8. Alex Owczarczak, Student Judicial Intern Clerk at U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit

Music Manumit

The Federal Circuit

This is not legal advice. Leave audio feedback at [phone]. This show was recorded and edited using GNU/Linux.
Expected Audience: law students and attorneys interested in decision tree analysis
First off, on top of our usual disclaimer, nothing Alex says should be taken as a statement by the U.S. government or the U.S. Court of Appeals.
mp3 audio | ogg audio | torrent | unedited video
Interview notes after the break.

Can you tell us a bit about your background?

Intern at Court of Appeals for Federal Circuit

All patent law appeals. Special subject matter jurisdiction. Administrative appeals

Many things dismissed for lack of jurisdiction

Before we get into the note, you helped file an amicus brief for a DNA decision handed down yesterday. Do you want to discuss that at all?

isolated DNA is not patent eligible.

SCOTUS handled it properly.

We don't need a play-by-play on the note. People can go and read it, but just tell us a bit about the note so people know what we are talking about.

IDEA doesn’t stand for anything!

How is a decision tree different than a flow chart?

flow chart is almost the reverse of a decision tree

The paper is presented as an introduction to decision tree analysis for lawyers. Do you think the paper could also be useful to musicians and other content creators trying to make decisions without counsel? Obviously people need to seek counsel if they are making an important decision, but obviously most Creative Commons musicians are not doing that.

Caution non-legal

Using these trees is all well and good, but isn't the valuation of cost and the evaluation of risk still going to be where most of the failure is?

Some things do curves versus numbers

What software do you use?

Free download but no longer there.

You weren't a business major in college, so where did you learn about this?

Doing research for a professor and came across it.

There have been a lot of bad decisions made in the financial world in the last decade and a half. Were those people using decision trees? What are some of the follies of using decision trees?

a tool to help.

Since our audience is most familiar with copyright law, could you briefly discuss the difference between utility patents and design patents? Also, how do those relate to industrial designs?

utility patent goes to 101

design patent is how something looks

design patent is different because does not have to be original in some way

no fair use in design patent

You know the outcome of Samsung v Apple, so doesn't that color your decision tree?

Samsung doesn’t have to file with the SEC

How broken is the patent system? Where do you think it is broken?

Not perfect, but not broken. AIA fixed some problems, but we’ll see how it goes.

AIA addressed some litigation issues and created new administrative courts.

Other things that could be addressed: gene patents, software patents, NPE, patent trolls, PAE (patent assertion entity)

property owners!

When/where can people find the note?

Should be online early fall.

Do you have anything else you'd like to share with the listeners?

It’s going to be an interesting next few years

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