Swiss-style Basic Income and IP

To the ill-informed, "Basic Income" is a social security system in which the government regularly gives each citizen a sum of money — with no conditions. No questions asked, no obligations. 

There is a referendum in Switzerland, which if passed would give each adult resident the equivalent of 2750.00 dollars a month. You can read the proponents thoughts here.  In short, the theory is, without the necessity to obtain income necessary to live, people could make more resumed choices about their careers. They could made different choices about how they spend their time. As a result, you might have a more efficient economy. 

Obviously, there are people, including economists, who think this is a terrible idea. The argument against Basic Income is that the whole system will collapse in a morass of lack of motivation to actually work. People will move their expenses down to the level of the Basic Income and then forego employment. Opting instead, it is argued, to just sit around all day. 

I take no position on which one of these outcomes is likely (or the likeliness of this idea gaining traction in the US). Wikipedia has a good run-down on the pros and cons.  However, I do take a position on the economic outcome of people sitting around. I tend to lean on the side of "that's great". 

Why? Because people freed from the restraints of taking ANY job to make ends meet, will naturally gravitate towards their hobbies. When people focus a lot on their hobbies, they tend to turn those hobbies into occupations. We see that with the craft "everything" movement. A zest for baking becomes a bake shop, a thirst for brewing your own beer becomes a craft brewery. A love of reading has become self-published media empires (Ed. a bit close to home....).

Freeing everyone from the constraints of occupation would lead to some people just sitting around. It would also lead to an explosion of new businesses financed by the Basic Income. 

Some of these new businesses would create new works of intellectual property. New artistic, musical, literary works; new software platforms; new devices and new methods could all spring from Basic Income. These works could be licensed world-wide; generating taxable revenue to feed back into the Basic Income system. 

Many Venture Capital organizations have an "Entrepreneur in Chief" position - a person paid to basically think stuff up. We are constantly being told that America needs more "innovation" and "entrepreneurship" and that IP is a step in the wrong direction. Basic Income matched with IP might allow the America to realize the dream of being a "Start-up" Nation where everyone is paid to "think stuff up."

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 

Market Forces

No, this post is not about the excellent Tech-futuristic thriller by Richard K. Morgan (although it is awesome and can be found here)

In light of the continuing mess at Dewey ( if you are unaware, see here, here and here) it is probably helpful to think about price discovery schemes for associate compensation in the current job market.

If you weren't aware, the job market for associates (new and old alike) is going through what economists call a "Market Clearing".  This is just fancy way of saying that the supply is currently outstripping demand, and either the supply will need to contract, or the price for the supply will have to come down.

If you have spent anytime talking to the management of larger law firms, you know that there is no such thing as a permanent decline in salary for associates. The reputation deficit that comes from such a move is considered to be far more damaging than the price savings. Now, this does not mean that it doesn't happen.  In the dark days of '08-'10, many a law firm took the "lowered tier" option of differential associate payments and tried to spin them as some sort of revolution in Associate salary / price discovery.

 However, most associates are not in a position where they are given the option of voluntary wage cuts in exchange for continued employment. The end result is that the price discovery is impossible in the legal market, and the only way to get the market clearing effect is to reduce the supply of associates, often through forced attrition.

However, there is an alternative:

The alternative would be to allow the associates who are performing at an acceptable level to continue to work at the firm, but at a greatly reduced salary.

It would be possible to retain two associates for the price of 1. Basically, offering two similarly situated associates the ability to "share" their salary and maintain employment.  For high-year associates, it is possible to still obtain a 6-figure income on that 1/2 share. This allows the human capital developed by the firm to still be utilized, and the associate to avoid the stigma of a growing employment gap on their resume.  Unfortunately, the current practice of picking one associate and dismissing the other does nothing to help discover the true price of the associate and results in a wasted investment for the firm.

Either way, the lack of utilization of human capital (in the form of associates) is something that the legal profession is going to have to come to grips with.

Jordan

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]