Edtech Insiders

At Edtech Insiders, we interview founders, investors, operators, educators, and thought leaders about the future of education technology. You’ll hear from leaders across the education technology industry and learn about all of the important edtech trends happening globally.

All Episodes

Edtech Insiders

Intellectual Property and Patents in Edtech with Evan Hill-Ries of Amplify and Trevor Skene of Patent Hacks

November 14, 2022 • Alex Sarlin • Season 4 • Episode 1

Send us a text

Evan Hill-Ries is Deputy General Counsel at Amplify, a next-generation curriculum and assessment company serving 10 million students in all 50 states. Responsible for supporting Amplify's K–8 digital curriculum product teams on content issues, development best practices, data privacy, and sales and marketing compliance, as well as company-wide work on corporate and strategic transactions, equity incentive plans, information security, accessibility, and HR policies. Evan has taught Copyright, Commerce, and Culture in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communications at NYU, and has counselled corporate clients on intellectual property, software development, equity financing at several corporate law firms.

Trevor Skene is the co-founder and CEO of Patent Hacks. Patent Hacks is a patent education company developed by 3 former USPTO patent examiners, who have designed an online educational platform (Learning Center) dedicated to making the patent process affordable for everyone. Trevor has also served as an entrepreneur and mentor at innovation labs in Pennsylvania, where Patent Hacks is located.

Recommended Resources:
Evan Hill-Ries:
Copyrights Highway by Paul Goldstein

Trevor Skene:
@patent_hacks on Twitter
IPWatchdog.com
US Intellectual Property Alliance (USIPA)

Alexander Sarlin: 0:05

Welcome to Season Two of edtech insiders, where we talk to the most interesting thought leaders, founders, entrepreneurs, educators and investors driving the future of education technology. I'm your host, Alex Sarlin, an edtech veteran with over 10 years of experience at top edtech companies. We have two great guests on today's episode. Evan Hill-Ries is the Deputy General Counsel at amplify a next generation curriculum and assessment company serving 10 million students in all 50 states. Evan is responsible for supporting amplifies K eight digital curriculum product teams on content issues, development practices, data privacy and sales and marketing compliance. He also works company wide on corporate and strategic transactions, equity incentive, information security, accessibility and HR. Evan has taught copyright commerce and culture at the Department of media Culture and Communications at NYU where he earned his JD and has counseled corporate clients on intellectual property software development and equity financing at several corporate law firms. Trevor Skeen is the co founder and CEO of ed tech company patent tax patent tax is a patent education company developed by three former USPTO patent examiner's who have designed an online educational platform dedicated to making the patent process affordable for everyone. Trevor has also served as an entrepreneur and mentor at innovation labs in Pennsylvania, where patent Hacks is located. Evan Hill Reese, and Trevor Skene Welcome to Ed Tech insiders.

Trevor Skene: 1:49

Good to be here.

Evan Hill-Ries: 1:50

Thank you, Alex,

Alexander Sarlin: 1:51

it's great to have you both here. This is a topic that I think is extremely important for a lot of our listeners, but one that frankly, I don't know a huge amount about and I bet a lot of people don't either, because it's pretty specialized law, patents, trademarks and copyrights in edtech. So I want to start by just asking each of you, what brought you into the EdTech field, and specifically this particular area of ad tech, which is all about the sort of law and intellectual property. Trevor, let's start with you.

Trevor Skene: 2:21

Yes. So for me, it was really my own experiences. So I've worked as a patent examiner for the USPTO. But I actually got there first, because my degrees in mechanical engineering, I've always had kind of like an innovative engineering mindset. And all the way back in the day I was innovating and trying to start companies. And really what slowed me down was the cost of patents. And that was like my first interaction with patents. And I kind of moved forward naturally ended up getting my degree and ending up in the patent industry, and essentially, coming full circle on that concept of patents costing a lot of money and being difficult for that everyday inventor. So then started the company patent hacks around trying to address that and make patents more accessible, more affordable for that everyday inventor. So I guess kind of just my own experiences brought me full circle in that industry and got me interested.

Alexander Sarlin: 3:14

That's really interesting. Now you help people, you know, get patents and figure out how to navigate that process at a lower cost. Exactly. Yep. And Evan, how about you what brought you into education technology and into your role as Deputy General Counsel at amplify,

Evan Hill-Ries: 3:28

so I was raised by a teacher related to other teachers always sort of had some education in my blood. It wasn't what I thought I wanted to do in terms of go into the classroom, and teach. But sure enough, Life finds a way. I graduated from law school, spent a few years working with startups, both in Silicon Valley and then in New York City. And in that moment, found my way to teaching as an adjunct at NYU, teaching a class that was basically copyright for undergrads. So I took like, what was in my wheelhouse, and decided to see if I could teach it to some sort of less than perfectly interested undergrads. And that was a really great experience. I mean, it was absolutely an exercise in what they tell you about you really want to find out if you know, something, teach it to someone else. And it was it was absolutely that that experience for me. And then I was looking for an in house opportunity. I think, you know, it can be fun working for a law firm and having lots of different interesting clients. But I found myself really wanting to sort of pull on an order I really believed in and find some organization that I could spend my whole working day working on their problems and trying to advance the goals of that organization, what they were trying to do. And I looked across, you know, the startups and tech companies in New York that would sort of fit that mold for me, I have to say, you know, in terms of getting me out of bed in the morning, some of the opportunities and say like in tech and ad tech weren't as interesting to me. But Ed Tech really felt like there was a lot to do there. And I could sort of, you know, we say this all the time, like, you can't discount the mission, like the idea that you are sort of helping the children learn to read is really hard to like, wake up on the wrong side of, it's really hard to feel bad about that. And I think that is honestly like, most of the time, I feel great about it. So I found my way to this opportunity. We've been through sort of when I joined the company amplify was part of News Corp, then we're sold off to a group of investors led by the Emerson Collective. And now we are sort of thriving as a independent private company, with some really supportive and excellent investors, who are helping us have what we think is a really big impact on just the honestly, the fundamentals that we are making sure that kids can learn to read and obviously, do math do other subjects. Actually, our most popular program at the moment, on the core side is amplify science, we've had a lot of success, getting a curriculum into the hands of teachers that really teaches to the Next Generation Science Standards in a way that's interactive and compelling and makes appropriate use of technology. I think one thing that we're really trying to navigate at amplify, and the whole industry in general, is what's the right midpoint, in terms of whether you're approaching the child as a sort of one to one kid on the machine all day, sort of interactive digital experience, versus no, let's not have screens in the classroom and do everything with differently sized pieces of paper, whether it's like a big board or little handout, I think, obviously, you know, setting up the strongman on either side of that spectrum, the answer is somewhere in the middle. And we think we found a good niche, we do tend to think it's a little more digital than a lot of places have in the past. But I think that's actually a really important distinction to make, that none of these companies are doing things for the classroom, can in fact, be fully digital, or fully print. If you really want to cover the whole spectrum of like, we have 180 days of instruction, here's your core program that you are teaching. Do you think that you can do that without printing a piece of paper is naive to think that you can do that without touching a screen is maybe even worse? And so I think there's a lot of interesting stuff happening there. That will dovetail into what we're talking about here. I think, when you think about how that affects these IP regulations that by and large, with a few small exceptions, were last updated, you know, in the 70s, in large part, right, we are sort of still working with a lot of pre digital laws. When we approach this space, when we try to think about how it's affecting what's going on in our kids classrooms.

Alexander Sarlin: 7:58

I love that focus on sort of the hybrid experience on you know, what part of education should or could be digital, what part should or could be analog or paper based? And throughout? How does a company sort of ensure that their their curriculum adds up and that everything is, you know, legally sound and the sort of is either fully owned or licensed in the in a proper way? I think it's a it's a really complex and interesting set of issues. Trevor, I want to ask you, you know, you yourself are sort of an ad tech startup, you run online courses and video based, you know, lessons about how to do the patent run through the patent process. So that's really interesting. You also work with a lot of individuals and startups. And when you work with startups in the space, what are the biggest sort of legal issues they are coming to you with? What are they looking to really accomplish with this patent process? And how do they think about intellectual property in 2022? So I

Trevor Skene: 8:54

think the biggest thing that people usually come to us with is a lack of understanding of anything that has to do with IP. And we try to be that kind of bridge and a good starting point for people on our website, we have free resources that answer some of the questions like What is a patent, the benefits of a patent? Should I get a patent is my idea patentable? So we try to start there and help people understand, even though it's like bare bones basics, and say, How do I even get started in this industry? What is it what like, where do I fall? Because I know Evan can speak to there's obviously a big difference between copyright patents, trademarks. And a lot of people don't even understand that a lot of people don't understand what those differences are and which path they should go down. So a lot of the early stage stuff is trying to steer people down the right path and educate people on what that is, once they get into our Learning Center, which is, like you said, an ad tech platform that walks them through navigating the patenting process. It's more about actually executing on that. So before you get into the platform, we want to steer you in the right direction. And once you know what you're doing, and you get into our platform, now you're ready to actually execute on it. And to your point there, it's anything from taking the idea and turning it into a real world invention. So we have a form or invention development form that helps people kind of go from I have this idea of this thing I would want to do, but what are the things I have to think about and the research I have to do and the things to make sure, you know, let's say I have all my bases covered. So let me make sure somebody else isn't already doing this so that I don't get sued to your point. They don't want to run into any of that legal trouble. And then also thinking about what is this idea that I have actually looked like in the real world? What are the park to park connections? How does this all come together? So that kind of helps them once they're ready to execute, move into that phase of thinking through everything they need to think through. And then we guide them through everything, like I said, from doing their prior art research, making sure somebody else is in already doing it, preparing their drawings and prototyping, drafting their applications and filing them. So in total, we kind of covered the whole patenting process. But like I said, there's kind of those different phases that we move people through to help them really take each step and understand what's going on and kind of move through fluidly.

Alexander Sarlin: 11:10

So I will admit, I am definitely one of those people who doesn't know the difference very well between a trademark or copyright, and a patent. Even though technically, I actually have a patent, which is like one of my prized achievements in all of life.

Evan Hill-Ries: 11:24

Definitely wanna hear more about that? Yes, yes.

Alexander Sarlin: 11:27

Evan, can you just give us sure I'm not the only one listening to this a little bit a Cliff's Notes on the difference between a trademark or copyright and a patent?

Evan Hill-Ries: 11:36

Absolutely, I'll put my adjective hat back on, I'm sure I have some slides somewhere that do this. But we'll, we'll do it live. I'd like to think of it maybe in this context, if you were talking about your audience maybe has an idea for or has already started work on a product that they want, they think will be a great idea for a startup, something that they can take forward into the market, and hopefully be really successful with both in terms of impact on learning, but also, in terms of personal financial rewards. And IP is an important part of how you essentially protect that. But I think the way of thinking about the difference between the different kinds of IP is to think about what specifically they're designed to protect. And from a policy perspective, what incentives are we trying to create? And so I think the easiest way to frame it up in your head, is that is is to think about what each area is trying to essentially create more of in the world. Why did Congress pull this policy lever to make these rights, because while they are nominally sort of described in Article One, Section Eight of the Constitution, it is simply empowering Congress to do it. So Congress had to wake up one day and decide, okay, we are going to have these rights because we think they are, they are good for something. So to go right into it. Copyright is an incentive is designed to provide incentives to creators to create more original works. And it's a low bar, I mean, literally, the things that have not met the standard of being original enough to deserve copyright protection, are, for example, the idea of alphabetizing a list of names and a phonebook. That one went all the way to the Supreme Court, it took all of our best discharges in the whole land, to figure out that, that maybe didn't need to be protected, that maybe the incentive didn't need to run all the way towards alphabetizing lists. But it is true that almost anything you create, whether it's a doodle on a napkin, whether it's five lines of code, whether it's the email you just wrote to somebody is protected by US copyright law. And it is protected for if it's an individual work, if you're doing this for your own reasons, for your entire life plus 70 years. So your grandkids are going to be able to license that email to somebody get excited. There's a lot of people like me who maybe think that that term is is a little bit excessive, it's time kind of long. For context, the term of for a corporate work, something that you do as part of your job is only 95 years. So only make of that what you will. But so there the idea is really, we want to make sure that there is an incentive to create works and get them out in the public and not have to worry about as much about restricting access as a way to get paid for them. Right that you can imagine if there wasn't copyright, you would have to like put hanging your painting on a wall in a locked room and only let people in if they bought a ticket and make sure they didn't take anything in that would let them take a picture or anything like that. Like you still see this honestly in some sort of music In other places, but that would be how it would all have to work if we didn't have some notion of copyright that let you restrict, as a matter of law, when people can redistribute your work when people can make copies of it. So copyright is, is a low bar and a broad sweep. But there were a lot of things that it doesn't protect. And one of the things that excludes essentially, is Patents, Patents gets carved out of that area of protection. And patents are about providing incentives to invent. And they are a more rigorous process where you actually have to apply to the United States Patent and Trademark Office and go through an examination process, which I'm sure Trevor can talk a lot more about. And that will eventually if you're lucky, if you followed all the important and valuable lessons on patent hacks.com. and elsewhere, you might, you might get issued a patent that lets you restrict people from practicing that invention. For the next 20 years or so. It's a shorter term. And the exchange there is that we want to get you to disclose the invention. So that after that patent is up to 20 years or so, people will actually be able to take that description you gave and use it themselves that we can enable follow on in innovation by actually having you sat down with some specificity. And this is definitely a hotly debated topic among patent nerds is sort of how much does the description actually enable later innovation? Very interesting question, but probably for another podcast. The way to think about it in your head is that patents are strong rights for inventions that you have to apply for and get, and that let you keep anybody else from even doing the thing. One of the crucial differences in copyright, technically independent creation is a defense. You can go and say, Yeah, I know my poems a lot like your poem. But I totally never saw your poem before. And I just wrote it myself. And you get a lot of interesting edge cases there where there's reasons out there in the world that lead people to very similar creative output. And it is actually enough to go to the court. And if you can prove it, say that Nope, never heard of that other guy never saw their work. I'm doing my own thing. And this, this strongly, fully formed from my own brain without access to their work. Patents not so much patents is really about I am the exclusive provider of this invention, out in the world for this term. And so that's one of the main reasons I think people consider it a stronger, right, it's worth investing more in getting that right. There is also for what it's worth the copyright registration process. But ever since the 70s, when they rebooted the Copyright Act, that's less of a important consideration, and not something I would usually advise startups to worry a lot about the question of patentability, and whether their inventions is patentable is certainly worth considering. But like I said, because the bar is high to go apply and get one, you might often decide as a startup that like, that's not where you're going to put your limited resources and capital. Copyright is really inverse, where you have the rights by virtue of creating the work, you wrote the code, therefore, you own the copyright. There's not much more you need to do there. The question is, how are you going to think about licensing that copyright, and that's where you get into lots of considerations in the EdTech space around both both open source software, which is endemic across all tech companies. But here we have this concept of OER, open educational resources, where we think even from a content perspective, there should be some lessons, there should be some assessments, there should be some other instructional materials that are actually licensed freely. So that yes, you the Creator, organization owns the copyright, but you're explicitly giving everybody else the right to do what they need to do with it under certain conditions, all sorts of color to be had around that. But that's where I see startups really sort of needing to focus on what they want to do with the rights they already have automatically. And whether or not it's worth going out and getting extra rights. Realizing this is going on a little bit, but I never got to trademarks. How about trademarks, trademarks, I usually leave for the end because if I set it up as incentives to create something, then it's easy to say okay, copyright is about giving you an incentive to write more or to paint more to think more. Patents are about giving you an incentive to invent more useful, interesting, great innovations. And that sometimes leads people to thinking that trademarks is about providing an incentive to create more brand names. And I don't want anyone to think that that's the case. We don't have a explicit policy in the law, where it is important that we come up with newer cooler names for products. Trademarks are different in that they're actually about preventing consumer confusion. So the classic example there is to prevent somebody from brewing something in their bathtub and selling it to you as Pepsi or Coke, I forget what the old timey reference from which opinion it was. But that is really about making sure that people aren't confused about where what they're buying is coming from, or who, what they're buying, it's coming from honestly. And so this is something that in my day job we do all the time, because we had the sort of good fortune, or some days from my perspective misfortune to pick a dictionary word as our primary brand name. And so we sell things as amplify, amplify has a fair amount of like, general connotations in English, people have a lot of things they want to amplify. A couple of years ago, we had a strong run of applications to the PTO to register various self improvement and self help marks, amplify your life amplify your this amplify your that. And we had to oppose a lot of those at least in the initial going, because they would claim the right to go and use that trademark for educational services. Now, most of the time, they mean, selling you an overpriced seminar in a strip mall somewhere about how you are going to finally amplify your life. But the problem is it doesn't specify and so I've got to worry about you going into K 12 classrooms and telling teachers oh, I want to do an amplify your life seminar. And they're gonna be like, Wait, does that relate it to the people who made my science curriculum? And that kind of confusion is exactly what the law is there to prevent? That's what we tried to do with trademark law is simply to draw the lines cleanly, between who's selling what to whom

Alexander Sarlin: 21:41

excellent synopsis, I feel like I am much more informed about the difference. And in some ways, it's sort of hidden in the words, right? I mean, trademarks is sort of the right to trade. copyrights are about, you know, basically the right to copy it without knowing about it, and patent much more secure. So Grover Evans talked about the patent process, and how it's by far the most difficult and complex of the three, and that even with all the help, you might be able to get, it's not assured that you will actually get a patent, tell our listeners, especially those who may be, you know, running ad tech startups or having ideas that they want to, you know, build companies off of, what are the sort of options for how to navigate that process? Do they need a patent attorney? Should they try it on their own? You know, how long does it take, give us a little overview of that part of the patent world?

Trevor Skene: 22:30

Yes. So there's generally three people that could file a patent, it's either the inventor themselves, like you said, they could kind of do it themselves a patent attorney or a Patent Agent. And really, the kind of varying difference there is really just the quality of help you're gonna get and the price. So patent attorneys are obviously the people that have gone to law school, they they've been doing this for a long time. And generally, they end up obviously, then being the most expensive patent agents, they essentially just deal with patents and don't deal with other parts of law. So they're specific to that, usually, they'll end up coming in a little bit lower in price. And then obviously, doing it yourself, which is what patent X is all about, is kind of the only way that you could really guarantee that you're going to reduce that cost. But then you have to go figure out how to do it yourself. Right. So that's where patent x comes in, and kind of guides people through that process of doing it themselves. So they're not completely alone. They have some sort of, you know, pre setup guide that's kind of taking them through that with templates and examples and everything they need to know. But which one's better is up to every person, right? Whenever I talk to somebody and they say, funds are really low heat, like you said, if they're a startup, if they're bootstrapped, and they're like, Hey, I'm trying to decide if I should spend 20 grand on a patent attorney, or if a patents even worth it. That's where I could turn somebody and say, you might want to check out patent hacks and see if you have the time, and you're you're willing to put in that effort, this is where you can protect yourself and save a lot of that money. On the flip side, if I talk to a corporation that has all the money in the world, they're never going to want to do it themselves, they're always going to want to just go pay a patent attorney to do it. So it really comes down to kind of case in point, there's not a one size fits all, like everyone should go down one path because the reality is everyone's financial situation or their capability of doing something some people don't like learning a new skill because they're just they've never been big into learning things and, and they're never going to be the type of people who want to do it themselves. But there are those kinds of different options. And it kind of helps create a little bit more of a level playing field. That's what we're hoping to do with patent Hacks is empowering that everyday inventor to be able to do it themselves so that patents oriented monopolized by the major corporations and the people with money because when that happens, we end up in a much less innovative world because, as with everything in society When a certain group has all of the power over innovation, then nobody else gets to kind of bring their new ideas to life. But that's kind of, you know, dovetails into what Evan was saying about the difficulty of understanding where the lines are with patents sometimes gets a little bit messy when you have a world where you were, I could just bring an idea to life and potentially be up against Apple or Google or some major corporation that's done something similar. So it's an interesting space. And kind of just last thing to what you were saying, as far as kind of the timespan and what does that look like? It's really variable based on the category that your invention is. But when I was working for the USPTO, nothing came across my desk that wasn't at least a year old in filing. So the other thing about patents is it's a long process. And Evan kind of alluded to that. But when you're going through the patenting process, you're filing an application, and then you're waiting to hear back from a human beings opinion kind of, of where other things that exists in the world kind of apply to what you do and why you should or shouldn't get a patent based off that. And then there's a little bit of kind of like a back and forth of you kind of giving your side of the story and then giving their side and that's where the kind of litigation process in patents comes in. And that is where the patent attorney and or Patent Agent is really helpful kind of bridging that gap and discussing that with them. But what a lot of people don't know is in the USPTO, there are provisions, I believe it's seven, oh 7.07 of the MPEP, which basically states that if a patent examiner is reviewing a pro se inventor, which just means you're filing on your own without legal guidance, if they're reviewing one of their applications, and they acknowledge that something in there is patent worthy, which I could say, as a former examiner, if I'm reviewing a patent, and there's a part of that application, that's really a pain in the ass to reject, it's really difficult to reject, you could tell that that has more patentable, you know merit to it than the other parts that you rejected really easily. Once they acknowledge that in their own brain, that's something in here is really probably patent worthy. There then required to help the inventor draft claim several claims, and guarantee that if that inventor includes it into their application via amendment that it's going to be granted a patent. So there's little provisions in there and stuff like that, or it is that are designed to help that independent inventor, and just in general, when you're working with a patent examiner, you're given their contact information, and there is allowed to be a little bit of a back and forth discourse there to kind of litigate through that process. So even though an independent inventor may not feel as comfortable with that process, as a patent attorney or patent agents has been trained to do so it is possible to navigate that process and the USPTO does set up things to kind of help people out with that. And they don't just like leave them out, they're high and dry to try to deal with these complex legal things on their own.

Alexander Sarlin: 28:01

That's really interesting. That's a very generous law. It's such an interesting idea, the idea that if something sort of passed the bar as patentable, not only is, you know, given halfway to patent, but actually sort of given an accelerant, and that you actually have to reach out and help people. I've never heard of a law like that. It's really interesting.

Evan Hill-Ries: 28:21

I mean, it's inscrutable, right, like, you should try filing a patent yourself. And you can see how much how nice it would be to have a little bit of like a thumb on the scale for the examiner to be on your side, in certain circumstances. I can see why that's needed.

Alexander Sarlin: 28:34

Yeah, I agree. You both mentioned that these processes have been are a little outdated, right, they've been sort of updated in the 70s, I think, for the copyright law, and the patent world, you know, obviously is very bureaucratic and legally bound. And I'd love to sort of translate some of these issues to some of the things we see in the tech world. So like, you know, on one side, you have the type of really open resources that you've mentioned, and they open education resources, open source software, all sorts of different types of inventions and ideas that are designed to be reused, you know, and that's been growing over the years, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the OER movement. And then the other side, just to get across the spectrum is things like, you know, when somebody's trying to use a Southpark clip for something, and it's, you know, it's taken off YouTube, and it can't be used in any context. And there's sort of incredibly intense of legal bindings on what how it can be used from an intellectual property angle. And then there's the technical patents, like, as you mentioned that Trevor, like, maybe Google classroom has a patent on that particular type of classroom exercise. And if a startup wanted to do that, they suddenly running up against Google's legal team and you know, their whole company might be at risk. These are so wildly different, you know, it's just such a different ethos between that OER and that hardcore patent world. Evan, I'd love to ask you just your of I know You've done a lot of work in the OCR space and thought about it a lot. How do you sort of see this spectrum of usage? And in your role, you know, at amplify? How do you sort of advise them about which parts of the curriculum should be very, very protected, and which parts may actually be worth, you know, offering is less copyrightable, or more creative Commons or anything like that. I'm curious how you see that spectrum?

Evan Hill-Ries: 30:25

Yeah, so I should say that, you know, I'm here in my personal capacity, you're getting my thoughts as a copyright nerd more than the position of amplifiers as a company. But I think that there's a lot of interesting issues around that precisely because there's a lot of both historical and current momentum around sharing intellectual property is thought of generally, in the classroom and in the school building, that, you know, fair use exists in part, but in large part, to enable the kind of academic uses of copyrighted materials that we are all familiar with, you know, however old we are, we are not too old to have seen something like a mimeograph or even a handwritten copy of some passage from a book or a text that was then something your teacher wanted to hand out to you and talk about in class. And all of those things, in essence, are on the face of them. infringement of the copyright in the original work, but we have this provision, this affirmative defenses, technically, of fair use, which as for some of these uses, we will essentially deem them to be fair, meaning that even if they're otherwise would be infringing, they're not going to be because we care about that use, we want to enable that use. And so fair use is wonderful for that purpose. But its problem has always been that it is hard to enumerate a perfect list of those kinds of uses. Right? And so fair use, as written into the law in Section 107 of the Copyright Act, is essentially a four factor balancing test, which the judge or the jury in that will consider the these four factors, the purpose and character of the use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount and substantiality of how much of the prior work you use. And then the fourth factor we often think of as like market harm, it's like, what is the effect of your use on what the original, the creator of the original work was expecting to get out of exploiting their own work their original work. And you can see how all of those can creep in to make the question of whether or not what a given teacher is doing in the classroom or, you know, even what a given district is doing across all of their schools, is or is not a fair use. And I will say, like, you know, one of the particular trials and tribulations of being a lawyer for an edtech company, in particular provider to these schools, is that, as I said earlier, like they will often come to us asking for permission to do a thing. And I will say, Well, hey, it's not really my permission to give, you're talking about what you can do with a given novel that we've included in the curriculum, and that copyright belongs to somebody else, I just licensed it to include it. But be I'm not your lawyer, so I can't tell you, school district or teacher, that Fair Use would look much more kindly upon you doing this than upon me as an outside commercial provider selling you a product. And so it's very hard to find the right way to tell them that, you know, not for me, but for the you could probably get away with this, but I'm not your lawyer. And I'm not going to tell you that. I think that is honestly, you know, something that schools could do a better job of in terms of like making sure that Fair Use is an active and important part of how they think about managing materials and use of classroom materials, like having clear, fair use guidelines for the teachers to say what they should or shouldn't do. Not that that's going to be perfectly coextensive with like what fair use would actually enable. But teachers need a starting point, right? They are not trained as intellectual property experts and they shouldn't be. And so I think that's an area were struggling with what is both out there and available for use, versus what is explicitly licensed as an open resource. So one way to solve that problem is also to say, hey, teacher, here's a curriculum. It's out here under Creative Commons license. So it's hopefully a little clearer what you can or can't do with it. And a lot of organizations have stepped up to the plate there and done things like that. I at amplify are K five ELA curriculum is based on an OER curriculum called core knowledge language arts, or C KLA that was originally released via the state of New York's engage in why Engage New York website that was designed to provide openly licensed curricula so that nobody has to ask a question about whether they're allowed to, like rearrange the lessons or whether they're allowed to pass this off to a teacher in another district who they think would also really like teaching this lesson. And that is all to the good. It is, in fact, we think, a really good enabler for getting teachers into sort of communities of practice where they really have a shared resource to draw upon, and they can talk about like, what's the best way to teach the KLA? Well, there's a lot of good ways we and amplify, obviously have a lot of opinions about the best way to teach pkla. And we make our what we think is the best version of CK la in that way. But what we don't have the sort of exclusive right on is, anybody out there having taken a lesson, we have to very much think hard, and I do spend a lot of times thinking about what is amplifies sort of secret sauce on top of that, that is our copyrighted material that we think, you know, you should buy the whole package from amplified to get the benefit of versus what is the underlying OER that others could take and build upon. And I think we're doing that now on the math front, also with illustrative mathematics, which is in in some ways, the one of the canonical use cases here for from the funding standpoint, where you have foundations like the Gates Foundation, and others going out there and saying, Well, look, if I'm going to spend $10 million on an education project, maybe one of the best ways to do it, is to just write a really good curriculum, and make it available freely and openly so that everyone can use it. And won't that like add a little bit of value to like every classroom and Teachers Day, when you put it into those classrooms. And I think that is is like a great use of the money and a very important sort of contribution to the field. I think that one of the things that is important to consider there and and really becomes a little bit of a sticky wicket is how do you actually build the community of contribution? And collaboration out of that? How is it not just here, we wrote a thing, let us sort of drop it into the classrooms and sort of retreat back into an ivory tower. And I and other organizations have spent a lot of time thinking about this working on this. But it I think remains a pretty sticky problem, because it's not honestly clear how much of the lessons of open source software, you can really apply to that kind of collaborative environment. If you think about it as like, open source works, when it has a community of collaboration and contribution, in part because the code compiles or it doesn't. I mean, that's a gross oversimplification. And my open source friends will be mad at me for being that that simplistic about it. But it's certainly true that textbooks don't compile, right. It's certainly true that figuring out when a downstream innovation a change that a teacher made in the classroom, or a district made to their materials for use in their career, is something that should be then incorporated back into the sort of root of the project and distributed out to everyone else who uses that happens all the time and open source software. And that remains really hard to coordinate and figure out on the OER side, when it comes to instructional materials. We just don't quite know the right way to do that yet. And I think it is one of the bigger challenges that OER faces as an idea is is how do you turn it into something that grows rather than something that gets like air dropped into the field?

Alexander Sarlin: 39:07

It's a fascinating take. And it makes me think of something like you know, if an individual teacher working in a district that uses you know, a CT knowledge or illustrative or EF or any of the the open source curricula that are out there, then creates their own materials. The question is, are those customized materials, open source? Sort of? Do they inherit the open source? Or on the other hand, is that something that the teachers can and should turn around and sell on Teachers Pay Teachers, or teach on outschool or use as teacher printers? You know, the added value of their customization and the examples they use in the ordering is that actually, I will say the word patentable because that's not at all what it means. But like is that IP for the teacher and something that they should be able to use for their own game? It is a really tricky problem and a really interesting one, I think something that's going to come up more and more or Another example is if they make a video, right? If they make a really amazing video to showcase how to work through a whole set of illustrative math problems, is that video something that is open sourced by inheritance? Or is it something that the teacher has clearly, you know, put work into it, and they have the copyright.

Evan Hill-Ries: 40:17

And just like an open source software, you often can try to make that choice by licensing. So just to take the examples I gave you, right? See KLA is licensed as well in its OER form, under the Creative Commons Attribution, Noncommercial ShareAlike restrictions. And that ShareAlike restriction does mean that if you make a derivative work of it, you have to make your derivative available under those same terms. So it's what you think about in terms of like the GPL, on the open source side, where it has this virality to it, where downstream works, sort of inherit the license, by law, essentially, right, as a term of the license in the first place, by illustrative mathematics is licensed under CC BY so just attribution. And so one of the fundamental decisions you make as an OER provider as an author is what of those downstream uses Do you want to enable. But also, which of those restrictions do you want to toggle on so that you either create other derivatives that have the same license, or you may be create, in the case of CC by the opportunity for other people to commercialize something on top of that. And you see that with, you know, the sort of BSD versus GPL considerations on the open source side all the time. But like I said, it's not clear that the reasons for going BSD or GPL, for your like, particular Python library for back end allocation of the AWS buckets or something like that is actually the same pathway and framework you should use to decide whether or not your math curriculum should have those same attributes. It is just a different field of application. And that's what makes it hard. Yeah,

Alexander Sarlin: 42:03

it's really interesting. And you can see the benefits on both sides. I mean, enabling others to commercialize is a huge incentive for them to actually put work into it, and make it their own and make something you know, amazing. On the other hand, making Derivative Works open, you know, obviously makes a huge community of open source content creators, and you can actually keep everything open. Trevor, I want to ask you something that I think may be on the minds of others, some of the entrepreneurs and investors who listen to this podcast, which is that your patent tax is really designed for when you're trying to actually patent your own idea. The one thing that seems like a real minefield in the patent world is that, you know, let's say somebody has an idea for a new ad tech startup, how can they make sure that they're protected from somebody else coming and shutting them down? Because they already hold the patent?

Trevor Skene: 42:52

Yeah, so that's one of the biggest things actually, it's funny you say that, because that's one of the things that I try to encourage. That's the scale, I try to encourage people to learn the most. Because I always tell everyone, if you learn how to do the research, and compare what you're doing to what already exists, that skill alone is almost more valuable than the ability to write the pad, right? Because like I said, in the corporate space or anything like that, you could take Advil, just go pay attorneys to do that, we actually are building a workshop right now, that's that we're going to be selling in the enterprise and corporate space that does just that, that empowers the innovators. So the engineering, the intrapreneurs, whoever's the actual innovator, to learn how to research and compare what they're doing to what exists to speed up the innovation process, but also, to kind of help reduce leak, reduce legal fees, so that there's not that kind of latency of I have an idea. Now I gotta report it to the you know, disclose it, and then wait for someone to do the research and tell me why I can't or can't move forward. If they already understand that concept. They can just move forward quickly. And it works in the you know, the enterprise space, it works in the startup space, when you can answer those questions yourself. It drastically increases efficiency, it saves some money too. But it especially in the startup space, and even in the enterprise space, the efficiency is really what helps if you say hey, we're gonna innovate. But there's such a long process of innovation, this innovation isn't going to come out for years, then it's like, Okay, that's great. But our competitors are coming in to the market every day with new things. If we take so long to innovate, that kind of hinders our growth. And especially in the entrepreneurship space, where you're up against oftentimes larger companies that have an established audience, then you really need to be able to move forward, you're burning through startup capital left and right. You can't have some long innovation process that takes forever. So that's something where the searching part of that, which is the first thing we teach in our platform, is all about understanding how to use patent databases. There's tons of free patent databases out there. I think we break down how to use eight of them in our platform. Warm, and we break down five different searching strategies that we were we were taught as you know, USPTO examiners, my two partners are also former USPTO, patent examiner's as well. So we kind of all collaborate on everything we do. But basically, that entire skill to your point is what helps people not only identify, am I going to be free here? Do I have freedom to operate? Am I not going to get sued? But also it helps them understand like, is this worth pursuing? How much energy should I put into this? And it helps that I like to explain it kind of like when you're innovating, there's kind of a fork in the road. When you do that search, right? There's one of two things that happens, either you find out that it's already protected. And now if you want to still do that idea, you have to identify what am I doing that's unique and different? And how and so how do I differentiate that from what already exists. And if there is nothing that's unique and different, you either give up there, or you build new things into your invention that makes it unique and different. And then the other option, which is of course, everyone's you know, fantasy situation is that you don't find something that fits into what you do. And then you get to just move forward with it as you imagined it. But the one thing I'll caution people on with that is that one of the things a lot of people don't realize is as a patent examiner, I would be allowed to combine things within reason to reject an idea. So for example, I like to use the example of like a lead pencil if there was a lead pencil, and it's the first ever lead pencil that you know, adds a grip to it. You could say, oh, cool, I added a grip to this lead pencil. But if somebody else looks and goes, that's good. But here's this pen, or here's this other thing that has a grip that I would use for the same thing. So I don't drop it while I'm using it, I can make that connection and say like, well, would it made sense that that lead pencil had already existed and that grip that existed over here would have made sense for us to combine those to do what you're doing now. So that's one of the things that I always encourage people to think about when you're doing the research. Whatever you're doing, even if you're Google searching, and doing a little bit of like a market analysis to figure out who are my big competitors, how is what they do similar to what I do, you want to keep in mind, if the unique thing that you're doing is something that's pretty obvious, like if you're like, Oh, well, they're doing this, but if I add a flashlight, or if I add a grip, or if I add something basic, that that's what is unique and differentiates me, you're almost never going to get a patent for that, because it'd be so obvious to make that combination for an examiner. Now, I always like to give the caveat there, if what you're doing that unique is the flashlight or the grip is also unique, like your grip structure has, you know, 75 like perpendicular, you know, grip patterns that then therefore make it super tactile, if that's the unique thing, now you're getting into a really specific niche type of grip that then can maybe be patentable, but it's just the general concept of, oh, I just have a, you know, generic grip, that that's what differentiates me, it's never going to be enough. So that's the thing that people you know, when you're doing that research, it's a skill that I think everyone should understand, because it's pretty much universally beneficial in the business space. But it's also something that helps a lot in the innovation process, right. Like, if you already know that your competition is doing 90% of what you're doing. Now, you could double or triple down on that 10%, that makes you unique. And that's going to be helpful for building marketing campaigns, it's going to be helpful for everything because you know, what benefits you have that your competitors don't. And throughout the innovation process, you can kind of pour more effort into those things. But it's also helpful moving forward in a lot of other ways, so that people don't think about that kind of backwards engineering of, you know, the innovation process of doing that research, but it's helpful in a lot of ways.

Alexander Sarlin: 48:57

That's really, really interesting. And I'm sure, you know, some of our listeners are thinking about mapping, you know, they're mapping their ideas right now to, you know, how could I check the patents for it? Or how do I innovate? What is the equivalent in edtech of that specialized grip, you know, that you're mentioning as an example. And it's really interesting. So last question, I thought there's gonna be to both of you, but I want to start with you, Evan. So part of the reason I love the education technology space is that you know, people in it tend to be so idealistic, so nice, they're really want to give away they really care about building an ecosystem. There's all these great communities. And, you know, it feels like that sort of cutthroat IP suing that might happen among car companies or, you know, it doesn't seem like it's really quite as big a presence in the ad tech world. That said, we're in a moment when, you know, Amazon is starting to move into ad tech. Google is doing a huge amount of Microsoft's doing a huge amount Apple's doing huge amount. metas doing a huge amount, and there are 10s of 1000s of edtech companies all over the world, many of whom I must be said are pursue Doing somewhat similar ideas? There's a lot of adaptive tutoring, there's a lot of test prep. You know, I'm curious if you see the EdTech world continuing to sort of be more collaborative than competitive and continuing to move more towards that sort of OER world? Or is there going to be a sort of moment when it becomes mature enough that people start that there's enough money flowing around that people start really suing each other and sort of pulling those patent cards? What do you think the future looks like?

Evan Hill-Ries: 50:30

That's a big question. I agree. That is fascinating. And I think it's, it's super important. I think there's a couple of different axes on which it's worth sort of investigating what is different or special about ad tech? Because I think you're right, there's a lot of mission driven organizations here, even if they're not nonprofits, there's a lot of mission driven capital, a lot of mission driven investors here who are not necessarily, I mean, definitely not nonprofits, but also, like, still looking for returns, even venture scale returns, while having an impact. And I think there are opportunities to do that, where I actually worry about it more honestly than the apples and Amazons and Googles of the world, I sometimes worry about the research institutions, the academic institutions of the world, partly because we all want to do what we're doing based on sound research that comes out of those kinds of institutions. So one movement that, you know, we and amplify, are really trying to be at the vanguard of is what we're calling the science of reading, which is exactly what it says on the tin, we are trying to make reading instruction more based on more research based based on years and even decades of science, meaning peer reviewed academic research on how kids learn to read and how they best learn to read and how they can be met where they are, and gotten to where they need to be. And that is, in so many ways, the right path for a lot of reasons. You want that research driven objective instruction, but then have to think about okay, where's that research coming from? Who's making those discoveries as you will? And how are they then turning those discoveries potentially into innovations in ways that we might find a little bit restrictive. So I think that the crucial piece that that keeps me up sometimes, that maybe not all your listeners will be familiar with is that, in the past decade, universities have spun up what are called tech transfer offices. And these exist their whole job, this whole squad of people, their job is to make sure that the intellectual property, most often the patentable inventions that come out of all the research efforts happening across all of these sorts of fabulous international research. university departments are then carefully and appropriately considered for commercial exploitation, right at meaning that like, they will license out, they will get patents and then license them out to commercial organizations who hopefully will will pay them a lot for it. Right? You know, there are examples like I believe the original PageRank patent for Google search, I believe, was held by Stanford, because it came out of the research they did there. And there's a lot more examples where I worry that if we aren't careful, there's an opportunity for us to be chasing, essentially, this research driven approach, that then looks like something of a cash cow to these offices, which I will say, often have a very, like, broad, and faculty guided approach to this stuff. They do listen to the professors who often do want this stuff to be made available more broadly. But there is going to be a hammer and a nail problem where it is your job to make money off this intellectual property. Your you exist to do this, and you are going to be driven towards decisions that are not necessarily about what is the sort of broadest best use of this research. But instead, like, how can we help a commercial provider sort of built fences around this research so that we can get the rewards of it and all of this is, you know, I want to make sure that we think about it as a holistic thing where we need to worry about whether or not that research gets into the classrooms and actually has the effect it was designed to have, even if there are some people making money along the way, for good causes. I think that's another thing that we sometimes the trap that we get sometimes fall into is, well, you know, maybe not some of the larger research universities, but but some of the ones that are not like, oh, well, Harvard, Harvard has a huge endowment, they don't need the money. Like, I don't have to feel bad, I can feel bothered by them getting the money. But lots of universities, obviously will do good things with the money they make from licensing that IP. But I think, on the same reason, on the author side, like, look, I don't have anything against paying authors and their heirs for the rights to the books that we want to use to teach middle school in high school and English to kids. But the concern you sometimes have is well, but don't we want more access to these materials, isn't the policy theory behind all of these intellectual property rules, that we should be finding a way to both incentivize the creation of these things, but also their distribution, also, that we should all read all the books that we should all get to use all the inventions, and that we are nibbling around the edges to create incentives, but that the goal is access as much as it is creation in a lot of these ways. I think that's a thing that we can lose track of around the edges of some of these rights, where we start to think of them as something that because the system was designed to provide incentives, it inherently will drive the right incentives. And you know, patenting is good. trademark registration is good. copyright registration and enforcement is good. And I think, look, I also do this for a living, like, there are a lot of ways in which that's important and good and the right thing for the organization that holds the patents and for society at large. But it isn't a given. And for edtech, I worry about as we focus on these research driven products, we make sure that that research actually does stay sort of open and available to all that's important.

Alexander Sarlin: 56:55

That's an interesting take. It's really interesting to look at. Yeah, signs of reading is very hot right now and for all the right reasons. But it would be a really interesting moment, if some of the universities that sort of have been the pioneers of that start to say, Oh, you're doing a science of reading program home? Well, that's our idea, you know, that part of it?

Evan Hill-Ries: 57:15

I mean, and I've had people ask us about like, oh, well, what about trademarking the science of reading? That's also tricky, because I think we have ourselves at amplify have a hit podcast called The Science of reading. But it's also like, like I said, that's what it says on the tin, we're describing the science of reading. And so the protection of that is not something where I get to stop other people from talking about the science of reading, when they are talking about what science leads to better reading. It just isn't how the law works, or how it should work. I think where we're really driving towards there is what actually, we need to protect, to provide incentives without harming what we actually can go out there and foster as a culture and of innovation across organizations across schools. And so yeah, the science of reading one, I will say, just as an aside, the fact is a lot of the science of reading stuff we're talking about, has been researched from long enough ago, that even if they'd gotten a patent on it, it would have expired, like we are behind the field here, guys, like we are building products that are sort of embodying so called Science of reading from 20 years ago, like this is not all of it. There's certainly awesome, interesting new research happening. But we also have not actually brought the research of decades ago in fully into the classroom yet. So there's there's that silver lining that, you know, if as an edtech industry, we lag the state of the art long enough, then the patents stopped being a problem, but we should want better for ourselves. Right,

Alexander Sarlin: 58:54

Trevor? Really quickly. I'm curious your take about for both of these issues as edtech matures as a field, do you expect more patent litigation from either big tech companies or research institutions?

Trevor Skene: 59:06

Yeah, well, like Evan just said, that's a really great point. So the one good thing about patents, it's almost like when they set up the patent process, they almost like learn from the mistakes of the copyright. Or maybe they did it intentionally, because it's easier to monopolize. But like patents were literally designed to prevent monopoly because it like you said earlier, a utility patent is only good for 20 years. And they do that, like you said earlier so that after that 20 years, it's free and open. Anyone can make use or sell that innovation that's described in detail. That's probably part of the reason why they make us describe in very clear and fine detail so that once it's free and open to the public, there's no disputes about the fact that this concept is completely free and open for use now, but one of the interesting things that could create this problem that you're talking about is people have It's a shock to no one people have figured out a way around that concept. And essentially what people will do is, you know, even if they've patented a general concept to start, they'll file additional add on patents that cover basically all the caveats of that. So if you think about it, if a patent is good for 20 years, again, using the lead pencil example, if you build the base of the lead pencil, and it's just a basic lead pencil, and then you do an add on patent five years later, that has a removable eraser that now you could add lead in. Well, now that patent technically has an additional five years on top of the original one. So now 20 years down the road, everyone can use the baseline lead pencil that no one uses anymore, right. So it's like, that's the way they kind of layer it on top and extend the protection of whenever they innovate, and they go, Okay, this is the next big thing that everyone's gonna want to use on our patent that and get the 20 years on that that starts way down the line after that original pieces is allowed. So there could be the potential for some of that issue in the industry, if, and, of course, who's going to leverage that more than the large companies. So if the large companies do come in and kind of get a foothold and decide they want to do that, or the university TTS, I could tell you, for, you know, we work with colleges and universities, as well as everyday inventors. And I've talked to hundreds of different, you know, universities and TTL offices over the last year. And like you said, in the large schools, it's about making money. And there were in all of schools is about making money. But in the larger schools, like you said, it's a little bit easier to see a Stanford or Harvard, somebody like that, that's like you said, well endowed, they're somebody that probably doesn't need that money. But when you talk to smaller d3 schools, or people like that, I'll talk directly to the person whose job it is, like you said, to make that money for the university to keep moving forward the process of, of patenting, and I can't tell you how many conversations I had with people who literally said they have to make judgment calls on which inventions to patent because they don't have enough money to patent all the ideas that are coming out. And their budgets are so tight, and every decision they make hinges on the fact of will we be able to make money off of this moving forward. So in some of those smaller schools, it almost becomes a part of their, you know, internal economy and how they keep the lights on at the end of the day, obviously, I don't think any universities are really struggling as much as maybe they say, but that's an interesting thing that kind of almost builds the society where some universities may be incentivized to say, hey, we need to make the money off of this because it literally funds our next patents in our next things moving forward. So it's definitely an issue that almost may even occur out of necessity for some of those other schools that don't have the kind of resources or funding to cover wherever their next innovation protection is going to come from. So it's a very interesting thing to look at. And like you said, almost every school has a TTL office now. And if they don't, they're in the process of setting up their TTL offices. And a lot of schools now are have an emphasis on entrepreneurship and stuff like that for students and faculty. And part of that reason is because universities realize that if they can kind of scoop up all this IP and use it as almost running the university as like a business on one side licensing and selling IP. And on the other side, kind of bringing in money through, you know, obviously traditional means that creates more of an opportunity for them to, you know, especially in a place where education through COVID kind of took a hit. A lot of people went digital and things like that they lose some of those traditional revenue streams they have, they're even more incentivized now to try to, you know, license that IP. So it will be interesting to see where that goes. And I mean, I guess it's kind of anybody's guess right now, it really comes down to what that university stands for. Are they trying to make money? Or do they need to make money? Are they more interested in kind of doing things for the better good, and

Alexander Sarlin: 1:04:17

we'll say yet another moral quandary for the university world. I think they're facing a lot right now. It's been such a fascinating conversation, I've learned a huge amount about everything legal under the sun. I want to wrap up here with two questions that I asked to every guest and I'm really curious about your answers. And I want to start with you. What do you see as the most exciting trend in the EdTech landscape right now that you think our listeners should keep an eye on?

Evan Hill-Ries: 1:04:43

So many How To Choose? But no, I think the most interesting trend is the extent to which we are at a little bit of a crossroads, I think post COVID What technology tools teachers find and use themselves versus what tools are sort of given to them by the district and sort of dictated to them, and finding the right ways where I think we have been in a wild west in the past, were very tech forward, probably younger teachers have brought tools in, by just sort of signing up and putting their kids data in the, into the tool. And saying, like, this seems like a fun tool to use, I'll use this. And I think a lot of like state privacy regulations and federal privacy regulations, too, are making that rightfully more of a process, something that the districts pay more attention to it and and think more carefully about. But I think there is still that cycle to go through that we have seen a little bit on the consumer side, over the years, but I don't think has really gone all the way through on the teacher side, where you have on the one hand of this big enterprise sales model of I have a tool, can I get this district or even this whole state to adopt it, and the processes that go into that, and the benefits that come from that kind of rigorous adoption process, and then that common usage across the whole state, or the whole district, versus the ability of teachers to actually go in there and say, Wait a second, like what really works for me and what seems to work for my kids and my room this year, this particular group of kids is this other tool that I can find and have access to, but I can't for my group, 25 kids actually run through the entire procurement process, run all the way up the flagpole. And you're seeing a bunch of interesting companies sort of try to build tools that glom on to the district approved thing or the district adopted thing, and get give flexibility to the teacher to do it their way. With the insert of increasing penetration of Google Classroom, you're seeing a lot of these tools work on top of that. Places like Pear Deck that have basically built themselves as we help you use Google's tools better, are really, you know, seem like small beer, sometimes when you're just like, Okay, well, like, instead of this way of using Google Slides, you're letting me use it this way. But one thing I've come to appreciate over the years working in edtech, is that sometimes it is the tiny changes that make all the difference for helping the teacher get through the day and get better results for their students. And so while you see, sometimes people will dismiss a given startup idea as like, that's not a company, that's just a feature, right? Like, you're just telling me like, oh, like, Instagram will just build that. And that will, then you won't have a market anymore. Or maybe you're one hope for success as the startup is to get acquired by Instagram, because they're the only ones who are going to want that because it requires the rest of their platform to work. I think there's a number of those moments and then tech that have come for us and will and more will come in the future, where the question of like, are you building a feature or a company has sort of important existential answers for a given startup, but have as an ecosystem, I think also really matters in terms of how we equip teachers with the best possible tools for their classroom. Because I don't, it can't be all on them to just figure it out and cobble it together. We saw that go well, and not so well during COVID. But now we have districts being a little more open to the idea of more flexible classroom tools. And I think we are in general, that is all a long winded way of saying like COVID changed a lot of things. It really disrupted our instructional models, for good and for bad. But I think it has really cracked open the field in the sense that schools and districts now and parents that ultimately drive a lot of the decision making there have a much broader appreciation of what kinds of tools can or should be used in the classroom. We've sort of shifted the Overton Window, if you will.

Alexander Sarlin: 1:08:52

Yeah, I think that top down, bottom up, tension is real and exciting. I mean, in a perfect world, it can actually be beneficial that tools can enter the classroom through either angle, because there's benefits to both sides. In a real world, sometimes they're in direct conflict. And you have a lot of issues where just the kind of situation you call out or teachers may want to use a tool that's separate from the district approved one but can't get it authorized or you know, where the district wants teachers to be all using the same tool because that has benefits in terms of data sharing, and, you know, aggregation and privacy, but the teachers just don't want to do it. It's an open field. Now, I'm excited to see where that goes. Trevor, what do you see as the most exciting trend in the EdTech landscape, and I know that you run an edtech company, but I'm curious how you see, from your perspective, a trend that listeners should keep an eye on.

Trevor Skene: 1:09:46

One of the things that I think is really interesting is kind of the certification programs and things like that, that people are doing now because you see, you know, someone like an Elon Musk who puts more weight into the skills that you can show that You have as a person over just a degree, somebody like that he would hire somebody off a certification, if they can show they have a skill more, so he wouldn't just automatically value a master's degree over that. So we might be moving into a world especially like you guys said, COVID shook a lot of things up. And we're moving to a world where, you know, things like certifications actually could mean a lot. And to some degree, like I said, to some companies, it might mean as much as a degree and cost a lot less. And you see, companies like Google doing that. See a lot of universities kind of spinning those out as like side certificate programs and things you could do. LinkedIn does a lot of them. And it's a lot of interesting ways that people, it's also really helpful for older people that maybe didn't go to college or went to college a long time ago. And now they want to shift careers. And it gives them the opportunity to learn a new skill and show that they have this skill and get hired in a different space without having to co spend another What 6080 100 grand to try to go get another degree to do that, which for a lot of people isn't doable. So I think in the EdTech space, it's certification programs, it's really interesting to me, and then in the kind of innovation space in general 3d printing, and kind of additive manufacturing is a really interesting concept. Because now, you could have something that fits on your desk at home and 3d print apart or prototype on your own. And that's something that really kind of changes the landscape for a lot of people who, you know, have an idea that as they're trying to visualize it, as they're trying to prototype in the past, they have to go find a manufacturer, somewhere that's willing to do small parts individual one off parts for them to test. And that's something that they would charge a lot of money for, because it's not, you know, conducive for the for the manufacturer. So 3d printing, not only can it create parts that couldn't exist before, but it's a great way to be able to kind of prototype at home and kind of innovate on the fly. And that's a really cool thing for society as a whole

Alexander Sarlin: 1:12:01

love that the alternative credential system on the rise definitely agree with that. And 3d printing is seems like a trend for inventors, and for innovation, the idea that you can sort of print on your own, it's really fascinating. Last Last question, I know we're running a little over time here, heaven, what is one blog, or book or resource that you would recommend for somebody who would want to learn more about any of the topics we talked about today,

Evan Hill-Ries: 1:12:25

there's two things I'll recommend from my days of, of teaching. One is a book called copyrights highway by Paul Goldstein, I think it's a really good and balanced if, you know, it is from a few years ago, so it has a all of these books are inherently of their time. But I used to assign it as the sort of first reading in my copyright for undergrads class, because I think it gives a really sort of good and, and balanced take on why we have copyright how we got here. And so if that is of the three rights, we talked our way around the one that you think is sort of most relevant or applicable to what you're trying to do with your startup. I think that's a good place to start. I think the other resource, I will say, it has fallen by the wayside, and also maybe destroyed our democracy in the meantime. But Twitter is still a great place for law professors, law professors do a good job at Twitter, in my in my estimation, and they following a few of those, it's a much more accessible way into some of the current issues that they're thinking through than actually sort of picking up on volume of a law review and trying to read it. So some follows I'd recommend our people like James grim woman, Rebecca TouchNet, Alexandra Roberts is great on trademarks, Amanda Levandowski, full disclosure, former student of mine, but now an academic in her own right and great thinker. And I think that following the follows, right, and seeing like who those people engage with on Twitter, can lead you to an ecosystem of I think, really interesting exchanges that still happen there in a way that I think was, you know, is sometimes refreshing. I think most of the news you hear about Twitter is either random sort of corporate m&a nonsense that they're going through right now. Or ways in which people's experience on it is sort of more or less toxic. And I will pitch like legal academic Twitter is is by and large, non toxic in my experience, and actually surprisingly accessible.

Alexander Sarlin: 1:14:26

Excellent. We will put the links to all of those people and to copyrights highway in the show notes for the episode. Trevor, how about you? What resources would you recommend for people who want to learn more about any of our topics?

Trevor Skene: 1:14:37

Well, first, I want to say I think the Twitter thing is a really good point. When people think about Twitter, they think about like you said the headlines they see, but Twitter is actually about whatever community you cultivate, you're only seeing what you follow. So to your point, if somebody wanted to just see IP related topics, if they follow people that only talk about that, that's all they're gonna see on their timeline. So it's really about what they want to cultivate. I think that's a really cool idea. From my standpoint, obviously, I'm going to say if you want to learn about IP basics and stuff, you could go to patent hacks.com. We cover all of that stuff. But if you want others topics in that space, if you want to look at, let's say, kind of the litigation and what's going on at the government level, there's a great company called engine, I forget what their website is right off the top of my head, but you could sign up for their emailing list and be kept up to date with what they're doing and trying to help stuff on the actual government level. Then you have companies like IP watchdog, who also kind of is a pioneer in that kind of IP Education State. And then you also have, there's a new organization out that's in nonprofits called us Intellectual Property Association. So the US IPA, and they are on a mission to create each individual state will have their own and I'm going to be part of launching the Pennsylvania branch, but every state so it'll be whatever the acronym is for your state like pa IPA. Those will all be nonprofits. They're all dedicated to educating people on all things IP. So yeah, between those, you could probably find a lot of things and answer some of your questions and give you access to resources that you might need

Alexander Sarlin: 1:16:08

some suggestions all around. And again, we will have links to all of those resources in the show notes for this episode. Thank you so much. This has been a really fascinating conversation on a topic that I came in feeling very overwhelmed by. We have Evan Hill-Ries deputy counsel for amplify in New York and Trevor Skene, who is the CEO and co founder of patent tax. Thanks for being here. Both of you.

Evan Hill-Ries: 1:16:34

Thanks for having me.

Trevor Skene: 1:16:35

Thank you for having us. Really enjoyed it.

Alexander Sarlin: 1:16:37

Thanks for listening to this episode of Ed Tech insiders. If you like the podcast, remember to rate it and share it with others in the tech community. For those who want even more Ad Tech Insider, subscribe to the free ed tech insiders newsletter on substack.

People on this episode

Alex Sarlin

Host

Ben Kornell

Host