Matt Gregory (00:14): Hello, Patrick. Good to see you, man.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (00:17): Yo, you having tough allergy times?

Matt Gregory (00:19): Did you? Yeah, dude, allergies are brutal. Although I have reunited with my Neil Med sinus rinse, which we talked about before on the show. And it's helped me a lot. So do you get allergies or no?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (00:32): yeah, yes, that's good. Historically, yes, but I don't know what I did to deserve not really getting it bad this year. I'm just kind of having a smooth time. I don't mean to brag, but that's just... Maybe I've been eating local honey? I don't know.

Matt Gregory (00:47): Good job. yes, I haven't been so maybe that's my issue. okay. did you guys have a nice trip?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (00:54): that I mean I haven't either Yeah, Portugal is really beautiful. Recommend it.

Matt Gregory (01:07): Cool. Several of our friends here have gone to Portugal recently and...

Patrick Dyer Wolf (01:12): It's like the thing that everybody's doing now. I guess, you know, for, for, for multiple reasons.

Matt Gregory (01:14): It's a thing. So for the audience that doesn't know, Pat, his wonderful wife Mary, and our friend Bill and I, we all went on a trip together to Asia, to Hong Kong, and then to Vietnam.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (01:36): Dude, we were talking about reviving the travel club. On this trip, we were like, when the kids get a little older, and then we were like, well, Bill's a little behind. He's got a little, he's got a little one. She's cute, but she's little. Yeah.

Matt Gregory (01:41): Yes. That's okay. That's okay. She can come. Accept. We accept. But I remind, I figured we could play a little game here where I bring up a photo of somebody that we ran into on our trip and you have to name the name of the person. Okay? Okay, this is, I'm putting you on the spot here. All right, so I'm gonna share.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (01:51): We accept. my God. Okay. I'm going to get embarrassed right here. Let's go. Yes.

Matt Gregory (02:16): I'm going to share a photo and you tell me if you can remember the name of the person that I'm sharing. Okay.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (02:18): share screen. Share scream. That is monkey who took my sunscreen. Frank.

Matt Gregory (02:32): So I was reminded, I think it's worth, I think we gotta tell the story quickly. Pat and Mary and Bill and I all got invited to visit our friend, Lena Bui in Vietnam. What year was it, Pat?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (02:36): Okay. Yeah, it was 2009. Did you see Lenat has like an art exhibit going on right now? Like in, I forget what country.

Matt Gregory (02:59): I did, I did in Hong Kong because she's seen Verman. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (03:01): In Hong Kong? Why did I think it was somewhere else? Anyway, yeah, she's very exciting. Okay.

Matt Gregory (03:06): I think it's a Hong Kong. So anyway, we go on this day long journey into this forest. And one of the attractions in the forest is the large population of monkeys that's there. And we're walking through the forest and immediately ahead of us on a bridge, a fairly narrow bridge, I might add, there was a large monkey.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (03:32): Yes.

Matt Gregory (03:36): I don't know if this guy's, I think between three and four feet tall.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (03:40): Crucially a narrow bridge. Impassable.

Matt Gregory (03:42): narrow, narrow bridge, sort of swamp land below it that might or might not have included other creatures that we didn't want to encounter. So the bridge was our path to safety, quote unquote. And I was into photography and decided I wanted to take a photo of this monkey, which I think the photo turned out, I mean, despite the pixelization turned out pretty well. Great composition.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (03:52): Yeah. Lava. Yeah, well done. Yeah.

Matt Gregory (04:11): but the monkey did not like the shutter sound and came flying at us and flying at Pat, really. So this is a big monkey came right at us. And Pat, what do you remember about that encounter?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (04:15): yeah. Thank you for reminding me that it was your fault that you took the picture with your shutter sound. I thought it was just that I was flaunting my bag. I think it was, yeah, I didn't, I mean, no, I don't blame you. I thought we had bags of, you know, like, I think I had a plastic bag that had like some sunscreen, maybe some like fruit or something, and I thought the monkey just saw towel, yeah, saw.

Matt Gregory (04:27): Yeah, it was my fault. No, it was me. It was me. Well, at least that's the way I remember it. So. towel.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (04:53): that bag and was like, that's probably got good stuff in it, and just like went for it and ripped it, ripped it wide open. And then just content scattered and he took the sunscreen and we were like, why did you take the sunscreen?

Matt Gregory (05:03): I remember him, remember the, I don't know why I say him, but the monkey swinging your towel around in the air and then shoving the sunscreen into its mouth and running off the bridge. I think at that moment, I just wanted to get out of there.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (05:17): Yeah. Ha ha ha! Yeah, I think we were like, let's leave. That's great. Yeah.

Matt Gregory (05:27): Yeah, yeah. Anyway, I just thought it'd be funny to bring, because we're talking about travel, to bring up this monkey here.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (05:36): That was the only photo that was...

Matt Gregory (05:37): So yeah, that's the only photo. Heejin and I were telling this story this morning to somebody, so I was reminded of the story and needed to bring it up with you.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (05:43): Wonderful. Fantastic.

Matt Gregory (05:54): Today on Trail Map we've got John Spangenberger on the show, who is a wonderful human being and also an IP lawyer in Boston, working with.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (06:06): I'm very interested philosophically in IP, just as a whole.

Matt Gregory (06:10): Yeah, well, he's the guy in addition to being I I'm not really in much of a position to to evaluate his skills as a lawyer, but he seems very knowledgeable about it. He's also a very, very one thing I am able to to assess is his teaching ability. He's a he's a he's an extremely strong teacher and explainer of

Matt Gregory (06:39): So I think Pat, you're going to have an opportunity to have your questions answered today.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (06:44): Okay, hope I can make them good. Hope I can hone them.

Matt Gregory (06:47): Well, it's not about that. It's about just being here and being yourself, just being yourself. So that's going to be a great conversation. Thank you all for listening, as always. Tell your friends. We're excited. We're continuing to grow this Trail Map beast and excited to keep bringing interesting people to you.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (06:56): You're right. You're absolutely right. Yes.

Matt Gregory (07:19): So without further ado, let's chat with John.

Matt Gregory (07:24): John, such a pleasure to have you on the show today. Thank you for being here.

John Spangenberger (07:28): The pleasure is all mine, Matt. It's my honor to be your second most interesting attorney on the pod. listened to Kris Butler's episode a few weeks ago. So a little bit of imposter syndrome, but I hope you make me look good.

Matt Gregory (07:33): Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (07:34): the Have you written any books about beer or maps?

Matt Gregory (07:38):

John Spangenberger (07:42): I some beer and I've looked at a map which I think gets me halfway there. Yeah, thank you, thank you. I actually tried to take one of her classes but it ended up getting canceled at the last minute. So I'm gonna have to meet her someday, yeah. Don't twist my arm.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (07:44): All right, you're in.

Matt Gregory (07:53): no. Well, I can make that happen. We've

Patrick Dyer Wolf (07:54): We're going to...

Matt Gregory (07:58): been talking about doing a Trail Map reunion of all the guests and...

Patrick Dyer Wolf (08:04): Yeah, but it's but I mean there's a lot of boss there's a lot of Boston guests so it's gonna be that should be doable. Yeah, yeah maybe maybe I'll take the Acela

John Spangenberger (08:10): You're going to have to fly up that.

Matt Gregory (08:10): Yeah. Well, Pat's a traveling musician, so maybe he can play a gig here and yeah.

John Spangenberger (08:17): That's right. You can play music for the reunion. We'll do a beer tasting. It'll be great.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (08:23): All elements will be combined. We'll fuse an atom and we'll eat vegan ramen. Ooh yeah, I'm down.

John Spangenberger (08:25): That's right.

Matt Gregory (08:25): That sounds brilliant. That sounds brilliant.

John Spangenberger (08:30): Perfect, and I'll lead us on a run, so that's the best I have to offer.

Matt Gregory (08:32): Yes. Yeah. so I got to meet John at my prior company. And John is an IP attorney based in Boston and also does some teaching, is a runner and excited to chat with you today, John. And you know, you've listened to thank you for listening to the show. You sort of have a sense of what we're all about here. And so I thought you'd be a great person to share with our listeners because of the way that you, your path and also the way that you talk about what you do. So I'd love it if you could just introduce yourself maybe to start.

John Spangenberger (09:15): Yeah, no, I'd love to. Yeah. So like Matt said, so I'm an intellectual property attorney. So intellectual property is sort of an umbrella term that includes various areas of law, one of which is patent law, which is a lot of what I do in my day to day. So I studied electrical engineering as my undergrad degree, which kind of sounds like a weird path from electrical engineering to law. But actually, every IP attorney you'll meet, or rather every patent attorney that you'll meet, has a STEM background. So we actually need to have one of a very particular list of technical degrees in order to practice patent law. And the reason for that is that, you know, our day to day is working with innovators to understand how their invention works and then translating that into, you know, legal protection. And so without that technical background, there'd be sort of a missing link in how to help inventors protect their ideas. So that's my day to day. Like you said, also, I have many hobbies. I'm extremely extroverted. So, you know, it's a bad day if I don't have something going on every night after work. So yeah, love running, big marathoner, and also love teaching. So just wrapped up teaching the spring semester of business law to Suffolk University undergrads. Historically, I've taught some legal writing classes, but this year decided to try out teaching some business law classes. So a lot of fun things going on.

Matt Gregory (10:38): That's so cool. When you were a kid, were you like a tinkerer? you, I think about like what I know about electrical engineering. Like, I'm just curious, like what led you down this path?

John Spangenberger (10:52): Yeah, totally. Yeah, they say a career only makes sense in retrospect, right? And totally makes sense to me because this was, IP law was not in my head as a kid. So I was very into writing as a kid. So I was very into creative writing. Always thought that I was going to be a creative writer in some respect as my profession. But then I took physics in maybe junior year of high school or so and fell in love with it. You know, it really kind of lit me up for the world of tech and STEM. And I was looking at these two career paths. I could go into creative writing or I could maybe have a career and go into electrical engineering. Good question. I was really into fantasy books. Still am actually. I'm still a huge reader. So very big into fantasy and sci-fi. In fifth grade, my crowding achievement, I peaked in fifth grade. I wrote this book about this world where in the grocery store, the vegetables and fruits come to life and have a big war with each other. Got a trophy for that. Won the creative writing competition. So kind of a big deal here.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (11:28): What kind of creative writing did you do? Nice.

John Spangenberger (11:51): But yeah, so I did a ton of that kind of creative writing. And when I was going to undergrad, I told myself, well, I can always write as a hobby. And of course, that didn't really pan out too much. I've picked it up on and off over the years, but never got fully back into it.

Matt Gregory (12:08): That's really cool. My son also in second grade at this point, he's sure that he wants to be a fantasy writer. And so he's on that path right now.

John Spangenberger (12:15): No kidding.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (12:20): He's on the... I was gonna say he's on the IP lawyer track.

John Spangenberger (12:20): Yeah, you've got him. Go ahead, Pat. That's right, that's right. You've got to be in the Lord of the Rings right now, right Matt?

Matt Gregory (12:25): Yeah, there you go. Yeah, well, actually, right now, he's he's been listening to Pat's got kids about the same age. And I'm curious, Pat, are your kids into Greeking Out?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (12:41): I don't know that. They would be because they have been into Percy Jackson and all the related series. My son knows way more about Greek mythology than I do, so they probably would love it. And my daughter.

Matt Gregory (12:46): Okay. Okay. Well, national geographic has a podcast series, 10 seasons of a podcast series called greeking out and Will is obsessed. and he's committed to Greek mythology versus Roman mythology. he got really interested in the Odyssey.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (12:58): Cool. in a minute.

Matt Gregory (13:10): which has actually come up on our prior episode, because I know Pat's family book group read the Emily Wilson translation of the Odyssey, the new one recently. Yes. And so actually, we've been reading the Odyssey to Will at night, which she's like super into. And last night we were talking about, and I don't mean to go on about Will here, but we were talking about the role of translator.

John Spangenberger (13:21): Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (13:21): Well, remember, there's the movie coming out, Matt Damon.

John Spangenberger (13:23): Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (13:29): man.

Matt Gregory (13:40): In translating these these epics and now he wants to learn Greek so he can work on his own translation. So that's his His next goal, I guess Yeah

Patrick Dyer Wolf (13:45): cool.

John Spangenberger (13:49): He's going to be a Greek major. Yeah, I was very into Percy Jackson as a kid. yeah, Will was on the exact same track I was. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Gregory (13:55): Nice. Well, we'd be lucky if he turned out like that. would be cool.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (13:55): ice

Matt Gregory (14:01): So, okay. you were on this creative writing track, then you got exposed to physics and you're like, whoa, this is really cool. It was just like a curiosity driven thing.

John Spangenberger (14:15): Yeah, I think it was born by kind of the fascination with just understanding how the world works, right? mean, physics was one of the first science classes where I started to really understand, I don't know, like, you why is it that when you're driving down the road in the summertime, you see like that mirage, that reflection ahead of you, you know, stuff like that, that I could start to apply sort of a framework to, to understand the world better. And that was fascinating. You know, you just start to see these kind of hidden workings of things working in the world that really intrigued me. And in particular, the circuits unit of our physics class really, really, you know, drew my attention where so much of the world back then and certainly more so now is computerized. It was just so fascinating for me to able to understand how all of that worked. So, you know, when I was at that crossroads where I thought, you know, I love creative writing, but I also love physics and it seems like it has a lot more job prospects, that's what drove me to study electrical engineering. And I thought that's what I was going to do. I thought I was going to be an engineer all throughout college. So I had an internship with the Air Force doing some software development. And then I had an internship with Procter & Gamble doing lean manufacturing. And they were enjoyable. I liked them well enough. I saw my brother, he's a few years older than I am. He's getting his, he was getting now has his PhD in material science at WPI. And you know, he is the foremost expert on like crack analysis and aluminum in like the automotive and aerospace industries, which is super cool. Yeah, go ahead. my God, I wish I could. So in the aerospace and automotive industries, you know, your material, you need your material to not be fatigued and break, right? And so.

Matt Gregory (15:52): Wait, wait, wait. Just, can you give us 30 seconds on what that is? Okay. Sure,

John Spangenberger (16:08): If cracks

Matt Gregory (16:08): okay.

John Spangenberger (16:08): form, you need to understand how those cracks can expand, get worse. And so what he was doing was studying how you can cast or, I don't know if cast is the right word, but cast aluminum to make it more durable. So now he runs the additive manufacturing lab there at WPI. So he's kind of a WPI lifer. And so still doing great materials work. All of that is so amazing for him and sounded like my worst nightmare was being so focused on this one narrow topic where I wanted to look at a wide variety of different things. So when I found out about patent law, which was just through dumb luck, I had a friend of a friend my senior year of college who was in the field, found out about it through him and thought, my goodness, this is a match made in heaven for me. You get to new technologies every day, right? Like this morning, I'm working on a medical device, implantable device. Later this afternoon, I'm going to be working on this power supply for data centers. So the variety is wonderful. And I still get to scratch that itch of the creative writing interest. And I was very into debate team as well in high school. So I get to argue with patent examiners, debate them about the meets and bounds of what our invention is. and then actually get to stretch that creative writing muscle. in a sense, legal technical writing is not, winning a Pulitzer over here for it, but it's fun. And it gets to scratch that itch where if I just practiced engineering, I'd probably have much less chance to write as much as I enjoy doing so.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (17:45): You have the chance to bring, to unite the humanities and the sciences a little bit. Matt, I don't know if you remember the line from our classic college era song, Party on Fountain, that goes, party with humanities, party with science, join the international party alliance. So that's what you've managed to do.

John Spangenberger (17:49): That's right, that's right. Only I can bring the two worlds together.

Matt Gregory (18:03): Yes, I do remember that

John Spangenberger (18:06): You two were in a band together? Matt, you were in the band too?

Matt Gregory (18:09): no, no, no. is really nice to affiliate that song with me in any way. But Pat, did you write that song, Pat, or it was written by Molly? Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (18:16): It was a co-write. was a co-write. literally, this is in my mind because I was thinking about it on my way home from the doctor. I can't even remember why, but literally I thought about that earlier. Maybe it was part of my preparation for this interview.

John Spangenberger (18:30): That's right, that's right. Import, yeah, the hard-hitting research.

Matt Gregory (18:30): Of course. Of course. Well, it's great. mean, it's always so I think a lot of the people that we talk to on Trail Map have found pieces of things that interest them and have brought them together into the way they spend their time.

John Spangenberger (18:49): Yeah, totally. That's what I'm saying about a career making sense in retrospect. As I was practicing my creative writing and doing debate team, never had in my mind whatsoever that patent law existed even as a career. I thought I was just kind of flitting from interest to interest doing the things that kind of lit me up. And then patent law, I tell everyone that it was dumb luck that led me to my career. I had no idea it existed, and yet I had been kind of cultivating these skills over the 20 years of my life up to that point. And when I found out about patent law, was just a match made in heaven for everything that I loved and I still love. My initial interest has totally been born out over the years. I've been in the career for 11 years now and have loved every day of it. I think I have the best job in the world and couldn't be more happy about it.

Matt Gregory (19:39): That's wonderful.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (19:39): Is it very variable the length of time you're dealing with a specific, I don't know if you use the word case or like how long are you working on one thing or thinking about it?

John Spangenberger (19:53): Yeah, good question, Pat. So, you know, the entire life cycle of a patent application is on the order of maybe three years or so, maybe a little bit more. But it's very much, you you pick it up for a day or two at a time, and then you don't think about it for months at a time. So it's a very front loaded process. So when an inventor who's usually, you know, an engineer at a company, maybe a startup founder comes to us with their idea, it's very front loaded in the sense that I need to fully understand how that invention works, right? So I will interview them to understand everything about how the technology operates and then prepare a patent application, which is sort of a technical description of how the invention works. I think a lot of people hear patent application and they think it's just an administrative filing. You you check some boxes and maybe file a couple of drawings of your invention and that's it. But it's actually about 20 to 30 pages starting of technical description of, know, every facet of how the invention works. So that process probably takes on the order of maybe up to 30 hours or so typically, 20 to 30 hours. And then once we file it, we don't see it for another year and a half, which is how long it takes for the patent office to pick it up and look at it. So it's their job to be the kind of opposing counsel, if you will. So they are only going to allow a patent application to proceed to a granted patent. If they say, yep, know, nobody's ever done this before. It's novel, it's not obvious. And so therefore you get a patent for this invention. Those rounds of back and forth typically last maybe about 5 to 10 hours. So all told Pat, over the course of three years, we're probably spending maybe 50 or so hours working on it.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (21:32): so then you're in patent pending territory for a while there. Yeah.

John Spangenberger (21:35): That's right. Yeah. Yep. As soon as you get an application on file, you can say patent vending, even if it's just a total nonsense application that would never really get granted.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (21:43): And does that kind of grant you, that grants you protection during that time, sort of?

John Spangenberger (21:47): Yeah, sort of. So it can put people on notice that you have a patent pending, which the very short version, Pat, is that if somebody were to ever be found liable for patent infringement, you might be entitled to more money because, you know, hey, look, I put patent pending on it. It was your job to look and see what patents might have existed. you you were on notice that you could be infringing someone's patent.

Matt Gregory (22:10): before we get too far into the patent world, I'm curious you came into, and this may be oversimplifying your interests, but you came into the patent world with a real interest in the sciences and how things worked. Now, I think a lot of people, including myself, when we think about patents, like a big part of it is defensibility and is, you know, there's a... there can be money making in it for people. I'm curious philosophically how you think about patents. do you feel like patents are a good thing? Do they help us? Can you share something about that?

John Spangenberger (22:46): No, it's something I think about a lot, right? Especially with, you know, a few years ago with Martin Shkreli in the news, the kind of pharma bro guy. Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right that patents can be abused and can be used in a manner that is probably not beneficial to the world. But I'll tell you about how I think about it. So the reason that we have patents, I mean, let's take a step back, actually, because I think many people, you know, hear patent and I think they know what it means, but maybe aren't fully familiar with what a patent does. So a patent gives you a 20 year monopoly on your invention. So once your patent is granted, for up to 20 years after that, nobody is allowed to make, use or sell whatever your patent covers. And so if you have a patent to a life-saving drug, you are the only one who is allowed to manufacture that drug for the next 20 years. And it doesn't take a whole lot of creative writing to figure out how that could lead to some bad outcomes, right? So why do we have that system? We have that system because it encourages the constitutional languages, progress in the arts and sciences. That's why we have patents. They provide incentives for people to innovate in the first place. So the argument would go, sure, I have a monopoly to make this drug for the next 20 years, and that may drive prices up for consumers, but hey, this drug would never exist if not for the patent system, because if I didn't know that I could get a patent to justify the investment in all that R &D, I would never have invented this product in the first place. Does that make sense, Matt? Does that answer your

Matt Gregory (24:14): For sure, Yeah, so it's a reward for, a potential reward for inventing new things that could be really impactful.

John Spangenberger (24:24): Exactly, exactly. Yeah, it is supposed to incentivize R &D and yeah, you know, it's a balancing act, right? I mean, on one hand it incentivizes R &D, on the other hand, it can drive prices up for consumers. So you're absolutely right, it's not a perfect system, but I feel pretty confident that it's a good system.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (24:45): Can you divulge any interesting things that have crossed your desk in the recent past? Even from long ago, just things that stick out for you that were either complicated or just like notable, notably interesting.

John Spangenberger (25:01): Yeah, complicated. One comes immediately to mind. goodness. I'll see if I can put this in vague terms while maintaining confidentiality and seeing how much I can really stretch, how much I remember. But it was for this defense company. And they had figured out a way to model plasma dynamics, like how particles move in a plasma cloud. using only lasers. So there's no actual plasma, but they figured out how to make lasers sort of a physical analogy to how plasmas operate. And that one, my goodness, it was such a bear. And, you know, it was such a painful process with the patent office because, you know, every time we got on the phone with them, we would have to re-explain how the invention works and say, yup, I know this sounds like, you know, magic. I know this sounds like it's all make believe, but I swear it's real and here's why we deserve a patent. my goodness, Pat, it was just a years long slog to argue at the patent office about that one. But how cool is that, right? That I get to be exposed to that kind of technology years before it ever reaches the market, right?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (26:05): you drawing, so in that case, were you drawing on some of your background, your physics and electrical engineering background to understand what they were talking about? Or is that, yeah.

John Spangenberger (26:14): Yeah, totally. Yeah, the vast majority of what I do would not be possible if I didn't have my four years of electrical engineering training to have those technical skills. yeah, even though I'm an attorney, right, I also went to law school, even though I'm an attorney, I could not do this job if I didn't have a technical degree. It is still very, very technical in nature.

Matt Gregory (26:35): Can you talk a little bit about the people side of your work and you're dealing with people that are inventing new things that are deeply technical? Does that require certain skill sets on your side to help them connect to what might be patentable or even just some of the soft skills that you use?

John Spangenberger (27:00): Yeah, totally. So I used to say that my missed calling was in hospitality because I love, you know, like having dinner parties, having people over for cocktails. I had a phase where I was extremely into making cocktails and, you know, nothing got me more excited than like designing a new recipe, making one up from scratch, like, you know, tailored to a person. I love just, you know, like making people feel comfortable and, you know, cultivating that sense of hospitality. So I used to say that until I realized that a lot of what I do I'm also in the service industry, right? Just like a bar is maybe. And the product that we're selling is certainly much different, but at the end of the day, it's my job to kind of translate legal problems into business solutions for people, right? And so, yeah, it's something I think about a lot, is, I'll put it this way. One of my mentors here at the firm, Peter Lando, one of his favorite phrases that guides my work every day is, don't tell me no, tell me how. And what he means by that is, you it's not enough as an attorney to just say, okay, CEO, your problems are here, here and here. You know, here's your legal exposure if you do those things. Well, that's great. I mean, that's table stakes to be a good attorney, but it doesn't get us all the way there, which is, okay, well, you what should I do next? Business owners are looking for counsel, right? They're looking for trusted advisors to navigate through the legal issues. to run their business most effectively. And so I see a lot of my job as taking in all of the kind of legal realities and the kind of output that I'm providing is not here's where you're exposed. My output should be, know, here are the concerns and here are the two to three options that are available to you and here's the one I recommend and why. So a lot of my job right is kind of translating legal realities into business solutions.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (28:54): When you say the options, are you talking about actual modifications to the invention itself or just how it's described or what do mean?

John Spangenberger (29:03): Yeah, it can be a lot of that, right? So, you know, if you think about, let's say you had the patent on the bicycle, right? You what does it mean to have a patent on a bicycle? Does that mean that a motorcycle is covered by that patent? Does that mean a tricycle is covered? So what does it actually mean to define the scope of a patent? We put it in words, right? So we would, you know, have one single sentence that captures what the invention is. And that's a lot of what our job is, is crafting that sentence, which we call a claim, to be as broad as possible, right? So yes, sometimes it's how do we craft this claim in a manner that is going to stop your competitors from entering into a similar space. And there can be other concerns as well, right? Maybe the client really needs to publicly disclose their invention somewhere tomorrow. but they don't have any patent applications filed yet, which is a problem. You want to have a patent application filed before a disclosure. So it's not enough to say, hey, you can't make that presentation tomorrow. You have to say, hey, just send me this, this, and this, and I'll get enough filed so that you're legally in the clear to make that presentation tomorrow. It's a very simple example, but that's one of the issues that we deal with on the day to day.

Matt Gregory (30:23): I'm just curious about like with companies where maybe a patent or an invention is like literally the core of keeping that company alive. It strikes me that there like in terms of like the value, the future value of that company. It seems like there probably are moments where patent applications are more routine and then moments where patent applications are everything for a company and you're dealing with you know, a lot of pressure. And I'm just curious, like, does that, how do you manage that in the way that you offer your services?

John Spangenberger (31:02): Yeah, it's a tough balance, Matt, because often there's an inverse correlation between how important the patent is and how many resources are available to the company. Because for a large Fortune 500 company who has tons of resources, know, IBM has over 10,000 patents. I don't think that the 10,000 and first patent is going to make or break the company, right? Whereas for a startup company, at the beginning, all you have is an idea and your patent is so important to you. Whatever patent protection you have, I mean, that is the whole company, right? And yet a lot of startups don't really have a lot of resources to have that patent protection, to hire a good attorney. So it's something I grapple with and to the extent possible, I always try to work with startups in the most cost efficient manner. And I heard, Matt, on one of your earlier episodes, you were talking about how nice it is to work at a big company where you can reach out to the counsel, in-house counsel, and not have to be worried about getting charged for that, And I totally get that. smaller clients, you know, I try to give a free hour or two of counseling each month to make sure that they're getting the best possible protection. yeah, I mean, it's certainly a challenge. Did I answer your question, Matt?

Matt Gregory (32:15): Yeah, yeah, for sure. Now I'm just trying to like, I think one of the things that we try to do with Trail Map is like put our listeners in your shoes in these moments where, you know, kind of to think about the human aspect of that pressure a little bit. So I think that's helpful perspective.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (32:34): mean, how many things are you dealing with at once that you, I mean, you were saying you pick it up for a couple hours and put it down, but like, how many things do you have to keep in mind?

John Spangenberger (32:45): Yeah, yeah, so I'm a partner here at the firm, Lando and Anastasi, I don't think I mentioned, but we are an intellectual property boutique, which means all we do is intellectual property, you that's our bread and butter. And now that I'm at the partner level where I'm doing a lot more, you know, kind of overseeing management of patent portfolios, rather than doing the, you know, direct drafting a lot of the time, which, you know, I still do, but not to quite the same extent. I would say I'm probably managing about 200 or so maybe 200, 300 active patent families. And when we say active, we mean, you know, the patent has not been granted yet. Again, it's that kind of three year lead time at minimum. And then even once a patent is granted, that's not the end of all patents you could ever possibly get on whatever you disclosed in that original application. You can file what we call continuation applications. And they're just additional claim sets that can cover the invention in different ways. So for a startup company, you know, common strategy we might use is to say, look, you know, this first patent filing is a foundational patent filing. It covers the meat and bones, the heart of basically the most fundamental version of what your invention is. So we would suggest keeping this patent family alive as long as possible and having tons of additional claim sets in the form of those subsequent applications to provide, you know, this as what we call a patent thicket, you know, a whole array of patents protecting the invention.

Matt Gregory (34:16): this is again probably revealing my lack of sophistication on patent front, but I know there's design patents, right, which are mostly focused on the aesthetics design of a device and then there are utility patents which have more to do with the functionality of whatever you're patenting. Are there other categories of patents that you're dealing with as well?

John Spangenberger (34:23): Mm-hmm. Not so much, you there are technically plant patents, which I have actually never worked on before. I don't know anybody who has, but yeah, you're right, Matt. Those are the two big categories. Usually when people talk about a patent, they're talking about a utility patent, which covers the way something works. But design patents are incredibly important and powerful. Like you said, they cover the way something looks. So they're pretty narrowly construed, whereas a utility patent can be way broader.

Matt Gregory (34:43): Yeah.

John Spangenberger (35:04): But you may be familiar with the famous Apple versus Samsung case where Apple had a design patent on just the kind of rounded beveled shape of the screen of the iPhone, which today is so incredibly prolific, right? But this was 20 years ago. The iPhone didn't exist 20 years ago. And so they ended up successfully suing Samsung for design patent infringement. the original judge it was a above a billion dollars and i'm getting reduced but i you know they're incredibly powerful tools

Matt Gregory (35:34): I know you're a young guy, so I don't know to what extent you can...

Patrick Dyer Wolf (35:40): He's like, I'm 64. I just run.

John Spangenberger (35:41): Yeah, I just have a good skincare routine.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (35:43): Yeah.

Matt Gregory (35:45): I don't know to what extent you can reflect on this, but I'm curious about the way the patent landscape has shifted over time and how you would characterize the patent landscape today versus even like 50 years ago. What does it look like today?

John Spangenberger (36:04): Yeah, yeah, so right before I started practicing, which was in 2015, there was a major Supreme Court decision that really cast a lot of doubt on how you can obtain patents on software-based inventions, which today, you know, I mean, there are so many software-based inventions that if they could not be patented, that would be very problematic for American industry, right? And so it is a point that is pretty difficult to grapple with. When I first started practicing, nobody really knew what the limits were on where you could get a software patent and where you could not. And so when I first started, did, I worked so much on cases where they were really tough, can you patent the software issues? There's been over the last 11 years of my practicing, that has smoothed out quite a bit. We've gotten a lot more clarity on how you can get a software patent granted. It's still a challenge. You need to really think very critically about it as early as possible. Just yesterday I was working on this patent application for a client who has a software-based invention and there's some clear issues that we need to account for. And if we don't draft the patent application right at the outset with those issues in mind, it would be a problem. We probably couldn't get a patent on it. But because over the last 11 years, there has been a lot more case law development clarifying when you can get a software patent. We now have the tools we need to preempt to those issues before they come. So it's not a non-issue now, but it certainly is something that was a lot more problematic when I first started practicing. And then in the industry more broadly, the topic du jour AI is shaking everything up. So right now, AI cannot be an inventor on something.

Matt Gregory (37:40): interesting.

John Spangenberger (37:48): So no matter how well, for example, you prompt chat GPT, whatever, even if it spits out an idea that would be patentable if a human had done it, you can't have a patent on that because AI is not an inventor. Similarly, know, Pat, you're in the music industry. I'm sure you're very familiar with all the AI copyright concerns that exist. So that's certainly a rapidly evolving area as well. Not so much my day to day, but something I do practice a little bit of.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (38:14): Yeah, it touches everything. Do you use any AI tools in your work?

John Spangenberger (38:19): Yeah, yeah, we do use some. So a lot of the kind of enterprise models are very good for getting up to speed on a new technology. So before, you know, I have a background in electrical engineering, but that doesn't mean that I perfectly remember, you know, how the radio frequency modules work in a smartphone, right? And so when I'm doing that kind of like deep RF engineering work, I need to brush up. Historically, I've got textbooks up here on my desk that I would look at to get up to speed. Now, fortunately, it's a lot easier. So I find the enterprise models are very good at having that back and forth to get me up to speed on a new technology area. So that's wonderful. There are plenty of services that offer IP specific AI services. So things that can help like analyze an office action, which is to say a communication from the patent office where they lay out why the application is not ready for grant yet. And it will say, hey, here are some flaws in the patent examiner's argument. None of it is really good enough yet to be a substitute for a patent attorney's judgment, but it's another tool in the tool belt that certainly is helpful and can help flag some things that we would have otherwise maybe not been immediately drawn to.

Matt Gregory (39:37): Do you see the frequency or the nature of the way that your clients are reaching out to you shifting with AI? Like they're plugging it in to be like, what's John going to say about this before they reach out to you?

John Spangenberger (39:49): Yes, I am. It can be. So let's start with the kind of bear case for it or the bull case, as it were. It can be great, right? I patent language is confusing. It is very difficult for somebody who has only been involved as an inventor in the patent process to understand the full meets and bounds of what the patent process involves. And so in that sense, AI is great for

Matt Gregory (39:56): Yeah.

John Spangenberger (40:17): know, helping to get inventors up to speed on how the patent process works. You know, sometimes I will get, I will communicate with clients and they'll have, you know, a list of 20 questions that were, you know, generated with the help of AI and that, you know, at best they make maybe some of the questions are relevant. The vast majority are really not applicable to what we're doing. And I don't mind that personally, right? Like I actually love the role of educator, right? And explaining the patent world to clients. Clients do not love when they see that they have to pay me to answer those 20 questions, 16 of which probably aren't too relevant. So yes, it's an interesting dynamic right now. I also just have concerns as an attorney because there are a lot of confidentiality concerns. So if you put your invention into a public facing model, like the free version of ChatGPT, that is... arguably disclosure of your invention and you've now foregone the ability to obtain a patent on your invention. Right, and so there were already so many traps for the unwary in the patenting process where inventors could really jeopardize their patent rights without realizing it and AI multiplies that tenfold. And also just concerns around like attorney-client privilege. There was recently a case where a client took his attorney's advice and put it into chat GPT and said, know, like,

Patrick Dyer Wolf (41:20):

John Spangenberger (41:44): How should I understand this advice and what should I say back to him? And just by doing that, he lost all privilege, all confidentiality rights to the advice that he put into that chat bot. There have been decisions that came down on the other side, so it's still an uncertain area of law. But it is certainly something that, as attorneys, keeps us up at night.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (42:04): It's interesting to think about. mean, personally, I've spent much more time trying to understand what is and is not copyright law in terms of music than, you know, patent law. I mean, like in the case of music, if you have written something down, technically you have copyright on it and then you'd behoove yourself to, you know, register it with the...

John Spangenberger (42:23): Exactly.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (42:28): with the government. it's not a thing where if you put it on a public-facing forum, then you forfeit the opportunity. But in both of those cases, though, my perception is that there's a fair amount of subjectivity is exactly the right word, but trying to carve out when something is actually unique.

John Spangenberger (42:40): Exactly.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (42:58): Would you use the word subjectivity or do you think of it in a more systematic, more scientific way, I guess?

John Spangenberger (43:06): Yeah, totally. So you're asking if, you know, whether something is new, novel, and patentable, how subjective that question is?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (43:13): Yeah, yes, because like, you know, there are so many things out there. There's so many inventions out there. mean, yeah, yeah.

John Spangenberger (43:19): Yeah. Yeah. No, you're absolutely right, Pat. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, so there is, it's a mix of objectivity and subjectivity. In an ideal world, it would be perfectly objective, but that's not really the case. So in order to get a patent, one of the requirements is that it be novel, right? It's never been done before. That's pretty easy to show objectively because there we're asking, you know, has this literal thing existed before? And that's pretty objective because if there's even one minor difference between what you're saying your invention is and what has existed before, then no problem, it's novel. The more difficult hurdle to overcome where there is more subjectivity is, is it obvious? So just because what you've done before is novel, or pardon me, what your invention is, is novel, has never been done before exactly, that's not enough. You also have to show that it is not just a mere obvious variation on what has come before. So that's where the vast 95 % of my job is arguing with patent examiners about whether something is obvious or not. And there's 15 different tests to say what it means to be obvious and when something is obvious and when it's not. So yes, there is quite a bit of subjectivity to it.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (44:22): Yeah. Yeah, so that's like, that's a binary, that's a, you know, it falls down on is it obvious or is it not. That seems tough.

John Spangenberger (44:36): Exactly. Yeah, yeah, but you can't have a patent unless it is non-obvious, so, you know, in the end we usually are successful, you know, 95 plus percent of the time, but doesn't mean it's always a fun road to get there.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (44:49): Yeah.

Matt Gregory (44:49): Well, I'm sure that our listeners are feeling this way, but I think in all of my conversations with you and my emails with you, like I've always been impressed with your ability to teach people new things. would you say that was something that was an important kind of for you growing up? Like you mentioned your brother is also, you know, working for a education institute. WPI, so I'm curious like where you think that interest came from in teaching?

John Spangenberger (45:17): Yeah, yeah. So the first time I can remember really being involved in an explicit teaching role was actually full circle teaching physics two when I was in college. So for six semesters, I taught physics two. I absolutely loved that. There was nothing more gratifying to me than to demystify physics two, which is a notoriously terribly difficult class that every engineer had to take, even if it was very unrelated.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (45:44): What's scope of physics to? What are we talking about?

John Spangenberger (45:46): Yeah, yeah, so it's pretty wide ranging. The vast majority of it is electromagnetism. So how do circuits work? How does your phone send a signal to a cell tower? And how are we talking right now? How is it that just through electromagnetic waves, you and I are talking right now in real time? So that's the vast majority of it. Some of it is also like Einstein's theories of relativity, things of that nature. But yeah, the vast majority is electromagnetism.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (46:13): just been reading I don't know if you ever came across this book from the 70s the Tao of Physics by I don't know how you say his name Fritjof Capra 1975 and it's the general gist of it is he's comparing modern you know this is 50 years ago but modern physics with with Eastern religions and how they how there's a Venn diagram but

John Spangenberger (46:19): I'm not familiar with it, no. Mmm.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (46:43): Both of which are very interesting to me, but just his descriptions of subatomic physics and electromagnetism and all these things that you were mentioning too. And four dimensional space time, how it's curved. All that stuff is just mind blowing and fascinating to me. And I remember loving physics in high school.

John Spangenberger (47:02): Mm-hmm.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (47:10): and not really going down the science path. stayed in the humanities path. just having been reminded of it reading this book, we kind of have a handle on how this stuff works, but it's kind of just like, Like, are just probabilities. Subatomic particles are just probabilities. They're not really stuff. Stuff is not really stuff. I don't know. Do you ever dive into that like, whoa, man?

John Spangenberger (47:34): totally 100%. Yes. I know that book by reputation. didn't know the name of it. Yeah, I mean, you think about how habituated we've become to things like the iPhone. I mean, the amount of magic that is in that little, you know, tiny box is inconceivable to somebody 50 years ago, right? It's funny how quickly we get habituated to things where, you know, like AI chat bots, we have this magic answer box now that did not exist until three and a half years ago.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (47:42): Yeah. Yes. Yes.

John Spangenberger (48:07): And already it's just like, yeah, you know, it's pretty good. It hallucinates sometimes. Yeah, I absolutely think about that. One of my favorite movies is The Prestige. Have you guys ever seen it? Oh, Matt, you got, let's log off right now and you've got to spend the rest of the day watching it. It's the first movie I've ever watched where I got to the end of it and then immediately restarted it because it's, oh my God, it's fantastic. I'm not going to ruin anything, Matt. But what'd you say? might be, there you go. There you go. Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (48:09): Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Gregory (48:17): Mm. Mm-mm.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (48:17): yeah. Let's go watch it and come back.

Matt Gregory (48:30): Might be tonight. I might watch it tonight, yeah.

John Spangenberger (48:36): Well, I don't want to spoil it, Matt, but it involves magic and there's also some science involved. And for me, it kind of painted the picture that there's a thin line between what we understand as science and what somebody, you know, 100 years ago would just think of as magic, right? And so I think getting back to sort of my interest in physics from a young age and in high school, that was a big part of it, right? It was kind of demystifying these things in the world that could be magic in another world. So teaching physics to my colleagues in undergrad then at RPI, that was so fun because physics was very difficult. It was kind of a notoriously difficult class for people. And I viewed it as a great chance to help people understand these topics in the most digestible manner possible and make a difficult class otherwise more approachable and maybe even fun. And so that's where I started my love of teaching was in college. And then, like you said, Matt, I now teach as an adjunct professor at Suffolk University. Been doing that for a couple of years now. And that's such a pleasurable part of my day in my life, right? Getting to demystify the law now. So much different topic, but also very similar in that it's sort of this invisible force that governs our lives, similar to physics, right? I don't want to get too woo-woo-woo-y about it, but

Patrick Dyer Wolf (50:03): I like it, I like it.

John Spangenberger (50:04): Yeah, there you go. There you go, Pat. But yeah, we live our lives through society governed by laws that many people don't understand the workings of. And so it's very fun to expose them to kind of the hidden formulas that govern why laws are what they are.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (50:20): What aspect of law are you teaching?

John Spangenberger (50:24): Yeah, so I first started off teaching legal research and writing. So teaching law students how to structure a legal argument, how to convey information as clearly as possible. Over the past year, I transitioned to teaching undergraduate students the class is business law. And so this is for a class for future business owners. And the idea is what aspects of the law do you need to know about in order to be an effective business owner, right? You you learn just enough to know, hey, I actually need to... call an attorney about this now. So we touch on things like contracts, when is a contract formed, how are contracts interpreted, when can your employee bind your organization to some obligation, things like that.

Matt Gregory (51:06): That's really cool. I would like to take that class. So it strikes me as we're like getting to know you here, like you've got your day job and you've got pieces of your day job that light you up in different ways. You're touching inventions and technology. There's a teaching element to the way that you're working with clients and helping them through their business.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (51:09): Yeah.

John Spangenberger (51:09): It's very fun.

Matt Gregory (51:36): know, outside of work, you've got teaching, teaching young people who are building their own skill sets. And we've talked a bit about running. Love to hear more about the role running plays in your life. But I mean, how intentional is this puzzle that you're putting together of all these different pieces?

John Spangenberger (52:00): Yeah, so you're asking how intentional is the way that I allocate my time for all of these interests. Yeah, I would say it's quite intentional. I, like I said earlier in our chat, am hugely extroverted. In an ideal world, I'm hanging out with one of my friends every single day. And so I am very jealous. I jealously guard my time because I never want to spend any second indoors. I'm not a big sit on the couch kind of guy.

Matt Gregory (52:06): Yeah, yeah.

John Spangenberger (52:29): very invested in how I allocate my time. And so, yeah, I would say that with teaching, I come back every semester. It's not a long-term obligation. It's three months at a time. But I am always, always, always down to keep teaching because that really lights me up. That is probably, don't tell my colleagues here who are gonna listen to this podcast, but that's probably my favorite part of the day is teaching, teaching students, but also teaching clients about legal issues.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (52:48): Ha ha!

John Spangenberger (52:58): And the running, think, scratches a different itch for me, which is, one, just my health, enough said. But two is I'm a huge audio book and podcast guy. So that's sort of my chance to just kind of zone out, listen to what I want to listen to. And so that scratches a totally different itch. But yeah, I'm quite intentional about my time. I like to think that I often reevaluate, is this something that's part of my life that's adding a lot of value? And if not, maybe I can. deprioritize it. Historically, I competed in marathons. I was more or less always training for a marathon. And eventually realized, you know what, I'm running 50 to 60 miles a week. Running six days a week, that is a lot of times spent just with my own thoughts. And as an extrovert, that's not necessarily my favorite thing to do. So yes, I kind of deprioritize that. Now I run more for fun, less on a schedule. And I have more time to do the kind of fun things with friends that I want to do. So yeah, I'm always sort of reallocating my time as I'm checking in with myself and seeing, you know, are these things that I'm spending my time on adding a lot of value.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (54:05): Did you run a growing up or was that a later in life?

John Spangenberger (54:09): Yeah, totally later in life. I remember thinking in college, like it would be amazing if I could run for longer than five minutes. And yeah, no, I was not at all an athletic child. Like I said, big into reading, not so big into exercise. So I definitely got into it later in life. It was actually COVID for the most part. So over COVID, I was super into audio books and podcasts and just wanted to get out of the house.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (54:16): wow.

John Spangenberger (54:34): And so running was such a great way to, you know, safely get some exercise and get to listen to my audio books and podcasts and eventually kind of tricked myself into liking running when really it was the podcasts and the audio books that got me started.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (54:49): I remember early COVID, everybody would just be walking. Like I was sitting on my front porch and there'd just be people, just huge hordes of people walking by.

Matt Gregory (54:57): COVID was an extremely challenging time for extroverts.

John Spangenberger (55:02): It sure was and luckily at the time I was living with my two best friends so I still had my know social time but but I don't know about you guys I look back on it with kind of rose-colored glasses you know I feel like I must have had Stockholm syndrome because I kind of nostalgize it yeah yeah

Matt Gregory (55:08): Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (55:14): Little bit, yeah.

Matt Gregory (55:16): Yeah, no, we do too. We do too.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (55:18): I mean, yeah, you know, horrible in many ways, but like there's a little bit of a snow day vibe. like, you know.

Matt Gregory (55:25): So I guess before we leave reading, what are you reading right now? Anything that you might recommend to our audience?

John Spangenberger (55:32): Yeah, yeah, a few of my recent favorites that I recommend. love, Pachinko is one of my favorite books I've read recently. Piranesi is another amazing one. Gosh, the name is escaping me right now, but it was written by the guy who, if I can rudely look it up on this other tab while I talk, it was written by one of the showrunners for Game of Thrones.

Matt Gregory (55:49): We'll know. Go for it.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (55:55): I read a book by him that I loved. Maybe it's the same one. hope it's the same one. Find it. Yes. City of Thieves. Great book.

John Spangenberger (56:00): Yeah, it's dead in World War II. Yeah, City of Thieves, that's it. Amazing book, yeah, so good, especially if you're into historical fiction. Devil in the White City is another great historical fiction book. If I can tell a quick side story. So at RPI, Rensselaer Polytech, where I went to undergrad, our engineering building has like a shrine to the Ferris wheel because George Ferris, who went to RPI, invented the Ferris wheel. And you know, I'd be walking in my class and I'd think like, we invented

Patrick Dyer Wolf (56:11): great one.

John Spangenberger (56:28): the internet, we invented AI arguably, we've got the first quantum computer. Why is the Ferris wheel, know, this carnival ride, like what we're putting on a pedestal? So in City of Thieves, I learned that it was sort of America's answer to the Eiffel Tower in the World's Fair in Chicago

Matt Gregory (56:35): Yeah.

John Spangenberger (56:44): But anyhoo, yeah, so those are a couple of books that I've loved recently. Right now I'm reading, gosh, can I pronounce it? Kaikeyi. So it is, if you've ever heard of the, I'm going to mispronounce this too, but the Ramayana. It's kind of a classic Indian myth story. And this book tells the story from the point of view of the vilified character in the traditional telling of the Ramayana. So it's sort of like Wicked, right? It's, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (57:11): I was gonna say, you beat me to it, yeah.

John Spangenberger (57:14): But I'm in three different book clubs. So I'm reading that one. And then for my other book clubs, I'm reading The Long Walk by Stephen King and Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown for the other one.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (57:24): Are you rea-

Matt Gregory (57:24): See, I knew you'd have a good answer for that question. just, you've filled up my entire 2026 reading list. Yeah, I'm glad I asked.

John Spangenberger (57:29): There you go. There you go. I wish

Patrick Dyer Wolf (57:30): There you go.

John Spangenberger (57:32): I was still on Goodreads.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (57:33): Do you audio them or do you re-read them?

John Spangenberger (57:36): It's a mix. I prefer read reading. every morning I'm fanatical about starting my day with just coffee and reading for at least a half hour. And so I prefer print, but because I do so much running, I do a lot of listening.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (57:43): Yeah, that's practical. Are you solo man? Are you partner man? Are you family man?

John Spangenberger (57:56): I have a girlfriend, yep. We've been together for five years. And yeah, not interested in kids, but fortunately we're aligned on that. So, yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (58:05): Good. That's good. I just had a lingering question in my mind about the business. Does your firm or firms like your firm, when there's like a challenge to a patent, or like a hey, do you deal with that type of thing as well?

John Spangenberger (58:25): Yeah, totally. Yep, yep. That's the formal legal term. Yeah, but in Latin, hey, yeah. Yeah, so, you can't do that. Yep, so what I do is called prosecution, which means that I help get patents granted. That's most of my work, but I am involved in some of the adversarial work. But what you're describing, Pat, we would call litigation. So that is when you think, yeah, there you go. There you go. Hopefully not from personal experience.

Matt Gregory (58:25): Hey!

Patrick Dyer Wolf (58:28): Yeah. Yeah, I know that word. No.

John Spangenberger (58:51): But yeah, if you think that somebody is infringing on your patent, you would file a lawsuit and that would begin the litigation process. So I actually do love the adversarial work, but typically you kind of have to pick a lane, prosecution or litigation. And I like the prosecution work more, even though I do love the more adversarial stuff. But yeah, so I dabble. And to answer your question more directly, there are folks at my firm who specialize only in litigation. So yes, our firm does it all.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (59:20): One stop shop.

John Spangenberger (59:21): That's right.

Matt Gregory (59:22): Well, John, I know we're coming up on time here, but I just really wanted to say a huge thanks to you for sharing your brain with us for an hour. It's been really fun to chat and listen to you think about your life. And I think you have a real model for me and for other listeners to think about how we're allocating our time. It's really very inspiring to see how purposeful you are with your time.

John Spangenberger (59:48): Yeah, no, it's my pleasure. I feel like I could talk to you guys for another couple hours, but unfortunately we all have jobs to get back to, I'm sure. So thank you so much for having me on. Yeah, Pat, go ahead.

Matt Gregory (59:54): Yes, for sure.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (59:55): It went quick, it quick. No, I was just saying went quick, the hour went quick. Yeah.

John Spangenberger (59:59): it went quick. Yeah, yeah,

Matt Gregory (1:00:00): Yeah,

John Spangenberger (1:00:00): yeah.

Matt Gregory (1:00:01): yeah. Luckily, we've had lots of good conversations here, but this was a great one. So thanks again, and hope we'll talk to you soon.

John Spangenberger (1:00:08): Yeah, and I'll be looking for that invite for the beer tasting with Kris. Alright, thanks guys.

Matt Gregory (1:00:11): Okay, sounds good.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:00:11): Yeah, we're gonna do it. We're gonna do it.

Matt Gregory (1:00:16): What a guy.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:00:16): Woo! Great guy.

Matt Gregory (1:00:19): Do you feel any different about IP than you did coming in?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:00:23): I know a little bit more. and I have more questions.

Matt Gregory (1:00:29): Just the tip of the iceberg, I guess. what's your next question?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:00:38): I meant to ask him what he thinks about the 20 year thing, if he thinks that's dead on or if it should be more or less or if there's other things he would like to modify in broad strokes about the structure of patent law.

Matt Gregory (1:00:43): Hmm. Hmm. That's a really interesting, that's a good question.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:00:55): I should have thought of that.

Matt Gregory (1:00:57): Well, I think you asked a lot of really good questions. I think it'll still be a good conversation, even though maybe you didn't get. I don't want you to have any regrets here, Pat. You're bringing so much here.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:00:59): man, so did you. Yeah, it was. I mean, as John said, it's a balancing act of regret and nostalgia. Humanity.

Matt Gregory (1:01:14): Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's next for you? Do you have any tour travel coming up or anything? Are you home for a while?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:01:26): Home for little bit here. Springtime. I love the springtime, you know. So wonderful.

Matt Gregory (1:01:31): I know, I know. I was getting ice cream the other night with Will and he said to me, I just feel like I have so much more energy this time of year. And I'm like, I know it's hope. It's hope. I've got a t-shirt on. Don't have to bundle up. It's pretty amazing.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:01:40): Yeah, dude. it's cuz it's 71 degrees out. Yeah. Yeah. And then it's, you know, school's out. It's going to be summertime. It's crazy. Time is wild.

Matt Gregory (1:01:57): I know. I know it is wild.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:02:01): What about you? I mean, I know you're going to the lumber yard.

Matt Gregory (1:02:03): We're going to lumber yard, to be hopefully doing a little building project this weekend. Heej has been doing a lot of planting in our garden. And so we've got some lettuces coming up. And Will has planted some flowers. So that's all happening.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:02:09): Nice. great, I want to do more of that.

Matt Gregory (1:02:25): but great, great conversation. And yeah, I hope you have a nice, nice weekend, nice Mother's Day weekend.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:02:33): Yeah, Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there. We love you moms.

Matt Gregory (1:02:36): Yeah, All right, go moms.