Jogging with the Davids

Today I headed out for a quick lunchtime jog listening to a recent podcast of David Levine's radio show, Hearsay Culture. I listened to the podcast from June 28 where he interviews CIS fellow David Olson about the patent system. The conversation provided a great non-geeky introduction to patents and included a discussion about some of the controversial things going on with patents today, like trolls and the LabCorp. v. Metabolite case (opinion) (see also WSJ Law blog and patently-o for some additional commentary). The discussion reminded me of my days as an associate in patent litigation (which I don't really miss from a life/balance perspective), and it was especially good to get an update on some of the recent controversies. David O.'s dead pan sense of humor doesn't hurt either in making this potentially very dry subject quite entertaining. Although my everyday practice now focuses primarily on other areas of IP law, the policy and real world implications of our patent system is something I continue to care deeply about. If you have an interest in these issues too, this episode is definitely worth a listen.

Last week I also listened to the episode interviewing Colin Rule about his passion, Online Dispute Resolution. Again, this was a fun and lively episode. I especially found the discussion about how on-line communication is so different from in-person communication that the norms in one forum don't often translate neatly to the other.

Dave seems to get the right mix of not-too-much-tech and not-too-much-law, to make these podcasts a fun but informative series. You can subscribe to the podcasts of Hearsay Culture in iTunes, and I understand Dave is in the process of setting a separate website (apart from the KZSU station website) to offer the podcast in other formats.