Blog 13: What I Learned in This Class, Part 2

Hello everybody,

I can't believe this would be my last post for this class! 
For my last post, I would like to talk about what I learned in this class. 
I learned a lot of things about patent: what it is, what types there are, how it is filed, how long it takes to be filed, the patent trolls, patent wars, and progressing patent reform policies. Yet, as I learned a lot of things about patents, I realized the importance of patent and questioned myself "why patent?"

Patents are inventions, part of Intellectual Property, which is a legal way to protect all the creations of human mind. All the things we learned in the class has to be linked back to the origin of patent. As there are patents, inventions are protected and cannot be commercially made, used, distributed, or sold without the consent of the creator or patentee. First, patents provide incentives to the individuals, in particular, the creators receive financial reward and recognition for their creativity. Second, the quality of human life can be enhanced through new creations. Third, there can occur technological development through protection that stimulates research. Fourth, it enables the inventors to recoup their investment for the money and time spent developing the ideas. Finally, the use of patent documents enables future researchers not to re-invent the creations. 

As stated, I really learned a lot about patents through this course, but what I want to emphasize the most is the importance of patents. Once we fully understand the presence of patents, we can easily learn and apply the knowledge we learned in this class. 

Blog 13: What I Learned in This Class, Part 1

Hello everyone,

Today I would like to focus on what I learned in this class and how I am going to use it and apply on my future field. From the beginning of this course, I had zero knowledge about patents, how it is actually filed out, the types of patents, the fact that there are so many patent wars between big companies, and how some of the people seek for economic opportunities and act as patent trolls. 

Currently being a freshman, I am not 100% sure of what I would do for my career, but I believe that what I learned in this class can help my future field. Not only I could apply the knowledge I learned from this class on my future career, but so I could apply to my everyday life. What I didn't understand before taking class, I would now understand the words used to relate patents on the news and understand the current issue. Before taking this class I never fully understood the patent wars major companies were having (between Apple and Samsung, or even in broader way of all major companies suing each other for infringing patents). I only understood why they were suing each other (because of patents they filed and whomever infringed it, they sued against). Yet, I did not understand how complicated and ongoing in was in current time. After fully understanding the complications of patent system, it definitely is complicated, time-consuming, and expensive to file a patent, sue a company for infringement, and win the patent war. 

Blog 13: Collaborative Learning Using Social Media, Part 2

Hello all,

I just want to add on more on what I wrote for my previous post. Since I wrote about what I really liked and disliked about the usage of social media, I want to elaborate on how I would recommend other professors to teach in this way and how we can further improve this way of learning. I personally find using all social media in class very interesting, unique, and efficient. However, I think it is pretty hard for big classes that focus on large field of subject hard to use only social medias to teach the course. For instance, it was productive and efficient for this class to use social media to learn about patents because we always had specific topic about patent (whether obviousness, novelty, paten trolls, etc). However, class that deals with subject that has huge field, such as, Intro to Economics, Intro to Psychology, Computer Science, math, etc would be hard to use social media collaboratively.

Yet, I think classes that deal with media, such as, media studies, film, or art could efficiently use social media to teach and learn the class because social media is something they should be familiar with. When we say that the class is appropriate enough to use social media collaboratively, I would recommend the instructor or professor to use not more than 2 or 3 social media because if it goes over three social media, then it becomes hard to handle and manage all of them. I think it is very productive and efficient to only focus on certain media and use it consistently (like we did in class) to ensure everyone is getting used to the same source. 

Blog 13: Collaborative Social Media Learning, Part 1

Hello all,

I can't believe this week's post would be my last post for this class and spring semester is already ending.
I just really want to thank Professor Lavian before starting my last post and appreciate all the lectures, assignments, and special guest speakers he had arranged for us!

I would like to focus specifically on the methods IEOR 190G course efficiently used, which is collaborative social media. We initially used blog and Youtube, then even tried Twitter. 

In the first few weeks of class, we used only blog and Youtube, which I was very positive about. I was excited with the fact that we are using blogs because I have never tried blog postings and just the fact that we commented on each other's blog posts really helped everyone to learn from each other. In fact, from viewing other blogs and commenting on them, I learned different perspectives on single topic or learned different topics on single angle. Often times, for free research on broad topic, it was very interesting to see what others found that was completely different from us. For instance, one of the homework I liked the most was looking for most ridiculous patents. Not only I enjoyed searching for silliest patents, but also I had fun watching other people's patents and their comments and thoughts about it. 

After few weeks of working with blogs and Youtube channels, we used Twitters to briefly talk any issues about patents. At first, I was pretty doubtful about using Twitter because I have never used Twitter in my life and I thought there were simply too many social medias we were using. I thought it was too complicated to handle posts and comments on blogs and YouTubes, and additional work on another social media was just too much. Yet, after using the Twitter, I found another advantage, which was not way different from Youtube and blog. By quickly tweeting about patents, it was easy and simple to talk about patents in one second, and it was also easy to just repost some of the tweets I personally liked on my classmate's twitter. 

Blog 12: Protecting Fashion Designs, Part 4

Hello all,

Since I focused on the field of fashions from Johanna Blakely's lecture, "Lessons from Fashion's Free Culture" on last week's post, I would like to make connection to intellectual property protection with fashion industries. The fashion industry in the States generates more than $300 billion in revenue each year. 

Although there are many economic and artistic contributions of fashion, there are very limited legal protections for fashion design in United States. Although trends change quickly, it is so easy to disseminate latest designs and make counterfeits. Due to this, it is challenging for designers to achieve a fair financial return of their creative artworks. 

The fashion industry, of course, has requested Congress to modernize and reform US law and allow for more reasonable and greater protection of designs. This would bring the US up to the sam standard as other countries, such as, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom, where fashion designs are protectable. Only the elements of a design are protectable currently in the United States. Trade dress, copyright and design patents are the three theories of intellectual property available to protect fashion industries. 

Blog 12: Smartphone Patent Wars in Depth, Part 3

As I have talked about patent wars for a subject we discussed in lecture,
I wanted to research more about it and discuss in depth for this blog post.
Lawsuits are rocking the smartphone industry as almost every big manufacturer fights to get money from their competitors for using its patents, to block competitors' products from being imported to US. 

If we think of this continuous smartphone patent wars in long term, this could mean fewer smartphones, devices eliminating features, or a general slowdown of innovation in the future. 

Judge Theodore Essex of the International Trade Commission, who rules on smartphone patent cases, agreed the "prospects for peace soon are bleak. The best possible outcome is mutually assured destruction, if the various smartphone players each assemble enough critical patents that they become unwilling to sue each other." 

However, not all patents are useful as weapons of war. Those essential to wireless standards are usually held where they are required to be licensed on "reasonable and non-discriminatory" terms. 

Blog 12: The Mobile Patent Wars (What We Learned In Class), Part 2

Hello everyone,

Since I explained about intellectual property protection as what we have learned in class,I would like to talk about mobile patent wars as another subject we learned from Professor Efrat Kasznik's lecture. 

The smart phone wars or smartphone patents licnesing is an ongoing intense  business battle that includes smartphone manufactures, such as, Sony, Google, Apple Inc.,
Samsung, Microsoft, Nokia, Motorola, Xiaomi, and HTC. The "smart phone wars" is literally having a conflict over the patents between multinational technology and software corporations. 

Comapnise have granted a patent that can sue other companies to prevent them from using the moethods the patent covers to increase their market share. Due to this, the number of lawsuits, counter-suits, and trade complaints based on patents and designs has increased significantly. 

Here is the timeline that I picked to show major events, initial suits, counter-suits, rulings, license agreements from 2009 to 2013.

2009
October 22: Nokia sues Apple over 10 patents
December 11: Apple countersues Nokia over 12 pantest
December 29: Nokia files a second lawsuit

2010
January 15: Apple files against Nokia over 9 patents
March 2: Apple sues HTC over 10 pantest
April 27: HTC signs an agreement with Microsoft to license Microsoft patents 

2011
January 25: Microsoft counterclaims against Motorola, asserting 2 patents
June 22: apple countersues Samsung in South Korea over an unknown number of patents
July 1: ITC rules that APple infringes on 2 patents held by S3 Graphics 

2012
June 1: Samsung files an appeal aginst APple's injucton against the Galaxy Nexus
July 2: Nokia clams that the Nexus 7 infringes on its patents
July 4: A high court in the UK rules that three of the four patents Apple brought up against HTC are invalid

2013
June: ITC rules iPads infringe on Samsung patents
August: ITC ruling from June vetoed , ITC blocks older Samsung phones for violating two Apple patents
December 23: Google initiates legal action against Rockstar Consortium 

Blog 12: Intellectual Property Protection (What We Learned in Class), Part 1

Hello all,

Today I would like to discuss about what we learned during Professor Efrat Kasznik's speech (hope everyone enjoyed our guest speaker!) and would like to go over intellectual property protection.

In order for Entrepreneurs and business owners to protect their own companies, they have to understand the basics of intellectual property law. 

Here are the four types of intellectual property that they can use to protect their business:

1. Copyrights
2. Patents
3. Trademarks
4. Trade Secrets 

Copyrights

Copyrights protect original works of authorship, such as, literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and computer works. The hodler of a copyright has the exclusive right to reporuce and adapt the work. It is recommended to register at the U.S. Copyright Office since registered works may be eligible for attorneys fees in the copyright infringement suit. 

The average time it takes is 2.5 months ~ 5.6 months. Although the duration of the copyright depends on several factors, it lasts for the life of the creator and an additional 70 years. 

Patents

Patents allows the patent holder to exclude others from making, selling, or using the invention. It should be filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. 

There are three types of patents:

1. Utility: Most common type, covering any process, machine, article of manufacture, or composition of matter. 
1. It should be novel, non-obvious, and have some usefulness 
2. Design: Any new, original design for an article of manufacture
3. Plant: New variety of asexually-produced plant 

Could cost thousand of dollars and take a LONG time. 

Trademarks

A trademark is a word, phrase, symbol, or design that distinguishes from other business companies. For instance, the Nike "swoosh" logo identifies only Nike designs. 

Before registering the trademark, a search of federal and state databases should be conducted to make sure that other similar trademark doesn't already exist. 

Trade Secrets

This is literally a "secret" formula, process, device, or other business information needed that makes an advantage of the business over their competitors. 

For instance:

1. Soda formulas
2. Customer lists
3. Computer algorithms
4. Survey results

You can't obtain protection by "registering your trade secret because businesses use non-disclosure agreements, restricted access to confidential information, post-employment restrictive covenants, and other security practices to maintain trade secrets."

Blog 11: Lessons from Fashion's Free Culture - Johanna Blakley

Hello everyone, 

For my last post, I chose an interesting TED Talk, "Lessons from Fashion's Free Culture" by Johanna Blakley that has slightly different angle from other 5 Ted Talks. Johanna Blakley focuses on the field of fashion, which is the only one era that is not shackled by patents and copyrights. She rather, counterintuitively, says that it is a good thing that it is not attacked by copyrights. Since the fashion industry has a complete zero copyrights when it comes to the design, there are many fashion imitations. However, Blakley expresses that this did not hurt the industry, which would have normally did in other fields. It did not make a huge problem in fashion field because the customers who buy the fakes are not the same as the customers who buy the real thing. 

Blakley puts her own opinion by saying that other industries need to update their ideas on copyright in this new digital age. I personally found her claim interesting that "clothing was too utilitarian to have copyright and patents applied to it." I agree on her saying that weak copyrights and patent protections in the fashion field did not reduce people's incentive to innovate. I thought that such lacking protection of copyrights encouraged designers to make brands stronger, not weaker. 

Blog 11: Embrace the Remix - Kirby Ferguson

For my third post, I chose the TED Talk by Kirby Ferguson, "Embrace the Remix." 
Obviously evident through his title of the speech, his main point is this: "Nothing is original, everything is a remix. But does it really matter?"

I chose his speech  because I was personally interested and connected to his main point. I really do think that it does not really matter as long as the remix of original and new idea is novel from the original idea.

In the speech, he proposes the idea that everything we create are taken from an inspiration that has come before. To back up this idea, he presents numerous evidence that ranges from simple borrowing to complex legal system. He attempts to summarize a lot of his conclusions and says, "our creativity comes from without, not from within. We are not self made, we are dependent on one another. Admitting this to ourselves isn't an embrace of mediocrity and derivativeness -- it's a liberation from out misconceptions, and it's an incentive to not expect so much from ourselves, and ti simply begin." 

He gives conclusion that is somewhat controversial to audiences: "stop trying to reinvent the wheel and instead build off of everything that has come before." I personally agree with his conclusion as I believe that most of all artists create something that are influenced by everything around them. There has to be something that inspire us to create something new--therefore, it is an inspiration that is built on original idea. He goes on saying that, we should not consider this as "stealing." Originality does not really exist, artists simply rework what is already existing in their own way. It's important here to highlight the part "in their own way." Interpreting in your own way is a key point that differs from just copying the original work. It goes through the filter of individual's perspective and mind that gives character to what have been created. 

Blog 11: How To Beat a Patent Troll - Drew Curtis

The founder and administrator of Fark.com, Drew Curtis, gives a TED Talk where he calls patent trolls as "terrorists."Overcoming the lawcase of Fark violating a patent "for the creation and distribution of news releases via email," he uses his experience in facing down a patent troll at a TED Talk. He calls patent trolls as "terrorists" as he believes patent trolls have done more damage than any domestic or foreign terrorists in history of the United States economy. 

In the beginning of the speech, he marks off the nature of the patent of being accused of violating, he says "now it may seem kind of strange that such a thing can actually be patented, but it does happen all the time. Take something already being done and patent it for an emerging technology." 

He goes on to say about his experience and explains how he wished to team up with other larger companies that were being sued like him, but eventually one by one they all settled than fought the suit. He gives an advice to the audiences, "don't fight the patent. Fight the infringement." Then, he goes on to his second advice, saying "make it clear from the beginning that you haven o money at all or that you would rather send money with your attorney, fighting the troll than actually giving them the money." 

In his final advise, he says to make sure to tell them that you are going to make the whole process as annoying as possible. Since the lawyers are on the contingency basis, flip the patent troll strategy back on the trolls themselves. He finally sums it all, saying "don't negotiate with terrorists" 

Blog 11: Pool Medical Patents - Ellen 'T Hoen

Hello all, 

today I would like to talk and analyze about one of the TedTalks, Pool Medical Patents by Ellen 'T Hoen. 'T Hoen starts off her speech with brief explanation about the airplane patents of the Wright Brothers. Successfully taking off the airplane on December 17, 1903, they were filing patents and suing competitors who were trying to pass patents on flying machine. Yet, US government went against this patent warring as US government was trying to increase the production of military airplanes. Ellen 'T Hoen viewed this negatively as it went against the development in industry. If the US government lets patent holders hold production of military machines, then not many firms would be allowed to produce machines as it is illegal. So the US government went against this to make patents available to share with others. 

'T Hoen compares this to example of life-saving medications. Similarly, accessing drugs like antiretroviral drugs (ARV) used to cure HIV, was only available to wealthy countries because of the high price. India, not knowing this, produced many generic formulations and rugs of ARV that caused the cost to drop to $350 per patient when it was $12,000 in wealthy countries. 'T Hoen continues as she says that it saved many lives due to many productions and cheap products that was accessible to many people. 

In 1995, the Word Trade Organization makes new rule of ensuring 20-year patents for new medications that leads the number of patents increase highly. 

'T Hoen remarks this by saying that if US government doesn't do anything, then another drug price crises will occur. Therefore, she suggests that something has to be outlawed to tackle the HIV epidemic.

Blog 10: Method of Exercising a Cat (Ridiculous Patent)

Hey all,

Lastly, I would like to talk about Method of Exercising a Cat as a ridiculous patent, although I have talked about animal-related patent for my first ridiculous patent. 

Somewhat lazy, but funny invention--Method of Exercising a Cat-- "consists of directing a beam of invisible light ... onto the floor or wall ... then moving the laser so as to cause the brigh tpattern of light to move in an irregular way fascinating to cats." So simply, this inventor is claiming a patent on the laser point that plays with cats. 

This invention has obviously been thought of long before this patent came out. Actually, the book, "One Hundred and Eight-Seven Ways to Amuse a Bored Cat," published by Balantine Book in May 1982, describes the same exact idea of shooting a laser to play with cats. Such usage of laser pointer is very obvious and not novel. 

This patent is very similar to:

1. 6505576 Pet Toy
2. 6557495 Laster Pet Toy
3. 6651591 Automatic Laster Pet Toy and Exerciser
4. 6701872 Method and Apparatus for Automatically Exercising a Curious Animal 

Since it is very similar to many other patents relating to playing with animal, pet toys, and laser pointer, it means that there are any publications dated before the filing date of this patent, which means that the invention is not novel and the patent is invalid. 

Blog 10: Apparatus for Simulating a "High Five" (Ridiculous Patent)

Hey all,

For the third patent, I chose this Apparatus for Simulating a "High Five," which is quite depressing and sad invention made by an inventor named Albert Cohen. 

"During a televised sporting event," the patent explains, "a 'high five' is commonly shared between fans to express the joy and excitement of a touchdown, home run, game-winning basket, birdie or other positive occurrence. Unfortunately ... a 'high five' requires the mutual hand slapping of two participants ... As such, a solitary fan is unable to perform a 'high five' to express excitement during a televised sporting event."

So this device is ridiculously made out of ridiculous reason. Since high five is require for the mutual hand slapping of two participants, whomever wants to do high five, but does not really have anyone to, they do it to this apparatus... at a sports game? Then are they bringing this apparatus at the game? There must be someone who is out thee for watch sports with and high-five with, I mean even with strangers.

At least, I find this invention very novel and new because there has no inventions that is exactly the same, or even similar. I don't find this as a potential infringement because I don't think there would be any device that tries to make a "high-five" machine or techniques. 

Blog 10: The Flatulence Deodorizer (Ridiculous Patent)

For my second ridiculous patent, I chose the flatulence deodorizer, which I could not stop laughing from it.

So, simply, this is a pad worn by a use that absorbs a gas due to flatulence. So the drawing is an example when he is at a perfect situation where he needs this patent invention. He is at the airport, waiting for the luggage to come out in his favorite "Z" jacket, when he suddenly emitted odors that made everyone stare at him. Feeling embarrassed, he even notices people covering their nose to get some fresh oxygen. Then, he regrets not wearing the flatulence deodorizer which he has seen it from his IEOR 190G classmate's blog post.  

I find this patent as a prior art because it is a material that was publicly available before the "relevant date" of a patent. I believe that there won't be any exactly the same invention that finds every element in the claim same as this patent. 

Blog 10: Animal Ear Protectors (Ridiculous Patent)

Hello everyone!

Today, I am going to talk about ridiculous or hilarious patents that we might consider unnecessary.
As my first post, I chose something that I personally liked -- Animal Ear Protectors! 

As an animal loving person, having two poodles back at home, I found this stupid, funny, and somewhat brilliant at the fact that you could actually bring this idea out as watching your dog eat food and getting its hair dirty. So, do you have a dog with long, floppy ears, who always get his hair dirty whenever he eats food? Well how are you going to deal with this problem? Just leave it or clean it out with paper towels? Well, you can easily solve this problem if you suggest this patent to the local pet accessory manufacture and let them know about US Patent #4233942. 

I guess you would have to decide whether your dog will look funny with stupid tubes around its ears than it would with crusted-up dog food all over itself. 

In terms of novelty, I think no one could really think about this idea. Therefore, there won't be a prior art problem where there has been prior art already made. I don't think this invention would be popular enough to be a potential infringement. In order to be potentially dangerous to be over lawsuits, it has to be something that is popular, money-making effective product. Almost no one would quite consider this product as productive and brilliant. Therefore, I consider this as not a potential infringement. 

Blog 9: Top 10 Biggest Patent Troll Targets

Hello all,

I have briefly mentioned that patent trolls have filed more lawsuits starting from 2000. I would like to talk in more depth about the increased lawsuits after 2000. Patent trolls have filed 19% more patent infringing lawsuits in 2013 than in 2012. Wireless carrier AT&T used to be the top target of patent trolls in 2013, suing more than 54 times, which is more than once a week.

The list goes like this:

1. AT & T
2. Google 
3. Verizon
4. Apple
5. Samsung
6. Amazon
7. Dell
8. Sony
9. Huawei
10. Blackberry 

AT&T was sued 54  times, Google 43 times, Verizon 42 times, Apple 41 times, Samsung and Amazon 39 times, Dell and SOny 34 times, Huawei 32 times, and lastly, Blackberry 31 times. This makes every company listed above sued by at least once every 12 days. 

RPX is a defensive patent aggregator, which is paid by many companies to buy potentially problematic patents beforehand on the open market so that NPE can not sue them with the potential patents. 

The top 10 list for NPE targets by total active cases when taking into account of NPE cases filed in previous years and still unresolved as of December 31, 2013, the list changes totally.

1. Google
2. At&T
3. Apple
4. Samsung 
5. Sony
6. Amazon
7. Verizon
8. HTC
9. LG Electronics
10. Dell

Google fought 72 active cases, Apple 68 cases, Samsung 63 cases, Sony 58 cases, Amazon 54 cases, Verizon 46 cases, HTC 42 cases, LG Electronic 42 cases, and Dell 41 cases. 

Fortune magazine explains that "giant tech corporations routinely pilfer innovations dreamed up by independent inventors, and that NPEs simply give these powerless individuals the financial support and litigation muscle they need to vindicate their rights. NPEs therefore serve not only small inventors, by also society at large, by preserving the incentive systems."

Blog 9: Why No One Likes Patent Trolls

Hi everyone,

Today I would like to talk about the cons of patent trolls and how the abuse of the patent system bugs out inventors and economy at large. In folktales, trolls terrifies children and townspeople. Likewise, in today's society and online, trolls abuse the effective usage of intellectual property. Yes, there is nothing wrong in policy or principle with an inventor licensing his ideas, but not manufacturing any products. Yet, most of the times, many trolls are not genuine inventors. They are economic seekers who only go after the chances that can earn them money. Furthermore, the lengthy and expensive lawsuits over patent infringement that many patent trolls attack for drag the economy and innovation as a whole. 

Patent trolls are not recent issue; they were already considered as a problem in 1890s. An American lawyer plagiarized the idea of improving road-engine from the exhibit at 1872 Centennial Convention, but was awarded a patent and sued many other car manufacturers for infringing on "his" patent. He forced them to pay him royalties. Similarly, there are a lot of patent portfolio mangers that simply acquire patent to make money by suing economically-lacking companies or inventors. This economically-seeking practice has aroused many other companies to act similarly, and the number of patent-related lawsuits has risen more then ten-fold since 2000. Shockingly, the most litigious patent trolls file more than one lawsuit a week. 

Economists say that patent trolls may benefit by helping to transfer the profit made by patents from manufacturers to inventors. However, the new research found that inventors only get 5% of their invention value after winning the patent trolls cases. The rest of the money goes to lawyers and NPEs. 

Due to the strength of NPE lobbyists, no serious reforms are likely to be passed on and the solution for paten trolls seem to be ambiguous and not clearly solved.