Friday food for thought: two bites for the price of one

Here’s another edition of the Friday Food for Thought feature.  This week, two interesting tidbits came to mind.

1.  I’ve given a presentation on the current state of patent law in the United States to several groups over the last several years.  It’s a work in progress that I update for each individual presentation to reflect the current state of affairs.  I’ve even changed the title several times (my last talk was at Ave Maria School of Law in Ann Arbor, MI; the title of that talk was: Patent Law in 2006 - What could be more exciting than complete chaos?).

Through all the changes, though, one slide has remained untouched.  There’s a point at which I reflect on some advice I was given by a professor about choosing patent law as a career.  That professor, an adjunct who was a full time patent practitioner, told me:

“Matt…patent law is beautiful….it never changes…I never have to learn anything new.“

I laugh every time I read that.  For several reasons.

2.  I follow the “Beyond Bullets” approach to presentations.  For my slides, I try to use striking images that relate to the subject matter and try my best to avoid text as much as possible (typically I’ll provide my notes pages as handouts so those who like text have some).

As an example, the image at right is on a slide relating to the Patent and Trademark Office proposed rules (”the PTO is beginning to recognize it’s own strength…starting to throw it’s weight around a little…”).

With all that as background, here’s the food for thought.  The presentation naturally includes a discussion on patent trolls (2005 was the year of the troll after all, er, wait…maybe 2006 is the year of the troll….).  I searched and searched for the perfect image for the patent troll discussion…and finally found it.

Check it out here.

Read about the Fremont Troll here.

Happy Friday.