Girls be illin?: Don't waste your start-up capital on non-essential legal fights

Story: Goldieblox, a toy company marketing engineering toys to girls, used the Beastie Boys famous / infamous song "Girls" in a parody music video to promote their start-up project. The music video went viral on youtube, spawning mostly ardent praise and affection.

The Cerberus Legal dogs of Universal Music sent Goldieblox a pleasant letter (by Cerberus legal dog standards) asking them to take down the video. The letter claimed that the parody video was outside the scope of the fair use exception to copyright use, and constituted an impermissible use of the underlying work.

The legal counsel for GoldieBlox filed a declaratory judgment action seeking a finding on non-infringement under the parody provision of fair use.  This could be a educational case about how a "letter" is never really a letter, but an invitation to bring a DJ action.

A lot of digital ink has been split regarding the merits of the parties positions. If you are in favor of the permissible parody argument, then the Electronic Frontier Foundation (eff) has a great rundown of the law and their interpretation.

The point being missed here is one of resource allocation. It is argued that any press is good press. If that is true, then this entire episode is a net benefit to Goldieblox and their start-up ambitions.

However, from a business point of view, getting into a law suit with a major entertainment company is a huge hassle. Aside from your own legal costs, which could have been better spent on non-legal blog based marketing, you run the potential risk that you might lose and owe someone, or some mega corporation, lots of money. That outcome is unlikely here (even if GoldieBlox loses, they will likely have minimal damages), but that is besides the point.

A cursory level of diligence would have shown that not only do the Beastie Boys not like "Girls" (they refuse to play it anymore), they are actually quite litigious. As such, perhaps their IP, regardless of your use, was not the best media to use.

For the legal costs involved in filing and arguing a Declaratory judgement action, you could have hired a band or a composer to generate a all new song. The point here isn't that the Beastie Boys are right to argue about fair use, it is that a start up generally should avoid potentially bruising legal fights.  IP counsel should always be mindful of not only the legal arguments, but the overall business position.

Start-up resources should never we wasted on non-essential legal fights. If you need access to a particular piece of technology or code in order for your idea to function, then roll the dice, take the risk. If you want to make a music video parody of a famous song, think about the necessity to the bottom line.

Jordan Garner

Product Design IP in the age of 3D Printers

Dieter Rams designed Coffee Maker

Intellectual property protection for industrial design and industrial designers has always been a fraught process. The nature IP does not lend itself easily to the tasks Industrial Designers might put to them. However, new technology might begin to change how Industrial Designers see Intellectual Property protection.

IP Limits

Conventionally, industrial design is protected through a design patent.  Design patents allows the designer to get protection on their purely ornamental design for 14 years from filing.  Unfortunately, this means that if the product has a functional component (enhanced ergonomics etc.) then the designer relinquishes that functionality, or they are forced to obtain the more expensive and time consuming utility patent. A utility patent covers the function of a device , process, compound or article of manufacturer. For example, a designer could hold a patent on the manufacture of a particular item. While this might successfully deter large scale copying, it does not prevent wide spread dissemination of the construction methods and processes.

Copyright protects artistic and literary works for 70 years, plus the life of the author. Text and audio-visual works are the primary focus of copyright. Once you move beyond the artistic realm into the functional, Courts have held that copyrights no longer apply.  However, the age of 3D printing might be about to change the rules of the game.

Charles Eames Design Patent 

3D Printing

For the uninitiated, a 3D printer is a device that builds an object, usually out of some resin, layers at a time. It is the electronic opposite of a very fine mandolin slicer. MakerBot, and companies like them are pioneering a way to have an "internet of things." The eventual goal would be a repository of templates for the production of all manner of goods, ready to be downloaded and printed, the way one might download a song and burn it to a CD [ed. do kids ever do that any more ?].

 The software used in 3D printers vary from device to device. However, they all use some form of stereolithography file to instruct the device on how to lay down layers of material. Once all the layers have been deposited, you should have a reasonable copy of object described by the file.

It should be apparent that 3D printing allows for the production of many useful things, it also allows for the re-production of industrial design elements without authorization from the original creators. Where 3D printing has created a problem, it might also offer a solution.

IP Incorporation into Designs



Since the procedures for manufacturing the item begins with a digital file. It is possible to encapsulate the design within the boundaries of Copyright law. If the software file, the instruction set for making a particular design is complete (that is, it does not require additional tooling, or minimal machining) then the software encapsulates the design.

It might still hold true that the tangible representation of the software (i.e. a chair or lamp) is not covered by copyright, the software code that executes the 3D printer is a valid piece of IP.  Therefore, the nexus of IP infringement of the design would occur when the digital file is copied (i.e. on a file share network). Thus, developing code for the 3D designs will become as important as the conceptual prototypes. Court are well positioned to hear arguments on the illicit trade and sale of pirated software. This presents an opportunity for Industrial designers and software coders to collaborate on clever implementations of the software to render the designs with minimal post processing. The closer the code is to representing the object, the stronger the case for infringement. Once the code base of a portfolio has been engineered, a simple licensing program [not in bitcoins!!!] (think Itunes) could offer people the world over the chance to download an use a particular firm's designs.

Alternatively, or additionally, a designer could include a structural trademark element. For instance, the design of a chair could,  incorporate a logo. In this instance, merely printing the object does not create a cause of action. However, once an unscrupulous manufacturer attempts to sell the copied design, they are engaged in trademark infringement.

There are likely more elegant solutions than these two for the potential problems posed by 3D printing. However, these solutions show that IP in 3D printing can be maintained and creators can be protected.

Jordan Garner

Flat Design and the Decline of the GUI Design Patent

 With the advent of IOS7, Apple has joined Microsoft (Metro) and Google (Now) in putting to rest (for the time being) digital skeuomorphic designs. While a good thing for designers who like clean lines, it might complicate future GUI Design Patent Strategies.

A quick primer, digital skeuomorphic design elements are when the interface or the icon is designed such that it looks like the physical world object that it is designed to digitally replicate. For example, the bookshelf in Ibook, is digital skeuomorphic design. There is no reason that a digital container of book files needs to look like a bookshelf; other than to relate to you, the user, what is the purpose of the digital program. Additionally, buttons with dropped shadows, or clever isometric representations of objects within the icon space, are all examples of digital skeuomorphic design.

However, with the advent of flat design across the three major mobile development platforms, things like icons designed to look like bookcases is going to be a thing of the past. Flat design, like its "Modernism" architectural equivalent is premised of reducing the ostentation ornamentation. In the same way that neo-Gothic architecture like this gave way to boxy simplicity of like this, so too does flat design trend to simple geometric forms and a studied lack of ostentation and ornamentation.

Part of this change has been led by a difference in attitudes regarding the purpose of the GUI in the first place.  Digital skeuomorphic designs were originally used to help people with no inherent knowledge of the inner workings of computers to easily map real world actions to digital ones. A digital file was made to look like a physical office file. A digital delete function was made to look like a trash can, etc. Now, with at least two generations of American consumers raised on digital entertainment, there is less of a need to visually explain the functions of each icon. It is simply enough, in most instances, to state its function and designate an area for the user to interact with that function.

lots of rectangles, no shadows 

GUIs, flat or not, can be protected by design patents. In 1996, the USPTO created guidelines for the protection of GUIs based on its decision in Ex Parte Strijland.  GUI design or surface ornamentation is protectable as long as it is shown to be novel, not obvious, and not functional. The claimed design may be presented as a line drawing or a digital image. Color and grayscale are allowed to be presented in the same GUI application, but line drawings and digital images are not. Animated designs are also patentable in the United States, and must show a minimum of two views of the animation. 

This is all a long winded intro into the point. Of the recent victories that Apple has achieved against Samsung, Apple succeeded in proving that Samsung had copied a design patented GUI (seen at left). As you will note,  this Apple design is chock full of skeuomorphic elements. This includes not only the icons themselves, but their placement, the shape of the icons, their slightly beveled appearance etc.

However, by moving to a flat design paradigm, Apple and its competitors are moving into a field whose sole purpose is to simplify the display elements, not add ornamentation. As noted above, design patents mush have a non-functional use, and must be directly related to the ornamentation. If flat design takes hold, it will be increasingly difficult for designers to obtain protection for flat designs as they  essentially become functional identifiers for computer tasks. As a result, we are going to see a lot of convergent design elements that people will accuse other people of stealing, but no one will be able to obtain a patent on.

As a result, it is preferable to augment your GUI design patent strategy with a screen shot copyright strategy. This way, if it is an instance of blatant copying, you are still protected by an enforceable IP right.

Jordan Garner

Russian Hackers vs Giant Vampire Squids

Of course, the poor illustration to the left is a wildly inaccurate retelling of the current legal battle being waged between banking giant Goldman Sachs, the Federal Government, and Russian Computer programmer Sergey Aleynikov.  While I won't go into the detail  (you can find info here, here and here) these are the basics. 

In 2008, Mr. Aleynikov, computer programmer, Russian Immigrant, and stand-in for future Bond villain, went to work for Goldman Sachs. During his tenure at the "Giant Vampire Squid" of Wall Street, he came across (or illegally accessed) some code base relating to high frequency high volume trading algorithms. Later, proving once again that there is no better capitalist than a former communist, Sergey struck out on his own, joining a financial start-up.

 Goldman Sachs, who had been paying Sergey 400k a year, insisted that he had stolen the code and was using it to make money at the expense of Goldman Sachs making money. Furthermore, Goldman claimed that the code, improperly used, could lead to destabilization of the financial markets. 

(It is a good thing that Goldman Sachs is responsibly in control of "Market Destabilizing Technology" ; We wouldn't want that to fall into the wrong hands)

Getting in the way of Goldman Sachs and profit; or destabilizing the world financial markets are  great ways to get the Feds called down on you.  

In December 2010 Aleynikov was convicted of the two counts of theft of trade secrets and transportation of stolen property under The National Stolen Property Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2314, and the Economic Espionage Act of 1996, 18 U.S.C. § 1832. 

Even though Federal Probation Service suggested a 24 months sentence, the Court in Lower Manhattan sentenced him to 97 months in prison, plus three-years of supervised release and a $12,500 fine. Furthermore, three weeks before sentencing, Aleynikov was incarcerated on request of the government, as he was judged  a flight risk.

Much like land wars in Asia, and going against a Sicilian when death is on the line, one simply can't take code from Goldman Sachs and expect anything less than utter devastation.

However, Mr.  Aleynikov was not quite helpless. His attorney appealed his conviction, asking the Second Circuit to review the District Court's decision denying a motion to dismiss the indictment for failure to state a claim. The Second Circuit heard oral argument on his appeal and, later that same day, unanimously ordered his conviction reversed and a judgment of acquittal entered. 

A copy of the opinion is here.

In summary, the Russian immigrant played the oldest trick in American Jurisprudence...A technicality. 

He argued that the source code was not a "stolen" "good" within the meaning of the NSPA, and  the source code was not “related to or included in a product that is produced for or placed in interstate or foreign commerce” within the meaning of the EEA.  The code was for internal Goldman Sachs use, and was not a 'good' so much as a component of a service that was offered. A plain, reasonable reading of either statute failed to cover his actions.  The Appeals Court agreed, and reverse the judgment of the district court.

Of course that is not the end of the story. The current Congress, who can't even agree to send money to hurricane victims, quickly drafted and passed, the Theft of Trade Secrets Clarification Act.  Then, noted anti-capitalist and Anti-wall Street Crusader President Barack Obama signed the Act into law. 

The Act expands the EEA so that it casts a wider net over actions that constitute a trade secret.  The EEA now applies to trade secrets related to "a product or service used in or intended for use" in commerce.  Senator Patrick Leahy, the sponsor of the bill, said specifically the new language would encompass trade secrets like Goldman’s internal source code, which, though not for sale, "was part of a financial trading system that was used in interstate commerce every day."  Cong. Rec. S6978 (daily ed. Nov. 27, 2012). 

So there are 3 takeaways here. 

1. If you are Goldman Sachs and you don't like a law, call a Senator and you get a new one.

2. For non-Goldman Business. The scope of Federal Trade Secret protection has just been expanded greatly. It is advisable that you reference this law in any employment contracts or other Disclosure or retention agreements, just so that employees know that prison and fines await them.  

3. For non-Goldman Employees. You need to make sure that any code or documentation that you come across, does not find its way into your side, start-up projects. The threat of this law and the repercussions they entail are pretty serious and can easily derail a career. There will be employers that will cite this law against innocent employees, so the only way to protect yourself is to meticulously document where the code you are using is originating. No short cuts.  

In honor of Comic-con - a rebuttal to the End of IP

This week is Comic-con in New York.

Comic-con is awesome.

Comic-con could not be possible in a nation without a strong commitment to intellectual property protection. While people may differ on the benefits conferred by the Sonny Bono amendment (AKA the Mickey Mouse Protection Act), no one honestly argues that the characters in their favorite comics, video games and movies, should be free for anyone to pass off as their own.

That being said, the Anti-IP crowd (which is really an anti-software patent crowd), has yet to make the empirical case that nations without IP protection produce more intellectual property than nations that have weak or strong IP regimes. The Manga output of, say South Korea vs China, speaks to this.  The reasons are varied, and the subject of individual posts.

However, in honor of Comic-con, I present the following (terrible) Comic which demonstrates some of the problems that Anti-IP advocates face.

(all "YEA!" should be read as though spoken by the talking food of "Yo Gabba Gabba".)

jgarner@leasonellis.com

Columbus Day Inventions - App Inspiration

In my continuing quest to prove that Patent law is not simply a mechanism for destroying the aspirations of having a "Social Network" style movie made about your life, I decided to put together a bunch of Columbus Day themed Patents.

While you can look at these patents and see the clanking mechanical devices of a century past, I prefer to see them as a rich vein of design and functionality that can be easily ported to a App for fun and profit. 

Humm...maybe I should patent turning mechanical patents into Software Patents... 

If you get tired of looking at awesome patents from the last century, a magical time of steam and whatnot, feel free to read the 8 page take down of the IP profession in today's New York Times.

Each of these patents would work well as an App or a graphic novel, cum spoken word performance piece. Either way, the prior art is well documented and at least 100 years old.  Just because some jerk calls you up and threatens you with infringement based on a flimsy patent does not mean that all patents were / are bad.

Columbus Day Patents: 

(All of these devices work better in their original, century old form, than Apple Maps)

For All you Brooklyn-ites, Fixie rider, Kickstarting metal workers out there, I present Brooklyn Native Raymond Finkelson's level attachment compass for bicycles. 

Designed to let bicyclists of the early 20th century know their direction, and grade, this bit of vintage Brooklyn Tech can easily be made and adapted to the wider, flashier Iphone 5. Christopher Columbus would have loved to have a bicycle and a Fixie at that. Only the truest of hipsters could rock pants that skinny. 

Above - A instrument for taking Nautical Observations. US Patent 11,475 (found here). Lots of Iphone 5 Potential here. A bit of graphical and computing horsepower lets you tilt a 3d representation of the Earth for all your nautical observational needs. Columbus would have given several shinny beads to the natives who hooked him up with this sweet app, and small pox. 

Above - Graphic Solar Instrument. Remake this into a Grid-based Helvetian typeface, you are set. Patent found here. Nothing impresses the locals like telling them exactly when Sun will be eaten by Mountain. Also it is helpful when you need to know when happy hour starts.   

Jgarner@leasonellis.com 

www.leasonellis.com 

Off hiatus, and the End Of IP

I have been on hiatus from Claimed Elements for a little while (which is official-ese for "I had other more pressing things to do").  However, much like the leaves change, so does my desire to blog.

A lot of this change in desire has come from some recent developments in the "End all IP" Troika of economists, open source software mavens, and Pacific Rim Software Pirates.

Recently, a study produced by the St. Louis Fed ( Paper can be found here) makes a strenuous call for the abolition of patents.  In brief, the authors conclude that there is no benefit to innovation by adopting a patent system. Let me state 1) that the St. Louis Fed has better things to do than opine on Patent Law. 2) They really should have better things to do than opine on Patent Law (Like calling for an increase in marginal lending practices so as to allow people easier debt servicing (oh, you don't like it when Patent Lawyers go all "economist speak", well turnabout is fair play.")

Obviously, I disagree, and not just because I like getting a paycheck.  There is a major fallacy lurking at the heart of the study.

Comparison.

Now, I grant you that Patent law has gotten a bit out of hand (something I call the Locust Syndrome, but more on that another time), but there is absolutely no way to determine if a system with or without patents produces more innovation.

Why. Because we don't have a second, alternative reality Earth to use as a control.  The authors focus (as most anti-IP people do) on Software Patents.  The problem is that they can not point to another first world, industrialized nation with the infrastructure and educational system necessary to produce sophisticated software code. We can't say that in 1520, the rate of innovation was better or worse than the rate of innovation today. The circumstances of innovation and progress are the end result of  historical accidents, low hanging fruit, and economic factors.

To paraphrase Neal Stephenson "in the early 21st century, America only did three things well, make movies, make music and write the best code."

The author's have not provided an example of a country that is producing superior, or more innovative software compared to what is developed by companies taking advantage of the U.S. Patent system.  The reason is obvious, in an fully integrated world, it is impossible to tell what effect the Patent system has on developments country A vs country B. Without a control group, we are merely grabbing at strawmen to explain why our version of reality is the right one.

So lets all take off our sandwich boards and calm down.

Jordan Garner (Jgarner@leasonellis.com)
www.leasonellis.com

Res Ipsa Loquiterminator

Res Ipsa Loquiterminator:
         
         French for "I have been replaced by a computer" is a phrase that you are going to hear more and more in law firms. Not really, since I can't imagine anyone at a law firm using such a sweet portmanteau. (Credit given to my good friend M.Cabrera Esq. for coining the term)


Regardless, what you will hear is younger associates griping about how they are unable to make their hours in light of the rapid adoption of Predictive Coding in document production.  If you want to know why computers are going to start eating your lunch, you can check here.  


For those with an aversion to clicking on the Wall Street Journal, it basically summarizes two recent civil cases where predictive coding (that is, computer sorting of documents for discovery based on relevancy of content) were allowed.  Importantly, these permissions were given over the objection of opposing counsel. So the gates are wide open to our new robot masters. 


Super, what does this mean for budding IP attorneys?  Well, document discovery in IP litigation (especially in the pharma area ) was/is pointlessly time consuming. While it will probably still be necessary for some IP specialists (read: doc reviewers with a scientific background) to review large reams of data, it is likely that the time of the 4 and 5 room discovery teams is coming to a close. This means even less demand for specific practice area qualifications (the Maw grinds slow and exceedingly fine) .  While this won't happen over night, it most likely will happen in the next few years. 


I am reminded of a document review in which I participated, where most of my time was spent sifting through bills of sales looking to see if the technology in question was "on sale" prior to the 1 year date.  Most of the documents I was looking at were internal order forms.  I quickly realized these were pointless, even though they had some of the "core" keywords plastered all over them.  


I imagine that predictive coding will allow case managers to make broad sweeps of this type of relevant (but not really relevant) data prior to bumping things up a step in the food chain.


It occurs to me that another place where Cybercoders (wouldn't that make a great Kids TV show...no) could come in handy is the new Inter-Partes Procedures instituted in the AIA. Limited discovery is now allowed.  Normally, this "limited" discovery would be limited by the cost and time involved.  However, with the use of Cybercoders, you could access huge amounts of data for minimal cost. I would wager that more and more Re-Exams are going to employ predictive coding as part of there opening gambits.  


Where I think human IP-based doc coders will still have the edge is searching for "best mode".  It is incredibly difficult for a computer to determine if a lab notebook or result table is disclosing the best mode for carrying out the disclosure.  Furthermore, IP coders are probably still going to be tasked with searching for deficiencies of enablement, or documents that purport to show that the invention failed to clear a statutory bar.  


Unfortunately for Human IP Coders,  Congress Passed the AIA with a specific section that minimizes the importance of both "Best Mode" and "Enabling Disclosures" in invalidating a patent.  Never fear, when tireless thinking machines drop the ball, Congress can recover that fumble and spike it on your career.  

You got a job, now what?

Even with last week's job report steady employment is still difficult to find for a lot of people. One of the demographics having a slightly easier time achieving the employment dream are those young people with hard science and engineering degrees. regardless of if you are going to work for Microsoft or some garage stat-up, you should keep in mind what is being slipped into your employment contract.

A good illustration of the pitfalls of not properly reading your employment contract can be found in Picture Patents, LLC v. Aeropostale, Inc.  (Google Scholar is a god send for cheap Attorneys who hate to use the Westlaw accounts).  While this case is not new (April 2011) it does provide 2 key point I want to make about employment contracts and keeping your rights.  


A bit of back story. Ms. Baker, a student at Columbia, got an job working for IBM. Excellent right! Well, IBM being a huge, 100-year old multinational corporation who builds Jeopardy winning supercomputers in its spare time, is not an entity to let something like an employment contract be a Staples brand boiler plate. The employment contract has all the obvious provisions about not showing up drunk and sexually-embarrassing your co-workers in the breakroom.  In addition it has this doozy of a IP assignment section. The relevant part states: 

4. I hereby assign (emphasis mine) to IBM my entire right, title and interest in any idea, invention, design of a useful article (whether the design is ornamental or otherwise), computer program and related documentation, and other work of authorship (all hereinafter called "Developments"), hereafter made or conceived solely or jointly by me, or created wholly or in part by me, whether or not such Developments are patentable, copyrightable or susceptible to other forms of protection, and [sic] the Developments: (a) relate to the actual or anticipated business or research or development of IBM or its subsidiaries, or (b) are suggested by or result from any task assigned to me or work performed by me for or on behalf of IBM or its subsidiaries....

The above provisions concerning assignment of Developments apply only while I am employed by IBM in an executive, managerial, product or technical planning, technical, research, programming or engineering capacity....

Humm... restrictive. You invent a newer, better algorithm. It belongs to IBM.  You invent a better toaster, IBM is making your toast. You invent a slightly tastier pancake (impossible you say!, pancakes are already at maximum tastiness! Bah!), IBM is slathering Aunt Jemima all over it. An important note here is "hereby assign" this means today, not some point in the future. So when you develop something in the future, it is already assigned (in a temporal paradox no doubt) to IBM.  You are binding future you to assign things, i.e. you don't get to renege later.

I am pretty sure you know what happens next. Ms. Baker comes up with an idea (not important what) that she developed with the resources of IBM, while at IBM. IBM declined to advance the project further. Ms. Baker decided to take the technology on the road, do some more developing and file some patents.  Later, she decides that a whole bunch of people are infringing said patents, and brings suit....and looses.  Why?

Cause those patents belong to IBM.  Yea, she paid all the maintenance fees, all the filing fees and all the attorney time, but BIG BLUE takes the prize. Ms. Baker failed (or Ms. Baker's attorney failed) on two accounts. One, when the IBM's employment agreement asked her to list all currently developed(ing) projects that were outside the scope of the the IP agreement she wrote "None".  While it was possible that at the time of her signing, she had zero conception of the project, it is not likely. More likely, she didn't think the idea was worth putting down on paper at the time.

What's the lesson?  Always divulge (in confidence, so as not to be considered a disclosure under sec 102 et seq. ) all of you concepts. Sure some of them might sound stupid, or half baked, but you never know when you will develop them into the next killer app, only to have Megacorp take all the cash.  This is easily done with something like a spread sheet that gives a basic description that lists the things you are working on and thinking about. The downside to this is that if you are too descriptive, you run the risk of narrowing your room to claim broader inventions.

Two, do not use your corporate resources to pursue personal inventions or discoveries. They hate that. More importantly, using their equipment lends credence to the fact that you were doing it for them, and it belongs to them (while else would a company let you do stuff, if not for their benefit).

The back-up lesson you kids who skipped to the end is to make sure you read your employment contract thoroughly. If you don't understand something, ask a lawyer. If you are working for a place that has this kind of contact, and you develop something on your off time, as your lawyer how to make sure it does not instantly get grabbed by the boss.

Pioneers

Infographic by Visual News

Visual News a great site for lovers of infographics (who isn't a lover of good, if slightly misleading infographics) put together this nice image regarding patents and innovation across the world. While I am not entirely convinced in the soundness of their reasoning behind the lack of China presence.  It is definitely a good way to present what can be dry statistic on the the trends in 21st century innovation.
I think two important observations stand out. 1) Even in the age of "Social Media" everything, the biggest patent sector is still directed to electronics devices and computer hardware.  2) That European countries individually do not produce a huge number of patents, but combined into the EU, they become a significant player in the global space.

New Feature

In the course of assisting a client with a trademark matter, I began thinking about all the decisions that eventually brought this client to my attention. While the hows and whys of the pertinent legal matter should always take precedence, I began to ask the client about their general impression of intellectual property law. More importantly, I began asking about what it meant to them before it became a focus of a dispute.

I think many practitioners fail to understand that the general public is largely aware of intellectual property concepts, but don't always know the best way to take advantage of the rights that our system provides. Much like in health care, IP practice focuses a lot of its time on preventable issues, that were never prevented.

I decided to get some data on what intellectual property producers think about IP, especially before it becomes something that is knocking on the front door of their livelihood. Issues like why producers opt for cheap invention services, why people fail to get federal copyrights or file for trademarks. My assumptions led me to believe, again like health care, that is was an issue of money. The capital outlay for preventative legal actions was seen as a waste of money, while remedial legal actions were undertaken as a option of last resort. In my interviews, I found this to be generally correct, however, there is a vista of thoughts, emotions and pre-conceptions that go into producer decisions.

In the coming weeks, there will be a new feature which will relate some of my interviews with designers, programmers, inventors and other producers of intellectual property. Hopefully to convey their impressions of our field and how those impressions influence their work, their decisions to hire attorneys, and their decisions to take action against other producers. Through these interviews, IP practitioners can learn as much about the people we seek to help as they learn about our field.

These posts will be labeled [Producer Profiles].

[GA]