Eric Gould Bear began his September CHIFOO talk by saying it was nice to be among designers after spending most of the last year among lawyers.  During the evening it seemed almost like there were indeed two different Mr. Gould Bears, the designer and he who spends time with legal matters.

First there was the designer with an aspirational and at times inspirational message with both some food for thought and applicable lessons, particularly in the role of designers in being inventive in helping create the future and getting the credit and just due for their efforts.

In the latter half hour or so of the evening, we were exposed to the Eric Gould Bear deeply involved with “licensing, legal teams, and litigation.”  Here was the holder of multiple patents involving interactive technology focused and determined battling corporations and big media. 

I can only speak for myself, but the experience of being in the audience for the latter part was a bit like the story he told at the outset of his presentation of coming to our area in July sixteen years ago snowboarding for the first time well above Timberline and having the sensation of going over a cliff.  But as Gould Bear said from time to time during his presentation, particularly when a question came up, we’ll get to that later.

Early in the evening Gould Bear expounded on how he sees designers as standard bearers to help change the world. He began the more formal presentation of his talk with a quote by Alan Kay from 1971. “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”  Gould Bear sees designers as uniquely qualified to this task because they see the world, not as the status quo but one in which they live to create possibilities with zest and a willingness to fight for ideals and greatness.  And therefore, armed with their tools and processes for prototyping and validating their visions,  designers once conscious and aware of how to leverage themselves as players in the world of intellectual property strategy, to play a stronger role in what he sometimes called the technology ecosystem.

A first step is to understand the component aspects of Intellectual property. To this end, Gould Bear briefly defined and talked about the differences between trade secrets, copyrights, patents and trademarks.  Trade secrets are information kept secret because it has economic value that is protected by reasonable security steps, the most basic of which is not to talk about it. Gould Bear made an obvious but significant point that secrets are no longer secret when people talk about them. Copyrights were defined as a particular expression of an idea and the right to license, sell copy, reuse, adopt it. Trademarks, on the other hand are the unique identifiers used to represent the source of a product or service.

Then there was a preliminary discussion of patents, the exclusive right to process or device based on an original idea and the ability to license, make, use, or sell proceses or devices based on that original idea.  As stated before, Gould Bear’s patents were the focus for the later portion of the evening.  And we’ll get to that, but first there was an exploration of challenges and opportunities a designer has when working with what Bear Gould referred to as disruptive technologies.

Disruptive technologies are game changers, paradigm shifters, those that permeates most all aspects of our lives and as described by Gould Bear they obsolete existing markets, offerings, technologies, mental models and the existing baseline of our interactive intuitiveness.

Gould Bear expanded on four major ways designers can get ahead of the curve when they are working in the world of these kinds of technology. They need to look beyond the technology, declare future UX as real, reverse engineer by creating a road map from the future of today, and protect the Intellectual Property that is important to them.

And this last point requires solid documentation. Gould Bear recommends the use of maintaining records in engineering notebooks But most of all the most important means of documentation is filing for patents “as soon as practically possible” with the “big bets on the table” without waiting for all details of usability worked out.

Gould Bear did indeed file for many patents during the years when digital video was developing and evolving.  They have become a significant currency for him for licensing and legal action. His company Monkey Media has bundled them as a package of services defined and laid out at http://www.seamless.tv.  He explains more about this area of licensing in a web interview he did almost a year ago.
http://www.itvt.com/interview/5790/radio-monkeymedias-eric-gould-bear-discusses-companys-patent-claims

Near the end of his CHIFOO presentation he endeavored to explain and demonstrate his claim of patents with examples of the kinds of conventions we see today in DVD and other forms of interactive media.  This is the part of the evening I mentioned earlier that felt a bit like over a cliff. He expressed obvious passion and conviction that his patents were the original ideas and inventions now being utilized by manufacturers and producers of digital media, but it was too much to process after the range of other ideas and concepts he presented. More than empathy for Gould Bear’s IP plight, I felt a kind of sympathy for the judges and juries who have to sort through the claims and clever arguments of high power and high paid attorneys.

And later as I read more about Bear and the lawsuit he filed in April, I wonder if web journalist Rik Myslewski’s comparison of Gould Bear’s press release statement with the resemblance of his argument to one Steve Jobs made in another recent suit that there is indeed “increasingly obvious fact that patents are being granted for the wrong reasons, allowed to become far too sweeping, and - perhaps - being approved by USPTO staffers not sufficiently familiar with the technologies and concepts involved.”  http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/15/yet_another_patent_case_against_apple/

Yet regardless,  there was much in Gould Bear’s message about the courage and pursuit of visualizing and creating new technologies as well as taking steps to protecting those creations that was informative, and even inspirational at times.  At one point in his talk he said “we all work for money,”  but one hopes he won’t be spending all of his future time in the sphere of lawyers, licensing, and litigation and instead create great design and inspire others to do the same.