“Law & Business” Podcast Episode 37: World Patent Scams

In Episode 37 of the “Law & Business” podcast, Anthony sits down with John Eastwood, partner of Eiger Law in Taipei, Taiwan.

Anthony and John discuss “worldwide patents,” a common misunderstanding that does lead to the scamming of those who have patents in a jurisdiction or wish to have patents in more than one jurisdiction.

For example, Anthony discusses several companies that have recently asked him about obtaining worldwide patents.

Then the topic turns to Matthew Whitaker, the former United States interim attorney general appointed to take the place of Jeff Sessions. For about 3 years, Whitaker had been on the advisory board of a company called “World Patent Marketing“, a company that was shut down by the Federal Trade Commission in 2017 and forced to pay out about $26 million for bilking customers of WPM out of millions that they thought were going for registering patents and getting licensing deals. How did WPM bilk them? The invention-promotion racket is actually an old con, going back to the 1960s or so — you put out ads promising to help inventors develop their ideas, get them into the market and to turn the inventions into money through license deals. The FTC has been shutting these down pretty actively since the 1970s, and Congress even passed a law in 1999 called the “American Inventors Protection Act” that put out a lot of disclosure requirements for invention-promotion firms, including their success rates, which in truth were pretty abysmal. They promise non-existent things like “global patents,” take in money from inventors, barely review the inventions, do nothing about getting them registered while demanding more and more money — until the inventors are sucked dry. Some of these poor guys took out loans and refinanced their houses.

The FTC registered over 600 complaints from consumers.

From the FTC complaint: “A few days after consumers submit their ideas in writing, salespeople typically call consumers and inform them that Defendants have accepted their inventions. and reiterate that they are great ideas. Salespeople ingratiate themselves with consumers and build up consumers’ confidence through praise for their ideas. Salespeople represent that if consumers buy Defendants’ invention-promotion services, consumers are likely to realize financial gain by licensing their future patents, or through the manufacture, distribution, and sale of their inventions in well– known stores, including Walmart. Salespeople often make projections about how much money consumers will make. Sales people may also talk about t he good consumers’ inventions could bring to society.”

Also from the FTC complaint:  “Defendants also generally fail to procure patents for consumers. Though Defendants use offshore drafting services and contracted patent agents and attorneys to file patent applications, those applications arc of poor quality, and are often not approved by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“PTO”‘) on its first review. Requests for more in formation or corrections from the PTO on Defendants’ customers patent applications often go unanswered by Defendants and their contractors, and eventually the PTO rejects the patent applications or considers the patent applications to have been abandoned. 33. In the end, after months or even years of stringing them along, Defendants leave most of their customers with nothing. A very few receive a patent, some receive an assortment of useless marketing materials; but none successfully enter into third-party licensing or manufacturing agreements brokered by Defendants, and none actually make money. Indeed, many of Defendants’ customers end up in debt. or losing their life savings or inheritances, after investing in Defendants’ broken promises.“

More from the complaint:  “Defendants fail, in almost every case, to provide many of the other promised invention-promotion services, such as promoting consumers‘ inventions at trade shows and other events, and providing ongoing support from a ‘licensing agent.’ Most importantly, Defendants fail to secure the promised third-party licensing and manufacturing agreements for consumers. In some cases, responding to consumers who insist that their inventions be manufactured Defendants tell consumers that consumers will need to pay tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of dollars more to actually commence manufacturing.”

This also happens in the trademark world and the United States Patent and Trademark Office does have a page to help consumers with trademark scams, also.

For those of us in the intellectual property world, this is horrifying stuff. Because patents and trademarks just don’t work that way at all. There’s no such thing as a “global patent” — patents, like trademarks, are very much locked into the specific countries where you file an application. All the time, we’re having to think about the best jurisdictions for our clients to file into. For the average non-lawyer, they don’t know this.

But Whitaker wasn’t just sitting on some panel with no clue. He appeared in promotional videos and photos for the company, vouched for the integrity of the company, and he served as their lawyer.

Some lessons to be learned in this episode:

1. The FTC.  Take this advice about FTC regulations and the FTC’s power.  The FTC can shut down companies and fine their owners when participating in deceptive advertising.
2. World Patent Marketing claimed that the company worked with AutoZone, Bed Bath & Beyond, Best Buy, The Home Depot, HSN, Lowe’s, PetSmart, QVC, Sears, SkyMall, Staples, Target, Toys “R” Us and Walgreens.  It’s easy to talk about some of the logistical issues of working with big retail (like stocking fees) – ESPECIALLY for new companies.  But it is difficult to have a brand new product appear on those shelves.
3. Several of the more unusual inventions and partnerships that World Patent Marketing listed in their press releases included the “Masculine Toilet” for unusually well-endowed males, a partnership arrangement with “World-renowned physicist, author, and scholar Dr. Ronald Mallett [who] believes time travel is possible, perhaps within the next decade,” and a website that claims that “DNA evidence collected in 2013 proves that Bigfoot does exist,” which sells Bigfoot items such as stuffed animals. Many intellectual property law firms try not to be impressed with the invention itself, but prefer to know what their clients’ business plans are, and how clients will make money after spending the money on intellectual property and many of these products referenced above have zero business plan.
4. Inventors should contact qualified intellectual-property counsel. The best shortcut and way to save money is to work with an experienced patent counsel.

Anthony Verna:
All right, everyone, thank you for listening to the Law and Business podcast. I am Anthony Verna and with me, once again, John Eastwood, partner at Eiger Law in Taipei, Taiwan. John, thank you so much for coming on again.

John Eastwood:
It’s a great pleasure to be here, Anthony.

Anthony Verna:
Thank you. We are recording at Chatter in DC, the only podcast studio and restaurant that I can think of.

John Eastwood:
So, it’s the only one I’ve ever seen.

Anthony Verna:
Claude, thank you so much for recording us today. So, let’s talk a little bit because I actually got this question. You and I were talking about this and I got this question at toy fair and I’ve been at toy fair for like the last decade and I’m talking to a company and I said, “What is your IP situation like?” And they said to me, “Well, we filed for a world patent.”

Right, exactly, exactly. And I said, “Well, there’s no such thing as a world patent.” They go, “no, no, no, we, we did. We filed for the world patent.” And I go, “No, there isn’t a world patent.”

John Eastwood:
Oh, I just bought a unicorn yesterday and I got the deed to the Brooklyn bridge.

Anthony Verna:
How do we begin to here? Because to me, if, but I’m a practitioner. So, to me this feels so simple to say, “No, there is no such thing as a patent for the entire world.” But it feels as if a lot of people think that.

John Eastwood:
Well, the first thing is that there’s a serious educational issue involved. And, I know that in the past when I’ve done some seminars, I’ve done some programs in the past aimed at trying to help busy managers and company owners understand a little bit about the basics of intellectual property law.

And I think every one of us does this one by one when we’re working with, with clients who don’t have a legal background is to try to bring them up to speed. They come to us and they say, “Oh, I’ve got an awesome logo that I’m totally going to copyright, and I’ve got a brilliant idea that I want to trademark. And I’ve also got this invention and I’m going to trademark that invention as well.”

Anthony Verna:
You know, I was at a firm for six months, about 10 years ago. And I knew I wasn’t going to be there for more than six months, which was my trial period. When the one partner came up to me and goes I got to trademark this invention, or this client needs to trademark this invention.
I go, well, that’s a patent, not a trademark. And he goes, Oh, whatever. And I’m like, no, not Oh, whatever, you’re a practitioner you should care about that.

John Eastwood:
Well, I mean, these are fundamentals and that’s what’s fascinating to me is I realized that for the lay person, they don’t know much about this and you want to be kind about it. And the same way that, I like to think that my auto repair mechanic is going to be kind to me. And that’s why you look for somebody who’s reliable and can explain these things and say like, you don’t want the person changing your oil to lead you astray in demand that you have to get your transmission fixed.

But, from the standpoint of a lawyer, there’s certain things that every lawyer should have. And this came up in the news not too long ago, with regards to, he was just an interim attorney general, Matthew Whitaker. He  took the place of…

Anthony Verna:
 Jeff Sessions.

John Eastwood:
Jeff sessions, right. And, now he’s been since replaced with another permanent…
Anthony Verna:
Bob Barr.

John Eastwood:
Yes. Right. And, there was a company that Matthew Whitaker had been affiliated with for about three years called World Patent Marketing. And this drove me nuts when I heard about this and I think this drove you nuts. And that’s part of why we’re here.

Anthony Verna:
Yes. No, no. It did drive me nuts when I looked it up. And to be honest, I didn’t realize that this company existed. I didn’t realize that he was affiliated with it until I started reading about it. And despite the very large load of FTC decisions that I read, I don’t get to all of them. And the fact that the FTC shutdown World Patent Marketing totally, totally got past my radar.

John Eastwood:
Well, they forced him to shut down and then they had to pay out like $26 million for cheating these inventors out of the millions that they thought they were going to get for registering patents and getting their licensing deals. And you know, that’s pretty rare. But from the standpoint of Matthew Whitaker, he was not just on an advisory panel for the company. He was sending out the attorney nasty grams to respond to inventors who were upset that they weren’t informed about what was going on with the stuff that was supposedly done.

They were sending money, I guess to this World Patents Marketing company and the company was promising the world to them, and that they were going to go protect their inventions. And in truth, they weren’t filing anything.

Anthony Verna:
Well, I mean, here’s what their business model included: The company told all of their clients, for lack of a better word that their proposed ideas were going to be done; were going to be reviewed by World Patent Marketing’s review team, because “the company is so selective with the ideas they choose to work with” and that these inventions would include a global invention royalty analysis containing a marketability study created by a Harvard University and MIT research team, which where do we begin on the strains  of credulity here?

John Eastwood:
Well, some of the inventions they came up with were pretty ridiculous. But here’s the thing. The invention promotion racket is actually something that’s been around since the 1960s, 1970s. And in the old days, they used to advertise in the back of Popular Science or, Popular Mechanics or other kinds of magazines. And they would right next to the folding kayak or the hoverboard that they would, that people are -x-ray glasses, and the kind of the stuff you always, you’d see in a comic book. There probably was an ad for Charles Atlas for how to make a man, how to become strong using dynamic tension to make yourself into a muscle man on the beach.

So what happened was that in the middle of all these ads aimed at gullible people who didn’t realize that the plastic army men they were going to get in a little locker were going to be about the the size of a pinky hair or something like that. It was ridiculous. So, you get to these ads that were placed in these magazines in the sixties and seventies. So, they would say, we’re going to help you inventors develop your ideas, get them in the market and turn that into money through license deals. Right. And the FTC has been shutting these down pretty actively since the 1970s. Congress even passed a law in 1999, called the American Inventors Protection Act that put a lot of the disclosure requirements for invention promotion firms, including their success rates, which in truth were pretty abysmal.

Anthony Verna:
That’s one word for it. Yeah.

John Eastwood:
And, and so this whole thing about taking in money from inventors, barely reviewing the inventions, doing nothing about getting them registered while demanding more and more money until these poor inventors are sucked dry. And some of these guys took out loans and refinanced their houses because there’s nothing like throwing  bad money after bad money when you think you’re going to about to turn rich.

Anthony Verna:
It reminds me really of what our jobs as lawyers are. When a client comes to us with a new invention and I try to consult at the very beginning and to say, what’s your business model? How do you plan to make money? What’s your plan for turning this? Because even if a patent is received in the usual way, one here in the United States, it’s two years as a fast track. So, these days we’re not hearing from the patent and trademark office for two years on an office action. So, you’re going to be, you need to start making money. What’s your plan to start making money and a lot of patents just kind of sit there and lay fallow.

John Eastwood:
Well, I think it’s important for people to have a plan, and they need to talk to a professional about the planning part. You save a lot of initial mistakes. If you just go and talk to a professional, most of the time, folks like me and you, we’re happy to talk to potential clients a bit. We’re not in the habit. I mean, just like a baker doesn’t give away bread. We as lawyers, we don’t just give them the full plan, but, until they’re on as a client. But to some extent the notion of working out a budget with a lawyer to come up with a real plan for what they’re going to do.

And from a business perspective, what do they want to do? I mean how are they going to talk to investors? If you go like a lot of young companies, a lot of startups, a lot of hip, cool companies, they think I’ve got the technology that I’d like to file patents for and I totally want to show this off at the trade show, right? I’m going to go talk to like a whole bunch of venture capital people. But they’ll be scared away if I dare to bring in NDA, the nondisclosure agreement and I’m like, well if they’re actually good venture capital people, they will understand a nondisclosure agreement. And if this is something you want to patent and I mean, it’s probably not a wise idea for you to be just…

Anthony Verna:
Just showing it at the trade show you become your own enemy. You become your own prior art, you become your own leg trouble.

Anthony Verna:
And that’s something that happens to me too. I get a phone call, well, I have this product, I’ve been showing it off and selling it for three years. I want to get a patent on it. And certainly here in the US your time starts running the second you bring it to a trade show and you only have a year between that disclosure and actually filing it at the patent and trademark office. I don’t know what the rules are in Taiwan for that, but here in the US, you only have a year.

John Eastwood:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean the clock starts really running really fast. And the other thing too is the people you show it to if you don’t have an NDA,  how do you… I mean there’s a lot of countries where if you don’t have an agreement, how are you going to be able to prove anything later on? I went to a business meeting and I showed them my invention and then they went in and they build exactly the thing or I showed them all the schematics and I emailed tons of data to them about how to make this. And I was asking them how to they and then it’s like, wow, you talk to the factory exactly about how to make this product. And then you dissed them and went off with different manufacturer and now you find out that the original manufacturer is making your exact item. That happens. That happens so much.

Anthony Verna:
You know, John, it really goes right to the first time that you were on this podcast talking about the relationship between the business and a manufacturing company and that you have to have a solid relationship there as well.

John Eastwood:
Well yeah, cause you have to watch what they’re doing. I mean just skip ahead a bit in terms of the life span of a product. But some people they want to go out to Asia, they go talk to like 15, 20 factories or something like that and their process defined the one that can make their thing and make it affordably.

And the one that makes it really cheaply isn’t always necessarily the best one or the most reliable. And you get around to that and then they think, all right, I am so sick and tired of walking around dusty factories. I never want to go back to a dusty factory again. You have to maintain a relationship with these people or else they will start to realize you’re not watching. And if you have an agreement with them about, like the number of widgets they’re making and this and that, I’ve had a lot of clients who’ve gone to factories in Asia and they regularly visit to kind of inspect and check things out cause that’s in their contract and they’ll just carefully look behind certain things and they’ll be like, Oh, wait a minute, you know, here’s a stack of 400 of our shirts.

That’s how it is, that’s kind of crazy if you do that. I think, when you see these kind of rookie mistakes, you think, as lawyers, we’re trying to save our clients, one client at a time, but we do see like these nodal points of trouble.

Anthony Verna:
Well, I think that that goes back to some of the points that you and I have discussed, whether it’s here or offline, which is one, if you’re manufacturing you need to have your IP registered in that particular country. So even if it’s registered here in the United States, if you’re manufacturing in China, move all of your registrations as well into China.

John Eastwood:
Right, right, right. Yeah. And even there’s multiple China’s cause that’s why…

Anthony Verna:
 I understand that as well.

John Eastwood:
So they call this the greater China market is the phrase we’ve used on this podcast. And so, Taiwan has a Taiwan Intellectual Property Office, TIPO. You have like over in mainland China, the PRC has its own that handles patents. You have over in Hong Kong, over in Macau, although a lot of people… honestly like Hong Kong’s not much of a manufacturing hub. I mean, it’s quite a good gambling hub. It’s a great place to visit. But a lot of people skip it in terms of the patents. Hong Kong people will sometimes. They look at that one as, as an important jurisdiction, largely because there’s a lot of trade shows that happen.

But China’s, where the manufacturing is, Taiwan is a place that depending on your industry, there may be a lot of manufacturing. So that’s, that’s important to keep in mind. But I’ve had people look at powers of attorney that we’ve sent over and they look at it and they say, Whoa, I thought I was authorizing you for Taiwan. And I’m like, well, yeah, you are. But it says Republic of China. I’m like, that’s ROC, the Republic of China. That historically is kind of like the official name for Taiwan. And that will show up on certain kinds of documents. It’s a situation that I don’t think will get resolved in my lifetime, but, that’s how it is.

Anthony Verna:
So I think you and I, the number one thought that we would have here is beware companies that are promising the world, like you and I have talked about the review. We talked about a business review.

We talked about basically having our clients kind of go slowly, cautiously. Companies that are promising the world patent really do kind of promise the world they promised, not just getting you protection everywhere. They promise getting you royalties everywhere. They promise you licensing agreements. And I mean, that’s just not necessarily possible in one in one shot.

Johhn Eastwood:
No, no. And it actually, for companies that are really astute about this stuff, I mean, I’ve worked with clients that have, I mean they’ve got like just tons of patents all around the world for lots and lots and lots of technologies. It’s hard for them even to keep up with the size and the scope of their portfolio and they’ve just got… I mean, they have tons of software that helps them do a great job with that, I guess. But, it’s funny for us because, as we work with these clients, even very professional clients, it’s still a struggle for them, even as a large, well-resourced client to force other companies to pay out what they’re supposed to pay in terms of licensing fees and royalties and everything.

So what comes out of this is that if large giant global companies, with all of the resources they have available to them…they have sales people, they have internal and external lawyers all working on this. And then if you’re just,  if you’re an inventor, I’m not saying it’s hopeless or something, but if you just turn it over to a bunch of jokers who use all sorts of incorrect, impossible terminology to describe what they’re going to do for you. And the likelihood of them taking your fanciful invention might be something a special device for scratching the exterior of pickles or something.

Your pickles scratcher… There you are, you’ve got your thing and you really should talk to a professional. You really should talk to this cause you need to have some good guidance at the outset and these folks, these kind of World Patent Marketing scam folks are exactly in the business of just sucking as much cash away from you as possible. That’s what made the whole Matt Whitaker situation crazy. I mean cause when people wrote to complain his response back…

Anthony Verna:
 Oh his response was nasty.

Joh Eastwood:
It was like, Oh here’s a quote. He goes, “I am assuming you understand that there could be serious civil and criminal consequences for you.” I’m like, what? How? How does this happen? Like criminal response, you know, that unhappy customer gets faced with, ”Oh I’m gonna send you to angry customer prison.“

Anthony Verna:
They also said that their security team was “all ex-Israeli special ops and trained in krav maga.

John Eastwood:
I mean what does that gonna do? But you can kick my ass. Cause I don’t like your work. I mean like I try to make my customers happy. I mean, and that’s not the way to do it. Client’s unhappy. If a client comes to me with a legitimate question about something I’ve done for them, I have answers. You got answers. You know, because a lot of times it’s communication. You have to build up the understanding because I mean, I don’t want to send out an invoice that someone doesn’t want to pay. You know, I want them to feel that my bills are a good value.

Anthony Vera:
Agreed. And, and also when you’re dealing with, with taking intellectual property worldwide,
Apart from the fact that it’s for the most part, jurisdiction by jurisdiction, there are cultural differences. For example, John, you and I are working on some copyrights for a client of mine and, and my client is utterly astounded at how many powers of attorney have to be signed. How many other different types of points of characterization there are in the People’s Republic of China filings as compared to American filings. It’s just a lot in your bureaucracy. It’s a lot more work. And culturally it’s just different. And it’s not like we’re not, obviously, it’s not like we’re not complying, we are compliant, but my client just feels culture shock with every little item.

John Eastwood:
And believe me, we live out there and we get shocked every once in a while because the copyright office, people will change their demands. And we have a choice. We have to make a choice. It’s like, alright, am I going to fight this? And in some, once in a while, it’s worthwhile to fight it and just say, this isn’t actually required cause I just filed one last week. But the other thing is if they’ve truly changed their standards for the documents or powers of attorney or something else that they want, it’s not worth fighting because they’re not going to change their position. And me going to them and fighting only like weakens the likelihood I’m going to get through this and it adds to the client expense.

But it is hard. And I remember in the old days, especially for example, the demands that used to be used very often in Asia. Now these get attacked through, WTO trips as being unduly burdensome documentary requirements. And thus the governments have been able to use that language as a way of kind of curbing some of this. But in the old days, it used to be this kind of behavior where your power of attorney didn’t just need to be signed by someone. It had to be signed by the CEO. So, Bill Gates has to sign all of the powers of attorney. And not only that, but it has to be notarized. So, you have to have Bill Gates on behalf of Microsoft signing in front of  Tim Cook for Apple or someone else.

But like, you’d have to have the CEO signing in front of a notary and that notarized document then needed to be taken to  the, um, Secretary of State of that state where the notary to have a statement issued that…

Anthony Vern:
Talk about unduly burdensome.

John Eastwood:
Yes. And then that had to be APA steel. It had to be like authenticated at the embassy. It was just insane cause it was all just to prove that we’re the lawyers on behalf of that company. We always had to make the…whenever some, for example, some judge or some other official would demand something that we knew that somebody else had overruled, we could make a decision.

It’s like, okay, I can go through all sorts of back channels and then I can try to find a way to crap on this guy to make him do the thing that I want him to do. And I have to make a decision too is like, is he a gatekeeper or is this somebody I’m going to have to deal? Is this a true person I’m going to have to deal with later? Or is this a one-time thing? And if this is judge in the middle of the far end of the country, then I might not ever run across this person ever again. But do I want to fight this with the client’s money? Or can I ask the client to sign a document again?

And I always hated those kinds of choices because I always wanted to stand up for what was right. And every once in a while, I had a client who would get so pissed off themselves that they would in effect fund that fight which actually did lead to some progress. Some clients who had hundreds of cases in a jurisdiction, they said, I’ve had enough of this. I am not signing and notarizing and legalizing a hundred powers of attorney every year. I’m going to get it done once, or I’m going to fight this one and I’m never going to do it again. I have to say my hats off to the ones who decided to make the world better for all of us.

Anthony Verna:
And this particular story that we tell, it’s not just from the side of being aware of these companies that are selling way too much because I mean, look, all of my clients get it. You know, every single one of my clients that registered, that files a trademark or files a patent gets at least a letter from some other company promising them the world. And of course, all my clients send me an email. What is all this about? And we say circular file, but this is all …. But this is also from the side of, of advertising law as well. Here in the United States, the FTC has a lot of power. And once the FTC finds that a company isn’t just abusing their advertisements, but are outright lying, outright committing fraud, the FTC has the ability to shut that company down.

John Eastwood:
Well, that’s what made it all the more, here’s another one of the things that Whitaker used to write. He goes, here’s a quote from one of the emails you sent out and he’s like, since you used email to make your threats, you would be subject to a federal extortion charge, which carries a term of imprisonment of up to two years and potential criminal fines. And I’m like, wait a minute, pot, kettle, that’s not even that there you are actually using, you’re writing these emails and writing these letters to people to help scam them out of their money. You’re using these interstate instrumentalities to like to screw over. Now in Asia, what we often run across the domain name scams, just…
Anthony Verna:
A lot of my clients get those emails saying you need to register all of these dot CH domains.

John Eastwood:
Oh, and you know what it is their businesses to sell extremely expensive domain names. They will sell it to you. You will get a domain name. It will be just insanely expensive. Right? And they’ll write false claims in there,  false and misleading claims along the lines of we are the domain name administrator for all of you know, dot Asia. Um, blahdy blah, blah, blah. And we’re like, no, you aren’t. Ah, no, no, no, you aren’t. And you run a search and you know, God bless all those websites that have been providing information on scam texts because it helps for me to explain to my client, yes, this is actually a very common scam. Don’t fall for it. This guy is not the .asia. And some of some of my clients have now, they do it as just kind of as a formality. Is this a scam? I think it’s a scam? And I’m like, yeah, it’s a scam. That’s all in the old days. I used to have to write a lot more.

Anthony Verna:
So wrap this up with a thought, since we’re hitting the witching hour. Obviously if a company is offering you the world, it’s probably too good to be true. And I would also say that I think those who actually deal with patents and trademarks all the time have a very tempered worldview as compared to offering you the world as well.

John Eastwood:
I think so. I think it’s just in our nature, intellectual property lawyers, they tend to couch everything they communicate with a lot of…it might be frustrating for some clients sometimes, but we don’t speak in absolutes. I think like good Jedi warriors or something like that. I think it was like only as a Yoda or someone else said, only the Sith, talk in absolutes or something like that. But like…

Antony Verna:
My nerd heart just skipped a beat. It was Anakin, so it’ll correct me. I’m sure as soon as this gets posted. But, the long story short is that there’s the correct advice for a complex situation is never going to be something like, Oh, we’ll solve it all for you. The correct advice is going to be here’s a bunch of options. Here’s yours. Here’s where your markets are. Here’s where you make your goods. Here’s where your competitors make their goods or your possible infringers make their goods and you to start to think about territories and you think about the Chinese term for patent is basically it’s like a monopoly. And I think that’s a good way to think of it. It’s a monopoly that’s limited in the number of years. It’s limited by the geographical territory that you file in. And it’s limited by the claim language.

Anthony Verna:
I agree with you completely. And even when I’m thinking positively towards a client, like, “Hey, have you ever thought of being a licensee and taking a license from another company and combining that with your products? Because I think it might be a good business idea.”, but “Hey, let’s talk and let’s explore and let’s target the companies.” Let’s talk and let’s explore is something that I always say to my clients. John, thank you so much …, Hey, this is the third city we’ve recorded in together.

John Eastwood:
 Anthony, it’s a great pleasure.

Anthony Verna:
 John, thank you so much. And Claude, thank you again for recording.

John Eastwood:
Thank you, Claude.