Something You Should Know - How Intellectual Property Laws Can Get You in Trouble & How Noise Harms Your Health

Episode Date: November 2, 2020

While you are probably more careful about the surfaces you touch and keeping things sanitized, you may have overlooked all the surfaces in your car. This episode begins with a discussion on the surfaces in your car and what you should do to keep them as germ-free as possible. Source: Westways Magazine Nov/Dec 2020 Can someone really sue you if you use their picture on your website? Will they win if they do? This is just one of the areas of intellectual property law I discuss with attorney Devin Miller, CEO of Miller IP Law (www.milleripl.com) and host of The Inventive Journey podcast. Devin explains how to protect your intellectual property and what you can and cannot do with other people’s. If you’ve ever wondered about copyrights, trademarks and patents and what they do, you need to listen.  How do rich people become rich? There is actually a simple formula that most wealthy Americans follow that reliably builds wealth over time. Listen as I explain how most wealthy people get that way. https://consumerfed.org/press_release/how-americans-view-personal-wealth-v-how-financial-planners-view-this-wealth/ We all know that too much noise is a problem. So how big a problem is it? Are there really serious, long-term effects of noise? What can you do to protect yourself if you are bothered by all the noises around you? Listen to Marcia Epstein, a musicologist and historian at the University of Calgary as well as author of the book, Sound and Noise: A Listener's Guide to Everyday Life (https://amzn.to/2HEH5KG) . Once you hear her I think you’ll realize that noise is a bigger problem than you imagined.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As a listener to Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know is all about. And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks. Well, you see, TED Talks Daily is a podcast that brings you a new TED Talk every weekday in less than 15 minutes. Join host Elise Hu. She goes beyond the headlines so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future.

Learn about things like sustainable fashion, embracing your entrepreneurial spirit, the future of robotics, and so much more. Like I said, if you like this podcast, Something You Should Know, I'm pretty sure you're going to like TED Talks Daily. And you get TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts. Today on Something You Should Know, wherever you get your podcasts. a photo of theirs on your website? Oh yeah. Bare minimum, if they decide to come after you, it doesn't matter if it's intentional or not, if you copy an image from the internet that's copyrighted by somebody else, it's a minimum of $750.

Then, the simple formula most wealthy people use to get rich. And the problem with noise. It's worse than you realize. People who have hearing damage as they get older, they're more likely to get dementia. It's also stress levels being raised chronically. That affects your cardiovascular system and your immune system. All this today on Something You Should Know. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like Something You Should Know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest.

Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. I spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed, critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show.

There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome to another all-new episode of Something You Should Know.

You have probably in the last several months become much more aware of the surfaces you touch and to wash your hands after you touch certain surfaces. We've all become more aware of germs and keeping things clean, but one place where you may have not paid as much attention is your car's interior. According to carrentals.com, the typical steering wheel has four times more germs on it than a public toilet seat. In fact, the dirtiest parts of the interior of your car, in descending order, are the steering wheel, the cup holder, seat belt latches, door handles, gear shift, and audio controls. Also, the trunk and a child seat, if you have one, are really disgusting. So cleaning and disinfecting the interior surfaces of your car is a really good idea.

You just have to be careful what you use. Alcohol-based products can dry out some of the interior surfaces, and too much of any product is not good. Remember, though, you can disinfect all you want, but it only lasts until the next time you contaminate it. So rather than grab the steering wheel right after you pump gas, sanitize your hands

first. Because the average gas pump is 11,835 times germier than a public toilet seat. Ew. And that is something you should know. You have intellectual property. You write a story or a poem or you take a picture or you write some music.

That is your intellectual property. You own it. That may not mean a whole lot, but it might. What's also true is that if other people take a picture or write a poem or they write some music, that's their intellectual property and you can't just use it, which is sometimes where people get in trouble. If you see a picture on Google that you would love to put on your blog, well, you're really not supposed to do that unless you have permission. Then you hear people say your blog, well, you're really not supposed to do that unless you have permission. Then you hear people say things like, well, you can use a little bit of the picture or

a little bit of the song, as long as you don't use the whole thing. Well, it turns out that's not true. It all gets a little confusing, and here to sort it all out is attorney Devin Miller. He is the CEO of Miller IP Law. He is also host of the Inventive Journey podcast, and he is an expert on intellectual property, copyrights, patents, and trademarks. Hi, Devin. Welcome. Thank you for having me on. It's fun to be here. So let's start out with the basics. What is intellectual property? Intellectual property is kind of an umbrella term. It really

has three things that sit under that umbrella. It's patents, trademarks, and copyrights. So if you're, and if you, this is a quick explanation. If you think of patents are really for an invention. If you create something, make something, that's a patent. Trademarks are for brands. If you want to create a brand or, you know, for goods or services, that's a trademark. Copyrights are more for creatives, a sculpture, a picture, a painting, a photo, something of that nature, that's going to fall under copyrights. Take all of those three and there's what makes up intellectual property. So on a very practical level, because I see it all the time, people use pictures that aren't theirs on their website or they they'll use, you know, like a big hit song on their website or in a podcast.

And how likely is it that they're going to get in trouble? And then what kind of trouble could they get into? Typically, for right now and in the past, if you're to go to pictures, if you're to find one that you loved on Google, you're searching all your favorite cat or whatever it is, and you're going to put it on your website. If you're a small website that's a small blog or it's a personal site or even just a very small e-commerce site, your odds of getting someone from a practical sense or a business sense of them catching you or doing anything about it are going to be reasonably low, meaning they're likely not going to do it. It's going to be more time, money, and effort to do it than it's worth. The reason I say it's getting worse is that now you're getting to the point that the internet or computers and tools are getting smarter to where a lot of times you can do what's called a reverse image search where people will just upload their

image. They'll have the tool search the whole internet, find that image, and then they'll have the tool search the whole internet, find that image and then they'll just start to send out letters to everybody. So whereas it used to be, and currently is not that big of a deal if you're small, it certainly is getting worse. Now to the cost of, what does it mean for cost-wise, bare minimum, if they decide to come after you, but doesn't matter if you meant to or not,

if it's intentional or not, if you copy a image from the internet it's intentional or not. If you copy a image from, you know, from the internet that's copyrighted by somebody else, it's a minimum of $750. And so if you were to, you know, do that, they can send out a letter. And for each time you use that image, they can charge you $750. It can go up from there. If you do it intentionally, it can get up into the tens of thousands of, If they can show you knew that it was copyrighted and you did it anyway, they can come after you for tens of thousands of dollars. And do they have to prove that they've been damaged to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars? Or is this more punitive, like we caught you and so now you're going to pay? Yeah, it's usually a combination of both. So usually the combination is one is, did you do it intentionally or not? If you did it

intentionally, you're going to get hammered a lot more. If you did it unintentionally, if they can't show, you know, you didn't can't, there isn't anything to say, Hey, I didn't know this was a copyrighted. I did it in good faith. I made a mistake. It was an error. Then it's not going to be. The other thing is they'll look at it and say, one is how much should it harm your competitor? Meaning, did it all of a sudden, because you started using their image, they stopped making as much money, or they didn't get as much income in, they'll look at that as a factor. And if they reduce your competitor's income a lot, they'll give you more damages. And the last one is, is they'll look at and say, now, how much money did you make off

of from using this copyrighted material? Did you all of a sudden go from making $1,000 a month to $20,000 a month? And if so, a lot of that income should have gone to us. And so it's kind of those three factors. The more damaging any one of those factors or multiple ones are, the more likely it is going to be those tens of thousands. If you want to use a picture or music or whatever, what you really are supposed to do is get permission, right? Permission's great. If you know that this is copyrighted, somebody else owns it, yes, get permission and get it in writing. Don't just get vocal permission or talk to them over the phone because memories change and people change their mind and what you talk to over the phone may not always come to pass later on but if so if it's one that

you can get one the other place you can do is there's a lot of places that do do a good job of having stock photos so even as you know as an ip firm we use the stock photos all the time and we'll go to a few different places ad Adobe has one that you can pay as a subscription. There are other ones out there that are called Burst and Splash and others that really do do a good job of giving you free images or on a subscription basis that you then don't have to worry about. If you go to a pretty reputable site, you're good.

The other one that you can do, it's a little more questionable, it's less perfect. When you do an image search on Google, if you go into the advanced search settings, you can actually say, now, is this one a copyright free one or is it free to use without having to do anything? If I take a picture or I write a poem or I sculpt a sculpture, because I did it, do I own the copyright to it, or do I have to take some overt action to register that? As opposed to patents or trademarks, which you do have to do more of an action to it, with copyrights, they would say you reduce the creative into a tangible medium.

That's a legal speak to it. What does that mean? Just to your point, as soon as you take the picture, as soon as you make the painting, as soon as you do the sculpture, as soon as you film the video or whatever it is, then you're going to have the inherent copyrights associated with that. Now, the reason why you may go register the copyright is a couple fold. One is that you're going to look at it and say, you know, sometimes it's hard. How are you going to approve the day that you came out with the sculpture? Well, maybe if you take a picture and it's timestamped and they're going to say, well, yeah, but that's easy to change. Or let's say, you know,

you do something else. It's really hard to show on sometimes whether or not you, when you created it. So if you register the copyright, you can say, hey, by this date, I created it. The other thing is, is if somebody were to come along and now infringe your copyright, then if you register the copyright, then it gives you an increased damages. You can get more money to recoup the damages than if you don't register the copyright. So in essence, you're really creating a paper trail. So you can say, I own this and I did this at this time. So you now have the proof. You know, it's kind of like showing your homework. If you're to go to a court case,

you always want evidence, right? The more evidence you can get, one, you're more likely to win and two, you're more likely to get better damages. And it's kind of the same case here. You don't have to register the copyright, but they're pretty cheap and relatively inexpensive. And it gives you a whole lot better ammunition if you ever need to enforce it. What about when you try to register or trademark like a name or a business name, like Bob's Restaurant? I mean, there's probably a million Bob's Restaurants, or if you have a business and you use your last name in that i mean can you do that anytime you use your own last name it's very difficult if not near impossible to get a trademark on it meaning unless you've reached a level of infamy like a michael jordan or everybody thinks of michael jordan the basketball

player when you say michael jordan or tom cruise or you know someone that is just so famous that when you say their name that's who you think of for For 99.9% of the rest of us, if you try and trademark your own name, you're not going to be able to get it because you can't stop other people from using their own last name in a trademark. Now, to your point, you can do what's called a design mark where you do more of the logo, right? So it's not just a word, but it's the look and the feel of your logo. It's the colors. It's the images. You think of the Starbucks mermaid or those type of things. Those are all designs, and those ones you can protect.

Now, what you're protecting isn't necessarily the word Bob in your Bob restaurant example, but rather you're protecting the look and the feel. You're protecting the Starbucks mermaid, and if somebody makes a logo that's similar to that, then you can say, no, yes, you're using different words, but your logo that's similar to that, then you can say, no, this, yes, you're using different words, but your logo looks so similar to mine. People don't know if you're selling it or I'm selling it or who's selling it. And so that's where you can protect with logos. Does that make sense? Yeah, that makes sense. So what about in a case of say Apple? Okay. Apple is just a word in the English language, but the company Apple seems to have kind of co-opted.

I mean, when I hear the word Apple, I mean, I might think of the fruit, but I often think of the people that make the iPhone. If somebody says, I want to go out and buy a Apple to eat for dinner tonight, you're probably not going to think they're going to go buy an iPhone, right? Unlikely they're going to eat that for dinner. And so Apple, the way that trademarks work is you define your types of goods or services that you do it. So different categories. So Apple has trademarks for the word Apple that is going to be for iPhones and smartphones and computers and laptops and those types of things. But if you were to try and go to the same thing, let's say you wanted to open up your own fruit stand and you're going to call it Apple and all you're going to sell is a fruit Apple. We're not able to get a trademark on the word Apple because

that's how everybody describes the fruit. And it's not that it identifies your goods or services, your products or your services. It is just how you describe the product. And so it'd be the same thing. You couldn't go out and get a trademark for the word smartphone. Everybody uses the word smartphone to describe smartphone. But if you were to go out and get a trademark for the word smartphone. Everybody uses the word smartphone to describe smartphone, but if you were to go out and get a trademark Apple for smartphones, that's how you can get it. We're talking about intellectual property and how things like copyrights, patents, and trademarks can affect you. And my guest is attorney Devin Miller, CEO of Miller IP Law. that ours is not a loving God and we are not its favored children. The Heresies of Randolph Bantwine, wherever podcasts are available.

People who listen to something you should know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more.

A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. So, Devin, I want to talk about this concept of fair use, and I think people probably get in trouble because there's a lot of definitions of what fair use is so what is fair use fair use is basically an

exception to the copyright law towards saying yes you're you're using somebody else's copyright but the for defined purposes that will say are okay or allowable or you're not going to in friends or copyright'll give you a few examples as to what fair use is. At the very core, what they say is it kind of has to have a transformative nature, has to kind of change the use of the copyright, the material that you're using that's copyrighted. So I'll give you an example. If you're doing a criticism or you're doing a review of a product and you quote the passage of the book and you say, this is the worst book ever. Or you go watch a movie and you use the image of the

movie and say, this was the best movie ever. You should go see it. You know, if you're doing that kind of criticism, critique reviews, that's one where they're saying, Hey, well, you're, you're, you're able to use a copyrighted material in that context. Another one that's a bit more in the gray area is harder to define is what's called parody, where you're making fun of something, you know, and this is kind of if you think of Saturday Night Live, how many times they go make of something. One of my favorite ones is when they go, you know, Alexa and they go make fun of Alexa. Well, obviously they're using Alexa, the copyrighted materials and even the trademark, but they're using it as a parody.

And so you get some protection that way. The last way that's generally on the fair use is on educational stuff. So if you're a teacher, if you're an educator at a university or, you know, K through 12 type of a thing, and you're using the material in an educational purpose within reason, then you can say they're going to give all of those reasons. They're going to say, well, those are exceptions to the normal copyrighted rules. So we'll allow you to use it. And yet you hear people say things like, well, it's okay if you use, you know, a portion of the picture, or you use 10 seconds of the song, or 6 seconds of the song, or those kinds of things, that that's fair use, but that isn't what you just said.

It's not true at all. You know, you can take, depending on what the copyright material, you can take, you know, one second of a video or one second of a music or, you know, whatever it might be, and you're still infringing their copyright. On the other hand, if you're doing it for a parody or you're doing it other contexts, maybe it's not copyright. So there isn't a 10% or, you know, 10 seconds or anything rule. I had a, you know, when I was in law school, I had one of my professors was,

if you know, play that funky music, White Boy. It's an old song, fairly famous. He was in the band that did that. He would show that one second, if it's that kind of that hook that catches the audience and is the thing that everybody remembers about that song, it can be less than a second and you're still infringing their copyright. So just to your point, audience and is the thing that everybody remembers about that song, it can be less than a second,

and you're still infringing their copyright. So just to your point, if you see it on television and read it on the internet, it's just an old myth that keeps being perpetuated. Well, there have been some interesting cases where, especially with music like Stairway to Heaven, and I know George Harrison of the Beatles went through a copyright infringement problem with one of his songs. But there's only so many notes that a song can have. And they can only be in so many orders that I wonder how often that happens where it's not intentional. It's just that, you know, ultimately lots of people could have written that song. Yeah, it is a very hard one. And going back to the law school example, the same thing that you just said, I had the

same professor got up and he did three different songs, completely different. But if you were to slice out just enough, then they all sounded the same, right? If you just take a few notes. And so it is difficult to say, hey, you know, there's enough of that. And that's when they do the analysis, when they look at it, if it's kind of a common or, hey, this has been used over and over and it's a fairly repetitive tune that's used in a lot of different songs,

you're going to have a hard time really saying that you and Friends are copyright. Aside from if you just downloaded the music and snipped it out, but assuming you did it yourself, where it is is going to be is they're trying to delineate what is that hook. Is it something that's the tone, the tenor, the type of instruments, how fast it is, how slow it is,

how loud it is, how soft it is, that makes that hook, that makes that catchy note. And if they say, okay, now if it meets enough of those criteria, you're still going to, you can still copyright it. So that is kind of that balance of, in the one sense, there are only so many ways you can play so many notes with so many instruments and yet if it is one that you know is fairly unique it does have a different sound and you know then they can start to say well it's not all of the song that's probably copyrighted but this hook and this portion is what about colors when i think of you know some companies like tiffany that have their blue and that there are colors that are associated with

brands, but can you own a color? Yes, to a degree. So you can own a color and use the one, you know, there's Tiffany's, there's, I know that there was Mary Kay that I think was, you know, the multi-level marketing where if you got enough, if you sold, if you got high enough up on the level, they give you a pink catalog. So Tiffany's did the blue, Mary Kay did the pink for Cadillacs. And really what it boils down to is the type of products that you do it with. So you think of the Mary Kay example, they have a specific pink, but it's only for cars. I mean, you could use that same pink color to paint your house or to do a gift bag or whatever else, because they've only got that pink

associated with the cars tiffany let's say they have the blue color for the the you know the gift bag if you were to go now take the tiffany color and paint a car with it then you're you're perfectly fine because it's not the same goods or services as whether using their color i wanted to talk a little bit about you know we hear hear about China being very cavalier about intellectual property rights and laws and things. And it opens up the conversation to, you know, just because you've got your copyright or your trademark or your patent here, how does that protect you in the global economy? You know, China, to their credit, I'll give it that they are trying to do better. And they're far from perfect and they're still working on it, but they are improving. They've at least realized as they enter the global market, they're trying to get a better

system. For a long time, it was really culturally that they say, hey, how can you own an idea? How can you own a brand? It's really everybody has ownership to that. And so that kind of that mindset they're now trying to shift and adjust but now to your question of let's say your u.s company and somebody in china starts to you know knock off your brand knock off your copyrights or anything else then you have to look at with across all of intellectual property copyrights trademarks

patents it is state or country by country specific, meaning you have to file your copyright, your trademark, whatever it is in each of the different countries in order to have protection for that. So generally, if you're saying, hey, we're only going to do 95% of our business in the US, then you're probably just going to get protection in the US. You're not going to worry about China. If on the other hand, you're saying we're going to do 95% of our business in China, then you probably want to go file in China. If on the other hand, you're saying, we're going to do 95% of our business in China, then you probably want to go file in China. Now, to your point, you know, and what now the other question didn't ask

is let's say that you were doing it in China or you're doing all of your business in the US, but you get all the Chinese knockoffs that are coming into the US. Well, your rights do allow you to anybody that imports a product, they bring it into the country, they're selling it in the country, anything else. you can protect your brand, you can protect your copyright, you can protect your patent. So at what point is it really worth it?

I mean, if you're starting a little company with your buddy and you have a logo or you have something, do you really, I mean, are you really going to be worried that somebody's going to steal it? I mean, at what point does it become important enough to register copyrights, trademarks and patents? Where most businesses land is it depends a little bit on the value of your business and where you see your business heading. So I'll give you a couple examples. If you're a small mom and pop shop and it can be universal between all of intellectual property, you're saying, hey, we just want to operate in the local community. We want to, you know, I'll give a restaurant as an example.

We want to sell shakes and hamburgers and that's really all we want to do. Then probably it doesn't make sense. You're going to, you'd be better to spend the money elsewhere. You know, on the opposite, if you're saying, hey, we really want to get a franchise or we want to sell nationwide or we want to become a bigger company or we want to set ourselves up to be acquired by someone else, you know, have bigger aspirations, then you're going to want to much more seriously look and see now where is the value of our company? Meaning is the value of our company and our widget and our products? And if so, get a patent. If it's on the brand and you know, you're the next Starbucks or

you're the next, you know, Nike or whoever and a big brand M&Ms brand and you're the next Starbucks or you're the next Nike or whoever and a big brand, M&Ms, then you're going to say, we need a trademark because that's a lot of where the value of our brand is. You think of Starbucks, yeah, they may make fine coffee or donuts or muffins or that, but really a lot of the reason people go back to them over and over is not because they're not better than the competitor, it's just they know the brand. And so if you're saying, hey, we're a brand product, same on copyrights. If you're going to write a book

and you're going to spend all of this time and money and effort and really your whole value of your company is in the book you wrote or the video series you did, then you're going to have to look a lot more seriously at protecting it. So it kind of depends, one, as to how big you want to get and where the value of your company is. When you invent something, one of the things that's kind of confusing to me and I suspect other people

is so you have a new way of doing something, a new invention, but it builds on somebody else's invention. Some of the things have already been invented and patented and you can't do your invention unless you infringe on their patent or get permission, right? There are some areas where they're getting very crowded. They're getting very difficult to invent. And one is honestly is in the golf club arena. It is very hard to get a patent in golf clubs anymore. And the honest reason is because you've had a lot of

rich doctors and rich lawyers that love to go and golf. And they all think they created the next best golf club to help their swing. And so it's very difficult to invent something in that area. Vice versa, you take one of the newer areas, augmented reality, your virtual reality. That one has a much more open area because it's just up and coming. So it kind of depends on the industry and the area you're at. Some things, yeah, they've been very invented, very difficult. Mouse traps are another one. Very hard to invent something, a new mouse trap. On the other hand, if you're in a new industry and something different, then you have a bit more room to play. Well, if you were going to invent, I don't know,

a new pen, isn't it going to be impossible to create a new pen without stepping on the toes and infringing on the copyright of whoever invented the previous pens? Patents, unlike copyrights that have a longer life and trademarks can live as long as you want to keep using them, patents have a life of 20 years. Meaning once you've, once you file the patent, it's been issued, you have 20 years from the time that you filed it within which to use it. So a lot of things like you take the pen example or other things one of the interesting ones is a pencil you know remember the old style pencil that has a lead in it or the graphite has a little metal crimp and then it has a eraser on top well that little metal crimp was actually patented it was you know one where it was this is how you attach an eraser to a pencil and that one is

patented long enough ago that now, you know, for a period of time, only the person that had the patent could do that. Now everybody can do it because it's been over 20 years since that was originally invented. So there is a bit of that. Once you've been out there for long enough, it's been patented long enough, everybody can do it. I know it may be hard to generalize, but if you were going to invent something and wanted to patent it, just in general, what kind of investment in time and money is it to get a patent? Yeah, I mean, I'll give it based off of kind of averages because there's a bit of variance. But if you're to take a general patent, let's say you wanted to get going today,

to get it filed, you're at about a month. So it takes about a month to prepare the patent. The cost of preparing it, if you were to go on, you know, kind of filed you're at about a month so it takes about a month to prepare the patent the cost of preparing at if you're to go on you know kind of where we're at we're about 5500 law firms that are on the east coast west coast they're anywhere from 8 000 to 10 000 to prepare and file it once you file it you're you're at about to get to the rest of the process you're about 18 to 24 months to get through it. Now you have patent pending. So you, you claimed, you said, this is a date that I invention invented it. This is the date that I own these rights, assuming that it gets patented, but to get through the rest of the process is

going to be about 18 to 24 months. And you're probably another five to 7,000 to get through the rest of the process. So if you were to say the whole process, probably about 24 months and cost just somewhere on the lower end of $12,000, the upper end of $17,000 to $20,000. Well, this is a topic where I think there's a lot of confusion, this whole thing about intellectual property and who owns what and who can use what. And I think it's really important that people have some understanding of how it works. My guest has been attorney Devin Miller. He is CEO of Miller it works. My guest has been attorney Devin Miller. He is CEO of Miller IP Law. He is host of the Inventive Journey podcast.

And there is a link to that podcast and to his website in the show notes. Thank you, Devin. Okay, thanks, Michael. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love

our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life.

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on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. I think we've all heard that noise is a problem. Too much noise can affect your hearing. It can raise your stress levels. It could just make you grumpy. In general, noise, we've been told, is a bad thing.

But just how bad is it? And what is noise? What's the difference between noise and sound? How do you reduce noise levels in your life if they're causing you harm? Well, here to discuss this is Marcia Epstein. She's a musicologist and historian at the University of Calgary, and she is author of the book, Sound and Noise, A Listener's Guide to Everyday Life. Hi, Marcia. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Thank you, Mike. It's good to be here. So let's start with distinguishing between sound and noise. What's the difference? And is noise really that big a problem for

the average person? Well, there is a big problem. The difference between sound and noise is somewhat philosophical, but there are universals that apply everywhere. Okay, noise is generally defined as sound that isn't wanted, whether it's at this particular moment or in this particular place. For example, what strikes you as just ordinary sound in the daytime might be noise at night because it wakes you up. And there's a lot of concern in medical circles about this for a couple of reasons. One is that people are damaging their hearing because of their recreational habits and because the technology for amplification of music keeps

getting louder and louder. And that even affects children, small children. One of the things I discovered is that there are very few regulations in North America, maybe none, for children's toys and the sounds they emit, which can get into dangerous decibel levels, especially when you consider little kids who have short arms and they're holding the device close to their heads. So that's something that hasn't really been given publicity, and it needs to. The people who work on this, the clinicians, are finding that a lot of young people now have the hearing that's typical of people over 50 who have worked in industrial jobs, and that shouldn't be happening.

The reason it's a problem in the long run is not just because of hearing loss, because it doesn't make you go completely deaf. It just damages certain frequencies. But those are the frequencies of speech. It's recently been discovered that people who have hearing damage as they get older, as they get into seniorhood, they're more likely to get dementia. It's also stress levels being raised chronically, not just while the noise is on, but even at a low level, it can affect your nervous system. That affects your cardiovascular system and your immune system. So in Germany, where really detailed studies have been done, they've discovered that people who live near major traffic intersections in cities are more likely to develop heart disease

than people who are living in quiet areas. Well, I think everybody has a sense that there's a problem. I have this experience. I just had it the other day where I'm in my backyard and it's quiet, fairly quiet, or I think it's quiet, and I don't even notice that my neighbor's air conditioner is on until it goes off. And then it goes off and it's like, oh, this is wonderful. I mean, this is so much nicer. I didn't even realize I wasn't hearing it. I was hearing it, but I wasn't listening to it. And when it went off, it was like this like stress relief. Yes, your shoulders go down and your neck relaxes, all of that, yes.

That's another concern, that everybody knows that we're under chronic stress. It's the way we live. And sound is one of the contributing factors. You pointed out very correctly that there's a difference between hearing and listening. If we're listening to what's going on, we're likely to notice what's annoying and try to do something about it. If we're hearing without listening,

all of this goes by and your nervous system reacts, your muscles tense up, you might get a headache, you might feel fatigued by the end of the day. It's common in workplaces. And we think of offices, quiet indoor workplaces, right? Well, not exactly. There's the ventilation system, which can be roaring in the background. There's a hum from the fluorescent lights. And there are little noises going on all over.

There are printers. There are computer fans. Computers are getting quieter than they used to be, certainly, but there's still a sound coming from them. And if you pay attention to it, you're going to notice that it sounds better when it stops. But there must be something about the human brain that compensates for this, and that's why you don't notice it, because you're trying to get through what is important to you, so somehow your brain puts that in the background and you don't notice it, and

that's functional, that's helpful. So the brain has set us up to deal with ordinary environmental noises, and how loud those are depend a lot on where you are. What it hasn't done is figured out a way to block out noise. Consciously, we are blocking it out by becoming used to it so that we don't react anymore. But we're still hearing it. That's the problem. We don't have any ear lids. Which is a saying that's been around for a long time in acoustic ecology circles. And yet then there's music, and music seems to, it's sound,

and some music is noise to some people, but music seems to have this opposite effect that we like. We like music. Yes, and it's one of the glories of our species. It's just that we often have it around so much, so constantly, that we lose the ability to listen to the external world. And this is one of the principles of acoustic ecology, that we need to know what the natural world sounds like because we evolved in it. We didn't have the ability to carry music around with us until just recently, and our nervous systems haven't changed much, if at all, since prehistoric times.

So our ancestors that far back got all kinds of signals and warnings and points of interest from the natural soundscape. What are the birds doing? If they're loud, you know that something exciting is going on for them. Maybe there's a lot of food around, and you go in search of that food. If they're quiet, it's likely that there are predators and they've left the area. So you want to watch out for those predators. If you hear water in the background,

you know that there's a place you can get water, which is essential for life. And over a very long time, these signals were picked up by the human nervous system or the proto-human nervous system. We share that with mammals, all mammals. So survival signals and danger signals came out of that heritage. We still carry it, that heritage. We still carry it, that heritage, we still carry it.

And the mechanical sounds, the city sounds, the traffic, and whatever music is coming into our ears causes reactions that we're just not necessarily aware of until, as you pointed out, the machinery stops and you notice, oh yeah, that was making me tense up. And so what are we supposed to do about this? I think what people think is that there's not much you can do about the noise in your life unless you're the one controlling the volume control. But the noise of the city, the noise of the cars in the street, the noise that we deal with every day, we have no control over.

Well, that's true on an individual level, for sure. But there are ways to get solutions going. It requires city planning in many cases. There's a study from Sweden that discovered that if architects and planners plan their communities and the structure of their houses so that bedrooms are at the back of the house rather than overlooking the street, there's less noise when people are trying to sleep. So that's an example of design that can make a difference. Wait, there was less noise when people are trying to sleep. So that's an example of design that can make a difference. Wait, there was a study that did? I could have told you that if you had just called me and asked. Yes, exactly. That doesn't seem like it needs a study. If people are going to spend government money on this kind of thing, they need studies, they need facts in

order to go ahead with that. So common sense, unfortunately, doesn't get counted much. But is there any kind of, I mean, I think everybody has a sense that less noise is better, that you should, if you can turn the noise down in your home or your office, but is there any sense of like, how much? How do you do it? What's the worst noise there is? Is there any kind of guiding criteria or is it just, you know, if you can make it a little quieter that's fine? There are guiding criteria and they have to do with decibel levels. The decibel is the unit of measurement for loudness of sound and you can look up anywhere on the Internet charts that show what sound levels, what sound pressure levels or loudness levels are produced by different machines and different situations.

You think of airport ground workers, for example, they have to wear very large earmuff-style hearing protectors in order to be around the planes that are going back and forth, because they would be pretty quickly deafened if they didn't have ear protection. something that's up at the top of the scale. There are louder examples. People in the military can encounter them. Bombs, for example. Heavy artillery fire, also deafening at certain levels. But in everyday life, there are examples as well. Stadium sports in enclosed areas can get to 120 decibels, which will cause hearing damage pretty quickly. Rock concerts, likewise. It depends on how close you are to the speakers. So this is something that a lot of people encounter on a regular basis.

But those are typically in people's lives, those are special events. Those are, you know, going to the baseball game or going to your favorite rock concert. What about just every other day when it isn't a special event? You're just in the city, you're driving in your car, you're around noise. Is just the general noise level okay? It's not going to deafen you, but it can definitely put you into a state of stress. And so what can we do about that? Well, again, design helps.

Another possibility is wearing earplugs, something that's very simple. They cost very little. They're available at any pharmacy. And even if you're going to a large party, it's worth protecting your hearing. It will not stop you from being able to be in a conversation. Even for a rock concert, earplugs will take out some of the decibel level, and you can protect yourself that way. Again, you will be able to enjoy the music, but you won't get hurt by it. Orchestra musicians have specially designed earplugs that block out certain frequencies so that they don't get problems from being next to the trumpets, for example,

or right in front of the trumpets, which can be too loud. Yeah, so the design of earplugs is quite varied. They can be put together for special situations, depending on what work you're doing. Or they can be just the basic ones that show up in the drugstore, and they do make a difference. It does seem that, I imagine if you were to talk to people, they would say, you know, it would be nice to have a quieter environment, but it's more of a nice-to-have rather than a have-to-have.

It doesn't rise to the level of, this is something we really need to deal with. You're right. And if you look at the public health emergency from COVID, it's considerably down the list from that. But it's something that's always around. COVID will get solved eventually, one way or another. The noise of urban surroundings is not likely to get a whole lot quieter, although there's hope on the horizon. Electric cars don't make much sound at all.

Some of them don't make any. And that's actually a problem in another way. The designers working on them are having to put sounds into them so that people can hear the next car over coming. So there are some disadvantages to silence as well. Isn't that interesting? Because when you think about looking both ways to make sure the cars aren't coming so you can cross the street,

you think it's a visual thing, but I think you're right. We tend to listen for a car coming, and if the cars are silent, well, you might just step out in front of it. So do you think the world, is there evidence, do we know that the world is getting louder? Oh, that's a big question. Okay, the world is definitely getting louder. And part of what I've researched is about the history of noise complaints. At first, we're talking about noise annoyance, because unless you were in the military working with cannons back in the 17th century, there wasn't much that could harm your hearing, except if you worked in certain occupations, like blacksmiths,

carpenters, that sort of thing, where you've got pounding and grinding going on all the time, millers as well. So most people didn't need to worry about losing the acuity of their hearing. But noise annoyance, tremendous. In ancient Rome, there were ordinances against bringing market wagons into the city, except at certain times in the evening, because they didn't want to wake people up, and they couldn't bring the market wagons with all the food for the next day into the city during the daytime, because the roads were too crowded.

So it goes that far back. It probably goes even further. But we don't necessarily have written documents about that from very many places way back then. When you look at, let's say, the 17th, 18th centuries, most people lived on farms, so cities weren't that much of a problem. But if you did live in a city, there was traffic on cobblestone streets of wagons and carriages going back and forth, drawn by horses. So the sound of wagon wheels or coach wheels and horses clopping around got loud enough to be annoying if you had an open window right near there. And complaints started to happen, mostly from professional writers who were interrupted in their work by the city sounds of traffic passing

and people talking and kids screaming and just the normal sounds of everyday life when you have some density of population. Okay, the real complaints, though, the frequent ones, the more intense ones, don't start until the Industrial Revolution, late 18th through the 19th century. And that's when the machines come in. And you get trains crossing the countryside. And you get trains crossing the countryside, and you get factories.

So anyone working in a factory would probably have hearing damage pretty quickly. There was no protection. There's still a problem in a lot of industrial areas. In the Western world, where there are regulations, it's reasonably controlled. In some places, very well controlled. There are laws about that. In many places, especially places where the economies are developing quickly, there are no regulations, or if there are some, they're not enforced. So you get the same problems that people in England found in the 19th century happening now in China, in Central America, in Southeast Asia, all over the world.

Well, it seems as if the world has gradually, and I think you've used the phrase, you know, crept up on us, that as the world gradually gets louder, we gradually get used to it. We learn to accommodate the additional noise, and we get used to it, and so that's now normal. And no one ever says, well, wait a minute, rather than keep getting used to it, let's turn it down. This is partly because we're constantly bombarded in the news by more immediate situations. But immediate situations have to be dealt with immediately, and we tend to ignore what we need to deal with in the long term.

So from all you've researched and what you know about noise, what's the prescription? What do you recommend people do differently? One thing that everyone can do is find times in the day when you can be in a quiet space, whether that's indoors in a room where you can't hear the outside clamor, it gives your ears and your nervous system a rest. Take a break from the sound and use earplugs. Lately, I've noticed that I've become much more sensitive to noise and I appreciate more the quiet. Maybe it's because I don't get it that

often. But I think your message is important. I think noise affects us all. Clearly it does. And it's important to be aware of how it does. Marcia Epstein has been my guest. She's author of the book Sound and Noise, A Listener's Guide to Everyday Life. And you will find a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. The media is full of stories of extravagant wealth. And perhaps that's partly why most Americans are pessimistic about their ability to become rich. They can't see themselves extravagantly wealthy like that. But here's the good news. Average people get rich all the time. The Consumer Federation of America studied how average people become wealthy. Here's how they do it. This is the formula to become rich.

They contribute to a retirement plan and take advantage of employers matching funds. They buy a home and pay off the mortgage and then don't borrow against the house. They spend less than they make and they invest the difference. They let the miracle of compounding generate money over time. And many start a small business or buy investment property. That's the formula for becoming rich in America. And that is something you should know. Wherever you listen to this podcast, whether it be Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, CastBox,

there's a subscribe button. You can subscribe to this podcast, have the episodes delivered right to you as soon as they're available, and it is all free. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager,

but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family.

But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook. Starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a co-founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lightning, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. During her journey, Isla meets new

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