Students in an Innovation Law Mentoring class at the law school are hosted by CLCR to coach students at Austin Poly to be advocates and witnesses in mock trials illustrating issues relevant to innovation.
We do this in weekly hour-long sessions in the law school fall and spring terms.
In November and April Austin Poly students come to the law school for a day-long mock trial competition and earn tuition waivers for the law school -- in the first three terms a sum of $139,000 was awarded.
The work now has a very strong base to which new helps for the Austin Poly students are being added.
The book tells the hows and whys of the mock trials and provides scenarios for mock trials to help all sorts of learners in all kinds of learning environments understand innovation rights.
See also: InnovationRights.org
After invention of farming, farmers tremendously
out-reproduced hunters and gatherers.
This made property and privilege super important.
Now city-dwellers out-reproduce farmers.
Now diversity and innovation are super important.
This challenges old ideas about property and privilege.
The counter attack on behalf of the old ideas is ugly.
FUD* is not an Innovation Right
Teach the controversy!
Teach the facts!
No! Teach the controversy!
No! Teach the facts!
But, there is no "controversy."
And, there are no "facts."
In science all results have error bars.
Teach the results with the error bars.
And, ask folks teaching controversy
to put the error bars on their “results.”
Watch the scientific error bars get smaller.
Watch the folks teaching controversy squirm.
[* FUD means promoting "fear, uncertainty, doubt" and is the marketing tool of choice for nasty people to use to discredit anyone threatening the status of those nasty people.]
FUD is Anti-Diversity
Clowns appealing to fear
to exclude persons
because they are different
rob us of values of diversity.
If persons are excluded
because of difference,
then there are no checks
on false beliefs,
no checks on
movement toward disaster,
no checks on movement
toward drinking the kool aid,
no vision of alternatives,
just the same old trap.
FUD Makes Experts
Appeal to fear,
appeal to wishful thinking,
become a media star.
Laughing causes cancer.
Laughing cures cancer.
Can't lose,
either way,
or both ways
on alternate weeks,
can't lose.
Though the “deadly sins” - extravagance, lust, gluttony, greed, acedia, despair, sloth, wrath, envy, pride, vainglory – can be drivers of innovation they are at least as likely to be barriers to innovation.
Drivers of innovation can include the “deadly sins:” extravagance, lust, gluttony, greed, acedia, despair, sloth, wrath, envy, pride, vainglory.
We should not need to invest in those drivers of innovation, but we do.
Greed focused on increasing property and privilege can be a driver of innovation.
Greed focused on self and against common good is a high barrier to innovation.
Who could be against investments in innovation?
If those investments might reduce consumption on which your income depends, or otherwise might reduce your advantage, then you are likely to be against those investments.
Why would anyone be against policies promoting green products in our innovation economy? There are rational and irrational reasons.
If green products would reduce consumption of products your income depends on, you are likely against any policies nudging green products toward the innovation pipeline.
If your income depends on resource extraction, you are likely against an innovation driven economy
You are likely to be against policies promoting green products if you are against activist government -- and thus against government having any active role in our innovation economy -- except that you expect government to enforce policies you believe in, and except that you expect government to solve all problems causing you difficulty.
Note how easily people having irrational reasons are exploited by interests having rational reasons.
You are likely to be against using tax dollars to invest in innovation if you are against activist government, except that you expect government to enforce ideas you happen to believe in, and except that you expect government to solve all problems causing you difficulty.
Again we need to reinvigorate our innovation economy to alleviate our dysfunctional dependence on oil. Again.
Years ago there was an Energy-Related Inventions Program (ERIP) in the US departments of Energy and Commerce, created in response to the oil crisis of 1973.
ERIP was an aggressive program which worked to create inventor support organizations around the country in order to funnel energy-related inventions into the program. I took the bait and started the not-for-profit Inventors’ Council here in Chicago.
ERIP was constantly in trouble at the Federal level because it was, and still is, argued that government should not promote innovation, should not pick winners and losers. Never mind that government protects, and promotes, interests of big oil -- that’s a story about campaign contributions.
So, ERIP slowly died and is forgotten. It was a program for “small people” as the BP chair calls us.
ERIP understood -- and we must understand again -- that, since it is not possible to predict where good ideas will blossom, policies to reinvigorate our innovation economy must at least present no barriers to participation, The innovation economy welcome mat must be all-inclusive.
Know-it-all big-shot: I just read that we continue to fall behind our trading partners in innovation.
Geezer pragmatist: Yes, the trend is rapidly downward on various measures.
BS: Geezer, you studied innovation as a physicist and as an historian of science each for several decades, working directly with inventors in the Inventors' Council for two decades, and now working on the second decade of working directly with inventors through the Patent Clinic at the law school. So, what do you suggest is the best way to encourage innovation.
GP: BS, the best way is to lower barriers to innovation.
BS: For example?
GP: Helping the greatest diversity of persons understand innovation rights lowers a huge barrier to innovation.
BS: Nonsense, my friends at the country club know plenty about how to hire lawyers to look after their intellectual property rights. That's all we need.
GP: Wrong on two counts Ace. First, innovation rights include much more than intellectual property rights. Second, innovation depends on diversity, diversity of ways to look at things, diversity of ideas. Your country club friends are too focused on excluding people not like them and on excluding ideas which might threaten their existing privileges. Those exclusive country club attitudes are dragging us down.
On Christmas eves I remember a conversation with a waitress on a Christmas eve many years ago. She told me that at 2 AM (or was it midnight -- little difference) a large store reduced the prices of goods for children. So, taking public transportation with several changes, she'd go there then to buy gifts for her children and lug the gifts home to be found by the children when they awoke.
It is heroic how she -- and many others -- live by their own hard work and grit. Comparing those heroes with rich folk, sure that they deserve their riches and wallowing in excess, brings me a very deep sense of shame for anything I do which might excuse that dis-equity.
During and after WWII we pulled together, were positive, with a can-do spirit, bringing over fifty years of incredible innovation.
Now we are pulling apart, are negative, with a can't-do spirit, erecting huge barriers to innovation.
Patent savvy can actually increase open access.
In her dissertation at the University of Gothenburg, Caroline Pamp makes several very important observations about how patent grants can prevent loss of access to ideas.
For example, if primary results are covered in a patent grant, then contracts can be used to keep access open. It follows that workers should be patent savvy so that the right to obtain a patent grant is not lost. If the right to obtain a patent grant covering primary results is lost, then an uncooperative entity might cover secondary results in a patent grant and lock up access.
If X is covered in a patent grant owned by A, and Y is covered in a patent grant owned by B, then A can use a contract to give B access to X, which is an incentive for B to use a contract to give A access to Y.
Patent savvy enables cooperating entities to keep access open. This can help fill the innovation pipeline fueling our innovation economy.
On the phone the inventor was so busy telling how clever he was to write his own patent application and get it allowed and issued, that he did not hear anything that was said.
He did have a very good idea. He did have an issued patent. His idea is in frequent use and each use might have paid a good royalty. Might have.
His claims were drawn so narrowly that they might be infringed only accidentally. He did not have patent savvy to see the value of claiming his idea so that the claims would cover a broad range of embodiments of his idea.
There is far too much bad information available about how patents work in our innovation economy.
The first step toward patent savvy is seeing that what you think you know might be wrong, seeing the need to learn from a reliable professional, and hearing what is said.
Know-it-all big-shot: Patents are just a right to sue.
Geezer pragmatist: You might be the one being sued if you’re not patent savvy.
Know-it-all big-shot: All patents are the same -- get the cheapest.
Geezer pragmatist: Cheap patent work likely will cost you a bundle later. Good patent work can create great value, keeping competitors far away from your product, which would be worth much more than the cost of good work.
Science has long been a key factor in our innovation economy, both as a source of ideas and as a key resource for moving ideas along the innovation pipeline.
In the nineteenth century, as scientists were investigating the magnetic effects of electric currents, various ideas for electric telegraphs were generated -- the resulting innovation changed the economy of the world.
Just after the US Civil War an Atlantic submarine telegraph cable to connect Europe and America was attempted -- it failed because of pseudo-science, costing much. When the cable promoters turned to appropriate science the cable became a successful innovation, almost immediately earning back the losses and again changing the economy of the world.
In 2010 we celebrated the fifty year anniversary of the first laser which had no known use. In those fifty years lasers have been sources of ideas which became innovations and have been means for turning ideas into innovations, both contributing to our innovation economy beyond count and growing.
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