a former employee, but let's say that they haven't yet revealed it to the world, but they're they're about to reveal it to a competitor like Pepsi Cola. Coca Cola to go to court and get the court to issue an injunction. And the court would tell Pepsi and the former employee or whoever this person was, you may not reveal this secret to anyone else. So that as long as it's still a secret the court will help Coca Cola. Try to keep it contained. They'll help them with the threat of injunctions. Okay, is that clear? Okay, ask away anything else. Meantime I will go on with slide 43. Just talking about a few common misconceptions and myths about patents and IP. Number one, you'll hear all the time that, you know, we get rid of patents and hurt small and venture or that's the that's the primary motivation of the patent system to help small inventors. Well, most patents don't benefit anyone they're just wallpaper, especially small inventors so they'll spend 1015 $20,000 on a patent attorney to get a piece of paper they can put in a frame and show their friends, but they never use it. They're used primarily by large corporations to amass, excuse me, patent arsenals, which they assemble for defensive purposes. So all these large companies have hundreds of thousands of patents, which they use sort of like as a picket fence or a porcupine defense. They have them to prevent their competitors or other people from suing them like, you know, Intel may be afraid to sue Microsoft, not only because they do business but because, you know, if Intel sues Microsoft for patent infringement or infringing one of Intel's patents, then Microsoft is going to look through their tens of thousands of patents and try to find one that Intel might entrench and counter sue them. So companies with lots of patents either, you know, they tend to avoid each other. So they basically have freedom to act because they have these patents. Now smaller companies don't have a defensive weapon they can use. So the companies with patents feel comfortable suing them because they're defenseless. Okay, so basically patents erect barriers to entry and protect the larger companies with compared to the smaller companies. Another myth about the patent system is that it's a first to invent. Now this is actually true in my understanding of most of the patent systems around the world, but not of the US system. The US system ever since the beginning has been based upon a first to file. In other words, it's two people have the same idea. And they each file a patent application or the one that would win in a dispute which is called an interference proceeding by the way interference proceeding. The one who would win. The one who invented it first, if he could prove that, even if he filed second. Now, that actually is about to change apparently I think just a couple of days ago. Senate bill 93, I'm going to blog about this later today or tomorrow probably on the Mises blog. I'm also on my blog. You might want to follow this during the course before sif.org. That's my Center for the Study of Innovative Freedom. And I put a lot of regular material on there about in ultra property happenings. Anyway, there is a patent form bill that's pending in Congress right now, which I think it passed before the Senate 95 to five. I suspect it will pass in the House and Obama will assign it, and it will actually change for the first time, the US system to the first to first to file system. So, the funny story about this is I'm Rand, if you read I'm Rand defensive patent rights in her capitalism, the unknown ideal. She tries to defend the first to file system she tries to explain why America is justified in having the first to file patent system, which we did not have we had a first to invent system. So she actually didn't understand what the law was. She thought it was first to file. And she tried to explain why that was the best way to go so you can see she was trying to reverse engineer or justify what the American system was. There's another myth out there about poor man's patent and poor man's copyright this sort of idea I get asked about this about every six months from someone. And they say, well, can't you just put your idea in a sealed envelope and mail it to yourself and hold on to that as proof about when you came up with it. I mean, this is a crazy idea that I mean I've been practicing patent law and IP law for 18 years and I've never seen anyone do this in a serious way this is some kind of urban legend and this is not the way to go. I don't think it would do any good at all. You wouldn't be able to prove that it was legitimate. Yeah, this is a common that you'll hear that's over and over again. Some people actually do it but I don't think they're doing any good they think they're doing good but they're not because what are you going to do go to court and prove that you've invented this on this date. I mean, first of all, if you understand copyright and patent law, you'd have to understand why you'd even ever need to prove this. The first invention is not of the sense to patent infringement. Second of all, you know copyright attaches when as soon as you have it fixed in a medium of expression so as long as you can prove you authored it. I mean that's not the best way to prove you authored it. This could be theoretically a way to prove when you concede to the idea for purpose of a battle with a patent another patent key in an interference proceeding that I mentioned when you're trying to prove you invented the idea first. But if the law changes next month to where it's first to file, then that's going to be irrelevant to so this is a weird myth of patent law. A lot of you may have heard this idea to these kinds of conspiracy theories and they'll say things like all the big oil companies or the big car companies or whatever. They bought up all the patents to these great ideas that would give you 100 mile per gallon, you know fuel injector or carburetor ideas. The problem with this is that patents are public. I mean they're all published. So, you know, even if Exxon or whoever has bought up the 10 or 15 genius ideas that would allow you to get 100 miles per gallon. I mean those ideas are still published. So, the proponent of this conspiracy theory should be able to do a free patent search on us pto.gov and show us the patents that were bought and you could even search for who's assigned, who owns these patents. I mean if it's been assigned to Exxon, then it would show that Exxon or someone owns it. I mean, so these are crazy allegations. I mentioned earlier already I knew I had this in a slide somewhere I've already mentioned the bottom thing on slide four to three that about the right to practice. Again, for copyright. Remember, you can't copyright something. It's automatic. Number two, or patents, they do not give the right to do with to the patent on only the right to stop other people. Now you can use this right to your advantage, quite often. And quite often you have the right to make your mention because you're not infringing someone's patent, but having a patent doesn't guarantee that you don't infringe other people's patents. And I already gave you the stool example, stool share example. Another kind of common myth about the patent system is this, this sort of mythology about the lone genius or the towering genius, you know, this guy that's in his garage, toiling for years and he comes up with a eureka moment and comes up with something that benefits mankind. And it says that most innovation, it's not virtually, to the virtually all innovation is part of a cooperative collaborative process and usually incremental in nature. And of course, virtually every innovation is an improvement on the current state of knowledge. So, even Einstein or in course Einstein couldn't get a patent on his inventions or formulas because they were abstract ideas. So he wouldn't be rewarded for his relativity or photon discovery, or equals MC squared, which he didn't come up with anyway but anyway. So this another problem with patent law, by the way, it's selective and arbitrary what it covers. It would reward practical gizmo making but not fundamental physics and scientific research. And by the way, simultaneous innovation is very common. In the history of patents, most of the most of the famous invention you've heard of. There were other people that invented this either before or at the same time as the inventor who's given credit for in history. So simultaneous invention is a very common thing. And the point of this is that it's often said that if you don't rent someone as monopoly in their inventions and they would never been created in the first place. Well, this is just actually false. I mean, first of all, it would be eventually it would be invented eventually probably maybe soon after or long after but it's going to be invented by someone eventually. You know, when technology gets to a certain stage, then it becomes right for all these creative people to use it and take it to the next level. I mean, the light bulb would eventually have been invented, even if Edison hadn't done it, for example. And not only that, like I said, quite often there's other people working on it at the same time. You know, there are three or four people that came up with the calculus at the same time. Three or four people working on the transistor at the same time wasn't just shock like. Okay. There's another misunderstanding about patents. That is that patent infringers are just someone who copied your idea from me. In fact, you'll see people like J. Neil Shulman they'll say, well, you know, if you don't, if you don't want to, you know, if you don't believe in copies and patent and copyright, just don't copy my damn invention. Well, but that assumes that patent infringer has to do with copying, but of course it doesn't copyright does patent does not remember to infringe someone's patent. All you have to do is make use or sell the device that is covered by the claims of their patent. That's it. Even if you independently invented it, that's not of the sense, it's not an excuse. Even if you invented it first, but had it secret, you know, kept it private, and someone else independently invented it and patented it later. They can stop you from using your own ideas. In fact, most patent lawsuits, the plaintiff never even alleges that the defendant copied what they did. And in fact, from the statistics I've seen and from my own experience in the lawsuits I've been involved with. I've never in my experience seen a case where a client that I'm talking to who was accused of infringing a patent or who's worried about infringing a patent. They never did learn about it from the other companies patent, or even their product. Usually they're just toiling away making their own products and they're coming up with different designs to make their products work. And as they're doing this, someone says, Hey, the way that our circuits configured I'm afraid it might look too much like claims 17 a patent number 6,000,221 and 512. So they go study they get a patent where they study the claims they go, I'm not sure I mean, I don't know if it's the same thing it looks kind of the same but I'm not sure. But the point is they didn't get it from the patent. They came up with it themselves, but then they're now they're in danger of infringing the patent. And this is the common way patents are enforced. You just alleged someone infringes your claim. You never always they copied it because they usually didn't. Let's go to slide 45. And by the way, any questions are welcome now we're getting close to. I'd be happy to go another 10 minutes or so. Or war if we need to another, as I mentioned, there's another myth that that we had copyrighted common law, but that was what's called common law copyright. And as I mentioned, that was more like a trade secret right. That was just a very narrow right to prevent publication of an unpublished manuscript. I have there's a good quote here by Lord Camden. And he said that claims that copyright arose in common law. I'm reading my quote here on page 45. They are founded on patents privileges star chamber decrees and the bylaws of the stationers company. And by the way, we'll get to the stations company in the history section later. Next class. And all of them, the effects of the grossest tyranny and usurpation, the very last places, which I would have dreamt of finding the least trace of the common law. So, disabuse yourselves of the myth that copyright, as we now know it existed a common law. Also, it's commonly said, especially by many libertarian to advocate IP that that it's a natural right, and it's based in the natural law. This is actually not true. We'll get into this later in the history. Also, it's the evidence for those who have a utilitarian approach to patents and copyrights and say that, you know, we need them because it encourages innovation and encourages creativity. Without it, we would have less would all be worse off. Well, they just don't have any evidence to back this up. And they never even try. It's also based upon the myth that we have a benevolent state, and we have a benevolent FDA. But the truth is that the state taxes and regulates the storage penalizes and incinerates and bombs things. It's really not out for the little guy. Right. And giving them a tiny monopoly pervers that can use doesn't overcome all the damage the state does to them in other ways. So we've got to get rid of this idea that the state is looking out for the little guy with these with these monopoly grants. All right, let's quickly go over the in the remaining time we have over the other types of IP already mentioned trademark. What it is, here's kind of the more formal definition. It's a word phrase symbol or design used to identify the source of goods or services is sometimes called a service mark in that case, by the way. And to distinguish them from the goods or services of others. And as I took a cola, about the little R in the circle there I mean to register trademark identifies their products as coming from them. Pepsi as things from Pepsi. Okay, so what it does is it it prohibits the use of confusingly similar marks to identify your goods. So every 10 years you can register the trademark over and over again long the company and the products and business. They read that they can last forever. Okay. So every 10 years. And I've already mentioned what what trade secrets are some examples of trade secrets would be databases customer lists. Okay, now these are largely protected by state law, although there are federal federal aspects to it. Now, once let me mention one disadvantage to relying on trade secrets. Is that, as I mentioned, it's possible for someone else to independently invent the, let's say you're, let's say you're using as a secret some invention some innovative process. Okay, to make a chemical or process to make a chemical or something or product. If someone else comes up with this 30 years later, then they file a patent on it. They can then stop you from using your own invention. And only you were first, because they have a patent. You didn't copy it. In fact, he came up with it first. So this is one danger of trade secrets. So this one problem of patents is that it makes people reluctant to actually use trade secrets. In fact, there's another, I just had a debate with a patent lawyer in Ohio about IP law. I just wanted to point it out that one advantage of the patent system is that it encourages disclosure of ideas that would otherwise be kept secret. Thanks, Danny. I'm going to go I'm going to stop it about five minutes anyway so you won't miss too much. Carl says doesn't the FBI investigate violation of trade secrets. Yeah, I didn't mention that but so trade secrets largely state law but there is a federal, I think it's the espionage act and there's a federal law which makes it a federal crime in some cases to steal trade secrets. So they do investigate that sometimes that's correct, although the body of the law is still largely state based like trademark used to be copyright and patent are completely federal base in the US we're talking about. But let me just mention one thing and I'll wrap it up here. What I was going to say was the original idea. If you actually look at the Constitution the patent act. What it actually literally says is that if you file a patent application, then we'll give you a monopoly. But if you think about this is like a bargain. What they're telling the public is, I'm sorry what the telling the inventor is, if you tell the world how to make your idea. We're going to publish this. If you disclose it. That's why it's called a disclosure or detailed description. Then we'll give you a monopoly so the exchanges, you get a temporary monopoly in exchange for telling the world about your idea. This also it said to work as an incentive to innovate but the main literal incentive is to disclose your idea. The theory is that without a patent system. Companies will keep everything secret and so you'd have less free disclosure and trading of ideas. The patent system encourages disclosure of ideas earlier than otherwise, even if you can't use the idea yet, you can start studying it researching it as soon as the patent expires, then you're free to compete with the company and use the ideas, etc. The problem is, number one, this company still do keep something secret. Okay, so in other words, most products that are disclosed. Sorry, most products that are patented. The innovative aspects of the product would have been revealed to the public anyway by the selling of the product. In other words, you know, if I have a new mousetrap design, if I start selling it, the public is willing to see the new design. So the patent system in that case, if I have a patent on that mousetrap design, the patent, the public is not benefited by the filing of the patent application because they would have known what the patent was like anyway. So the disclosure that it encourages is superfluous to what would have been disclosed anyway. So there's very little new disclosure that the patent system encourages. On the other hand, as I mentioned, many companies are afraid of being sued for practicing their own inventions, so they're afraid to keep things secret. So what a lot of these companies do, they cannot afford to file a patent application because it can be expensive. So what they do is they publish their ideas. Okay, in some journal or some publication service for a fairly minimal fee of one or two every $100. They publish it on purpose to make their ideas public domain or prior art to prevent someone else from independently reinventing this idea later and filing a patent on it. So the effect of the patent system is to force companies that are not getting a patent in exchange for this to reveal their secrets to the world. So basically it distorts the market and makes companies give up secrets that they otherwise would have had a right to to maintain just to avoid being a victim of a patent lawsuit. I think I will stop here if anyone else has any particular questions now I'd be happy to answer them. Otherwise, I'll wait a second to see if anyone has any questions and otherwise I will see you all. Let me ask, would anyone be interested, would anyone here be interested in a an office hour session let's say one o'clock p.m. Two o'clock p.m. New York time on like Thursdays. I don't know if we would need to do that. Yeah, I did that for my last course. I don't know if we need to do that yet. I would do it if anyone wants to. Yeah, I think I won't do it this week because I didn't mention it or didn't list it but I'm happy to do it if there's a demand for it and I mean for it. I'm happy to do it on the weekends too. It's hard to find the best time for office hours. We can discuss this in the course discussion page. Any further questions. Go ahead Gwendolyn about fights. You can find fights by the way on the just search just search it on Wikipedia the fights case. So Gwendolyn has a question about fights to go ahead and I'm waiting. Will the data in a wiki be considered a database and are priced. That depends on whether it's original. I mean it's just, if it's a mere compilation of data, like near facts, I mean the typical example would be a database, or a map, or a phone book listing something like that, maybe sizing data something like that. But I think a lot of wiki have original contributions right. I just take a look at the fight. You'll see how they formulate it, but it depends on what the wiki had when one. I mean, if it's if there's an actual article written by individuals, I think those are creative. Those are original works of authorship. Those are typically going to be protected by copyright. Now the wiki may attempt to have a creative comments type license to make it somewhat open source whether those licenses are effective or not. That is a different question. I have some questions about that. In any case, they're still copyright, they're still protected by copyright. Gwendolyn says the the software itself was that the data is a different issue. I'm not sure what you mean, but I thought wiki was a online way of having a collaboration of adding information to something. So what I'm saying is it depends on the nature of the information, whether it will be a database or not. When will I cover Donald says when will I cover questions for the professor? I usually cover them as they come in. If there's some that I've missed, please point me to them. I try to subscribe to all the forums. Are there anything I've missed, Donald? I usually answer them dynamically during the week as they come in or sometimes I'll save them for a Q&A session, but as we may not have one at least this week, I'll answer them. Gwendolyn says the software that runs the wiki might be under open source, but the data, the wiki access is independent of the software. That could be, I mean, we'd have to look at the particular case with the answer, but just basically think of original expressions of idea as protected by copyright. Near data is not near facts or not. Matt said he read against IP on his iPod and liked it and didn't take too long. Thank you. Thank you. And there's an audio version by one of our members here, Jock. Lloyd said Lloyd talks about the Wikipedia has a explanation of the license they're using. I agree, but the point is you wouldn't need a license if it wasn't protected by copyright in the first place. Okay, so whether there's a license or not mean sort of presupposes that there is a copyright in the data. So the first question is whether there's a copyright in the information or the material. Okay, guys, so I will be in contact with you during the week on the forum. And anything to feel free to email me anytime. That's my email here. Again, that's my email at Danny's. And otherwise I'll talk to you on next Monday night. Good night everybody enjoyed it.