The Strange World of Intellectual Property
Jeremy Ben-David, Founder, Managing Partner
As the world of wearable technology has developed, there is apparently no limit to the possibilities provided by smart glasses, VR goggles and the like. They vary from assisting partially sighted people, such as in the case of Orcam; to providing real time information, such as with the discontinued Google Glass; through enabling an experience which is multichannel, multidirectional and multimedia, courtesy of the Meta glasses such as worn into court by Metaâs founder Mark Zuckerberg, several days ago; and old-fashioned virtual reality goggles which overlay your reality with whatever other reality you wish.
Now compare that rapidly evolving cutting-edge technological world with the world of law, whose reputation is of a world in which dinosaurs still roam free; there is a reluctance to innovate, and whose wheels, while turning, revolve very, very slowly.
If you are reading these lines as an IP attorney, you will almost certainly identify more with the fast-pace of the world of technology and science, rather than the slow perambulation associated with the world of law. For hidden in that latter world, as we well know, is the world of intellectual property law. It is not only lively and engaging, but has an influence which is to be found everywhere, from the food that we eat to the clothes that we wear, to modes of transportation and communication, and even in the means by which I am writing this very text(!)
Intellectual Property is a phenomenon that relates to a seemingly boundless world that pervades virtually every corner of human endeavor. It affects almost every field of industry and innovation. It is open to exploitation â both positive and negative â by all manner of players, and, on occasion, has even been known to set political agendas, such as in 2013 when President Obama announced measures against NPEâs (Non Practicing Entities) who were cast as âPatent Trollsâ, the devil, if you will, of all that is right and just.
But back to wearable optical device technology. Itâs fair to say that while I am not a purveyor of such items as listed in the above opening paragraph, thatâs not to say that I donât view them with a certain fondness. This is not because of their ability to augment what we are seeing or hearing, or ability to record our surroundings and to broadcast sounds and pictures thereof, and various other super effects that can be done solely by virtue of technology itself. My fondness of such things is because they remind me of a discovery that I made during my early days in my chosen profession.
As a young IP practitioner in the 1980âs, I discovered that there is a unique way in which we view the world, one which augmented reality devices, however realistic they may be, will never be able to replicate.
Let me explain.
In 1987 (or thereabouts) as a newly qualified patent attorney, I was just discovering the miraculous world in which we live. No, itâs not what youâre thinking. It was my ability to walk into the neighborhood grocery store and instantly spot hundreds of different trademarks sported by the candies, and other packaged foodstuffs on the packed shelves, and to see which trademarks were registered and which were not, and those about which you couldnât tell anything at all.
I could then walk into a pharmacy, and wonder about the medicines that were patented, those that had gone off patent and become generic, and those, regardless of their patent status, that were sold in exciting looking, special packaging bearing interesting trademarks, alongside those whose makers hadnât bothered about their packaging or labelling at all.
Entering an electronics store, perusing different models of the Walkman brand cassette players was another experience in itself. They were an entire IP world, being coveredâŚ, no, not covered, smothered(!) by IP rights galore! How many patents, designs and trademarks related just to these devices, sold in their hundreds of millions? Of course, none of that prepared me for the 21st century era of the smartphone, which ushered in devices whose ubiquitous technology was covered by thousands of patents covering inventions used by billions of people around the world, to say nothing of the design rights protecting and trademarks marking those devices.
So, wherever we look, whatever we do, there is almost nothing that doesnât involve IP rights in some shape or form. However, I know that non-practitioners could walk into the same stores, see the same things, and everything that you (as a practitioner) and I would see, briefly mentioned above, would be totally invisible to them.
So, thank you very much to the developers of augmented reality and virtual reality technologies for reminding me of the fondness that I have for my profession. These technologies are clearly new and amazing. However, we IP practitioners have a built-in way of looking at the world which doesnât require cameras, sensors or any other technology to see parts of the world that in a way that is not shared by others.
While the world of IP attorneys is not exactly an augmented reality and is certainly not a virtual reality, it is unique.
Is it strange?
It may be strange to others, but for me itâs what provides much of the fascination of our chosen profession.
