#420 – An Interview with Joe Long

Chris Gammell: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Released December 16th, 2018. Episode 420. An interview with Joe Long. Welcome to the Amp Hour. I'm Chris Gammell of Contextual Electronics. And I'm Joe Long from Hackerboxes. Hey Joe, how are you doing? I'm doing great. How are you? Good, good. It's good to talk to you. We first met in person at least. We had talked on email once, but we met actually at DEF CON this year. You were actually at the vendor area there. So what were you doing while you were there?

Joe Long: Yeah, we were doing a lot of things at DEF CON this year. Met a lot of people. I really liked your blimp badge with all the million LEDs on it. So yeah, we were there in the vendor space. We had several of the prior Hackerboxes. I think we had 11 or 12 that we were selling. And we were selling a badge. And we were also sponsoring the hardware hacking village and the soldering village. We had made up a bunch of kits and soldering things. And little badges and little Ethernet taps and things. So we were having a great time there, as always.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that is like dialed into the community there. That seems like. It seems like. So for people who don't know, what is Hackerboxes?

Joe Long: Okay, Hackerboxes is predominantly a monthly subscription service. So a lot of people are familiar with things like Loot Crate and Birchbox and Blue Apron, where you get some stuff in the mail in a box every month. So it's kind of physical stuff, whereas we're used to having things on the internet in this day and age. So our stuff that you get, though, instead of being toys or food is. I was going to say, is it edible, the stuff that you guys are selling? Not usually, but they're items related to electronics and hardware hacking. So, you know, electronics kits and tools and, you know, supplies that electronics hobbyists would like. Like, you know, solders, breadboards, jumper wires, alligator clips, all that sort of thing. So, you know, the sort of thing that you can. Normally, a lot of us buy these things on eBay or Amazon. But, you know, to just have have them curated and pop up in your mail every month. And, you know, of course, we get a little bit of economies of scale. So that's predominantly what we are as a subscription service. And, you know, there's an educational component to that. So when the stuff comes in each box, there's generally a project or two in there that we kind of hint at how to do it. And, you know, give some links and then people work on them together and share questions and things like that. And, you know, and then we also sell past boxes. So, like, you know, we generally have them going back about a year. You can buy, you know, the hacker box from four months ago or something like that. And then we have some very specific things like, you know, workshops that are like we have a thing called a starter workshop. That's like an introduction of electronics. And it comes with a soldering station and a multimeter. So for people that are just kind of digging in.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's great. That's great. It is. So it is specifically targeted kind of at the security industry as well or just kind of broadly, broadly targeted?

Joe Long: Not particularly. We do some things that are that are somewhat security oriented just, you know, because our name is Hackerboxes in like the broadest sense of hacking, meaning, you know, trying to do more with less and, you know, getting in getting into things and figuring out what they do and using them for other things and expanding their application. Sort of like in the, you know, the MIT Tech Model Railroad concept of hackers from, you know, this Stephen Levy book. But, you know, because of that name, we also, you know, because we do things like DEF CON where we're, you know, we always take the chance when we can to touch on things related to security and security research and things like that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that makes sense. And I really like that, too, about the, you know, sometimes when you just have something show up, you know, like with like the I work with people who are getting started in electronics, too. And a lot of times they're like, well, what's my first project? I don't know what it should be. And when instead it's like, well, here's some stuff and here's some general ideas, it's much better to have that in front of you. And then you can use that as a starting point. You know, you start to investigate, well, what is all this stuff in the first place? Where where do I actually go from here? So, like, what is the are people normally getting started kind of with Hackerboxes?

Joe Long: You know, we kind of run the gamut of sort of skill and experience level. We certainly have some members that are relatively new. I mean, we kind of say it's not it's not a completely an introductory thing. You know, we we kind of jokingly say, you know, if it's your first time at Hackerboxes, you have to solder. Like if it's your first time at Fight Club, you have to fight. And, you know, people have said, oh, well, could you make a Hackerbox that doesn't have soldering? And I was like, if if that accidentally happened, we would we would change that box so that it had something in it you had to solder. So, you know, and we right, you know, but for one thing we do, I think, you know, a lot of electronics, the way we all learned it in school is it was very theoretical and mathematical. So we try to take that out of things, you know, whereas we just kind of because that's what I think is great about projects like the Arduino project. You know, basically people just get a board and plug it in and just start going at it. And I think that sometimes that's a lot, a lot cooler, you know, than trying to sit there and, you know, figure out the matching impedance first before you can even go in the lab. So a lot of our stuff is like, here's a bunch of stuff. This is how you solder it together. This is what you can do with it. And of course, you know, we're hopeful that people will do that and then maybe back it up a step and be like, well, hold on. Why does that work? Or more of the case, why does it sometimes not work? So, yeah. So, you know, we've all been we've all been there.

Chris Gammell: So, yep. Well, yeah, and exactly. And the, you know, if someone is like, hey, I'm really interested in electronics, you're saying that they're gonna have to solder. That's fine. I think some people probably use that. That's like a barrier for them. But it sounds like you you push through that. But then it's like if someone says, I'm interested in electronics, where do I start? And you say and you pull out a calculus textbook. It's like, oh, OK, now what? You know, like that's that's a tough. But it's like you said, like that's how a lot of school school schools kind of start things out. And so instead of having the hands on. I mean, people who listen to the show will not be surprised that I you and I jive very well on this kind of thing. So there is nothing surprising here for people listening to the show before. But it's I like I like the experiential.

Joe Long: Exactly. And that's what to me, that's the hobby part of it. That's the, you know, getting into it and having fun. And, you know, I mean, I'm I'm an engineer. I used to teach engineering. I, you know, I I'm all about the theoretical part, too. But I think that, you know, the theory is meaningless without the practice. And I think the hobby is actually having fun and doing stuff. Not many people do math as a hobby. Not that that doesn't happen. But and I'm really fond of saying, you know, making the analogy that if you if you had to be a mechanical engineer and be able to, you know, analyze strains and temperature curves and all these things before you could drive a car. No one would drive a car. That's that's not real life.

Chris Gammell: You know, that's right. Yeah, right, right. Well, so let's step back a little bit. So you started engineering, but like take us up to the point where you started doing hacker boxes. How did you get to where you are? You were born on it.

Joe Long: When I was born, I was very young and I was really very wet. Sorry.

Chris Gammell: So you were practicing engineer for a long time, right?

Joe Long: Right. Yeah. So I yeah, I was kind of one of these people who was like kind of a techie my whole life. I mean, way back in the 80s, you know, I was an Apple II person on BBS is all the time and all that sort of thing, you know, pre web. And then, you know, I studied engineering and I was an engineer for a long time. And then I took a diversion in my career for a while. Not exactly a diversion, but I kind of branched out into into a patent law, which is, you know, actually, in a way, just another aspect of engineering just has a legal aspect to it. And I kind of missed working on things. And, you know, I was still doing things as a hobby and, you know, working with my clients on the technical aspects of their legal problems. But, you know, I really like the hobbyist aspect. And so, you know, I did this idea just popped into my head one day about doing a subscription box. And so that kind of started as like, you know, it started as a hobby. It was extension of my, you know, even though I am a licensed engineer and I've done electrical design work as a living. And when I was when I was working almost entirely only in patent law, doing electronics was almost like a hobby. So an extension of my hobby was let's get these kits together. And part of the idea was driven by just working with some people and, you know, in the maker community and noticing that, you know, despite some really great resources for getting toys and stuff that, you know, the parts we needed to do our hobbyist work. There are times when you're like, oh, I just need a 10K potentiometer. And it's like, you know, you don't want to wait two weeks and pay $8 in shipping to get a 50 cent part shipped. And I was like, so it originally started with me thinking, oh, let's make a club like a buyer's club where we all build up our parts catalog. And it, you know, it grew a little from there. Right. Yeah, exactly. To build up the lab you're saying. It grew a little from there because I basically, you know, realized when we started digging into it that, you know, people didn't want to just get like a, you know, a stack of resistors. And, you know, they wanted the each box to be more of like, well, you know, what can I do with it? So, so we kind of, it's still, it's still something between those two things. It's, you know, there, there are still just supplies and stuff to put in your junk box that come in the box. But, you know, there's also usually sort of an application or a theme to every month's box. Got it.

Chris Gammell: Well, let's walk through, let's walk through one of the boxes because that's kind of interesting. And, you know, like what, what people would open up and see in there, because it seems like there's, there's multiple projects, but you've probably seen what people actually do with them as well.

Joe Long: Like, yeah, well, and that's, that's, what's really interesting. And that's part of that, where I said that, you know, it runs the gamut because, you know, for, for beginners, you know, for people that are just kind of like getting into the hobby, you know, they seem to just do exactly what we say you can do, you know. And, you know, and, and sometimes not, you know, are not even able to pull that off because they'll short something out or something or work out or, you know, they'll be missing a certain thing that they might need to make it happen. But, you know, they'll just kind of jump in and get going on it. But there are other people, you know, the more advanced people might get it and be like, oh, you know, I already have. You know, like for example, in the, in the most recent box that shipped, there was a, some little audio amplifier boards that use the LM3D6. Well, you know, people that have been doing electronics for a while have a bunch of different LM3D6 boards and circuits laying around. So there are probably plenty of people that looked at that and they were like, well, yeah, I already have one of those. And they just threw it in their box, you know? So, and there are certain things that are meant to just be thrown in the box. Like for a few months, we just included like every imaginable different size of shrink tubing and, you know, in, in, in little, like, you know, 20, 20 item bags and things like that. Oh, that's nice. The people that are on the newer end of the spectrum are like, what am I supposed to do with these rubber tubes? You know, because they're working at it like, you know, in a, in an analogy we use a lot. So on one end of the spectrum, you have a thing that's like, you know, a model car kit. So you buy a model car kit that makes a, you know, a 74 Camaro or whatever, and it only makes that Camaro. It doesn't have extra wheels in it. Right. If you, if you have extra parts, you're, you're doing something real wrong.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. Right.

Joe Long: So, so we say at one end of the spectrum, there's the, there's the model car kit model where all it does is make that car. And if you want to try to make an airplane out of it, you're going to be in big trouble. You might as well just get out a block of wood and start over. Right. And on the other end of the spectrum, there's, there's, there's Lego where, you know, a Lego kit can be used to make whatever it makes like a pirate ship. But you could also use those same exact blocks and make a spaceship. Um, and that really what you probably do is both. You get it and you build what's on the cover maybe, but then you throw them in your box and you use them for later things. And we say that, you know, hacker boxes is a little more on the Lego end of the spectrum. Meaning if, you know, when you get the box very rarely, is it something where you just put all the stuff together and they all go into one thing and do something, you know? So, you know, and we have had comical things like that shrink tubing thing where, you know, where we get, just get a bunch of people that are like, I can't figure out where to put the, the rubber tubes in my, in my, whatever the project main project was that month. It was like, no, you just put them in your, in your, in your supply box. Right. So, um, but yeah, so, you know, and it's pretty cool. Like what we really, like, we have a whole bunch of like filters, like kind of like mental tests that we run before we green light a design. And one of them is, well, this appeal to lots of different people. Like, well, will, will a new person or someone with less experience or, or even someone who just wants an easy way out, just be able to put something together and use it. And on the other hand, is this going to be of interest to someone who's already done this five times and just wants to have another one to keep on hand, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And it's cool too. I mean, like, I like, I really liked that idea of like just having the extra stuff in there because I was, I was remarking on Twitter earlier this week of like, like, why do, why do people like, uh, unboxing videos? Right. Like we see all these people like do mailbag, like Dave, my cohost has been a lot of mailbags and people seem to love those. And I watch other channels and like, I love them too. And I was just, I was perplexed why, why I like it. And ultimately it's because I'm building up a mental library. And what you're talking about is almost building up just a part library and like building this thing out. You don't know, you don't, you need this thing until you really need it. You know, you all become hoarders eventually. And so you're kind of just help helping feed into that a little bit, but in, in a positive way.

Joe Long: And, you know, and, and on that note, like we, um, uh, uh, you know, our, um, our online, uh, material, we call them the box guides. They're basically just like information about each box. You know, we've had like, I think it's now it's, it's around a half a million views on those. And as much as I would love it, love it to be the case, we do not have a million subscribers. So, you know, what that tells me, tells me is that there's a lot of people that look at these things just to be like, Hey, what are these guys building? You know? And I think that's a, you know, that's a great thing about this sort of stuff. You know, that's why we put that stuff out, uh, you know, to, to be completely public. Cause it's, you know, it's, it's such an amazing sharing opportunity to, you know, I mean, like we've had boxes where one of the items in it, we're like, well, you know, what do you, what can you do with this thing? Well, watch this, you know, EV blog about, uh, uh, um, about what's going to do. What you can do with, I think particular, we linked when we did a FPGA, uh, board because there's, uh, David made some really great videos about what is an FPGA and what do they do? Cause you know, so we were just like, so watch these videos. So, you know, we kind of link out to lots of other stuff and people link to our stuff and it's, uh, you know, it's a really good, uh, sharing. Yeah, exactly. That's great. Well, let's walk through some of these, uh, so, so you, you do all your documentation on Instructables, which is cool. Um, and so you said the last one was audio and I'm just kind of like going down the list here. So audio, and then before that was Jumbotron, I assume that's lighting up a big sign, uh, or something. Yeah, that's right. We had, we had, uh, some of the little panels that are used to make up the big Jumbotron screen. So there are a little, uh, 32 by 64 LED panels and then, uh, a driver circuit and a little, um, kind of game controller that you can use with that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And then before that was electro chem, uh, that's like, Oh, it looks like a bunch of sensor breakouts and things like that.

Joe Long: That's right. Yeah. And actually this was somewhat inspired by the, um, uh, I don't know if you saw it at a DEF CON 26, the, uh, Florida man's, um, breathalyzer badge. Oh, I did see that. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. So we were looking at that and someone was like, Hey, you should make a hacker box with a breathalyzer in it. And I was like, that's good idea. Yeah. So, so you can kind of see from, you know, that was, uh, that was a month. Basically that came up just shy of two months right after. Yep. So you can see how long our cycle is, right. Cause you know, that means that the, we, you know, what we were designing in, in July, late July, early August, we were able to, uh, you know, get that out November. Cause that's a, that's a question. A lot of people always ask us is, um, you know, if you, if I give you an idea right now, uh, you know, when, when, when will I see it? Well, you know, maybe like four months from now. So. You know, I mean, unless there's, unless, you know, there's already a blockage in the pipeline. And that actually brings up an interesting point that I'd love to share that, um, nowadays, most of our box ideas at the, at least at their very initial origin come from a member and public suggestions. Like, so we'll get, someone will, you know, send us an email or we'll be talking to someone and they'll say, Hey, you should use a box that has a, you know, for example, breathalyzer circuit in it. And we'll be like, Oh, that's a neat idea. And then we'll just kind of let it sit around and yeah. And roll around in the brain for a stew up. Yeah, exactly. And we have a big list. We keep whenever someone shoots us an email, you know, there are some people that are really prolific and they'll send an email with like eight different ideas in it. And, you know, and of course, because lots of people are sending in ideas of those eight, usually six of them will already be on the list somewhere, but sure. Right. Well, how they might fit together too. Exactly. Yeah. And so, you know, so, so, so the initial ideas are often, you know, now, like we, you know, we, we, we barely even have the, the ability to even come up with ideas anymore because, you know, basically any idea we could have is already flying at us from the public, which is amazing. You know, we, yeah, that's great. We love that. I know, uh, you know, a lot of people have, have asked me at times, they're like, can you guys keep coming up with these ideas? And it's like, we, if we, if we wanted to not have any more ideas, we couldn't do that. Like they just, you know, they just, you know, just so, so much good stuff is, is, uh, is, you know, out there, great projects and people sharing cool ideas, you know, like you said, one big happy family,

Chris Gammell: right? That's great. That's great. I mean, and looking at these, uh, different boxes too, it, it seems like there's, uh, it's either like there's a box where there's like one big item and then there's a bunch of small things around it. Like you said, like the tubing or, or, you know, other breakouts and wires and push buttons, stuff like that. How are you actually determining, uh, I guess you don't have to reveal your numbers, but like, you know, like you do have a limit on how much stuff you can put in there. So like, how are you determining how much stuff to put in and,

Joe Long: and how are you sourcing this stuff too? I guess. Well, um, yeah, that's a really great question. We actually, it's, and it's really complicated actually. The, uh, it's a, there's a, uh, there's a, a, what would you, what would a mathematician call it? A multivariable constraint system going on where there's, you know, there's, yeah, there's, there's the constraint. You're trying to make a

Chris Gammell: project, not just, not just maximize the amount of crap you put in a box. You're trying to make a

Joe Long: project first and foremost. Yeah. To some, to some extent. And, but in some boxes, there are, there are two, there are two kind of unrelated things that just, you know, that, or, you know, and maybe we connect them by a theme, but that was, that theme was after the fact it wasn't that we, you know, so, so like, for example, the, the lock sport box, which is incredibly popular, it has, uh, you know, uh, a practice lock, uh, one of those translucent locks in it. And then the set of lock picks, and then it has a bunch of electronics for making your own kind of, uh, demo secure, physical security system, you know, with like motion sensors and RFID input and things like that. Yeah. And those two things, while they are thematically related, they have, they have no connection to each other at all. Right. So, um, you know, I, I guess they do a little bit, but

Chris Gammell: you know, we, we just, uh, uh, yeah, I mean just generally, you know, hacker type, uh,

Joe Long: yeah. So sneakers type stuff, right? Right, right. So, yeah. But so as far as the, um, you know, the, the, the multivariable constraint problem, I said, you know, there are some that are, some of the, uh, constraints are very like they're, you know, that you would almost say they're easy because they're, they're, they're, they're firm physical constraints. And those are, you know, we, we, each box has to be under a pound so that we can ship it, uh, easily and cheaply. Oh, right. Um, it has to fit within like, you know, a general box shape, you know, which that's a little bit more flexible, but like, for example, we've had things we've wanted to do that were a little like longer. So like we, when we did a Yagi antenna, that box was a little longer. The one with the jumbotron was a little longer, but we can't really go over like 10 inches. Cause then we'd have to use a super thick box or a tube to, to store it. So there's, there's a volume constraint, like a, uh, like a physical dimensions constraint. There's a weight constraint, which are the weight constraint is a really hard one. Like there are projects we'd love to do that, but the weight constraint hits that. Um, and then obviously there's a budgetary constraint and then there's the, there's the educational, uh, requirement and then there's the coolness requirement. Right. So, and those last two, you know, we can, you know, there's a lot of flexibility there because, you know, if you, if you had the right, uh, I don't know what you want to call it, like a quantum physicist or someone doing, doing the discussion, you could make, you could make a toothpick incredibly interesting by talking about all the atoms in it. Right. So, so I mean, in electronics is kind of like that, like we can try to make anything as interesting and as cool as we want. And if it's not that cool, we can add a, you know, some cool swag, like a koozie or a wool hat. You know, if you look at some of our last couple of boxes had those and right. Yeah. We always have lots of stickers and stuff. So, you know, we can try to make anything kind of cool and we can try to make anything, you know, educational. So, so those are kind of easier constraints, but on the other hand, also we need to, you know, we like to have a very, very different themes. Right. Right. You don't want someone to open and be like, Oh, this again. Right. Exactly. And so, you know, in some of those things we can just never deal with, like, um, you know, like we need microcontrollers in most things, like, you know, probably two thirds of the boxes have a microcontroller in it. And probably half of those times we're just, we just use an Arduino type of thing, often a nano, cause they're small. Um, you know, and we've used the ESP32 a few times just cause you know, those are popular and you get a lot of, you get a lot for your money. So there are things like that that get repeated. You know, we have, obviously we have USB cables, you know, uh, probably every other month we throw in some sort of different USB cable, but for a while we were just using kind of the same USB cable over and over again. And then we were like, well, you know, let's make them a little bit of a nicer USB cable. Let's make them different lengths. Let's make, you know, one rugged and one light, like, you know, to kind of mix it up. Um, but you know, uh, but you know, so that's an example of something that's almost like an annoying requirement is that, you know, in, in, in an awful lot of boxes, we have to have DuPont jumper wires and things like ether, like, uh, USB cables and alligator clips. But in part, that's what the, uh, starter workshop is all about is, you know, we, we kind of have this, uh, sort of, uh, philosophy that we assume you have the sort of things that are in the starter workshop. So, you know, if there's a specific box. It's got like a power supply, it looks like some,

Chris Gammell: some diagonal cutters, a multimeter, uh, one of the soldering irons that, uh, will melt, burn your house down. Right. Um, yeah, the, yeah. So, so, you know, there are times where we're like,

Joe Long: oh, in this board, this box, oh, there's no room left or there's no weight left, but we're going to need some, uh, male to male jumper wires. And sometimes we're just like, well, you know, people probably have those. And if they don't, they'll go find something. So, you know, we can't, we can't put everything in all of them, you know, and, and actually we, we, we sort of avoid trying to do power supplies just because, you know, we do have a fair number of international subscribers and they can't use wall wart power supplies. We, you know, really shouldn't be shipping any sort of batteries plus they're heavy. So like we never really do power supplies. You know, we assume you've got those or you can figure out what they, you know, what they take and, you know, and that's, that's part of the, you know, some people might call it annoying, but it's also part of the educational part. So like with the jumbotron, you know, that thing needed a very specific type of power supply. And it's like the online conversations we saw from, you know, quite a few people that were like, well, you know, you, you say it has to have four amps. I don't understand what does that mean? You know? And so, well, now all of a sudden you have to learn about power supplies, you know, and that's,

Chris Gammell: that's a good thing. So that's right. Yeah. Yeah. And so, uh, it seems like a bit of community has sprung up around this. So what does that look like for you guys?

Joe Long: Yeah. There's, um, there's, there's quite a few people that, uh, every month, you know, almost seem to want to build it as fast as they can and then post a picture of it on the, you know, on, on the, um, instructable or on the, on Facebook. And yeah, I mean, there are a lot of, a lot of people out there and, you know, interestingly, a lot of the community is just really quiet. Like, you know, they'll occasionally shoot us an email or, you know, it's really funny when we get an email from someone and they're like, I've been getting hack boxes since box number three, you know, which at this point means they've gotten, you know, well over 30 of them. And, uh, you know, I just wanted to ask about yada, yada. And then, you know, we'll notice, Oh wow. That's the first time we've ever heard from this person. Like they'd been with us for that long. So yeah, so there's a lot of really quiet folks out there, but you know, there's a lot of people that have made videos and people that, you know, almost always post pictures of their projects. So, you know, it's, it's, it's a good community.

Chris Gammell: It's great. And I think that that shared context kind of matters too, of like being like working on the same thing. Right. So you can have, you know, it's like, if you say you have a problem with just a random web thing and you go to like a stack exchange, if it's a completely unique message, you're, you're screwed. You're not going to find anyone who's like, you know, either got to go and describe it and wait for responses and hope for all that stuff. If you find a, you have a completely similar problem because you're in a completely similar situation, that's a much better scenario in my

Joe Long: opinion for, for learning and for, for finding out. We definitely see that all the time, you know, and it even helps us because, you know, there's no way, no matter how good your, your QA department is, you can't test out every single scenario and every different type of laptop and every type of, you know, serial cable. So people email us and they'll say, Oh, I can't get this and this to work. And, you know, a day or two might go by where we're like, Oh, let's try to set that up. Let's see if we can make that break. And then someone else will email like with almost exactly the same question, but they'll have some other little clue in there that makes us realize like, Oh, that happens when you don't have the, when you're using the, you know, the five volt pin instead of the VN pin. Oh, now we see. And so the fact that a bunch of people are hammering on the thing all at once, it, you know, it, it's almost like a built-in, uh, you know, quality assurance, right? It's scary

Chris Gammell: because there's a bunch of people doing it, but it's also helpful because a bunch of people are

Joe Long: doing it. Yeah. And, you know, we have, you know, if you look through our, um, our box guides, there's always a little note at the beginning of the box guide, you know, there's like a, a list of what's in the box and then what other things you will need, you know, which usually just says sovereign iron, but sometimes it's like, you'll need this type of battery or you'll need a computer or something like that. And then we were always like, you know, you also have to have, you know, a good attitude and, and a spirit of like adventure because these, this doesn't always work. And the point, the point isn't necessarily to make it always work. You know, like if, you know, we,

Chris Gammell: you know, we, we, we sometimes have to say, I hope, I hope your project doesn't work. He likes saying that one a lot. So I will repeat that in his step. And I mean, I agree with that so much.

Joe Long: Like you learn so much more from that. I think that, you know, there, there is the, there is the desire to like, you know, to, to, to win. Right. But on the other hand, sometimes you, you almost, you almost learn more by losing. And I wanted to find, um, Oh, what is this here? Let's see. Yeah. So one of the things in our FAQ are what if I mess a project up and you know, it says the goal is the goal is progress, not perfection. You'd better plan on messing things up. We all do. Uh, the more components you burn up short out or otherwise mutilate, the more you're learning. The path to expertise in electronics is beset with smoking heaps of, of gear and dreadful tangles and spaghetti coating cables. You know, that's, that's,

Chris Gammell: that's the way it is. I mean, you know, it's until, you know, the smell of burnt capacitor,

Joe Long: you've not truly learned. Exactly. Yeah. You're being too safe if you're not, if you're not occasionally, uh, messing something up. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, what about that? I mean,

Chris Gammell: like on the safety side, are you guys worried about that for people getting started, things like that? I mean, it sounds like it's mostly USB power. I mean, we try to be really careful about just

Joe Long: giving the necessary warnings. I mean, you know, granted, you know, electricity can be kind of dangerous, but you know, we don't do any like super high, super high voltage step up. You know, we don't have a, uh, you know, and even things like, you know, we've done a few different things where we have relays, you know? And so, uh, of course it's obvious to the trained eye that, oh, I see, here's, um, you know, here's a board, uh, here's an ESP 32 board and in, you know, and a relay, I could use this to, uh, you know, wifi control my, my lamp. Well, you know, we always have a thing in there that's like, no, you better use it to wifi control your audio speaker, uh, hookup, you know, your line level voltage because something, something five volts, please. Exactly. Yeah. Unless you know what you're doing. And if you know what you're doing, you don't need to ask, you know, you don't ask us. Right. So it's, uh, you know, and, and, of course it's all kind of like, you know, use it your own risk sort of thing, but, you know, we try to take, take the risk out. I mean, you know, you know, ultimately what we want people to do is have a good experience and, and learn things, even if they completely botch up the project that, you know, they'll hopefully learn something from wondering why they botched it up. Right. But we don't want

Chris Gammell: anyone to hurt themselves. Of course, of course, of course. And so you, are you seeing people kind of combine past boxes together to do other new things? I mean, like it sounds like there, there's a lot of people doing the suggested project and then, but then they're taking it further.

Joe Long: Yeah, definitely. And we actually also suggest, uh, you know, a lot of times are, we'll kind of describe something simple you can do with what's in the box. And then we'll be like, you could also do something like this or this or this or this, or what else can you do? And just see what people come up with. And, you know, and it's awesome. People do really cool things. And, you know, and of course people that have been HackerBox members for a while, which a lot of people have, we have, you know, we have a lot of folks that have been members just for a long, long time. And, uh, they have all this, they have a whole bunch of HackerBox stuff now. So, you know, when they get something like, you know, like for example, the Jumbotron, you know, a bunch of people added the chemical sensors from the month before to that and made it so that, you know, so one guy had it so that the Jumbotron floated around in his pool and had to, uh, use the thermocoupler from the month before to measure the temperature of the water and show it on a big and, and just, and people just combine things like that all the time. And, um, and, you know, and it's, you know, and it's really neat. I mean, you know, to some extent it's, it's, it's kind of the point of it, right? I mean, it's kind of like what we're saying with that, that Lego model. Like if you, you know, if you get the, uh, the, the, the pirate Lego ship, you know, you, you better put some, uh, cowboys and police officers on there too. Right.

Chris Gammell: So I was, I'm actually, I'm headed, I'm headed back to my, my, uh, my hometown for the holidays and I will be specifically playing with the pirate Lego set with my nephews that I had as a kid. And so I'll be doing that. It'll be a pirate spaceship, of course, you know? Yeah. I have, uh, I have,

Joe Long: I have three sons that are, uh, the oldest one is seven and they are, uh, they, they love building things and they love Lego. So, you know, in, in, in my mind, that's what I mean. Are they getting into

Chris Gammell: the electronics side of things or, or, or is that a little bit? They're pretty, you know,

Joe Long: they're pretty young, but you know, it's kind of funny how they, you know, they, they all, you know, especially the seven and five-year-old, I mean, that less so with the three-year-old, but they, you know, they all already know like what an led is. And they, you know, if you, if someone were, if someone were to tell them like, Oh, watch out for that light, it might be hot. They would definitely be like, Oh, LEDs don't get hot. You know, it's like, they just,

Chris Gammell: you know, great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's the other thing I was thinking about earlier is that, you know, these kinds of things where, uh, you know, people getting started, a lot of the getting started resources, you know, and people credit Arduino and other things, Raspberry Pi, things like that. I see more and more engineers coming up and be like, yeah, that's how I started. That's how I get into it. You know, of course, before that there was, you know, anyone talking about the forest mims books and the five, five, five projects in there. And, you know, there's always these resources that are the beginner stuff that ultimately ends up flavoring a lot of, a lot of engineers experience over time, because that's, you get those, like I was talking about the dopamine hits, you know, like when you get that thing to light up, when you get the jumbo trying to show the pool, the pool temperature or whatever it is, it feels good. You know, that's great. Yeah. It's,

Joe Long: it's, it's, uh, you know, it's this awesome feeling of like mastery over the, over the physical world,

Chris Gammell: you know, like, Oh, look, I hooked some stuff up. I wheeled electricity. I'd bend it to my will.

Joe Long: Like, like for me, you know, back when I was younger, the, you know, I, I took a ham radio class when I was really young and it was like kind of my first exposure to electronics. But, you know, I often kind of explain that my, um, one of my really exciting things about electronics is, you know, when you're a little kid, you think your dad is God. Right. And I remember being like, probably like five and asking my dad, how a radio work and he couldn't explain it. And I was like, Oh my God, he doesn't even know how a radio works. It must be so hard. And I felt like I set my, I set my, uh, my goal on becoming like this, what in my mind as a five-year-old seemed to be like an insurmountable level of genius to be able to explain how a radio works, which of course, you know, now to me is an absurd, absurdly simple concept. I don't know, man. I still,

Chris Gammell: it's still pretty magical to me. Yeah. Well, I mean, but you know, the thing is though,

Joe Long: now we've got a, you know, I expect my son by the time he's 12 to be asking me what, you know, what's spread spread? Yeah. Right. Exactly. Exactly. You know, why, uh, what, you know, what's a, uh, you know, software-based radio versus a, uh, they do, they do tend to zoom right past something. Right. But yeah, exactly. Yeah. But it's, uh, you know, it's funny how something, something will just stick in your mind as like, Oh, that must be really important because people don't know it or that must be really tricky or it's almost like magic, you know, and then, and then it just, it just gets stuck. Whereas I think there are other people that look at things like, let's say for example, just like how FM radio works and they think, Oh, that's so mundane. There's one of those in every car. Why would I care about how that works? Right. So it just depends on what sticks, you know, like what, uh, so, so, I mean, one could argue from our educational mission that what we're trying to do is just get things to stick, like for people to mess around with these things and be like, Oh, I see how a signal can be represented as a list of numbers or a voltage or, Oh, that's interesting. And then, you know, who knows maybe 20 years from now, someone who did that will, you know, work on some next generation AI or something like that. And yeah, you know, we could only hope to be, uh, to be humbled to know that, you know, some people that bump into our product will be inspired by it. So, yeah, that's, I think that's the, the, the, the,

Chris Gammell: the goal of education in general. You, uh, you keep saying we, how big is the HackerBox's team?

Joe Long: Um, well, right at its, at its very core, like at its design core, it's only a, it's only a handful of people. Um, but we have a whole bunch of support things in the periphery. So like, for example, we, we pack so many boxes now that we, you know, we have a pretty large team of people that help us, um, put the boxes together. And some of those people are also, you know, interested enough in the box that they'll get one and play around with it. You know, some of them are just people that are, you know, like, you know, it's a fun way to make money to put stuff in boxes. They don't even really seem to care what it is, but so, you know, it's, it's always the gamut, but so, you know, we have a lot of folks in the, in the kind of the physical, um, I guess you would call it like fulfillment box fulfillment part of the business. Um, you know, we're, we're always trying to expand the, uh, the other areas. Um, you know, we're trying, trying to have more and more people do, uh, what we kind of internally jokingly call it like a, a guest box design, like where someone, you know, is like, Oh, I have an idea about this. And then we'll say, Oh, Hey, lay out the, the PCB and tell us what, yeah, well, not really celebrity. I mean, not that we'd be

Chris Gammell: opposed to that. I was thinking like, sorry.

Joe Long: Well, I would actually say that, uh, one cool thing that we did was we sponsored the, um, the badge life, uh, badge competition at FCon 26. And, uh, and, and, and, and we did it by giving, you know, uh, hacker boxes to all the different levels of winners. And there were many different levels. So lots of people got them, but, um, the, the overall winner, one of the prizes they got, which we were a little bit tongue in cheek about it, but we thought, no, let's see. We, um, we told part of the prize was that you could do, you could, you could design or contribute to a future hacker box. And it turns out that the person who won that has been, you know, we've had several phone calls now about, you know, some different things. And, uh, they've given us some input on, so, you know, they designed this beautiful badge. I don't know. Do you remember the Illuminati? I do. Oh,

Chris Gammell: that was a gorgeous one. Yeah. Yeah. I did not meet who that, I didn't meet who that was. And I know some people don't like their, I don't know if that was a, a non, nondescript, uh, personality doing

Joe Long: that, but I didn't meet them. It was, uh, I mean, I, you know, I, I know them as a person now, but you know, I, there, it, it only has their handle on it publicly. So I wouldn't say their name, but, um, yeah, it was a beautiful badge and it was very cool. And it was, uh, you know, it had like a nice backstory to it that it was like inspired by, uh, uh, uh, Nicholas Cage, I'm sure. An older family member who was a Mason. Yeah. Something like that. Or, uh, yeah. Or it was either that or Keanu Reeves. Yeah. Right. But, uh, yeah. So, uh, anyway, the, um, uh, uh, you know, so we've been talking to them now and they've been giving us some great ideas about some, some future projects. So you never know when, you know, these, these, you know, like I said, we, it's an internal name that we call them where it's like a guest, a guest designer. So,

Chris Gammell: you know, so that's kind of fun. Cool. Well, on the sourcing side of things, so like how, how are you normally sourcing the actual components? Are you mostly doing like an AliExpress Alibaba type thing? Or like, I mean, because we don't really know what the, I don't know what your, your quantities are. Like, I don't know how you're actually, you're not, you're not running down like micro center or something, right?

Joe Long: No, no, definitely not. The, uh, so we actually ran into a problem really early on, like around month three, uh, where if you go to, um, so most of the things that you see advertised on like AliExpress and even to some extent on Alibaba, they're, they're not the manufacturer, right? It'll, they'll make it look like it. They're like a listing agent. Yeah. Yeah. Or what they, I think, you know, they're in Shenzhen, they call them a trading company. So they're companies that you just, you know, you want something and they'll go buy it or, or, you know, they'll buy some stuff on spec and then sell them. But, um, generally for some specific thing. So let's just say some certain type of cable or some certain variant of like a, uh, or let's say Arduino nano board or something. There's a company that makes it. And there's really just one, even though like, it looks like a hundred different people sell it. Right. So, um, so, so if that company that makes it only has 300 in stock and you need 3000 of them, you're in trouble. Right. And then if they, if they're even like, well, we can run some for you, well, that's going to take a few weeks. And then if they, go to do that and then a week into it, they find out they can't get the, uh, you know, the AT mega chip for it. Cause they're just, they just can only buy 2000 of them right now. Then you're in trouble. Right. And so we realized that there's a real problem when you get into larger quantities, you can't just get on all the express and buy them. Right. It just doesn't work that way. So we, um, we actually have a, have a buyer that we work with, um, in, uh, in Shenzhen who, um, uh, basically there, you know how I told you that there's these kinds of interleaving, uh, multi-variable constraint type of things. Well, they work with us on those constraints to help us, you know, like we'll pick something out and they'll be like, well, we can't do that. And then we'll be like, well, you know, what about if we use this different type of, uh, interface? So actually the, the board that we're, uh, the, the, the box that we're putting together right now, we, you know, we had to go several rounds on that. And actually I don't want to talk about that one specifically, but so let me take a few steps back in the, the box that we did that had the Yagi antenna in it. It has a little USB, uh, wifi. It was 23, uh, called airwaves. So, uh, so the thing with that was we needed to, we needed a, an inexpensive, but high, you know, highly functional, small, um, USB, uh, wifi adapter that had an SMA connector. So that was vitally important because we needed to interface to several different antennas. So that box has five different antennas in it. Uh, and so we just, you know, so, and part of the point of the box was to experiment with how these different antennas, what the trade-offs were with, you know, omnidirectional, directional, you know, directional gain, the, you know, distance, things like that. So, um, so obviously it had to have an SMA connector. Well, you know, most little, you know, kind of commercial wifi devices and dongles don't have an SMA connector. So, you know, the, the antennas either integrated or, you know, it might be, uh, uh, yeah, it's like an onboard chip antenna or something like that. Exactly. So we, um, you know, so even, so, you know, I remember just, and I remember that, that one specifically, cause when we were going through the purchasing process on that, I was, uh, I was on, I was traveling. And so there was a lot of flipping open the laptop and like looking at different things that are, you know, half written in Chinese and, you know, pictures from some different angles and then, you know, having it cracked open so I could see what chip was in it. And, you know, and then kind of going around and around and around and, you know, getting one where, you know, okay, look, we're going to need them in two months. We're going to need this number of them. They have to fit this, this size weight and cost constraints. And, you know, and, and so having someone on the ground there, you know, obviously who speaks Chinese and knows all these different manufacturers is, is, it's just, it's just absolutely necessary. Like if we didn't, if we didn't have someone doing that, we would, we know we would be done. That's cool. That sounds like an interesting process. Or, or, you know, I'd be on a plane a lot and I don't speak Chinese. Right. You learn eventually. Yeah. Yeah. Although interestingly, my last name is the Chinese word for dragon. So I think sometimes when I deal with these Chinese companies, they're like, Oh, he's the dragon.

Chris Gammell: Uh, I would like you to please record that interaction next time and verify that with me. I, I, I, yeah, we'll see. Oh no, it's the dragon.

Joe Long: Well, that's been an ongoing joke for my life. Cause, uh, you know, when I was in college, I worked, um, and I know you and I both used to live in Pasadena, right? I used to work out there. Uh, I didn't never live there. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, uh, yeah. So when I was in college, I worked at a JPL and a, you know, which is obviously part of NASA. So you'd think, Oh, that's part of the federal government, but the lab I was in was, I think everyone other than me was Chinese. And so, you know, I, um, uh, and then when I worked at Georgia tech, uh, one of the research labs I was involved in that did optical communications, I was one of the only people in the lab that wasn't Chinese. So, and then in all of those different contexts, I mean, you should have learned Mandarin by now, man. Come on. I should have, I wish I could. And, you know, I need to get one of my kids to take it in school so they can teach me. But, uh, yeah. So it's been an ongoing joke in my life with all these, um, uh, Chinese people who I've worked with who have been, you know, overall extremely amazing people. I loved working with them that, you know, they, they always end up joking that like, you know, that I'm the dragon. So that's great. And I think sometimes my personality matches that.

Chris Gammell: So no, I'm kidding. Nice. That's great. So, I mean, it sounds like you, uh, I mean, like what, what would you say? I mean, is this your full-time gig or no?

Joe Long: No, it's not. I, um, uh, my, my, what I, what I call my day job is I'm actually a, a patent attorney. I'm an IP attorney.

Chris Gammell: Well, I wanted to talk about that as well. And I think that's, uh, that is quite the interesting like mix. I mean, I know you said that earlier on too, that you got to kind of back into this because you wanted to give it the hands-on thing, but it's, you know, to go from hacker boxes to IP law, it's, it's, it's quite the, quite the interesting mix there.

Joe Long: It is. And, you know, I'll tell you one of the coolest things about it is it really gives me an opportunity to see such varied aspects of, of our field because, you know, as an IP attorney, you know, generally we're dealing with larger, large companies that have very valuable IP interests that they're, they have to protect, you know, to, you know, to, to not be in, um, you know, in malfeasance against their, uh, their, their, their shareholders, right. They have to protect the value of their IP and, you know, in contrast that with the things we do in the maker hobby world. And even with hacker boxes where we're like, everything is free. You know, if we, if we design something before we even finish designing it, like we'll send you a copy of it.

Chris Gammell: IP, IP. I remember this from somewhere. What were we going to do with that?

Joe Long: So it's, you know, and it's, it's interesting because it's, it's really, um, it, it, I, I feel like it has put me in a, in, in, in a really unique position to appreciate the importance of those different, seemingly contradictory mindsets, you know, that, um, that I think, uh, uh, you know, if you want to get philosophical on a, on a grander level, uh, reflect, you know, some important aspects of our society that, you know, we're, you know, we're, we, we still live in a relatively capitalistic society where we're driven by keeping score of, you know, what product sells and what doesn't. And, you know, who, who makes more money from what thing and we vote with our dollars and things like that. Like we live in a capitalist society. On the other hand, you know, we have to take care of each other, especially when it comes to things like those in need. And when it comes to things like helping people grow, like helping education, you know, and open source is a lot about educating people and making resources available to help people. Right. And, you know, I would say, you know, uh, you know, I know a lot of people, especially in the open source world, don't love Microsoft or Bill Gates, but I mean, he's a perfect example of someone who profoundly wealthy, but has set his resources towards doing good things for a lot of people without necessarily any

Chris Gammell: personal income. I mean, post Microsoft Bill Gates is a, is a very different, uh, it feels like

Joe Long: to me. Exactly. He's a tremendous, tremendous philanthropist, right. He's, he's, he's inspirational. Right. So I think, um, you know, that, that to me as a model of, you know, you can, you can, you can play a game, like you can, you can fight and try to win and score the most touchdowns or home runs or whatever you can, you know, you can play the game, but then you can also be, you know, be a decent person and contribute to the people around you and kind of have that open set, open source, open hardware hacker mentality about, about, about life in general, you know? So I think it's, it's, it's really cool. I mean, I mean, I'm, I'm really into that. Well, let's hear about the,

Chris Gammell: I mean, like IP law is, uh, something we've touched on here before. I think we've talked about it. I mean, obviously we're big fans of open source around here and we've talked about some of the, you know, there's some shenanigans in, in, in, and throughout the, uh, the IP world, but we'd, I'd love to just hear about like how you got started with that and, and the kind of work you do, like kind of like a real look at what it looks like day to day, because I think, you know, I think, I think pretty much at this point we've, we've started saying like, unless you have the millions of dollars to, to, to litigate a patent, why are you even doing it as like, you know, like a lot of people were listening here and, uh, but maybe that's, maybe that's not correct.

Joe Long: Maybe that's a misconception. You know, it's, it's, it's correct. And it's not, I actually always start there. So like when, when someone calls me up and they say, Oh, Hey, I, uh, I've invented something and I want to get a patent. You know, I always start, start down the road of no, no, you don't want a patent. What are you going to do with the patent? Right. Right. Cause it's kind of like, Oh, you know, I I'm thinking of buying a TV and maybe even a couch someday. I must buy a house. It's like, yeah, what do you really need a house? You sure you don't want to rent a house? You sure you don't want to live in a trailer? Like, you know what I mean? And it's not, that's not, that's not a totally apt analogy, but it's, um, it's important to understand. And of course there's the, there's the vanity aspect to it. Some people are like, I just want the patent. I want my name on it. I can appreciate that as well. But, um, but when it, you know, when it boils down to it, patents are expensive and they're kind of a, they're kind of a business thing. They're not something that like, they don't have a lot of meaning for like an individual person. There's something you use to protect an asset so that you can sell it. Right. So, and I, and I love, um, and I think I'm not alone in this for people that do, you know, uh, uh, what we call, um, uh, kind of, you know, IP, you know, what we call intangible property. So not, so, so, you know, in, in life we have real property, that's our house, right? So like land. And, uh, and then we have atoms and atoms instead of bits or, or legal documents. Well, but there's actually two things under that heading. Cause then we have personal property, which are like your laptop and a, and a, and a book you might own. Sometimes that's also called chattel, right? So those are physical things, but they're not, they're not real or, or royal property like, like land. And then there's intangible. What's the, what was that word again? Chattel? Chattel. It just means stuff like, like items, like, uh, you've never heard that word before. And so we call that personal property versus real property, right? So your house is real property, the couch inside your house is chattel or personal property. And then, um, and then there's intellectual property, right? So if you write some code, you own the copyright or just to keep it simpler. If you push the button on your camera and take a picture, you own the copyright on that picture. You own it the very second you created it. Um, you know, so, so a copyright is a very simple form of, of, uh, uh, intellectual property. Not that it's not, uh, important and valuable, but it's created instantaneously. Right. And so, and there's also, you know, simple, simpler forms of trademark, which are like, uh, uh, you know, when you put the little TM on it, that's the common law trademark. It's not, it's an unregistered trademark. Uh, unfortunately there isn't really a simple form of patents, but when you publish something, you're kind of short circuiting other people's patenting. So in that regard, you can play in the patent world just by publishing things or creating open source.

Chris Gammell: Because then that would act as, as like a prior art that they couldn't necessarily patent that.

Joe Long: Exactly right. It's a barrier to other people patenting something once, once the, uh, once someone has already published it, right. It's, it's basically giving it to the public domain. So, um, uh, yeah, so, so, uh, you know, so there's these different types of property and I love analogizing between them. Right. So, uh, because inevitably people that are kind of in our world and by our world, I mean, people that are kind of like in the kind of the hobbyist electronics, the maker world, we like to make stuff where, you know, we're really interested in sharing things and, you know, the, the, all one big happy family motto. Once again, um, you know, we, sometimes people in that world, you know, are like, Oh, these damn patents, we don't want any more patents. These just make everything difficult and expensive. And not that there's not some truth to that, but it's like, you know, you have to analogize that yet. We really nice if we could all just go anywhere and I could just pitch a tent and sleep anywhere I want, but you don't want me doing that in your mom's front yard. I take it like you, the, you know, the fact that, you know, uh, even if you don't care about your own personal, um, real property, you probably don't want, you know, your, your elderly relatives to have to deal with like vagrants coming and setting up on their land. Like we do have some, we do have some value in property law. You know, you don't want someone else just jumping in your car and driving it away. Uh, you don't want someone squatting, squatting in your backyard. And, you know, equally so if you create, you know, uh, an innovative, uh, invention that passes all of the, all of the bars for becoming patented, uh, useful, non-obvious, um, uh, requirements and you get a patent on it, then, you know, it's, it's your right to control that property to that extent, you know, and not that there aren't, uh, as you say shenanigans that go on and on, on, under, under those headings, but, um, you know, it's, it, it, it, like I said, it's a, it's a tough contradiction at times for someone to be as, as pro, you know, open source and sharing and maker community hacker mentality as I am, but then also to be helping people protect their IP. I will say that I, I like to say that I stay kind of on the nice side of IP. I help people get their patents. I don't generally go around getting involved in a patent litigation and having people use patents as hammers, especially in the, uh, in the, in the context of, uh, what we call a non-practicing entity where someone just buys up patents, never intending to use them. The rest of us call them patent trolls. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. But in, in the legal world, we call them non-practicing entities. Yeah. The common term for them is patent troll, you know, and, and there's, you know, that's, uh, not, not entirely, uh, not entirely a, a, an, an unacceptable thing to do, but it's not particularly useful. It's not, it's not adding much to the world to be doing that sort of thing. Right. So, um, so that's not, that's not really what I do. So, right. Right. I mean, the thing I

Chris Gammell: look at is like, so patents are, are usually the thing that are, it's a return on the R and D dollars that someone spends. So someone goes, so a company goes and spends, you know, $5 million to hire engineers and build prototypes and do all this stuff. And then at the end of it, they have an adventure that they want to protect. And it's like, basically the IP, like you said, it's a, it's a saleable asset basically at the end of that, that hopefully they can use to either sell it to someone else or protect so they can make money on that $5 million they invested. Like from that perspective, I think it's great. Uh, the patent trolls are usually more like, well, I saw this as a a thing that yes, it was, maybe I even paid the $5 million or whatever the company thought it was worth for the patent or they acquired it somehow, but then they are going to extract more value and value is a loosely held term in my mind, because it's really, they're just using it to, like you said, use it as a hammer. And, and that's the unfortunate piece. Right. And the really, the

Joe Long: really unfortunate thing is when you start looking at, um, what, you know, some of us call these things nuisance lawsuits. So a patent lawsuit is a very expensive thing to get involved in. So, so, so let me make a simpler example. Let's say I was a really annoying neighbor of yours. Um, I could frequently file lawsuits every time you walked across my yard for trespass or whatever, uh, uh, demanding $200 right now, of course I'm up to pay several hundred dollars to, uh, to file that complaint. And then you're going to get served. And then probably rather than hiring a lawyer and taking a day off of work to go and argue my silly case, you might just be like, ah, Joe, here's your, here's your $200 check go away. Right. But now, you know, puff that up into the world of patents where, you know, just to get started, just to have a few meetings with a patent attorney, you're already talking about tens and tens and tens of thousands of dollars, if not hundreds. And then it will eventually grow into millions. So, you know, if, if you go to a company, a larger company, and you have even a colorable argument that, that, that, that you, you might have something that was infringed and you file a hundred thousand dollar lawsuit, there is a fair chance that that company is just going to pay that, that, that off and not, they're not going to mount the battle about it. Right. And, and if they know that you're, that you are well funded and you have good attorneys, you know, that, so that sort of thing that the nuisance can get big enough that it actually starts to become a problem, you know, and then, uh, uh, I don't know if you've ever watched the show, uh, Silicon Valley, but I was just going to say season, and I looked,

Chris Gammell: I just looked it up in season four, episode seven. That's a great example. Yeah. And I, and I,

Joe Long: I, you know, I, I love that show. It's, it's, it's, you know, it's, uh, it's, it's so real and so ridiculous at the same time. I absolutely love it. But the, uh, you know, the whole thing about where they're like, Oh, you know, we were going to settle for this amount, but then someone else settled and now the case is worth more, you know, like things like that. Like that's, that's kind of like, uh, that's kind of, uh, you know, those games are ugly and I, you know, no one really benefits from those. Like you're not really helping the world. And like I said, you know, to some extent they're not, they're not entirely wrong or, you know, or there would be sanctions against the attorneys doing them and people would fight them more. I mean, it's not, it's not like they're out and out, you know, illegal or corrupt or whatever, but they're just not incredibly useful. And so, you know, I mean, you know, and, and of course there's none of this is all that black and white. I mean, there are some things that are very black. Like you look at it and you're like, uh, that nothing sounds good about that, but you know, often there is an inventor behind these things. So, you know, like I have seen some situations where there's something that looks like a patent troll, but it's actually like a company that does this a lot, but then, you know, the actual inventor still owns half of the patents and, you know, the money that's coming out there being compensated for, you know, inventing the intermittent windshield wiper there, you know, so, so there is some, there is some, some righteous purchase behind it, purpose behind it in, in some instances, but you know, the system is not, is not perfect, unfortunately. And whenever you have a lot of, uh, a lot of money, uh, on the line, you know, things can get a little ugly. And, you know, like I said, I, I really like the, uh, you know, I kind of, I kind of consider myself a technologist first and then a lawyer second. Um, you know, not that they can really be ordered like that, but you know, I really love, uh, I love teaching, you know, that I think that's sort of my, my natural, uh, uh, role in life. And on the side of the game where you're helping people get patents, it's really kind of a teaching job because the patent has to teach the invention to multiple audiences. It has to teach it to the patent examiner and then, uh, uh, other inventors. And then maybe even at some point, if that patent ever becomes part of a lawsuit, it has to teach it to the finders of fact, meaning, meaning the judge or the jury in that case. So, um, you know, so there's a lot of teaching that goes on in writing a patent and arguing patents. So I, you know, I, I, that that's the part of the job that I really like. And I love working with inventors and meeting different, you know, different, uh, folks who have invented different things and talking to them about why they invented it and why they felt there was a need for

Chris Gammell: it and what they're going to do with it. It is, it is just really cool stuff. So let's, let's do a little teaching here. So what, what is it? What does the patent process look like then? So if someone in our audience had, has been working on a thing and they came to you and they say, Joe, I want to, I want to file a patent. What are the steps that you're going to walk them through to get from

Joe Long: A to Z? Yeah. I already kind of told you the unfortunate part is I will initially first try to talk them out of it. Okay. That's, that's a great first step though. Right. And, and, and really what I mean there is it's not that I'm talking about it, but I want to know that they have a good reason for wanting to do it or they, or they are at least very cognizant of the, uh, uh, the risks and the risk and risks and rewards and the timeline and the costs involved before they, before they just blindly go into it. And what, I mean, what I will say, I am, if you're able to say like,

Chris Gammell: what are, what are some of the timelines that people should expect? What are the costs that

Joe Long: people should expect? Well, yeah. So, so let's say we get past all of that. Then we, um, so then, so then the process is generally you disclose your invention. We call it a disclosure meeting. It really just means you tell the patent attorney about what your invention is, you know, and you want to be able to get into, you want to be able to, to focus, like, uh, do a course to find type of thing. Like you want to be able to tell the patent attorney I've invented this and spit it out in one sentence, right? I invented a, you know, a car with six wheels instead of four, right?

Chris Gammell: Let's keep, let's keep using that example. That's perfect. Yeah. Yeah. So, and then you want to say,

Joe Long: you know, four wheel cars, sometimes one of the wheels get stuck or, you know, they, the, the, the differentials are complicated to make. I, you know, I don't even know. I'm just making stuff up, but so you have a reason why the, why there was a need in the art. And we actually use that term all the time, a need in the art of a four wheel car. And so that motivated me to make the six wheel car. I had these ideas. My ideas were not obvious because they had the unexpected result of when I added the six, the two extra wheels, um, my fuel efficiency went up, right? So it's really important to have that unexpected result, right? Cause anyone who wanted more wheels on a car would simply go from a four wheel car to a six wheel car. That's, that's what we call in the patent world obvious. And you never want to be obvious. So, you know, you want to tell your, your attorney, this is what happened that made me think, wow, this is an invention. I've really invented something because just doing something new for the first time, what we call being novel is not, it's not, it's necessary, but not sufficient. Something does have to be novel, but you know, no one. So an example I make all the time is if you put a microwave oven in the back of your car, in the trunk of your car and say, I've invented a microwave car, you didn't invent anything. You took two things that already existed and you put them together. It's obvious, right? So, so, so it's novel. Maybe no one's ever done that before, but which is necessary, but it's not sufficient because it's not, it is still obvious, right? However, if you do that and it increased your fuel efficiency, that was an unexpected result. That's not obvious. And that's an invention, right? So that's a little bit of a subtlety there.

Chris Gammell: What if you have a baked potato now in your car? That's not obvious.

Joe Long: Well, but in a way it sort of is, because if you wanted to have hot baked potatoes in your car, if you asked someone who knew what a microwave oven was, which is pretty much everyone now, Hey, what's one of the ways I could have a hot, a hot baked potato in my car. It's what's called obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art. So anyone who cooked a baked potato before would say, Hey, you know what you could do is put a microwave oven in there. Or they'd say you could put a hot plate in there. Those two solutions would be obvious, right? But it would not be obvious.

Chris Gammell: Do you run those as tests? Like how do you, how do you actually validate that as a, as the attorney?

Joe Long: Yeah, absolutely. So we, you know, we, so there are, there are three things that you need to get a, to get a utility patent, which is really what we're in the technology world. When we talk about patents, we mean utility patents. It has to be useful, novel, and non-obvious. Those are, those three things are required. And we run the, you know, just like with any other legal problem, you have the, you know, you have these tests that you run and you make sure that all the elements are met. And so usefulness is a very low bar. Like pretty much everything's useful in some way or another. Like if you don't meet the usefulness bar, you shouldn't even call it the attorney to begin with. That's, that's something we don't need to, we don't need to argue about that too much. So novelty just means no one's ever done it before. So no one's ever stuck a microwave oven in the car. Non-obvious means it does something that wouldn't have been obvious. It accomplishes something that wouldn't have been obvious. It's not an obvious solution. So, so we run those three tests all the time. And then there, you know, there are some other tests, like you can't patent mathematics, you can't patent a process of nature, things like that. You know, we call those one-on-one or are they patentable subject matter to begin with? So in any case, we, you know, we do, we do run these tests and we discuss them with the clients. And then these are the bases for which the patent office rejects them. So, so let's go back to our, our procedure here. So, so the, you, you tell the attorney, this is what I've invented. You give them kind of the, this is, you know, this is why it's, this is why it's kind of unexpected. This was my aha moment. This is why it was needed. Then they, they could do a search for you. So let's just put that aside for right now that there's this whole topic of searches. I can talk more about that if you want, but that will tell them whether or not, you know, you're barking up the wrong tree. So let's say they do a search and it doesn't look like there's any prior art that's going to be a problem. You go ahead and file the, they'll, they'll still have to prepare a patent application. This is the, this is the expensive part of it. That generally costs in the eight to $15,000 range, depending on how complicated the invention is. And then they'll review it, sign off on it. There's a bunch of legal documents that get signed. They file it in the patent office and then you wait around for one to three years. And then the patent office will assign it to an examiner who is, who is themselves a scientist or an engineer. Um, you know, this person knows that field and they work in that area all the time. So they know all the art that's in that area ostensibly. And then, uh, what they will do is reject it. And, uh, and I know that sounds like I'm making a joke, but they reject like 98% of patents get rejected on the first shot. Holy crap. And it's not, um, it doesn't, it's, it's definitely not the end of the game, but really what it is, is if you think about it, let me, let me reframe the issue of getting a patent. The patent office is going to this idea that you have for doing something. They are going to take that idea away from the rest of the country for 20 years. Right. And just let you do it. Okay. That's a big deal. So they are like a exclusive license, right? Exactly. It's called a limited monopoly is exactly that exactly like a license. Yeah. That's an interesting way to look at it. So, um, yeah, so, so they, um, they're going to take it away from everyone else. Well, they're government employees, so they work for everyone else too. So they are required to give what's called, you know, an argument or a reason for allowance, right? When you get your notice of allowance, the patent is finally allowed. The examiner will go through and explain why you have to, why, why, why you should be given this patent, why you should be given this limited monopoly, right? Cause it's a big deal. They're taking it away from everyone else. Um, and, you know, it's important to remember that. So I, um, you know, I, I like to frame it that way. And really what you're doing is that examiner is going to say, nope, you, you don't, you don't get a patent. This is the prior art I found. And they'll, they'll cite the closest art and they'll make an argument. Sometimes it's not an excellent argument. Let's just leave it at that. Uh, as, as to how that prior art proves that your invention is either not novel or is obvious. Right. Um, and then, and then really what they're doing is they're saying, I am going to have to give a very well-reasoned and excellent re an excellent explanation for why I'm stealing this idea, not stealing it, but precluding the rest of the country from getting to use it and giving it just to you. You write that argument for me right now, right? That's really what the rejection is. They're saying, here's the prior art I found. Now you fix it. Right. Oh, interesting. So it's like a bounce back at that point. Exactly. Right. So they're not really saying no, no, they're not saying bad dog, no patent for you. Really what they're saying is, okay, it doesn't look like, it looks like maybe you don't really get a patent. Explain to me why you do. Right. And, and, and, you know, usually if you make a good argument, uh, at also at that point, you can, you can, uh, change the wording of your claims a little bit. What exactly it is you're claiming you own, as long as you're not offending the description in your application, you can change the words around a little bit. You can make your, what you're claiming to own a little narrower. You can, you know, move it, move it over a little bit. As long as you, like I said, you have to stay within your initial description, um, what we call the specification. So, um, so, so that goes on and sometimes that can go many, many, many rounds. Sometimes it just goes one or two rounds in 2% of the cases. It goes no rounds. You just get an instant allowance. That that's pretty rare. And if that happens, you're probably, you probably claim your invention too narrowly if that happens, but you know, one could argue, argue the opposite. Does that mean that's not a good patent end of that point? Not necessarily. It might be that it's really good. It might be that it's just super narrow that it's like, you know, I invented, you know, this, this thing that has this, this, this, this, and this element. There's so many elements that it's just a tiny little thing. Right. So, so the, the, interestingly with a patent claim, the more words are in the claim, the less you own. Right. So, uh, if you think about it, if your claim says, so the claims are these sentences at the end of the patent that are sort of like to make an analogy to real property. Again, they're like the meets and bounds, uh, that's at the front of the deed, you know,

Chris Gammell: those kinds of mathematical things that it goes this, this far deep, deep in the lot.

Joe Long: These are the corner points, that kind of idea. Exactly. So the claims of a patent are the meets and bounds of the invention. They, they define legally what exactly the invention is. So if your claim says I invented a thing, right, you will great. You just owned everything. Right. So, because it has very few words, so it's extremely broad. Okay. So that's like where, if you say, I, you know, I claim a computing machine, well, that's incredibly broad, but if you say, I, you know, I claim a computing machine that is liquid cooled, uses three logic levels where one logic level is represented by 3.3 to 3.35 volts. Like that's so many words that you're describing something very, very narrow, right? It has to use a trinary numbering system. They have to be confined to these voltage levels. The voltage levels have to be defined by this type of, you know, a CMOS transistor or whatever. And so once you say all of that, you, you are owning very,

Chris Gammell: very, very little, right? So does that mean that the, uh, the, the, uh, a broader patent,

Joe Long: if it is awarded is more valuable? Exactly. Yes. Except for the cases where it's so broad that you should have never been allowed it because then it'll get reexamined and it'll get torn apart

Chris Gammell: later. Let's just call that, that, that shouldn't happen. If it does, it's a fluke and it might be

Joe Long: bounced out anyway. Yeah. But so part of the, part of the trick that we do as a patent attorney is, you know, you'll describe your invention to me in engineering terms, and then I will write claims that try to capture it as broadly as possible. Right. So that you end up owning a lot. So even if you're thinking, you know, Oh, I invented this thing that does whatever, and it has these type of transistors, you know, I might describe it as having like switching elements or, you know, uh, non, non linear circuit device that, you know, uh, accomplishes, you know, a, uh, you know, a, a, a bimodal distributed, uh, arrangement of electrical values, which could be kind of be saying a flip flop. Right. So, so we just tried to describe it as broadly as possible so that, because what I was about to say a second ago is you don't want people to be able to design around. Right. So if you have a claim that uses tons and tons of tons of words and is really narrow, and let's say part of your claim, and we deal with this kind of stuff all the time, your claim says, you know, okay, so it has three voltage levels and one of them is 3.3 to 3.5 volts. Well, I could just design mine to always use 3.6 volts. Now your patent does not apply to my product. Right. I'm my, my, my, wow. Okay. It's that, it's that like corner Casey. It is. Yeah. So what we do is we try to not say anything that's that specific. So we start by using very, very broad language. Like we would never use things like voltage levels, but it might be that the examiner finds art that shows, oh, look, this thing has three voltage levels. One of them is 12 volts and one of them is nine volts. And then we're like, okay, well, what if we go in and say, you know, the highest voltage level is, but you know, then, then we would still try to make it very broad. Like we would say, okay, well, less than 12 volts, right. To get around the prior art. So really another way, again, I said, I, I warned you, I love analogizing to, to, to, to real property because we can see it. So when you, when you first, when, you know, when Manhattan was first made, the first people that came in, they owned the big corners. They just took over a big chunk of land and which later became a corner. And then, and then, you know, decades and decades later, people were buying little tiny pieces of what we call infill. Right. So once it, once an area of technology has been around for a while, like let's say computation or communication systems, you're doing a lot of infill, like you're no longer patenting a car. You're not patenting a car with two axles. You're patenting a tire that can go on a car. The plastic piece that's in the door. Exactly. And you're actually like, you're patenting things like the shape of the tread and how it wears and how deep it is in the middle versus the side. I mean, you're just getting into these little tiny details.

Chris Gammell: What kid hasn't actually dreamed about growing up to become an engineer and then get a patent about the tread of a tire, you know?

Joe Long: Exactly. Exactly. It's a, I mean, and it is, it can get really sexy. I mean, when you're, when you're working on some stuff that's, uh, you know, and I would say that's one thing that was, you know, for me was very exciting about working on in patent law is I know, you know, when I first went to college, I was, I majored in physics and I thought, Oh, you know, I want to work on like, you know, radio waves and particles and things like that. Cause I really love radio technology. And then I realized like a physicist will spend their whole lives working on one problem. I was like, I want to be one of these engineers. They design stuff. They'll work on a new product every couple of years. Well, a patent attorney, they work on a new patent every like four to six days. So like I get to learn all about some new piece of technology, talk to the person who invented it. Who was usually like a, you know, a world-class researcher in that area or someone who's, you know, groundbreaking in that field and learn all about it, write about it. And then five days later, I'm onto the next one, you know? And like, you know, for someone who's like a, a junk food junkie about technology, like nothing could be better, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, what about the level of depth? Like how much do you have to dig in? I mean, you're talking to experts. It sounds like that's super cool. Um, but like, how much do you dig in? Like how much do you have to actually grok what's going on? Do you, do you have to like understand the actual underlying technology? You have to, you have to grok it in its fullness.

Joe Long: If we're going to quote Heinlein. Yeah. You have to, you have to understand it well enough to know what makes it, uh, you know, novel and non-obvious, what differentiates it from the prior art,

Chris Gammell: what's special about it. And so, yeah, I mean, you, you sometimes run into like, you're like, Oh, what the hell am I looking at here? I mean, I'm sure that happens to you.

Joe Long: Not me. I mean, who do you think you're talking to here? No, I'm just all the time. I mean, all the time we, you know, an inventor will tell me something. I'll just be like, and then I'll have to go back and I'll be like, what is, and I'll be honest with you. I've been in meetings with another attorney, you know, because you know, no one's an expert at everything. So like, for example, I worked with a guy for a while who was really sharp and he was a mechanical engineer, but you know, we did projects together. And I remember being in a meeting with him where the inventor described something and then, and then the guy was like, so hold on, what is this NPN PNP? And he wanted to like, get into that. Like it was part of the invention. And I was like, I was like, dude, that's well known in the art. Like we're not, that's not part of this. And he was like, no, but, but I know, but what's the NPN. And I'm like, it means it never points in. Okay. Just let's just move on. Right. But it's like, you know, and I'm sure there are many times like, you know, for a while I worked on some propulsion system patents and I know I was talking about, you know, like some phase change materials and different combustion things. And I'm just like, I have no idea what this is. And it was probably causing me to momentarily, I hope not, you know, because, because you, you rely on the inventor to set you straight, but momentarily get focused on the wrong thing, you know, and be like, Oh, hold on. So it's, it's liquid oxygen. And they're like, no, no, it's always been liquid oxygen. Shut up. And, you know, and then refocus you on the thing that's important. And, you know, but it's why, um, you know, just like with most things in life, when you operate at a very high level, you become specialized. So like, you know, in the patent realm, my specialties are, uh, you know, communication systems. So radio frequency communications, um, security, obviously embedded systems, because, you know, anything related to microprocessors and stuff, I love. And then, um, uh, there were some things that changed in the patent world around 10 years ago with regard to how software or what we call computer implemented. I was going to ask about that. Okay. And, and, and so that's one of my specialties because, you know, I'm kind of a computer scientist, right? So I, uh, uh, you know, I know a lot about, uh, software. So I just kind of became an expert in how, how to get around these issues in the computer, computer implemented method, uh, realm and also how to, how to, um, express the operations of a, of a computer implemented system as, um, as a, as a process so that it's patentable because inherently that sort of thing is not patentable. Right. And it, and it shouldn't be, but sometimes there are aspects of them that are, and you have to, you have to pull out the part of it. That's actually the invention that has nothing to do with the substrate, the computer system that it runs on. And, you know, and so that's sort of one of my expertise is that kind of getting into the software part of it. So like, you know, I, I, I worked on some of the patents for a Google wallet and also for, um, uh, some of the, uh, Bing search linguistic stuff and Bing maps and things like that. And, and more recently, a lot of things related to, uh, um, medical data processing, electronic medical records, and then also data analytics around that. And like just being able to really get into the detail of the software of those things and the, uh, and being able to like, you know, speak software language about those things, even though, you know, I don't really consider myself a programmer, software developer, but I studied computer science, you know, in my computer engineering, uh, background. So I can speak the language of those things and I've kind of learned the legal, the legalese around it. So, you know, that's one of my expertise, you know, and if someone came to me and they were like, Hey, I think I've invented, you know, a new drug that lowers blood pressure. I'd be like, great, let me, let me find a patent attorney to refer you to. Cause I don't know anything about pharmaceuticals or chemistry. And, and I can't do that. Like it just wouldn't, it wouldn't be, it wouldn't be right to the client. And I, and I couldn't, and I don't want to.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, the thing I always think about with the software patents is I guess maybe more on the design side, maybe we could delineate to the utility design stuff. But I remember there was one thing about like, like iPhones and like curved icons. So maybe that was a design patent, but I just remember there was like a whole big hubbub about curved icons at one point.

Joe Long: Yeah. That would, that would be a design issue. Cause that doesn't, that doesn't really have any

Chris Gammell: utility. Okay. So let's delineate. What is the difference between a utility and design?

Joe Long: Well, design merely covers, uh, it protects how something looks. So, um, it is, it's a pretty narrow thing because, you know, like for example, if you have a design patent that were, I don't, I don't know much about, um, about the, the, uh, uh, icon issue there, but if you had a design patent covering icons with rounded, uh, edges, you could make icons with square edges or, you know, a beveled, uh, edges, you know, like kind of a hexagonal edge and it wouldn't, it would not offend that design patent. So design patents are very narrow because they, they merely point out a single way of displaying something. And, um, a utility patent is, is, is the broadest type of IP because it covers the concept behind which something is done. So it's kind of implementation agnostic, especially when you get into processes and methods. Like, you know, I, I love the computer implementable methods and method and process claims because it doesn't matter what substrate you do them on. And in fact, you know, I, I wrote this really great, I'm saying it's great. I liked it. It's a boilerplate that, you know, years ago that I still, still use all the time that, uh, where I kind of describe what the idea of a computational substrate is in order to, um, um, really, uh, draw attention to the fact that when I talk about a computer implementable method, and I say a computing machine, that that computing machine could be, um, uh, some gears or some pulleys and ropes that it's, or tinker toys. It doesn't have anything to do with it being, uh, being a windows box, right? Like that's, so we're, that's not what we're talking about. It's not a computer invention, you know, so, so there's a great quote from a, uh, Supreme court case where they said that, um, you know, that an invention, if it were, if it were otherwise patentable is not rendered unpatentable because you put it on a computer, right? So, you know, I like to turn the tables on that and say, look at this invention. It doesn't have anything to do with it being on a computer. We happen to run it on a computer and I'm going to, in one of my claims say that it runs on a computer, but you know, what is a computer? Well, let me tell you some things. And then I list a whole lot of ridiculous examples of what a computer might be. So could you give us a more

Chris Gammell: specific example of like the, the thing that's actually, you're actually patenting is on software, but you moved it outside of it. Could you give us an example of what that was?

Joe Long: That's right. So, so, um, you know, let me, let me make a, uh, kind of a, a tinker tour billiard ball example, something that's so simple, it almost seems stupid, but let me, let me just try to follow along with it that let's say, let's say just some, something related to like data analytics. So if you were like, if you were claiming it so that it were a computer program that took in a bunch of data and processed it, well, I mean, that's like a computer program, big deal. But you know, what you had is something that, you know, receives, receives, uh, sampled information where the sampled information, you know, came from a sensor in the environment that sampled information, you know, reflects these characteristics, physical characteristics of these objects that sampled information is then filtered, um, ordered, you know, with a, uh, um, with a, if, with a fuzziness of ordering of a, of a certain magnitude so that, you know, two is always bigger than one, but maybe 1.1 is not necessarily bigger than one. Like you have a plus, you know, an error there. So you're sorting with like a fuzzy sorting, right? And of course you would, you would use much more, uh, technical and legalese language to say that, you know, so basically you, you had a, a forgiving sort, you know, or sorting that was kind of like binned or, or plus or minus type of sorting. Right. And then, you know, and then you use that to create categories, you know, or bins, and then you use those to characterize that data. And then that data was used to accomplish some other output. Like it would tell you, you know, a likelihood of that person having high blood pressure or something like that, right? Like it, it has to impact the physical world. So we're taking something where we measure some things in the physical world. We do some processing on them that sound, we use computer like terms, but what we're really talking about is what is literally done with that data. And then we use it to make a decision that impacts the physical world. Right. And, and, and speaking more specifically, we say that it has to substantially, substantially transform or, or, or it has to substantially represent a machine or transform machine. Right. So it actually has a physical connection. So it sounds like software and we're going to implement it as software, but really what we're doing is we're interacting with the physical world by collecting data from an acting on it. Now you could do that with a bunch of transistors, right? It doesn't, it doesn't have to be software. That's not the point. Sure. Yeah. Just be a much more complicated kind of thing. Right. I mean, I guess you are still using transistors. Yeah. Obviously there's a matter of degrees there. Like, you know, are you literally talking about, you know, doing analog computation with transistors or are you using a computing machine or are you implementing a computing machine in an FPGA using, you know, a barrel log core or something like that? Like it's, but, but the thing is in the end, those substrates should not matter, right? Like if you're, if what you're actually doing is something that no one has done before and it wouldn't have been obvious to do, and it's not just pure mathematics. It can never be a pure theory. It has to be something that, you know, uh, that, that is a machine or transformation that actually impacts the

Chris Gammell: physical world. So, so you're saying that, that the patent is written so that even if, if you handed a piece of paper to a group of people and they did all these operations at the end, it ended up creating some other number, then change the outside, outside of that system of people doing that thing, basically replicating a computer. Well, in the end, what you need is you have to

Joe Long: have a machine that connects to the real world, right? So if it's all just moving data inside of a computing system, even if that computing system is a, is a, is a, is a table with a bunch of accountants sitting at it, then that's not, that's not patentable, right? That's because that's just, you know, what we, what people like us would just call pure software. There's no, there's no actual invention going on there, but if it's something that you could build with gears or ropes or pulleys, just because you write it as a computer program doesn't make it not patentable, right? So that's where it gets really confusing. And it's a, and I admit that it's very confusing, but that's one of the, I am, I'm a little confused right now. I gotta say, yeah, it's a, you know, it's, it's, it's one of those things where it's the kind of the, one could call it trickery, but after you do it for a while, you're just like, Oh, I can, I can smell the difference between something that is, that is an invention that I could make with, you know, physical devices, but I'm writing it as a computer program and I'm going to run it in a computer program. It's, it's a, it's a new invention. No one's done this before, or is it just moving data around? And,

Chris Gammell: you know, and of course with a lot of other tests that you apply to the, to the actual, whether you should be patenting this thing in the first place.

Joe Long: Yeah. It's called the machine or transformation test. And there are a couple other little tests that go around it. And, you know, we, the Supreme court has commented on this a few times over the last, uh, uh, 10 or 12 years, this has kind of become an issue. And, and, and that issue is part of patent harmonization because in other countries, what we call international patent harmonization in other countries, you can't, you can't just straight up patent something that sounds like it's a, it's part of a computer system unless it's more physical. So, you know, we, we, we've moved that, that way a little bit in the U S patent system, not much because, you know, in the end, we still have this notion that just because you can do it in a computer is, doesn't make it not patentable. So, you know, and, and patent attorneys are, are pretty good at knowing how to word something so that it is actually a machine or transformation. And, and they also know when it's not, it's not, you know, I mean, there are lots of things where a client tells me, Oh, I've invented something and they described it to me. And I'm like, that just, that is way too much, just a big data processing system. Like if you can tell me how this couples to sensors and what's going to happen to that data afterwards, it's going to, you know, impact, you know, triaging a patient or, you know, throttling a fuel system or something like that. We can talk about this, but if it's just, if it's just a bunch of processing numbers, then that's going to be a no go.

Chris Gammell: So what about like algorithms? I mean, is that, is that, is that a good example of what you would try and apply this test to?

Joe Long: Well, exactly. Yeah. So a purely mathematical algorithm. So let's say like the, you know, like a fast Fourier transform or something like that, like that's not patentable because it's just, you know, it's just a, uh, so is that protectable at all in any way or no?

Chris Gammell: Like if you, so if I come up with a new transform type, is that, is that patentable or anything?

Joe Long: Yes and no. So the transform itself is not so, but, uh, generally, but let's say it has a really great application. So let's say you come up with a new thing, you know, it's not an FFT or a plus transform. It's some other mathematical transform, but it is amazingly useful at finding a very stable, um, uh, digital filters, right? Sure. So what you could patent is a method for, for specifying a filter. And then you might even need to couple that to, like, you couldn't even say for like, for a signal processing system, you might need to couple it to, you know, an audio

Chris Gammell: transform or something like a radar system, like a, this specific radar, like a communication channel

Joe Long: equalizer or something like that. Like, you know, you need to get very specific about I'm, I'm collecting, I'm, you know, I'm interfacing with the physical world in this way, these inputs, and then I'm creating these outputs. And in between here is this processing that is novel. The processing itself would not be patentable because it's just too, it's just too pure computation. You know, it's, it's just an abstract concept and abstract concepts are never patentable. You know, you have to, you have to tie them to a, to a machine or transformation. And, you know, and so it's one of these things where it's, it is a little subtle, but after you deal with it a few times, you're like, I can kind of, I, you know, I have, I have a sniff test for it that if it's, you know, if it's just purely a, an abstract idea or not. And, you know, interestingly, it's changed so much in the last 10 years or not, not changed a lot, but it's just become a little more specific that, you know, sometimes we do get in a little bit of a debate with a patent examiner on, you know, when they have a feeling one way or another about it, that just doesn't jive with our experience. But they've gotten pretty good at, you know, having that same sniff test. And, you know, it's sort of one of these consensual reality things, like once everyone sort of agrees that, oh, this is what the transformation test means. And you see it in enough court cases, right? That's, that's, you know, that's, that's American jurisprudence, right? You, you, you see, you see the courts, you know, saying repeatedly, you know, this is patentable and this is not, you know, and in this case. Right. And then everyone goes, let's stop wasting our time by not. Right. Yeah. So a scary thing in the patent world though, is it's so complicated that it sometimes takes a long time and many, many iterations for those, those things to gel. But, you know, luckily, you know, there's a patent board of appeals that for patentability that has its own, you know, that has its own experts. And so we, you know, we, we, we rely on them for, to give us lots of good examples. And.

Chris Gammell: Would, would you recommend that like the, the, the novice engineer or just the beginner, the novice IP type person should like, should I be reading patents and to understand more about them? Or like, what are some resources you usually point people at for about patents?

Joe Long: I mean, it's, it's fun to read patents that, you know, it's, it's tricky to read them though. I mean, I know, uh, I, um, you know, I, I, I, I was about to say I love, but it would be probably more correct to say I hate seeing, um, newspaper articles or, or trade journal articles from the technology world that are like, and, and usually if it starts with Apple patents, blah, blah, blah. I like, I don't even have to look at it because, you know, I don't look at it till the next week when I get in. And when I get someone who's just like, Oh my God, how could this be? And I'm just like, it isn't, it isn't the, okay, look, there aren't aliens there, you know, put, put your tinfoil hat away. There aren't aliens. The president is not a lizard monster. Like it's just, it's just all the whole, the whole thing where like, you know, people that have a blind spot, they fill that blind spot in with like a crazy, like 4k image instead of just smoothing over the way your brain does. Right. So it's like, people don't really understand patents. So they're like, Oh, this patent talks about, you know, whatever. Apple is clearly trying to patent, you know, nuclear powered contact lenses to kill us all. Right. No, they're probably not. That's probably not the case.

Chris Gammell: Well, it makes, it makes for a good article. Come on. Let's start, let's start there.

Joe Long: It does. Yeah. But it's a, it's a little tiring. So, but, so I, I'm only pointing all that out to say that when you look at patents as a, you know, as a non-patent expert, they're confusing. I mean, even these people that write about them all the time, they're usually wrong, sadly. Um, or they've got something, they've got some little subtlety kind of wrong and then they build their case around that, you know, they're not their case, but they're, they're, they're, they're expose. Like, you know, they've, uh, like I said, they're filling in a blind spot with a, you know, with something very complicated instead of just, just glossing it over. But, um, uh, but in any case, I do always,

Chris Gammell: I do always like the, uh, you know, like the Ben Krasnos of the world. They, uh, they, uh, go and read the patents as like, uh, as a way to kind of find out more about, you know, that is, that is the ultimate benefit, right. That it's, you know, you get the exclusive access to this thing, but you also have

Joe Long: to share it with the world. That was going to be my caveat is, yeah, you should definitely, um, you know, if you're, if you're, if there's a very specific area of technology you're interested in, you should be reading the patents in that area so that, you know, so that you can, yeah, but, um, you know, but it's, you don't want to go crazy with them because, you know, some of them are going to be written really weirdly. And, you know, in the end, like they're, you know, they, they might not mean what it seems like they're trying to say they mean, and some of them might just be wrong and whatever, but it's certainly interesting. I mean, I, you know, I like, I like looking at patents and, and after you do that for a while, you'll really get a hang of, you know, how they're written and what they say. And then, you know, the next level of dare I say, entertainment is looking at patents that are what we call pro se patents where the, where they're written by the inventor themselves because the claim, the claims are just usually so bad, even when they're good, they're so bad.

Chris Gammell: Is there a way to specifically find those or is there like a site that kind of is a compendium of, of just the pro se ones?

Joe Long: Yeah. There, there, yeah, there are some weird, like, uh, I can't remember off the top of my head, but they're like, you know, wacky patents, uh, websites that put out wacky patents and, you know, in a really great, um, uh, I'm trying to remember the name of the, there's a, a couple of, um, a couple of blogs that come out, come to mind. Um, unfortunately, recently I follow, uh, I follow electronic stuff like your blog a lot more than I do. Um, uh, the patent logs, but it's like, you know, there's one that's called, I think it's called patently obvious. Okay. Yeah. That's a good one. Yeah. And there's, there's, there's a few, like there's a few out there. I mean, you have, you just Google around, like, you know, patent blog or funny patents or things like that. You can find some, some interesting stuff. And, you know, and I would, and I would definitely say like, you know, when I talk to people who are like real experts in some area, you know, like a college professor who, you know, publishes in some really tiny, like area of like, you know, memo antennas or something, they're, they're usually reading patents in that area. And those patents are often written by, you know, they're, they're the inventors of the same people that are publishing at the IEEE

Chris Gammell: journal, you know, and I read them on the same topic. They're contemporaries and they're trying to just kind of figure out what's the state of the art kind of thing. Yeah. And some of those guys

Joe Long: read that kind of stuff because inevitably there'll be a, there'll be an expert witness in a patent case related to them or something like that. So, you know, so they'll, uh, they keep up with those things. But, you know, for those of us who are, you know, just like, you know, buying the, you know, the, the, the cool new, you know, cheap, uh, sensor chip that came out and hooking it up to a microcontroller and making a fun project, you know, probably don't need to get bogged down in patents, but, uh, but I mean, they're interesting. I mean, I think I'm very biased cause I, I deal with them all the time and I, uh, you deal with them a lot more, right? And I, um,

Chris Gammell: you know, but of course, so like I have to, I have to ask a selfish question here. Is it like, so like I've been consulting and I've had some potential clients ask me about patenting and stuff. And I feel like if I say like the whole thing that you say, like about the, yeah, it's not really worth it. They're not going to listen to me, but yeah, especially if it's like a smaller client, um, how do I nicely break that to them? Is there like some numbers that I can use like for

Joe Long: litigation numbers and costs? Okay. Well, there are a few numbers. One of them, you know, if you go through the, uh, the funnel that like, that's, that's an interesting one. So, you know, the vast majority of things that are invented are not, are not patented. Right. So, so like the first step of that funnel is just the guy, you know, so you have an idea, then do you have the $20,000 it's going to take to go through the patenting process? So that's, that's the, that's the first step of that funnel. And that's going to knock out like 99% of everything. Right. And then for the patents that are actually filed, probably only something like 70% of them get issued as patents because they just get along the way, they just kind of get dropped or they just, the, the, the, uh, inventor gives up fighting with the examiner or whatever. So, um, uh, so there's, there's that, that's the next step of the funnel. And then there's, let's say you actually get your patent. So, so we're, you know, we're way down in like a microscopic tip of the funnel now of the patents that actually, it's a disproportionately large

Chris Gammell: companies as well, because they paid to keep fighting almost all that stuff. Not, not disproportionately.

Joe Long: It's almost entirely. So, but, but, but hold on. But so now that we're down at the microscopic, this is where it gets ridiculous of all those patents that have now issued, which is basically known, uh, only 2% of those ever become part of a commercially viable product.

Chris Gammell: Whoa.

Joe Long: Right. So like, okay.

Chris Gammell: So, so if we started with a million at the top of the funnel, what would, what would be the number at these different levels? You think?

Joe Long: Yeah. It rounds to zero. So, so, so basically every great idea you have. So that's the thing is when, you know, when you're talking to someone and they're like, I have a great idea, I should patent. And it's like, first of all, you only had one great idea. You're not an inventor. You're, you know, you're a, you're just some, you're some person. Yeah. You're just, you know, I had a, I had, I, I think I forgot a few great ideas, you know, while I was getting the floss out of the container this morning, it's not, you know, it's like it's, uh, um, so, so in any case, it, the ideas aren't valuable. It's their implementation, their business implementation that's valuable. And when you start going down that road, then you, then you want to protect it. So anyway, so just looking at this, at the steepness of that funnel, that's already, that should be a big deterrent. Right. But then, uh, also, you know, so when I was first, so, you know, I was an engineer for a long time before I became a patent attorney. So I went into law kind of older. I was an older person. I was in my, my mid to late thirties when I started practicing law. And, and, um, and I remember the first couple of, uh, you know, older, more experienced attorneys I worked with, they never want to deal with independent inventors, right? They only want clients like, you know, like Microsoft and IBM companies that file thousands of patents and have the budget to do it. And they don't want to be handheld. They just write a check and say, file the patent by, right? Like those are the clients you want. You don't want to, you don't want to deal with someone who's bringing you their baby and they want to call you every day about it. Right. You never want that. And then those are the people that file malpractice lawsuits. So in any case, I was kind of told avoid independent inventors. And then the trick that, you know, I didn't, I didn't like it when I first heard it. Cause I was like, oh, that's not cool, but it made perfect sense. And now I kind of get it is when an independent inventor calls you, you're like, you know, cause they always call and they're like, I think I've invented something. I need to meet with you next week. You know, if your answer is, I'd be happy to meet with you in three weeks and my retainer is $10,000, please bring a check or send the check in advance. That person doesn't call you back. And the thing is, if you end up doing something for them, that $10,000 is going to be nothing. Right. So it just, it quickly tells people, this is not a game you want to play. Right. And if they, if they really do want to play it, it's typically because they have a reason to play it, you know, and then you're going to know. And I've, I've been involved in, with some situations where a very small independent inventor had an idea and they had, they, they were just really business savvy and they had a business reason for patenting it to get leverage over another company or to get, to get a vendor, right. You know, to get the fender

Chris Gammell: or the merchant to be able to make it for them. I've heard this as well from startups do it as like a, because if they're trying to get acquired or they're trying to raise funding, it's just something

Joe Long: they kind of have to do. Oh, all the, all the time. I would say of the smaller companies, like the startups I work with, it's all about getting funding. Yeah. They are. It's a way to, it's a way to signal your value. It's value signaling of, you know, look, we've, we've invented these four things and we filed patents on them. And, you know, in, in those cases where they're getting VC funding and the company, you know, it's, it's sort of like a moonshot, like it's going to become amazing or nothing. If you become amazing, you need those patents. And if you become nothing, well, you had nothing anyway. So, you know, so, so in those cases, it actually kind of makes sense. Like, you know, if you're, if you're raising, you know, 20 to $80 million and you're going to, you know, you've got a, a really steep burn and you're really trying to make something really big, you know, to, to, to put a hundred thousand dollars or whatever into developing a patent portfolio is probably pretty wise and your investors are going to love it. So, so that, you know, that's an instance where you want to do it, but you know, if you're, you know, if you're, if you're just kind of like a hobbyist or even like a consultant and you've come up with something that you're like, Oh, this is neat. I want to own this. Like you need to think really good about what the, what the ROI is going to be like, you know, if, if everything works out, are you going to be able to sell this or license it to someone or, you know, is, is the, and an important thing to remember with patents is they're not a positive, right? They're what we call, they're a negative, they're a bundle of negative rights. So they don't give you a right to do anything. They give you the ability to stop someone else from doing it. Right. You could tell

Chris Gammell: someone else, Hey, that's my thing. Don't do that. So I have someone who is also going to sue you to do

Joe Long: that, not do that thing. Exactly. So what you want to ask yourself is, you know, let's say it's going to cost you $20,000 and maybe get a patent on something. Is it worth that $20,000 to be able to tell that other guy not to do it? Like it's creating that barrier to entry in your space. Does that going to give you a real competitive or strategic advantage? And do you want to go through all the trouble to try to get there? So a really cool thing about our field, or one could say it's a bad thing. I don't know, is that things change so quickly that sometimes patents don't even matter that much, you know, because by the time you get the patent three years later, you're, you're onto the next thing. Right. So, and that's not the case in pharmaceuticals because the R and D cycle is so long and so expensive, but you know, in electronics, it's like, I mean, I've worked on a lot of patents that I thought were pretty cool. And, you know, three years in when they're getting pretty close to being allowed, they're just like, well, you know, I call the client and they're like, that's what, we're not working on that anymore. Don't waste my money on that. You know? So that's crazy. You know, and that's, and then, you know, that's, that's going to happen. You know, cause, cause we, you know, we pivot so quickly in the electronics and computer because we can, you know, yeah, yeah, that's great. That's great. I mean,

Chris Gammell: I feel like, like anything that I'm usually working on too, it's, you know, like you were talking about, it's like a most re-implementing of other technology. I'm never working. I'm working on development of stuff, not research of stuff. And it feels like it's more towards the research side of things anyways, where you will actually be patenting, patenting things

Joe Long: in the first place. Yeah. And the thing, and the thing with patents is, you know, as far as I'm concerned is the, you know, the thing that's cool about them is the technology, right? Like it's a, you know, it's like you want to share this new concept or technology, but the reality of it is, is that, you know, there's so much money involved in patenting and it's so expensive. And then it takes so much money to enforce patents and things like that, that the, um, uh, or to monetize patents that the, the, um, the value in a patent is, is in its business application and in the, in the, in the commercial implementation and in the, you know, in enforcing and monetizing it as a business practice. So it's almost like, you know, the stuff that we kind of geek out on and get excited about, like, Oh man, you were able to do that with one transistor. Like that's, that's what's cool. That's what's cool. Like, and that's cool for me when we're in writing the patent and stuff, but in the end, the decision, whether to get the patent and whether you, you know, whether you really want it or whether you just have one patent or do 10 children off of the patent, because it's so important. All of those, those are business decisions, not technology decisions.

Chris Gammell: Right. And hopefully there's business money behind it too. Cause you're going to need it.

Joe Long: Exactly. Well, in, in, in business sense is, you know, business savvy and not just, uh, you know, throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks granted, you know, the companies that do a lot of patenting, like, uh, you know, IBM, Qualcomm, um, you know, uh, Boeing, Microsoft, they, they have the money to just throw it out there and see what happens,

Chris Gammell: you know? So that's, yeah. Well, uh, Joe, where can people find out more about your law practice

Joe Long: and hacker boxes and you in general? Um, well the, uh, uh, if you are interested in our law practice, we have a website, it's a long tech law.com. Uh, long is my last name. Um, and, uh, or the dragon. I mean, don't forget that. Yeah. The dragon, right. Exactly. So, um, uh, or, uh, you know, if you're just interested in IP law in general, you can go to the USPTO, uh, US patent and trademark office, USPTO.gov and find a lot of stuff there. But, you know, if you have some, a specific patent or IP question, feel free to call me. I mean, even if, even if you know that the answer is probably, I shouldn't do that. I mean, I'm always happy to answer people's questions and I talk to people all the time and, and, and, uh, students and anything. So, um, you know, so that's totally cool. And then as far as hacker boxes goes, uh, you should definitely check out hacker boxes as a, you know, most of your listeners are probably into electronics. It's just, uh, our, our website is at hacker boxes.com. Um, and, uh, you know, check out the subscription service and, uh, other fun things we sell and look at our videos. And like I said, all of our educational material, you know, box guides, whatever extent you want to call them educational there. It's a lot of it just links to other, other things, but it's pretty well curated. It's all free online. You don't have to actually buy the boxes to jump in there and learn some stuff and try some things out and see what, see what we're all up to every month and get involved in conversations.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And I'll link people over to the, uh, some of the instructables pages. I have links in my notes about the ones we were talking about, like 26 and stuff like that. So that'll be, that's a good place to find out more and see pictures.

Joe Long: Yeah. Well, you know, where can we find out more about amp hour?

Chris Gammell: Uh, well, uh, the empire.com is a great place to go, but, uh, Twitter as well. And I don't know if you're a Twitter, but, uh, are you, are you on Twitter?

Joe Long: Yeah. We, uh, actually we had a bunch of Twitter traffic today because someone took one of the recent hacker boxes and made a, made an ugly holiday sweater for the jumbo truck. Uh, it's not, not, not safe for work, but they kind of turned it into like a, a Defcon style thing with the Defcon logo. And, you know, it was a nice, so we actually, we're having a lot of fun on

Chris Gammell: Twitter this morning. So awesome. Well, thanks for telling us about all this stuff, Joe. It's been, it's been, uh, you know, quite a, quite an interesting journey from the open source, open knowledge stuff to the little bit more closed IP, uh, you know, making money kind of things. That's, it's quite the gamut. Like you said, you have to say in this gamut in there. So yeah, it's, uh, it was been, it's been an interesting journey here.

Joe Long: Yeah. Well, Hey, I appreciate the, uh, opportunity to talk to you about these fun things. Well, I wish I could have called in a couple of weeks ago. I wanted to talk to you guys about whether or not it was illegal to grab a bird scooter and hack it. Yeah. We'll save that for another legal podcast. I'm sure. Yeah. You guys were talking about that and I thought, uh, I thought I, I know the answer.

Chris Gammell: I know the answer. Dave was right. Don't do that. Okay. All right. Fine. Fine. All right. Well, thanks Joe. We'll give you a call soon. Yeah. Have a great holiday. Take care.

Speaker ?: Bye.