 Okay, so if everyone can just keep their microphones on mute until until you need to ask a question or until the Q and a session. And by the way, everyone's free, feel free to interrupt me as I'm speaking. But what I plan to do is speak for a while, maybe 30, 40, 50 minutes, how long it takes to do the first part. And then we can open the floor up to any kind of questions. As I explained in the Twitter message and the Facebook post about this. It occurred to me, you know, I've given lots of talks over the years on on patent copyright law, intellectual property law, why it should be abolished, why it's un-libertarian, those things, hundreds of talks probably. I've only given a few talks in my life, early in my patent law career to other lawyers mostly about patent law itself. That is, you know, to business people or to patent lawyers. And never I think never to, to libertarians, and it occurs to it occurred to me the other day that it would be good for me to do this because lots of times, there's lots of confusion over the way patent and copyright law work. And, you know, you really need to have some idea of how it works to have a good understanding of what's wrong with it right and to criticize it and understand the right solution. So, this is a talk not really for business people, but if anyone wants to use it practically that's fine with me. But what I intend to do is talk about patent law today and if this goes well and people are interested we can do a second session on copyright law and then maybe other sessions on other things but the, but let me just get started now. Before I get started, does anyone have any questions? Is there any problem with hearing me or seeing what I'm doing? Okay. All right, so, as I said, I'm a slide on page two of my slides slide to I'm going to give an overview so intellectual property law is a subset of law. That's the laws the states enforced in different countries in the world. And there are different types of different types of IP law. Hold on a second. Greg again. Okay. The big two types of IP law would be patent law and copyright law. Okay, but there are others too. And let me briefly explain something most of you know me from libertarian or Austrian circles as a libertarian writer and thinker. I've been a practicing attorney since 1992, and a patent lawyer since 93 and a registered patent attorney since 1994. So I've been doing patent law hardcore in my career as a lawyer for almost 30 years, about 30 years now. And I've done hundreds of patent applications for high tech companies like Intel, and my last employer applied up to electronics and physics and laser patents, all kinds of things like that. So I have a lot of experience with patent law and also other types of IP law like copyright and trademark to a lesser degree. But that's my sort of practice. And I've written and spoken on those topics as well, but I've written and spoken mainly on libertarian issues and libertarian aspects of this. So that's sort of how most of you know me. In any case, in fact, practicing patent law was one reason I started investigating the morality as a libertarian of patent law, because I was practicing in that field and I started wondering how the hell can this weird thing be justified and I tried to do it. And I failed. And I, I failed because it's not justifiable. I finally realized that and when I realized that, then I started writing around the same time that I passed the patent bar. I started writing on patent law from a libertarian point of view so they kind of go together but I kind of want to focus today on the practical aspects and the real the real world aspects of patent law. Okay, so now. IP intellectual property is a term that is fairly new. People came up with in the late mid 1800s in response to criticism of patent and copyrights which reviewed as monopoly privileges granted by the state, and the free market economists in the 1800s started criticizing it because it's contrary to free trade. They started realizing this and country started abolishing their patent law and they started thinking what the hell we're doing. And, and then in response the entrenched industries came up with the defense because they wanted to keep copyright and patent alive because they were making money off of it. And they called it. They said it's not a monopoly privilege by the state it's a property right it's an intellectual property rights a special type of property right. Okay, so at this point in time they're different. In other countries they have different subsets of IP law, and they all, they all work differently. So the big two are copyright and patent and in America, those are federal that's that's a national law. The state laws have been preempted because the Constitution grants Congress the power to do this trademark laws and other type of IP law. I'm going to get in the patent today I'm just going through a quick overview. trademark is still state based but with some federal aspect in the US and trade secret is mostly state based. Going to the next slide now. Can I interrupt you one second. Sure, go ahead. On the very top of your screen you can put swap this place, because we're looking at, we're not looking at our point say we're looking at the viewers at the present presenters. See what I'm saying. On the very top, it says swap this place on your on your side. If you click under we're going to be we're going to look at the PowerPoint fully. I don't even make sense. I think the problem maybe I have, I may have too many displays open let me let me close on my displays and swap displays okay I see it now. How about that. That's better. Great. Okay, then let me go up. Okay, so this was the first slide. Well, here's the first cover page slide number two overview. And now the slide that we're on. Okay, so in addition to patent and copyright, which are the kind of primary types of trademark of patent intellectual property sorry trade trademark and trade secret or the other two. But there are other types to there are special laws like both hold designs and semiconductor mass court protection, both American based, but probably both holds someone someone wanted to get protection of their boat so they got that inserted into the copyright act, and then some semiconductors because of Texas instruments and Intel and companies like that. In some countries there are database rights, and in some countries there are moral rights which is sort of the right this this inalienable right to be recognized forever as the creator of the work and also to prevent the, the owner of the work from destroying it. Like, you know if you have a mural painted on your refrigerator you can't sell your refrigerator or destroy it is crazy. And then there are sort of special things that are not regarded as IP but they work the same way like you know it's illegal to use the NSA seal in America, there's some special statute. That's basically IP and then of course, as we all know if you paint certain religious figures pictures on the cover of magazine you might get killed. That's kind of a type of privately enforced IP. There's always there's proposed rights like all these things, burbling up through the Congress right now about forcing people to pay for forcing internet providers to pay and Google search engine things like that, pay newspapers for using their headlines and their articles, or there's always agitation to add fashion designs as part of copyright or patent. And then there's talk about this new artificial intelligence how they, you know, the AI engines like chat GBT and the other ones. They, they, they scour the internet for date for images and for text to to build their, their models, and you know that's, that's a type of copying, and then when they produce an output that could be argued to be a copyright infringement to like derivative work so there's all kinds of applications of this kind of broad idea of intellectual property. And I have talked, I have spoken about this a little bit, not about how it works but about the types of IP and a couple of publications like my against intellectual property in the first section. I think I call summary of IP law. I kind of try to summarize these things and then I did a talk about 20 something years ago now. There were oil and gas lawyers when I was doing that as a, as a practice, but I was explaining patent and copyright law and IP law to them. That's an old talk but copyright law and IP law changes slowly so that's still pretty pretty up to date. If anyone wants to look into it and then there's all kinds of guides on the internet like you know these IP law for dummies and things like that. I'm going to try to go through that here. Okay, let me go through the history briefly of patents. So the patent system is one of the, the, the four main types of IP and it's one of the two big important types copyright being the other patents have to do with inventions copyright has to do with artistic and creative works. The expression of ideas is what copyright covers patents cover the functionality of a process or a composition of matter which is a pharmaceutical or a drug, or a machine and apparatus, usually a machine sometimes a process. So these originated in Europe, and sort of the first modern incarnation of this was in 1623 in England, when the, the parliament got fed up with the abuses of the of the crown the king in granting patents to court cronies, which were exclusive rights to do something. Okay, so patent just means it's a Latin word patente means open. So a letter patent was an open letter. So it was basically the king writing down on a piece of paper. Mr X has the sole exclusive right to sell this product in this region, something like that, or to do this so it was like an exclusive anti, you know, anti competitive protections grant that protected the person because he could show the letter to people and say, Listen, if you if you sell playing cards in this town, I have the right to do it, because of the king, because this letter patent, you're violating the king's commands illegal you're going to, you know, you're going to be arrested, are penalized. So that practice got out of hand because the kings would grant these things out left and right to court favorites, and often in exchange for favors so they would say okay you're going to go to this new territory of the crown, and we're going to give you the exclusive right to sell sheepskin, and you can make a lot of money because no one can compete with you. In exchange, we want you to help us collect taxes from everyone. Okay, so it was a way of buying, buying loyalty and buying favors from from the people lower than you in the hierarchy. Well this practice got out of hand. And so Parliament reigned it in in 1623 with what they call the statute of monopolies because these things were seen, these letters patent were seen as grants of monopoly privilege, and other monopolies. So the statute of monopolies said, look, the king cannot do this anymore. However, we're going to let him keep doing it for inventions. So you can still keep granting a letter patent to someone. If you think they've come up with some new invention, some practical process or device or gizmo. So the king kept granting patents on occasion for for inventions. So that's how, and nowadays we think of patents as patents for inventions that that's because that's the only thing that remained after the statute of monopolies of 1623. Now, still it was a it was a it was sort of a discretionary power of the crown it wasn't really a bureaucracy there was an institutionalized patent application system. So let's just go to the kings, you know, secretaries or whoever and say look, can you please ask the king if you'd give me a patent on this invention and sometimes you get it sometimes you didn't. Later on the process became institutionalized and democratized with the first general patent act, being enacted by the colony at the time of South Carolina in America in 16 and 1691. And then the next one, I guess, will be of note would be after the United States. After the United States was was founded in 1770. Well, you could say 1776 1785 when we when we won the, the Revolutionary War, the War for Independence against Britain, and then, and then in 1789 the Constitution was ratified. As I have here on slide page number four, article one section eight clause eight of the Constitution which is what grants Congress the limited and enumerated powers that they have it says power has Congress has the power to promote the progress of science and the useful science by securing to limited times for limited times. That's why patent copyright don't last forever they have to last for a limited finite time to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their writings and discoveries okay and by the way, as a matter of historical curiosity. The word science and the arts was used in a sort of way backwards to the way that we use them now in the cause there you'll see how science is listed first and goes with authors and writings. Arts goes with inventors and discoveries and that's because the word science is part means knowledge right that's why, you know, you have a conscience is conscience. Science means the the art means knowledge, and that referred basically basically to writings and useful arts meant inventions because arts are things that come from artisans are you know practical makers of plows and and tools and devices. So arts meant inventions and science meant. Excuse me science meant writings or knowledge. In any case, so the clause of the Constitution ratified in 1789 gave Congress the authority to pass patent and copyright law, not the obligation but just the right, the power. And so, in 1791 year later Congress sure enough went ahead and enacted the first patent act and the first copyright act. And these were general, the patent act in the US was a general act, it was like a bureaucracy I think Thomas Jefferson was one of the first commissioners, even though he opposed patents, oddly, in some way, he was still the first commissioner because he actually knew something about invention. So that's, and then other countries of the world in Europe started following suit in the 1800s soon after that, and patent law started becoming a thing. And now it's a big thing. Okay. I don't know what patents are. So, oh, I don't know how I can do this. I want to give an example of a patent. The way it happens is you get a patent attorney or a patent agent. And a patent agent or a patent attorney is either in engineer, or an engineer with a law degree who has taken the patent bar exam and passed it. If you're just an engineer, you're a patent agent, and if you're a patent, if you're an attorney, you're a patent attorney, and both both are qualified to file applications to the patent office. And I want to show an example of this because when I started practicing I was totally confused, because I only had one guy that was teaching me and he wasn't a good teacher. And we see here. I'm going to pull up an example here. So, now let me share my screen. Okay. Can everyone see this patent application that I'm looking at right now, or do I need to swap screen again or something. It's all clear. You can see it right now. Yes. Okay, I am on, I'm on the top right now on page. Very front page. Can everyone see this, the title says optical component holder. Anyone. No, we're looking at something that says IP treaties. Oh, what about now, what about now. Now we can see it. Okay, so this is, this is a patent application I drafted a few years ago. So it's just a word document, and you file it and you write it a certain way and so it's got it starts with the title, you list the inventors, you explain the technical field and then the background is like what's going before so you set the stage. And then you have drawings which I'll show in a second and you have a description of the drawings. Then you have what's called the detailed description. And that's like required by patent law and patent law it's called the patent bargain the bargain is the government is going to grant you a limited monopoly on the exclusive right to make user cell or import this claimed invention for 20 years from the filing date, which means about 17 or 18 years in practice because it takes about two or three years to get it issued from the date you file it. So if you file it on day one you take two years to issue it then you have 18 years from the data filing left so you have an 18 year patent term. So it's about a 17 18 year patent term typically it used to be 17 by statute but they changed it. Here's under Obama, in any case, so the bargain is, we're going to give you this exclusive right in exchange for you disclosing to the world everything you know, so that by the time it comes into the public domain and 18 years. Everyone knows what it is and they know how to compete with you and they know how to build on it and all that so that that's the patent bargain. That's why you have to have a written description, which number one has a written description of the invention number two has drawings which which illustrated and number three, which enables someone skilled in the art to basically to do what you're you're claiming to make to make a copy of it eventually. So the detailed description starts here and you refer to the figures figure seven whatever with reference numerals so I'm just scrolling through the path this is so that's what you're right okay. This way you send into the patent office. Okay, and then you have some drawings among the figures now here and the drawings are figure one whatever and then with reference numerals pointing to different things so you can refer to them in the description. And then you terminate the patent with a set of claims. Now this is what you're claiming is the unique part that you should get a property right in this is sort of like the meats and bounds of your patents so the claims start with a claim one and they start with the word a or the always are in this like a process a machine a device for whatever comprising comprising means including and then you list the elements of the of the essential nature of the invention so this is an optical component holder comprising element a element B elements C are limited they call these limitations to any case that's what you get a product so if the examiner agrees with you that there's nothing similar out there in the in the prayer art, then he'll grant you a patent, and that looks like this, let me find that. Oh, by the way, so when you when you practice when you file the patent, the patent office keeps a record and then going back and forth to the patent examiner is called. For some reason I don't know why it's called prosecution, probably just to confuse layman, but it's not like a criminal case but it's called prosecution you're prosecuting the patent, you're trying to get it issued. It's it's called. It's not adverse like third parties are not part of this is all secret. It's only between the patent attorney of the of the inventor or his court or his company's employer and the patent office so it's like a one way proceeding so there's all these obligations to be at the role and to be disclose everything. So this is a chronic this is the patent office prosecution history. So you see it starts at the bottom, like I file this on December 6 2016 with the specification and drawings, the claims and the abstract that's all part of the prosecution as a power of attorney and then there's all of the things and then later on, you know, I get a an office action from the examiner he says I need you to change this and the claims. So then I'll have an amendment you see I follow an amendment, and if it satisfies him or I may be I may be I may disagree with him I may argue with him. So this process goes on for a couple years you see so finally the patent was issued, or I got an issue with the application in August of 2018 about two years later, saying okay it's going to issue in a couple months if you pay the fee. And then that results in the issued patent, which is here. So it shows kind of the features the information I gave him in a format you know the title the first inventor, the assony who's the owner. It shows my name as the attorney. Norman can sell a. And then different classification fields for international filings there's an abstract which is like a summary and drawings and claims anyway that's what a patent is. And by the way, up until I think two days ago when the patent office apparently switched to a paperless. Some kind of electronic certificate grant of patents up until two days ago. You were issued a paper copy and the one original copy was called the red ribbon copy because it actually came with a red ribbon attached to the front cover that's the picture of one right there. So it's like a gold foil embossed kind of seal with a red ribbon on it so that's called a red ribbon copy. Oh you don't really need that for anything. You can sue someone for patent if you can prove you have one. Okay, let's get back to PowerPoint. Is the red ribbon copyrighted like the seal. Is it copyrighted. What do you mean. Yeah, like you mentioned that the NSA label you can't replicate that. I know I don't think no and not that I'm aware of. I mean that that might be a type of fraud or something if you did that you know in a certain in a certain way. Okay, I'm back on my slideshow can everyone see the my slideshow. Yes. Okay. There's something you shouldn't so when the patent is granted, then you have a property right so to speak in the in the claimed invention and the first thing to look at is claim one. You have these subsidies subsidiary claims like claim 234 they're called dependent so the first claim is always an independent claim it stands by itself. A device that does the following claim to is usually a dependent claim it says, you know the invention of claim one, having also a B and C, so you add some elements and the reason you do that is because your first claim you want to be as broad as possible but still be allowed by the examiner because if it's too broad like if I just claimed. The invention period, then that would not be allowed because it's too broad because there's already inventions in the world, or if I said, I claim a machine. There's already machines in the world so I can't get a patent on all the machines in the world because their prior art. So I just say a machine that has the following characteristics which are new right which no one's done before. If you add too many features that make it new, then it's easier for someone to just like if I have 17 elements like ABCD all the way to care whatever someone can just copy my basic idea and just skip element K. And then they're not infringing my patent. So you want to have the minimum number of elements in the first claim that lets it get allowed, but in patent litigation later it might get challenged because maybe the patent examiner who can only find so many references with a quick search because you're only paying a few thousand bucks to file it. You can only pay the examiner to do so much of a search, but in patent litigation were millions of dollars on the line. The party you're suing for patent infringement might spend $100,000 on a search and they might uncover some things the examiner didn't uncover. And that might show that patent one claim one should not have been granted because it's too broad now. What you do is you have claims two three four five and you add other elements to the other claims to successfully narrow them down so that if in litigation claim one gets invalidated because it was too broad. You can say okay well fine claim one is too broad but claim claim three is still adds adds two more elements and and the reference that you found doesn't have those so claim three is still valid. And it's still broad enough to cover my competitors products so that's why people have all these claims and the patents. It's a strategic practice. Now, the claim of a patent doesn't give you the right to do it it gives you the right to exclude. That is, it gives you the right to stop people from doing it. Why doesn't it give you the right to do it. The reason is because so let me give an example. Let's suppose everyone sits on the ground and one day I come up with a stool. Now a stool is a flat seat member, having at least three legs, depending from it, and you can sit on it right it makes sitting easier. I file a patent application I give a drawing and I explain what a stool is and they get a patent. I claim a seating. I claim a seating apparatus comprising called a stool comprising a flat a relatively flat seat member attached to to three legs, spaced or approximately trying to literally apart, you know, having a link, roughly equal to the half the length of a human something like that right you could claim a stool. Now some other guy decides hey, this tool would be way more useful if I put a back on it then it's becomes a chair, right. So I take a stool and I modify the stool and I add a chair. And I patent that so you could patent the chair pat a chair would be a stool having a back seat member. Now that's patentable, because it's new and useful and non obvious and all these things. But you can't make it because it's still a stool, because it still meets the claims of the stool, it still has a seat and three legs. Even if that's four legs still has three legs. And so I might invent an improvement on the stool called a chair, but I'm unable to make it and sell it. By the same token, the maker of the stool is unable to improve his stool by adding a back to it because that would violate the chair makers patent. So what what would happen is, quite often is the chair patent guy and the stool patent guy would would do a license with a cross license to each other. But the point is just because you have a patent doesn't give you the right to do something it gives you the right to stop others now that can be used strategically to stop them from competing with you or to extort money from them. If you're a patent troll, which we'll get to in a minute. I'm on slide seven now. Now, there is one thing to keep in mind, I think I mentioned this in the previous slide. Yeah, they're domestic only. I'm back on slide six, the patents patents are domestic only. Now if you think about it all property rights are domestic like if you have a property right in your home in America, or in Texas, then Texas law is what protects you. But by its nature is a scarce material thing. It just doesn't make any sense that it's like it doesn't make a difference whether that right is national, state based or international because in China wanted to infringe my rights for my house they would have to go to Texas and try to break into my house, and they'd be covered by Texas law so it's like there's no difference. It doesn't make any sense to distinguish between a property right being domestic or international because all property rights and scarce material real things. They only exist in one location at a time and the legal system that covers that covers that so they're the same thing in a sense no one would give a thought to it, but for patents and copyrights. It's not it makes a difference because there is no international patent or copyright system there's only domestic law, but the way because these things don't cover material things, and they cover copying. So theoretically, if I have a patent on an invention like, like say the stool in America. It's national based. So no one in in the United States could make a stool without infringing my patent they would be violating my, my property right under US law, but someone in Mexico or China or Russia, or France, who made a stool would. They're not violating the patent right because they're not doing it in America. They would only be violating my patent right if I filed a similar right a patent in France or China or whatever, and they will be violating the Chinese patent. So when people accuse China of stealing American IP. They literally don't know what they're talking about because it's literally impossible for a Chinese company, or the Chinese government to infringe American patents by doing something in China. If if Apple has a patent on the, on the iPhone, and if some Chinese company makes a complete pure knock off of the iPhone in China, that literally is not an infringement of US patent law, even by US patent law terms it doesn't report to cover things outside the US. Now Apple probably would have a local patent in China, and the Chinese firm would be violating Chinese patents and they have a Chinese patent system just like we have a US patent system. Everyone acts like they don't have one but of course they do because we've been successful in exporting our IP laws to other countries so they do have, they would have a patent there but it wouldn't be violating US patents. I think what they usually mean when they say China is stealing US IP and say mother the same thing is true for copyright. If if if someone is selling a CD in China, which has American songs on it, it's like it's not a violation of US copyright. It might be violation of Chinese copyright but if they don't have a copyright or patent system, then it wouldn't be a violation of anything. There was a time in the 1800s when some countries like Italy and the Netherlands abolished or never had patent rights, because they thought they were ridiculous. So companies were free to pirate other, not pirate but copy other companies pharmaceuticals without any without violating any law any law whatsoever. I think what they're talking about is this. Remember, the types of IP include trademark patent copyright and also trade secret. What happens is China doesn't have a free market. Like the US does like in the US it's more permissionless you can just open up a company doing whatever you want. You don't have to ask permission but in China, it's more of a light it's more of a socialistic bureaucratic system where you have to get permission to do things you got to get a license from the local city or the local, the local region or the local province and then the fat maybe the regional government. So there's all these licenses and permissions you have to get like do you want to open up a an American company wants to open up a manufacturing facility in China, you got to get all these permissions. So what happened because they don't have a free market, you got to get permission. And when you get permission the government can use that to extract promises from you like you got a promise to hire so many people locally. You have to partner with a local firm here so we can claim that we're promoting local business. That's called a joint venture so quite often if Apple wants to open a manufacturing facility to have to use a local Chinese company, or they have to open their own facility and partner with a local company. Now that's the price of doing business. Now if you don't want to open a facility in China to save money you don't have to. But if you want to you have to do what you have to do to get the license and that might mean partnering with some locals. And you look when you partner with locals and you hire locals guess what's going to happen. Same thing that happens in America, you have employees that sometimes steal the, you know, they violate their non disclosure agreements and their employment agreements or their joint venture agreements, and they they leak the information that supposed to be proprietary this trade secret information. So if Apple's building a new iPhone, you know some employee might take a photograph of it when they're on the assembly line and sell it to one of their buddies and then soon you have a, you have a knockoff company making, you know, making, making a version of that of that good. And that is, you could say this violation of trade secret law but it's but it's what it's what's going to happen when you have employees. And it's good is what's going to happen you have a joint venture with the Chinese company which you agreed to do to get the benefit of doing business there. It's got nothing to do with patent or copyright because if that design was patented under Chinese patent law, then you, of course Apple could sue the, the knockoff company in Chinese courts just like they can sue people in America for knockoff. This thing about China stealing us IP is complete nonsense. In any case, the heart of the patent purposes of getting the patent is the description I mentioned earlier the detailed description the drawings, and the description explaining how it works. That's what you have to do to get the patent you got to, you know, lower your paintings show things to the world, but the heart of the patent from a legal point of view is the claims because the claims are what your property rights are in. And again, as I mentioned earlier patents are the right to exclude, not the right to practice with the stool chair example. Okay, now on seven. I've got a post to explain it's just incredible all the legislation that's out there. Covering patent and IP law. It's just a morass that's why you need specialists like me to decipher it for you because no one can understand or this, but there are as I said patents are domestic but there are international aspects to patents. But those are primarily the following area for treaties. Number one the Paris Convention from 1883. So that allows you to file in one country. Like in the US and then within a year you could file in other countries so I could file on day one in the US and say six months later I could file a UK patent and a Chinese patent. And a Russia patent, or whatever, claiming the priority date of the US filing. And then the patent cooperation tree which came about about a century later 1970 is more it's like the Paris Convention but it's more unified. So you could just file a PCT application. So let's say I file in the US on day one, and it costs like a 10 $20,000 to pay the patent attorneys and the filing fees and all that. Let's say a good one third or one fourth of the patents that you file if you're a large company, or eventually going to be either unimportant because you don't make the product that you were planning to make that patented covers or because the patent office rejects the patent and you never get it. So if you were to file 100 or 20 patent applications in different countries, you're talking that $10,000 or $20,000 multiplied by, you know, 10 or 20 or 30 times it could be millions of dollars to file in every. So most most patents you only file them in one country or in the crucial countries like America, Europe, the European patent treaty China maybe. And what you might do is you might file one patent application in the US and then six months later you file or three months there you file a PCT application. And that gives you like two and a half years to wait to decide whether to file in another country so then you have time to decide financially whether it's worth it. Anyway, it's just a thing people do. And then there's the, the trips aspects of the WTO agreement. And this is what sets down minimum standards like so if you want to be part of the WTO, your patent law, all those domestic, it only covers your country but it has to have certain minimum standards like you can't be two years. You need to be at least x years I don't know if it is but most countries are about 1718 years, like I said, so you have to have certain minimum standards. This is how the US pushes and Western countries push our IP laws on other countries with these agreements and also other agreements I'm going to go to the next slide now, slide eight, like bilateral investment treaties and free trade agreements. We sneak into those things like oh if you want a free trade agreement in the US you need to expand you need to increase the length of your copyright term by 20 years to be more like us. And I actually did that recently just hoping to join a treaty that never got, never got passed. So, I call this IP imperialism, and I've got some blog posts about that. Okay, so, so most countries in the world, including communist countries like Cuba and North Korea, China and Russia, Soviet Union, they all had patent laws, it's not like a capitalist Western thing. In fact, I would argue IP is socialistic because it's institutionalized interference with private property rights, as I argue in my policy talks about why patent law should be abolished. Actually IP is the socialist policy but anyway most people view it as a capitalist Western thing because the word property is in there because of the dishonest nomenclature used by the, by the, by the patent whores to call it IP rights so people think it's a property rights thing and they think it's the Western thing so they're actually surprised when it's it's they find out that Cuba and North Korea and Russia and Soviet Union, everyone Vietnam they all they all had patent law and copyright law. Okay. Now, as I said earlier so so to get a patent you have to give a disclosure and all this but patents. What, what do they cover. They are they are an exclusive right to practice an invention but that means the subject matter of patents is inventions right so trademarks cover like trade names like things that identify the source of goods trade secrets is proprietary information that's useful to you, as long as it's kept secret keep something you keep secret copyrights have to do with original creative works like novels or paintings or movies or things like that. Patents cover inventions which are, which are practical processes or apparatuses or devices that can do something useful. So to get a patent you have to satisfy say for basic criteria this according to the patent act in the US and the similar in other countries. So, number one you have to have statutory subject matter, which means it's an invention. So you can't get abstract ideas like equals MC squared or math or physics theorems, even though those are useful to their to their too much part of the project like that, and you can't get a patent for for artistic works you know that's what copyright covers. I think it was one interesting case where someone was selling a measuring cup, where it was like a half of a cup, but it looked like a cup measuring cup, and all the lines in there would say like a half a cup halfway down, but it was for half a cup so like if you could just take a cup, like if the recipe said a half a cup, but you want to make half the recipe you could use the half a cup cup thing, and go to half a cup and maybe you're too stupid with with math or I'll do I don't know. And so there was a there was the question was well, you can't get a patent on this because it's about, it's about a writing. And that's what copyrights cover but I think the court said no no this is actually functional because it helps you solve a problem. Anyway, you have to set your subject matter which is usually easy to satisfy. It has to be useful, you have utility, and that's usually easy to satisfy to because most inventions, the exam or just assumes that it works. By the way, you don't have to make a working model anymore to you just have to file a piece of paper describing the invention. That's called a constructive reduction to practice a reduction to practice would be actually making a working model. Now the patent office used to require a working model, and they still have the option to ask you to turn one in if they're not clear about how whether it works, but I've never made one in my life usually you can brainstorm with an engineer and in a room a conference room and 15 minutes and say it would be needed if you could just move the resistor over here and that would, that would make room for this and that would make a better device and you can just describe that and file a patent on it. And the day you file it with the patent office, that is called constructive reduction to practice it's like a fiction. In any case, if you file something that seems like a perpetual motion machine, like Joseph Newman did these he had some kind of idea for using magnets or something to like magnetic particles to have a machine that can generate electricity for free. He never could make it work because perpetual motion is actually impossible. So if the examiner can detect that there's perpetual motion being claimed in your invention, he will reject it for not having utility. And then also like if you if you made a device the only purpose of which would be to like to destroy humanity or something that would be claimed to have this utility not utility so you couldn't get a patent on that either. I've never had these problems in my practice making lasers and things. The two big requirements are your invention has to be new or novel, which means no one's done it before. And it's also in the most difficult step in the final one, it's got to be non obvious in view of what was known before, or, or, or you have to have what's called an inventive step that's what they say in Europe. This twin is arbitrary and so basically the examiner, he finds one or two or more prior references which are not exactly on point if they were exactly on point then your invention wouldn't be new. But it's, you can always usually change something like let's say someone had invented, I don't know, a red automobile. I've just made a blue automobile. Well, then my blue automobile would be new, but it would still be obvious in view of the fact that automobiles were known already, because it would be obvious to just change the paint color. That's how they argue. Anyway, that last step is the one patent lawyers usually end up arguing with the patent office most on. And there's all kinds of legal standards which have evolved over the years about the nuances of this. And again, as I said, the patent application process is done by a patent attorney or a patent agent, usually patent attorneys. What you do is you talk to the engineer, usually an employee at a company, and on the phone or in person and, and you try to have them explain to you his idea, and you ask him questions and you, then you write a draft of the patent application like I showed you earlier and you file it. One interesting thing about the process is in most countries, I know in the US, but in most countries I believe you have to file in the country it's invented in first because most countries have these export licenses and all these things to control potential secrets and all this kind of stuff. So, before I, if I file a patent application in the US, I cannot file in any other country, Canada, Europe, PCT, I'm sorry not PCT but of China, whatever. I can't file in the other country until the US government gives me permission. That's called a foreign filing license. So when you file a patent in the US, about two or three months later you automatically usually get a letter back from the patent office saying, your foreign filing license is hereby granted, like they kind of give it a cursory review, make sure there's no nuclear stuff in there or whatever, and that they want to claim for themselves. And then then you have the right to file in the PC overseas and other countries, whatever. Alternatively, you could file a foreign filing license first, which I have never done in my whole career, and then you could file in another country first if you wanted to but you have to get the foreign filing license first. And on occasion, which again, it's never happened to me, but theoretically instead of giving you the foreign filing license after you file a US patent, you might get a notice from some secret government agent, some government agency saying, we detect national important secrets in here, so we're going to give you a secrecy order and we're going to basically expropriate this patent from you. They might pay you some kind of expropriation fee or something. I don't know, I've never had it happen. But the thing is they have a chance to take a first look at it. And if you had a patent where there was something that like the NSA or the military thought they could use, they might want to keep you from making it public to the world, because when you file your patent is not made public until 18 months later. So there is still secret until 18 months later, roughly when it's published. Okay. So this is getting into the details but again, you could file in the US you could use the PCT application to preserve foreign filing rights or you can use the Paris Convention. Anyway, and this process again as I mentioned is called patent prosecution it usually takes I've had them, I've had them take eight months to a year on rare occasions but usually to usually two to three years is what it takes and sometimes we longer but usually two to three years So you have 20 year term from the data filing patents usually lasts 18 to 17 years that's roughly how it works ever since the about 15 years ago when the law was changed. Now, once you have a patent and most companies have patents because they get them because their employees have an obligation under default state employment law or under their work or under the agreement that they sign when they when they join the company. So anything an employee, especially an engineer or a technical person were part of their job is to come up with technical solutions to things. And to innovate basically when when the when the employee comes up with the invention it's automatically owned by the employer so most of your work as a patent attorney is going to be representing companies who have employers. Usually engineers who come up with inventions and you file patents on them. Now the company might pay a bonus to the inventor they don't have to but they, you know, given $1,000 $5,000 as a bonus to incentivize them to come up with these patents because they're but they can be valuable to the company. And usually companies strategically develop a patent portfolio know why do they do this they do this for different reasons. Most of the time it's not the in the independent inventor working out of the garage who makes an intermittent windshield wipers and makes millions of dollars. You know, usually it's the employee of a corporation right that's what happens, usually large corporation, because it's expensive to file these patents and it's very expensive to, to assert them in litigation. One reason is defensive like you basically, you want a cluster of patents surrounding your technology to dissuade your competitors from suing you for invent fringing their patents because you want to make them afraid to sue you because if someone sues me, like if I'm competing with another company, I'm making, I'm making cell phones they're making cell phones. I might accidentally or on purpose, infringe some of their patents because patents are largely bullshit. It's almost impossible to avoid infringing patents. So if I'm making my cell phones, even though I'm covered with a bunch of patents as I said earlier patents don't give you the right to do anything only to stop other people. So just because I have 50 patents covering my cell phone technology doesn't mean I have the right to do it. I might still be infringing someone else's patents. So I come out with my first product and all of a sudden I get sued by my competitor. Well, my competitor might be afraid to sue me if I have 50 patents because they're they're also making cell phones they may be infringing one of my patents and I could counter sue them. So one main reason to have patents is defensive it's like the porcupine approach like you don't sue me and I won't sue you. Of course this leads to oligopolies and cartels because only the large companies can afford to have these big patent portfolios. So this makes the little guys afraid to enter the fray because they can't, they can't defend themselves with their patents so they're they're at the mercy of all the big companies have all the patents. Another reasons to raise capital like if you're if you're a startup and you want to you have venture capital and you want to impress your investors, they're going to ask you do you have a good patent program. They say oh yeah we have 50 patents covering our product they'll say okay, you're protected. Another another way another reason to have these patents is to make money by licensing them. This is what patent trolls do by the way patent trolls just run around. They get patents to either buy them from from bankrupt companies or they just have brainstorming sessions with a bunch of engineers they file a bunch of patents they get a bunch of patents. They just run around suing people. As I mentioned on the slide on page 11 slide 11, you know, they don't really want to kill the people they're suing they just want to wet their beaks like, like a mafia guy, you know, as pro IP objectives law professor Adam Masov says, Oh, lawsuits like this or just an invitation to negotiation. I'm serious about this you need to speak to me. He says that like it's a good thing. It's a freaky mafia type threat. And some some large companies do this to like IBM for years has made like I think since 96 to 2021 they made $27 billion licensing their huge trove of patents to people. Of course behind this license is the threat of loss like if you don't give me some money I'm going to sue you so it's all extortion. In recent years it's gone down from like a billion a year it's like 600 million dollars a year they've been making in recent years so big money can be had by licensing the patents. And then again by patent litigation or like patent rolls can do it and then I'm on slide 12 now. And patent rolls are disparagingly referred to as non practicing entities and everyone's critical patent rolls. Well they're not even making the product it's like yeah but that means they don't want to kill you they just want to taste. They're just a tax. If I if I'm making smartphones and a patent roll comes after me. They just want to take a little cut of my profits so I can pay that just like I pay my taxes, and I can keep practicing. But if my competitors who's me, they want to kill me they want to stop me they don't want me to compete with them they don't want to cut they want to stop me. So actually so called practicing entities are worse than patent rolls. If all we had to worry about was patent rolls who just write patents office as a little drag on innovation a cost it wouldn't be the death now that actual practicing entities do so like, you know, some of you might remember. Apple had a patent a design patent not even the utility pattern just a patent on an invention design patent just the way something looks basically the ornamental aspects and patent had an apple had a patent on basically like a flat touch screen device like an iPad or or an iPhone with rounded corners. So they sued Motorola and then there was all these smartphone wars about 1015 years ago between Samsung and Motorola and Apple. And of course what they did was they had they spent hundreds of millions of dollars on patent patent attorneys, doing the litigation. And then they finally settled with each other with like cross licenses and someone agreed to pay a royalty to the other and all they did was they passed the cost down to the consumers in the in the in the form of higher higher phone prices. And they basically end up forming a cartel like you have these major phone companies which all have big patent roads like Samsung and Motorola and Google and Apple. Oh, if you were a startup companies, you wanted to make, you know, Stephen can sell us new smartphone. I might have one or two patents, but I'm going to be sued into oblivion by all these big guys if I try to make a smartphone because there's no doubt they're going to find some of their patents are going to say I vow I violate and even if I'm right. And I have to go to court it's going to cost me literally millions of dollars to defend myself. And if I win, I just walk away with a loss of money and the right to practice. This basically is a way of dissuading small companies from getting into the business and that creates large companies. So it creates oligopolies and cartels. All right. I think I'm done with my lectures. Let me turn this off then probably have some questions remaining so I will open the floor to any questions. And although I said this is about IP law not policy, you can ask whatever you want because they all go together. So everyone feel free to unmute yourself if you want to ask a question. Are you familiar with the right brothers being patent rules. And legally I think a bolder and Levine cover some of that in their book against intellectual monopoly. And yeah of course a lot of these early innovative industries were embroiled in litigation and distracted them from their original focus. And if I remember I don't remember the facts exactly but there were so many lawsuits and there was so much damage to the to the fledgling airline aviation industry in the US which, you know basically started here with the right brothers. That was late 1800s. So by the time World War One broke out when air long airplanes are starting to be useful for for warfare. The entire American aviation industry was like, estimated because of these two patent wars. So I believe the original airplanes had to be, they had to go to France to get them or something. Finally there was some kind of government mediated settlement and then the US industry started up again, but it, but this is an example of how patent battles can, can delay technological innovation for for for a generation. There was there was a type of television technology about 12 years ago. I forgot the name of it was like before OLED, but if some kind of unique it was after plasma and it was this unique really promising technology. But there were so many patent wars that all the manufacturers just gave up they couldn't make it because there was too many threats and they, they had moved on to the next thing. Maybe the next thing would have been better but we'll never know because they just didn't, they weren't able to do it. I always hear like about the White Brothers invention and Kitty Hawk in the museum, and you only hear about the plane, but you never hear about what they did with the rest of their lives afterwards and they just became patent rolls. Yeah, and Edison with the light bulb all the all these guys, you know they tried to exploit the patent system. Again, this is why the patent system came under attack. Well, one interesting thing was so in, you know, like I said, it was sort of a remnant of the statute of monopolies and 1623. And then the US kind of passed the first major modern patent act in 1790. And about, you know, 30 years later in the mid 1800s, all the free market economists started saying what what are we doing. So they were really pro free trade. They could they made a clear argument that patent rights impede free trade. So all these countries started going yeah so there was like a strong movement in the mid 1800s to abolish patent law, and it was started started working some countries abolish or patent law, others refused to implement it. And it looked like it might have been on its way to being phased out because it was just like a remnant of the protectionist mercantilist era of previous centuries. And what happened was that around 1873, there was a major world recession. And, and when that happened, everyone got really paranoid, and they started being hostile to free trade. And so because everyone was hostile to free trade. And they stopped listening to the economists who said patents are a bad idea because they're contrary to free trade. And so this patent abolition movement just collapsed. And patents had their, were able to survive and prosper and then they got so entrenched because all the inventors like Edison and the right brothers these kind of guys are like you can't take away our patent system we need this different, you know so so it got entrenched and now we have today's a system where everyone, everyone just assumes patents are a natural part of any private property system. Do you have a citation on that historical movement, the free market economists in the 19th century. Yeah, well, probably the good source of that as there's there's kind of a quasi he's either Austrian or quasi Austrian, there's economists called Fritz Macklop and may chl up. And in 1950, I believe he and Edith Penrose. It's on my website C for SAF.org. He and Edith Penrose wrote a wrote an article about the 19th century patent law movement and and why it collapsed that's a really good article. I think Macklop summarizes it. Later in a 1958 study he wrote for Congress on the patent system as a whole, which is also my website C for SAF.org so look for Fritz Macklop and Edith Penrose something called the 19th century patent movement or something like that. Thank you Stephen that's an awesome source. Appreciate it. Could somebody mentioned like some of some of these people had to go to France to kind of escape the harsh patent regulations here in the 1800s and sometimes to go to China could somebody make like a avoid all that build in an oil rig. Like structure out in the ocean international waters and avoid infringing on anyone and build what they want without being sued or prevented. Well, probably they could build it out there, although, you know, there's dangers of flying without a flag right and being being out in the open. But the problem is that what you the patent right covers making using selling or importing a product. And so, if you made a bunch of knock off iPhones on this oil rig and in international waters. What are you going to do with them if you want to sell them in any country like you sell them in the US you'd still be violating the US patents because you're selling them there, or importing them there. All the customers will be violating the using part they be using it so it you'd still be you still be covered. I mean the only thing you do is make them. So let's let's say you're even Apple is probably not going to patent the iPhone in every country in the world is just too expensive. All you need to do is patent it in the country's the biggest markets like Europe and say America, or the other countries where it's likely to be made like say China. Because if you have that covered you have the endpoints and the start points covered. Now, maybe, you know, maybe, maybe lichtenstein. Maybe you could make them in lichtenstein to sell them lichtensteinians because they're not going to have a patent lichtenstein. But you know, the market is too trivial for that. lichtenstein the patternless paradise. No, it's just it's a small country and you probably like I said you wouldn't you wouldn't have a patent in 193 countries you'd have it in the top X countries so the small countries would you would not have a patent in small countries. Anyone else. Do you have your own patents. I filed a couple on my own and I was a co inventor on a couple when you're a patent attorney and you talk to inventors usually you're not an inventor, but on occasion you come up with a suggestion when your brainstorming with them. And if it's if it's sufficient to make you a co inventor of one of the claims, then you're listed so I'm listed on on three or four patents. What about patenting computer code. So, that's interesting because so let's say go back 40 years. Software and computer code was not considered to be covered by copyright or by patents. Okay. But over time. Now computer code can be patented and is copyrighted so it's copyrighted because it's considered to be a writing a work of authorship. So just if I write a novel, it's patented. I'm sorry it's copyrighted. If I, if I write computer code. It's still something I wrote now. Some people disagree with that because they say computer code is functional. It's not really expressive. But then you know you have your software autistic savants say oh no it's really an art man we're expressing ourselves. Comments in the code. So copyright covers it now, but copyright only covers the actual expression of it it doesn't cover the functionality. So if if if I if I copy if I have a copyright in my code for a spreadsheet program or something. If someone gets that code and remember in the old days they wouldn't release the code they would just release the executable they would keep the code proprietary. So theoretically reverse engineer the code the executable, or you could maybe get a pirated copy of the actual code. And so now you know the functionality if you just write your own code from scratch, that would not violate the copyright. Or you can also because patents allow you to, there, there are there, I think there are four types of patents there is utility patents which is patent everyone thinks of, which is, which is the useful process or apparatus. Opposition patents which is like performance particles. And there's also design patents which is the ornamental way something looks like the iPhone rounded corners thing. And then there's also plant patents which is for asexually reproduced plants. And those are kind of special domains I don't really do those and they have different terms but the regular patent everyone thinks about as a design is a utility patent. And again that covers a process and an apparatus. An apparatus is a machine or device, but a process is just a flow chart. So it's a way of doing things and that's what so and that's what software is software is a process. So if you if you can take the code, not in the 700 page or the 70 page detailed level, but you can break it down into a flow chart with boxes and arrows. That gets to be more a functional thing and you can if you can describe that in a series of steps in a patent claim, like I claim. I claim a process for a process for for detecting an image. Or a process for compressing data comprising the following steps step one, receiving inputs input data of an image numbers of a sequence of moving images step two, determining the difference between frame one and frame two, and step three, instead of transmitting frame one and then the differences because the differences are smaller than the, you know, that's what image compression is right and so I've done patterns on this kind of stuff for Intel and other companies like that. So that would effectively cover the functionality of software code, which means someone couldn't even reverse engineer and write it their own way because if they're still doing the basically flow chart under different language, they're still infringing the patent. But you have to apply for a patent copyrights are automatic, which means they're more problematic for software for Pat Jeff to apply for it. And then people know what it is to like because it's published anyway. And then, you know, if you write a program in JavaScript, for example, you're using a computer language that was made by another private organization and they seem to permit people to use it to do what they want. But like it is something owned and controlled by some other organization. You create your own program that does something new. I mean it seems like you could never disentangle who originated what, you know, I think I'm, and I specialize more in patents that in software and copyright. Right. My understanding is that, well, first of all, a lot of these things are open source. So you just don't have that problem because no one's even trying to the open source the most that they try to do is they try to say you can use our code to build your code. But we do have a copyright in our code, but we're going to let you use it. And the only condition is, we're going to assist that if you make a new software incorporating some of our stuff, which under copyright law might be called a derivative work. Then you have a copyright in that yourself, but we're going to insist that you grant the same license to everyone else. It's called the, I think it's called the, it's like a copy left kind of thing or in CC it'd be the CC, CC SA share like, I think, I think canoe does that. So they basically try to force you into using their model, which is copy left. But that's not the same thing as using someone's software engine to generate your code. So if I licensed, I don't know, I'm not up to date on current, how people do it when I when I was in college, I would use like Pascal or C plus plus. Okay. So I go to turbo Pascal and I buy this software and I can use their format to write to write a program and to generate an executable right. So I'm using their copyrighted or their, their copyrighted software to do something. Now, theoretically, they can have an end user license agreement. If they don't have if they don't have the license agreement, then what I created just mine, mine alone, the fact that I'm using their tools doesn't make it theirs. You know, it's like if I rent your, your machine shop to make, to make, to make my, my new gear. I own that gear and I own any patent in that gear, just because I'm using their materials doesn't mean anything. But if they had an agreement with me, if they if they could, they could make this thing, we're only going to sell you this software if you sign on the dotted line and you agree that anything you make with our with our tool, we own part of. I suppose that might be enforceable. I've never heard of that because that would be just too unpopular in the market. I think I would just go use a pirated copy of turbo Pascal or whatever, instead of using theirs because I wouldn't want the inventions I come up with to be their property. I don't think that's a problem. I could be wrong that someone who's more of an expert in software would know that I don't think that the companies that make the software tools you use to generate your, your thing, unless it includes some of their libraries and then they could say they could use this copy left things if you incorporate our libraries you have to give us credit or attribution or you have to release yours under some kind of license but I don't I don't know in practice how restrictive they are. I think with software encoding is that it's there's always a next upgrade and the next update every week. It's always changing. I think it makes it impossible to try to nav it and try to pattern it right away when the next week is this going to be a different version and that makes it the present one obsolete like, like fashion, I think it's difficult to copyright fashion, I think, be in the same room. You know, that's correct and there's an interesting thing so fashion is not perfect and perfect like perfumes all the smells of perfume they're not protected either. So fashion designs are not protected by any kind of special right so that's why you have these knockoffs like you'll have these high end luxury. Couture manufacturer Chanel and Dior and all these they come up with these things are $5,000 dresses or whatever, and then you'll see a very similar thing the next season in Walmart you know. So but what what happens is like, because there's no copyright or patent on fashion designs, you have, you have some, some of these high end brands they try to use trademark. So this is why for example, you've probably seen like Chanel purses they have the big Chanel see on it right, the double C thing or Louis Vuitton they have that little Louis Vuitton little clue or symbol with LV, all of their luggage and their purses. And the reason they do that is because if someone makes a knockoff of a Louis Vuitton handbag, they have to copy that design of their logo and that might be covered by trademark or even copyright. So what they've done is they they basically embedded into their product, their trademarked logo, and they forced consumers to think that's part of the fashion design of it. It would be like you bought a Mercedes and like the entire Mercedes car. It was covered with thousands of little their little triangular circle logo thing like all over the car. And that was part of the essence of the cars that you had 1000 Mercedes logos painted on it. So then if someone wanted to make a knockoff Mercedes car they'd have to make it look like a Mercedes by having the Mercedes logo that violate the trademark. So in a way, this weird lack of an availability of trademark wall but lack of copyright law for fashion has distorted. I don't know if we would have had this this this phenomenon of purses and dresses and handbags and luggage having the logos plastered all over them as part of the of the design if it wasn't for people trying what they could to use some type of IP law to protect themselves from competition. If there was no patent and copyright and trademark law. Maybe this never would have happened we'd have a whole different fashion industry. What is your position on copy left. Well, I don't like it at all. And I think if there was no copyright, it would disappear because copy left depends upon there being copyright like copy left says I have a copyright in this and only I have the right to stop you from using my copyrighted material. I'm going to let you use it but only under these conditions so it's a license and a license is permission, but people only need permission if they need permission. If someone has a copyright and they can stop you. If there was no copyright, you would need permission to copy people's things. So copy left would disappear. I prefer CC zero or CC by attribution only or zero. I don't see how CC by is any big imposition because most people, when they copy your novel or your painting. If they're not going to be in legal trouble for doing it. They don't have a problem saying who the original author was they don't usually copy a novel and change the name of the author and pretend like they're the author because it would look like an idiot right. So, most people if you if you do a bootleg copy of I don't know the latest avatar movie by James Cameron you're not going to pretend it wasn't James Cameron. So the CC by condition is not an imposition because everyone's going. No one has a problem that you should giving attribution is if doing so doesn't make them liable. CC CC left copyright under CC it's called share like and copy left is what you're talking about that version of it. I don't like it because it's an attempt to use my little activist thing and to leverage my copyrights to force you to do it my way. I prefer to open it up just make it open source. For example, if I published it if I published a novel, and I released the CC zero. That means anyone in the world is free to reprint it even with their name on it or they can make a movie based on now let's let's say I publish a novel and someone makes a movie based on it. I actually have a copyright in that movie because it's a derivative work, but I don't have any rights in it because I've just claimed my copyright in my book. So they would have a pure brand new copyright in their movie and they could, they could use copyright against people, which I don't like but I No, not against my book, but but against, because my book is not a derivative work of their novel is the other way around. I mean other movie their movies the derivative work of my book, but they could they could stop people from copying the novel, the movie sorry. Like even if I copied the movie I'd be in trouble because it's a unique new work on its own it's a derivative work. If I used copy left, then they, they would only be able to have the right to make this movie if they also released it under copy left which means they couldn't sue people. And I can understand the motivation to do that it's sort of an activist thing is trying to use your copyright to force other people to be libertarian. I prefer to just open it up and make it non copyright. That's my preference. So what, what do you think about, like just breaking those licenses like creating a dark net website with software which are movies or whatever just breaking it and doing it illegally. I don't know if it's prudent or wise in every case because there are severe criminal copyright penalties. I mean, people can actually go to prison for this kind of stuff. Unfortunately, dark net like without any trace like without any way to government trace who did it. I mean, I'm all in favor of that. I think copyright law is totally evil and so is patent law and I think evading it is perfectly, perfectly moral and a good thing to do if you can get away with it. I don't know if it's always risk it worth the risk. I think that's a good thing. In fact, I think this is this is part of the problem with copyright is that it can be evaded by, as you say with the dark net or with encryption or with torrenting and things like that. Since the internet is the biggest threat to digit the digitalization of information and the internet of streaming torrenting encryption is a huge threat to copyright because basically it's it has become now impossible to stop what they call piracy which is which is a misnomer, but it's impossible to stop piracy. And this is why governments keep trying to pass laws that effectively restrict internet freedom, which is why I think copyright is in a way the most. Well, I have a debate about whether copyright or patent law is more harmful I think patent law is more harmful than copyright in that patents slow down the pace of new innovation and this is how the human race became as wealthy as it is by the accumulation of technological knowledge. And if you slow it down you're slowing down the advancement of the human race. On the other hand, copyright law lasts a lot longer and it heavily distorts culture and it's also a threat to internet freedom because the copyright interest know that the internet is a big threat to their copyright enforcement regime. So they keep trying to like get rid of the DMCA, the safe harbor and the DMCA, they hate that, you know, they want to be able to sue like YouTube and Google and blogs and platforms for hosting infringing content instead of having to go after the guy that did it and issue a takedown notice and all this kind of stuff they hate this stuff. And, but of course the internet would probably disappear if copyright was enforced the way it was intended to. So this one of the problems with copyright it's a threat to internet freedom and internet, the internet is essential to finding the state. I'm afraid that this new AI that's coming out could be killed by copyright because you already have people calling Barry Diller and other people calling for saying that you know when you have these AI engines like chat GBT and the other one that does the art or whatever, they basically mind the internet for images and for data right to train on and to build on and then they generate a new output. So it's basically a black box that transforms online into an output. Now, from a copyright point of view, most of that information they're downloading is is probably protected by copyright. And then what they're generating is would be a derivative work. And that's technically copyright infringement. And since there's these ai's do so many trillions of operations internally and they operate so much faster than us. There was a law professor named John Tehranian about 12 years ago, and he estimated that like everyone everyone here on this call everyone that's a normal, modern internet user, theoretically is is liable for about $4.5 billion a year and damages for copyright infringement just from copying things on the internet, sending someone an email here and there that kind of stuff. Now, imagine chat GBT. $4.5 billion. And that was 12 years ago. So let's say $6 billion. Now, take the $6 billion we're all liable for every year, which is preposterous, but that's the way copyright law works. And multiply that times, I don't know, a billion or trillion all the operations these these these ai's use. So like, you know, every ai is liable for quintillion dollars a year and damages which is 1000 times more than the entire planet Earth is worth. It's like insane right it's, this is how this is what you get. It's like the legal equivalent of dividing by zero, like in math if you divide by zero you get, you get impossible irrational results. And in law, when you try to protect intangible things with physical force which is a tangible thing, you're dividing by zero, and you get insane shit like this. But they combine it, combine it with censorship so it's kind of working like violation. Intellectual property but also in in the ways that it's not good for people. It's good for corporations. Sure that that gets that gets us to you know the topic of AI itself and whether in its current form it can be useful as it's kind of quasi controlled by the state. I mean, I'm personally not, I'm a skeptic of AI and its utility but I think it's going to keep developing and eventually it might turn into something kind of useful but the point is, to the extent it could have a use someday, assuming the government doesn't corrupt it too much. Copyright law could be an impediment and slow it down. That's all I'm saying. So you haven't used a child to be tea with your lawyering and attorney work. Well, I'm basically basically retired so I don't need to but I can see how it could be useful like it enhanced an enhanced Google search on occasion. I've seen like David Vex or my friend he's he's getting good at using it to generate tables of like, when to water your plants and things like that but the thing is you can't trust it and it doesn't have any intentionality and it's not conscious. It's also hobbled of course by you know you can't use it for news or porn and and you can't use it for things that they think is racist so it's like the whole thing is like already gimped and hobbled and we'll see what happens with it but I don't I don't I don't see I don't I don't see it's really good but white color workers out of business anytime soon. You mentioned there's criminal penalties for copyright violation. Are there similar penalties for patent violation or how is that enforced. I don't think so. I don't think so there's there's something called enhanced damages for what's called willful infringement. So, let's say I infringe someone's patent and they can prove that I've damaged them. I've damaged them because they weren't able to sell their as many things at a monopoly price as they could have with being able to stop competition. So let's say I damaged them to the tune of $5 million. If I was aware of their patent and I did it anyway. Like instead of like unknowingly I did it willfully. Which is one reason you will have companies send a letter to you and they say, we think you're you're violating our patent, it's patent number X. Here it is. We insist that you stop. Now they have a record showing that you were from that day forward at least you are aware of the patent and you were willfully infringing it. So then the damages can be troubled triple tripled. I'm not aware of any criminal penalties for copy for patent infringement. Now for trade secret trade secret is largely a state thing but there is a federal criminal trade secret thing which I think also has criminal penalties. But yeah copyrighted serious because there's this guy named Aaron Schwartz who was the guy that helped invent RSS. And he was brilliant young coder and you know he snuck into some server room at Columbia or one of the universities and he, he downloaded all their academic articles they had from one of these databases. And he uses laptop and use their broadband to upload like thousands of these, you know, like law review articles or like academic papers he uploaded them to the internet, like big deal. And he and he got caught he was facing like 20 years to life in federal prison are just uploading academic articles to the internet and so he committed suicide he killed himself because he couldn't handle it. There was a guy I remember I mean there's lots of stories but maybe 15 years ago, remember the Wolverine movie. He uploaded one copy of Wolverine to the internet and he went to federal prison for one year. There was a there was a rich, there was a UK grad student named I think Richard O Dwyer. And he had a website. And on his website he had links, he didn't he didn't have pirated content but he had links to like servers and Russia or China or somewhere to which which themselves hosted pirated copies of Hollywood movies and things like this. And the US tried to extradite this guy to the US from Britain to face federal criminal charges in jail and like his whole grad student career was disrupted for three years. I mean he was fearing being sent from Britain to America to go to federal fucking prison for having a website that had hyperlinks on it that's all. He finally won or he finally got it to be dropped but his life was like made a nightmare for five years or something it was crazy. So it's just a real thread it's serious. So when it's domestic only, how could they argue that a Brit that's never been to America broke a American federal law. I don't know the details. I assume they were arguing he was violating British copyright law. Because there's a burn the burn convention, basically, which all the all the countries of the world, almost every country that I'm aware of as part of the burn convention which requires every, every country that's a member to have a copyright law with certain minimum standards. In fact the US didn't join that until 1988 because we didn't like the, the moral rights aspects of it so I think we got an exception for that, but it, but the burn convention. The US has strong copyright law internally, but we for a long time, you could pirate foreign works. I think Charles Dickens hate it was pissed off about that like, you could buy pirated copies of great expectations and shit so, so he wasn't making as much money as he could in the US so he went on tour here, doing speeches to make some money from his loving audience. And then he, he. This is one of the stupid defenses of IP. I think I can't remember who made this argument I've got it on my website somewhere but someone says you know Charles Dickens had to come to America and tour to make money off speeches, and then he got pneumonia and died so basically the lack of copyright killed Charles Dickens. That's crazy. So I suspect that Dwyer was in violation of the British version of copyright law, and probably under some treaty he could be hauled into court in the US because the victims were American and something like that. Thank you. Would you say that the patent regime in the US is getting worse right now and what ways is it getting worse. No, I don't think it's getting worse. I think my guess is copyright and patent have both reached their limit like I doubt there's going to be any more extension of patent copyright terms because it's just so ridiculous it's life of the author plus 70 years now in the US and I'm sure they're going to try to add another 20 years on to it like they did 20 years ago. But I don't think they're going to get that. Now, the one thing is I do think copyright law will keep getting worse because they're going to gradually keep adding these. These, these things about like they might shrink the section 230 and the and the DMCA say forever back a little bit, or they might enhance the penalties. But they're going to go after enforcement and that that would be an increased threat to the internet. Ask for patent if you talk to patent attorneys and patent whores, people that are favor the system. They will say that the patent system has gradually been undermined and gotten weaker in the last two decades three decades, and to a degree they have a little bit of a point, not in terms of the law. The laws are relevant. The statute was changed under Obama, but it was changed in in in in trivial ways from the point of view of the average victim of, like for example we went from a first to file system. I'm sorry we went from a first to invent system to a first to file system, primarily because basically every other country on the earth has the first to file system and we wanted we wanted to be like them. But, so all that means is, in some cases inventor a will win the battle instead of inventor be, but from the point of view of the industry, it doesn't matter whether inventor a or B owns it because it's the the threat to innovation is still still the same thing. I mean, if I'm going to be shaken down or extorted by someone, it, I'm not going to be upset that it was inventor be instead of inventor a. Oh, I wish it was in. I wish it was the guy that was the first to invent so the first file that's the sue me for a billion dollars. It doesn't matter. There have been some court decisions which have. And to my mind they're all roughly favorable because they slightly reduce the, the, the damage done by the patent system. So one example was a case, I don't know, several years back, where it made it a little bit harder to get an injunction to enforce a patent. So, before this decision, I think it was about seven, eight, nine years ago. Maybe it's called Alice I can't remember. But before then, if you if you won your patent infringement lawsuit against someone, you pretty much had an automatic right to get the court to issue an injunction where the court says, you must stop selling this product. It was like automatic it was just given like as a result of winning. But I think this court case basically said, no, you don't get an injunction automatically you have to satisfy a three part test. And you can't always satisfy that so like basically damages monetary damages, or in many cases enough to satisfy you so you could just ask for money from your victim, instead of an injunction. And so some of the proponents of IPA is a copyright. I'm sort of patent as a property right. They think that that undermines its state status as a property right because you can, you know, if you own a house, you don't just get damages of someone squatting in it you get to kick them out right. So they think that if you actually have a property right in an invention you should be able to get an injunction as a matter of course, but now it's harder so, but it should be harder because injunctions are horrible. And there's a couple other things like you know, maybe some abstract ideas are not going to be subject to patents that would have been but it's roughly the same as it used to be I don't think I don't think patents will get any worse or any better. They're not doing anything like increasing patent terms or anything like that. Okay, no, no. Is there a fair use equivalent in patent law, something like that. No, there's something in patent law called a doctrine of equivalence. And the doctrine of equivalence says that when you have a patent. The patent right is what's defined in the claims let's say claim one, and it's defined by what they call the limitations of the claim or the elements of the claim so let's say you have a claim with say four elements, ABC and D. That means that any competing device that has that has elements ABC and D will be infringing okay. What most people have a hard time understanding is so if you have a competing device that has element E. It's still infringing because it has it has elements ABCD that's why a chair would infringe a patent on the stool because a chair is a stool. A chair is a special type of stool because the chair still has a seat and legs. And that's all the Pat so the patents patents have the word comprising which means includes. It doesn't mean consists only of if you had a patent claim that said I claim a sitting device, consisting exactly of a seat and three legs. And then if you had a stool that had four legs it wouldn't be infringing or if you had a seat a stool with a with a back it wouldn't be infringing because it wouldn't be exactly only a seat and legs but that's why patent lawyers don't claim it as consisting they say comprising includes right. So, it just means the competing device just has to have that bare set of elements, even if it has other things. Now, under the doctrine of equivalence, let's suppose. Suppose I had a patent on something and it was, let's say I had a stool and I said, let's say I had a patent on a on a stool and I said I claim a sitting device having a seat and three legs nailed to the to the seat. And someone else says oh okay well I'm just going to use a screw instead of a nail to get around the patent because the patent says nails it doesn't say screw. Well then, under the doctrine of equivalence, the court might say well, in this case, the screw is a functional equivalent of the nail and so, so like my my my patent has elements ABC and D, and the competing device has elements ABC and D prime. Well, if D prime is effectively the equivalent of D then it still might be infringing. So if anything it's the other way around. Yeah, thank you. No one else. Anything at all anything about IP law policy practice. Practice how many new patterns do you get like are they issued every week on a Monday, or often do you have to read the news to know if you're impacted or not. And that's what that's part of the problem with this, you know, you know how like in the law we say that ignorance of law is no excuse which, which makes sense if law is natural law because everyone, you know, the idea is that natural law is engraving on your heart. You can't say oh I raped this girl but I didn't know I wasn't supposed to rape her like you can't claim ignorance of the law if it's natural law or murder or whatever you know, but if it's arbitrary law thousands of statues and no one, no one even knows how many. No one knows what the law is and no one knows how many laws there are like no one even knows this right maybe maybe chat GPT can figure out someday, but I mean it's I think when laws made artificially by statute it actually ignorance of the law should be an excuse in my opinion but but unfortunately it's not same thing with the patent system it's impossible to keep up with it. Patents are issued if I recall every Tuesday once a week they're issued. But no, no one keeps track. In fact, like I said earlier, if you're aware of a patent, then you might be guilty of willful damages or treble damages. So there's also there's almost an incentive to keep your head in the sand and not to not investigate the patents out there because if you're making a new device, you kind of don't want to know if it's covered by a pattern, because that's only going to make you reliable for more damages down the road. So, yeah, you don't keep up now if you if you want to go into a certain area you can you can pay someone to do a patent search in a given area, and there are hundreds of subcategories in the patent office, the way the patents are done but of course it's impossible to scientifically do this right. Because it's arbitrary categories. That's insane. Thank you. I want to thank your time for putting this together. I think this completes finally my Amesis Institute curriculum. I think I missed you at 2016 and aspirin Alabama. But you did write a sign that book for me against intellectual property so I appreciate that very much this course that you provide. So my plan is, I think I'll go on and close now. But I think my plan is, maybe if everyone thinks is a good idea welcome, maybe in the email we wrote earlier, you can write me back and let give me your thoughts on this. I maybe do another one of these next week or something like that on copyright. And then if there's room for another one or anything else we could do that to but that but at least it would be good to have like one good recorded thing. Like this on the kind of nuts and bolts of how the system works. So that people like understand these laws that that I've been railing against for so long and that we're talking about the policy aspects of. So, I guess I'll let everybody unless there's any final question I'll load any any final comments or questions. I just think that the copyright one is going to need a lot longer Q&A. That's fine or I could even do like, you know, I can start the Q&A and then if we need another one I'll do a second Q&A to extend it so that's not a problem. Well, thank you very much. I really appreciate it. This was fantastic. Thank you. Thanks everybody have a good have a good day. Take care. Thank you. Was a very good meeting. Thanks.