Something You Should Know - What You Never Knew About Your Neighborhood & Understanding Intellectual Property Rights

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Starting point is 00:00:27 Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know. Ever wake up just before the alarm goes off? I'll tell you why that happens. Then the fascinating stories behind things in your neighborhood. Street signs, phone poles, traffic lights. Do you know how long a traffic light stays yellow? There's actually a formula that's used nationwide.

Starting point is 00:00:51 You take the speed limit and you divide by 10 and that gives you the number of seconds. In a 55 mile an hour zone, that light will stay yellow for about five and a half seconds. Also the formula most rich people use to get rich, and the confusing world of intellectual property. For example, if you use a picture from Google and put it on your website, can the owner of that picture sue you? Oh yeah. 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, it's a minimum of $750. All this today on Something You Should Know.

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Starting point is 00:02:04 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 episode of Something You Should Know. Has this ever happened to you? You set your alarm to wake up in the morning and then just before it goes off, you wake up on your own. Coincidence? Apparently not. What happens is when you set the alarm, you subconsciously tell yourself what time you're going to wake up. Then about an hour before wake up time, your body begins to secrete stress hormones into your system in preparation of the stress of waking up.

Starting point is 00:02:47 About an hour later, you wake up all by yourself. In a study, people went to bed and were told what time they would be woken up the next morning. And some days it was 7 o'clock, some days it was 9 o'clock. And in each case, the researchers saw that the stress hormones began to be released about an hour before the person was told they'd be woken up, even though the wake-up time kept changing. So it appears that you actually program your own internal alarm clock, which sometimes goes off just before the real one next to your bed.

Starting point is 00:03:20 And that is something you should know. So let's take a stroll around your neighborhood. Because every day you probably walk out your door and go about your business without paying any attention to all of the things around your neighborhood. The street signs, the traffic lights, the utility poles, your front lawn, the animals running around your yard. And all of these things have an interesting story that I think you'll find fascinating. And here to take us on this little tour of your neighborhood is Spike Carlson.

Starting point is 00:04:00 He's author of a book called A Walk Around the Block. Hi, Spike. It's an honor to be with you. So I think a good place to start is concrete, because around my house anyway, the streets and the sidewalk and the foundation of my house is all made from concrete. It's hard to walk out of your house and not step on concrete. And concrete's really interesting. You know, it has an amazing history. It's the most used man-made material on the planet. We create about 10 billion tons of it a year.

Starting point is 00:04:34 And so that's about 3,000 pounds for every man, woman, and child on the planet. So it's a very used material. It has a fascinating history, too. The Romans kind of developed the formula and figured out how to do it, you know, back, you know, 100, 200 AD. And then the formula was lost for about 900 years. And when they discovered it in a Swiss monastery in the 1400s, it kind of came back to life again. And so, you know, even something as kind of drab and dreary as concrete has a good story to it. What's the difference between concrete

Starting point is 00:05:13 and asphalt? And these words get thrown around, but I'm not sure anybody really knows what they mean. Yeah, the two that get mixed up the most are cement and concrete. And cement is basically kind of the powdered version with the lime and other grains. And then as you add aggregate, that becomes the concrete. And asphalt, a lot of people look at that and go, it's mostly just the tarry, gooey substance. But about 90 or 95% of asphalt is also aggregate. So a lot of people call it asphalt concrete. And so those are kind of the main differences. You know, concrete street might cost three or four times as much as an asphalt street. It may last, you know, twice as long. So lots of times when planners are trying to figure out what to put down,

Starting point is 00:06:07 you have to take into account budget and whether you're going to have to cut into it to get to utilities and those types of things. So in most neighborhoods, unless your utilities are underground, in most neighborhoods you look up and there are telephone poles, and they're somewhat unsightly, and I think most of us don't even notice them anymore. But they're really interesting, so talk about those. There's a hierarchy to a telephone pole. The lower portion is usually called the yard sale sign region,

Starting point is 00:06:40 where people post their lost dog signs. Then as you go up, you get to the low voltage and communication wires. There's always a four-foot safety gap when you get into the kind of more of the household current. And then at the very top, you'll often get the high voltage wires, high voltage transmission wires. And, you know, one little thing I found fascinating with telephone poles is they each have a birthmark that's installed at the factory. And after it's installed, it should be at about eye level. And that birthmark has information on the species of the wood and the manufacturer and when it was installed and that type of thing.

Starting point is 00:07:22 And if that is way above your head, the pole probably wasn't planted deep enough. If it's down around your knees, it was planted too deep. And so it's just kind of a way for inspectors and linesmen to get that thing planted the right depth. So that's called the birthmark. And most telephone poles and utility poles have them. Isn't that, nobody knows that. And well, they do now because you just told us. But I'd never heard that before, ever. Yeah, well, my wife hates taking a walk around the block with me just because of that.

Starting point is 00:07:58 Because you stop and look? Yeah, it's interesting. It's weirdly interesting. In every neighborhood, there are fire hydrants. There are fire hydrants everywhere. And I guess like telephone poles, we tend not to even notice them anymore. But obviously, they're important to have. But they're really interesting as well. You know, we start at the top and look at it, and the bolts and valves on a fire hydrant are five-sided. And that, of course, is because it makes them more tamper resistant.

Starting point is 00:08:33 So that's, you know, that's starting there. If you go back in history, most water systems were made of wood. And so if there was a fire in a neighborhood, the fire department would usually dig down, find that pipe, drill a hole in it, and bail the water out of that. And then they would stick a peg in there to mark it so they could find it in the future. And that's where the term fire plug comes from. One of the things that I notice about neighborhoods now compared to years ago is

Starting point is 00:09:09 that it's much more common for people to keep to themselves, that people on the block don't know each other as much as they used to. I don't know if you looked at that, but I think that's pretty interesting. You know, things have gotten so segmented these days. There's areas where there's residential and then there's business and then there's, you know, commercial and things have gotten so segmented. And if you go back in time, it was in the neighborhood people would work and live and play in the neighborhood. And that has diminished as things have gotten more segmented. Part of it is to give neighborhoods an identity. Like in my town, there's one neighborhood where

Starting point is 00:09:52 everyone on the boulevard plants beautiful flowers every spring. And so that has become the identity of that neighborhood. You know, we have the old part of town where people like to, you know, walk through there and look at the architecture. You also point out that there really is a practical reason for knowing who your neighbors are. Local governments are most effective if you're within two friends of someone in government. So that if you have a question or a concern, that you can get to that person to express your concern. And so those are just, you know, some of the ways that community can be built, you know, more green space, the more welcoming a neighborhood is. Yeah, well, it is interesting. I mean, I actually was talking to someone not that long ago,

Starting point is 00:10:44 and I asked, I knew somebody that lived on their street, and I didn't know. And I said, do you happen to know this person who lives on your street? And she said, well, I make it a point not to know my neighbors. And I thought, well, that's kind of strange, and yet it seems to be pretty common policy. Yeah, yeah. I mean, to each his own. You know, people are comfortable in different ways, but there are ways to make a black feel more community-oriented, and it's really an individual choice. Yeah, well, I mean, if I live in a neighborhood and I need a jumpstart on my car or I've locked myself out of my house, I want to make

Starting point is 00:11:26 sure I know some of my neighbors so I can ask them to help and I can help them in the same situation. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I did one segment that got cut from the book and it's on little free libraries, which are these little, you know, libraries on a stick where people will put 20 or 25 books. And, you know, the guy who started that just found that just even something as common and simple as that is a place where, you know, neighbors get together and there's something to talk about. And the more commonalities you can create, the better. Talk about the front lawn. Yeah, the front lawn, that was an interesting one to tackle. If you look at your lawn, every square inch there's about eight grass plants. And so you've got, you know, your average lawn has seven million little plants to take care of.

Starting point is 00:12:19 And there's, you know, kind of an interesting history behind lawns. Some people think that lawns started or areas started getting mown and cut down so that defenders could more easily see people who were going to attack the castle. It just gave them better sight. And then King Louis XIV, he at Versailles decided lawns were a good deal and they gained in popularity. And there's lots of misconceptions about lawns. There's a lot of information out there or data that says that the chemicals and things we put on our lawn, you know, add to the green and the algae in nearby waterways. And that's true to an extent. But there's other things that add to that too. And that's simply the decomposition of leaves, dog droppings and other things. So there's a lot

Starting point is 00:13:16 of ways lawns get a bad rap where they really shouldn't get a bad rap. So that's one of the things we take a look at. Well, one of the interesting things about lawns is that everybody seems to have come into alignment that we all should have this green lawn that has no weeds, no clover, no nothing. And wasn't the Scotts Company pretty instrumental in that PR campaign? Very instrumental. I mean, if you didn't have the perfect lawn, you were an outcast. Kind of around, you know, when Levittown came in and everyone was put in a yard

Starting point is 00:13:53 and there was a mandate that you had to mow your lawn, you know, once a week. And if you didn't, someone from the Levittown overseers would come out and take care of that. We're talking about some of the interesting things in and around your house and neighborhood that you probably haven't thought about much before. My guest is Spike Carlson. He's author of the book, A Walk Around the Block. This is an ad for better help. Welcome to the world. Please read your personal owner's manual thoroughly.

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Starting point is 00:15:13 So Spike, let's talk about some of the creatures in the neighborhood, the animals that run around the yard and whatnot. Yeah, I tried to pick two that were kind of common to city, suburban, and rural life. And the two I picked were pigeons and squirrels. It's very hard to interview a pigeon. And so what I decided to do was spend a few days with a pigeon racer, a guy named Phil Nelson, who has 240 pigeons. And I kind of went through the series with him of training a pigeon and then being involved with a pigeon race. And they're fascinating creatures. I mean, yes, they have that misnomer of being rats with wings,

Starting point is 00:16:03 but they're also very, I don't know if we can use the word smart, but, you know, seemingly smart animals. They've been taught to play ping pong and they were taught to guide missiles during World War II. And they have a sense that we don't. This race that I partook in was a hundred mile race and, uh, they were released and the guy said, you know, they're all going to beat us home. And they did. And it's kind of a combination of keen eyesight and hearing and smell and sensitivity to gravitational and magnetic forces.

Starting point is 00:16:40 And then just being very tough birds, you know, pigeons were pigeons have been awarded more medals for animal bravery than any other animal. I mean, horses have won three awards, dogs 20, and pigeons 30, just because they are actually a pretty reliable way of communication. And they've been used right up to within the past 20 years for communication. The other animal I looked at was squirrels. For that, I interviewed one of the more interesting pieces of research on that was I interviewed a squirrel linguist, a guy by the name of Robert Lischick at Auburn University. And he'd studied squirrel communications for about 25 years.

Starting point is 00:17:24 And again, someone like that is just fascinating to talk with. They have one sound where if they see a cat, a cat's their main enemy, they have a sound that tells the cat, OK, I see you and you see me and we can play this chase around game or we can just call it off. And then they have another series of sounds where it's an increasing number of cooks, like a cook, cook, cook, and a flagging tail, which warns other squirrels in the area that the predator is getting closer and closer. And then there's another sound that when Elvis has left the building, when the predator has left the building, when the predator has left, that the coast is clear. So, you know, that was a fascinating part of it.

Starting point is 00:18:11 Another thing is this time of year, you see squirrels running around burying nuts like crazy. And you start looking into that. There's different squirrels store their food different ways. The common gray squirrel, you know, buries their nuts and acorns over a wide area. And they only remember where they bury a nut for about 20 minutes, but they have a keen sense of smell and they often leave a little fertilizer behind when they bury a nut. And so that's why they can find, you know, some people say they only find about 25% of the nuts they bury, but that's just another kind of interesting thing about squirrels. And you said that squirrels talk to cats, but do cats understand the language?

Starting point is 00:19:03 That I don't know. It's just kind of that warning sound that says, okay, you see me, I see you. Robert Lischick used mechanical cats to kind of test this theory. I don't know. We didn't get into whether the cats understand, but the squirrels are trying their best to communicate. So people might not think of traffic lights as particularly interesting, but in fact they are, according to you anyway. Yeah, again, it's one of those things that I just found weirdly fascinating. For as often as we go through stoplights and see them and how often they control our lives,

Starting point is 00:19:44 there were some really interesting things I discovered about them. And so, you know, one thing was, well, let me quiz you. You know, how long does a stoplight stay yellow? I think it depends, doesn't it? It does depend. And there's actually a formula that's used nationwide. You take the speed limit and you divide by 10, and that gives you the number of seconds.

Starting point is 00:20:09 So if you're in a 55-mile-an-hour zone, that light will stay yellow for about five and a half seconds. If you're in a 40-mile-an-hour zone, it'll be about four seconds. And no matter what, stoplights will always stay yellow for three seconds. They also stay, there's an all red phase where it's red in both directions for one to two seconds. So that's, you know, there's a formula for everything. It's applied nationwide so that whether you're driving in Hawaii or Alabama, those rules of thumb kind of hold. You know, the crosswalk push buttons, in New York City, only about 10% of them actually do anything. The whole traffic timing cycle is so complex that if they were to actually interfere with the flow of traffic,

Starting point is 00:21:01 things would just be a mess. And so only about 10% of those push buttons actually do anything. And there's just other things about stoplights. I mean, we're often so perturbed by the emergency vehicle preemption system, that light that flashes when there's an ambulance or a squad car going by. But they reduce intersection crashes by about two-thirds, and it increases response times by 25%. And so as irritating as those can be, they really do the job they're intended to do. Well, one of the things I find interesting about stoplights is, I mean, they stay red. Different intersections stay red

Starting point is 00:21:46 longer in different directions than others, but it's like they somehow they've kind of timed it out right. And like most of the traffic gets through before it changes. But then there are other times where you're stuck at a red light thinking this is taking forever. You're right. I went down to the Minnesota Department of Transportation traffic center, and they do indeed, and it depends on the time of day and the heaviest traffic flow. From that center, they can program the lights to make the flow better in one direction or the other. There's also sensors in the pavement and seeing

Starting point is 00:22:29 eyes and cameras that can also give that stoplight a sense of, you know, when adequate traffic has gone through there and it's time to turn. So as a whole, it varies from state to state and city to city. It's rare for any stoplight to not go through a full cycle in four minutes. And so that stoplight you've stayed at for forever was almost invariably no more than four minutes. Yeah. Well, four minutes at a stoplight is like, you know, four minutes in the dentist's chair. It takes a long time. I did want to ask one other thing about the lines on the road.

Starting point is 00:23:15 Well, they, like signs, they communicate to us. And, in fact, when I was talking with the lines and signs people, they said lines are more important signs because they tell you where you are. They tell you, you know, where the exit is. They, of course, divide, you know, different forms of traffic, different directions of traffic, you know, rumble and mumble strips, which are included, you know, decreased traffic crashes by 25%. But the lines you see on your basic two-lane road, they seem like they're so frequent, but the lines themselves are 10 feet long, and then the space between is 40 feet long. But like stoplights, the uniform traffic manual kind of dictates how things are

Starting point is 00:24:03 across the nation. So they're a language of their own. Well, one thing that every city, every neighborhood, every town has to deal with, and without it, there's no city or neighborhood or town, is water and sewers. And in the Twin Cities here, the city of St. Paul draws their water out of the Mississippi River, and 40 miles downstream, they release it after it's been through sewage treatment. And then another 17 million people downstream on the Mississippi River draw their water out and put it back in, too. And so technology and science has really gotten us a long way in that. If we didn't have great sewer systems, we just couldn't have big cities,

Starting point is 00:24:48 and we wouldn't be as healthy as we are. So everywhere from sewage to power poles, I just find fascinating. Well, I do find that power pole thing pretty interesting, that they each have a birthmark. I'm kind of looking forward to ending this and running outside to look at the birthmark on the pole outside my house. My guest has been Spike Carlson. He is author of the book, A Walk Around the Block, and you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Spike. Yeah, thanks so much. It's been fun. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast.

Starting point is 00:25:25 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. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control

Starting point is 00:25:59 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. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new

Starting point is 00:26:35 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,

Starting point is 00:27:10 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. 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.

Starting point is 00:27:50 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 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,

Starting point is 00:28:24 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.

Starting point is 00:28:53 It's patents, trademarks, and copyrights. So if you're in, if 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 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'll use, you know, like a big hit song

Starting point is 00:29:31 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 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.

Starting point is 00:30:12 What's 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 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 the and and currently is not that big of a deal if you're small it certainly is getting worse now to the cost of you know what does it mean for cost wise you know bare minimum, bare minimum, if you're, 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, you know, from the internet, that's copyrighted by somebody else, it's a minimum of

Starting point is 00:30:55 750, $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. 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 off 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

Starting point is 00:31:40 you didn't can't there is anything to show 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 you they reduce your competitors income a lot they'll give you more damages and the last one is as they'll look at and 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 it and say, now how much money did you make off from using this copyrighted material?

Starting point is 00:32:12 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 gonna be 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,

Starting point is 00:32:32 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 talked 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 an IP firm, we use the stock photos all the time and we'll go to a few different places. Adobe has one that you can pay as a subscription. There are other ones out there

Starting point is 00:33:12 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 size, 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,

Starting point is 00:33:57 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, you'd take, 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 and say i 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 time stamped 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

Starting point is 00:34:40 to show us 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 or 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?

Starting point is 00:35:17 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 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, you know, if you have a business and you use your last name in that, I mean, can you do that? Anytime you use your own

Starting point is 00:35:51 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, where 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 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 a what's called a design mark where you do more of the logo right so it's not just a word but it'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.

Starting point is 00:36:28 It's the colors. It's the images. You know, 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, you know, in your Bob restaurant example, but rather you're protecting the look and the feel. So you're protecting the Starbucks mermaid. And if somebody makes a logo that's similar to that, then you can say, no, this,

Starting point is 00:36:50 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? OK, 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.

Starting point is 00:37:35 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 type 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.

Starting point is 00:38:03 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 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. 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?

Starting point is 00:38:43 Fair use is basically an exception to the copyright law towards saying, yes, you're using somebody else's copyright, but for defined purposes that we'll say are okay or allowable or you're not going to infringe their copyright. So I'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 give you an example you know if you're a give doing a criticism or you're doing a review of a product and you you know you quote the uh 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

Starting point is 00:39:23 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 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 us 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.

Starting point is 00:40:12 They're going to say, well, those are exceptions to the normal copyright you know, a portion of the picture or you use 10 seconds of the song or six 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, you know, fairly famous.

Starting point is 00:41:06 He was in the band that did that. He would show that, you know, 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, 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 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. school example the same thing that you just said i had the 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 the 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 you know repetitive tune that's they use a lot of different songs,

Starting point is 00:42:25 you're gonna 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 gonna 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,

Starting point is 00:42:42 how loud it is, how soft it is, that makes that hook, that makes that catchy note, and 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, 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?

Starting point is 00:43:23 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 pink, same pink color to paint your house or to do, you know, your, 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 for the gift bag. If you were to go now take the

Starting point is 00:44:05 Tiffany color and paint a car with it, then 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, we 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?

Starting point is 00:44:52 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 you're a U.S. company and somebody in China starts to knock off your brand, knock off your copyrights or anything else, then you have to look at, across all of intellectual property, copyrights, trademarks, patents. It is 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. 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

Starting point is 00:45:42 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 U.S. You get all the Chinese knockoffs that are coming into the U.S. 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.

Starting point is 00:46:01 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

Starting point is 00:46:36 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 gonna 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's 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,

Starting point is 00:47:17 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 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 book you wrote or the video series you did then you're gonna 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

Starting point is 00:47:55 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

Starting point is 00:48:40 help their swing. And so there's, 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, mousetraps are another one, very hard to invent something, a new mousetrap. 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

Starting point is 00:49:20 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 file the patent, it's been issued, you have 20 years from the time that you filed it within which you 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 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 I 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,

Starting point is 00:50:18 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 kind of where we're at, we're about $5,500. 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 at about, to get through the rest of the process, you're at about 18 to 24 months to get through it.

Starting point is 00:50:56 Now you have patent pending. So you've claimed, you said, this is the date that I 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 $5,000 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 you 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 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.

Starting point is 00:51:34 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. The media is full of stories of extravagant wealth, and perhaps that's partly why most Americans

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Starting point is 00:53:03 There's a button somewhere that allows you to become a follower, which means that when there are new episodes available, as soon as they're available, they're sent right to you. So you don't have to go looking for new episodes. It's a great way to listen to this podcast. So please become a follower. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

Starting point is 00:53:23 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

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Starting point is 00:54:08 Starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Rob Benedict. And I am Richard Spate. We were both on a little show you might know called Supernatural. It had a pretty good run, 15 seasons, 327 episodes. And though we have seen, of course, every episode many times, we figured, hey, now that we're wrapped, let's watch it all again.

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Something You Should Know - What You Never Knew About Your Neighborhood & Understanding Intellectual Property Rights

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