如何保护您的创新+支持威士拉弗里曼的妇女

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Untold Stories of Innovation

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“I didn’t know patent law existed. I just wasn’t exposed. So, I truly believe exposure is critical.” —Angela Freeman is an intellectual property associate at Barnes & Thornburg, LLC and president of Women & Hi Tech

From today’s episode you’ll learn:

Why do stories matter to the innovation process? What values can be instilled in innovators who share stories? How do innovation leaders inspire creators to tell and share their success and failure stories?

Angela Freeman是一个知识产权助理Barnes & Thornburg, LLC公司总裁Women & Hi Tech。Angela admits that she learned what a patent attorney was many years into her career as a molecular biologist at伊利莉莉。Her scientific background lends a hand as she helps inventors protect their inventions, determining if a patent is the right route for the organization. To Angela, knowledge is power. That’s why empowering young girls to get involved in STEM is her passion project. Inspired to make a real difference in the lives of young girls, she says, “You can’t be what you can’t see.”

Today's Guest:
安吉拉·弗里曼头像

Angela B. Freeman是巴恩斯&Thornburg LLP律师事务所印第安纳波利斯办事处的知识产权助理和专利律师。弗里曼女士是该公司的知识产权部门和生命科学练习集团的成员,在那里她首先将她的练习作为律师职员,同时参加印第安纳大学罗伯特H. McKinney法律。Ms. Freeman assists clients in intellectual property matters involving highly technical subject matter, particularly in the life sciences/biotech, agricultural, and pharmaceutical arts, and is admitted to practice in the state of Indiana, before the U.S. District Courts for the Northern and Southern Districts of Indiana, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

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凯蒂[00:00:04] Welcome to Untold Stories of Innovation, where we amplify untold stories of insight, impact and innovation. Powered by untold content. I’m your host, Katie Trauth Taylor. Our guest today is Angela Freeman. She’s an intellectual property associate at Barnes and Thornburg and she is president of Women & Hi Tech. Angela, thank you for being on the podcast.

Angela[00:00:30] Thank you for having me. I appreciate that.

凯蒂[00:00:33] Tell us what it means to be an intellectual property associate and the kinds of clients that you work with.

Angela[00:00:39] Sure. So I’m an intellectual property associate, as you mention. And there are several flavors of that. I am a patent attorney. You can also be a trademark attorney or copyright attorney. I appreciate being a patent attorney because it is the only area of law at all that requires that you have a science and technical background—some type of engineering, hard science. And I appreciate that. It is probably one of the most challenging areas of the law. It’s one that most attorneys will tell you they don’t like to do because it deals with math and science. You know, typically attorneys get away from math and science. That’s why they go into the practice of law. So we are the kind of rare creatures in the legal field that, you know, have—some people’ say— are able to use both sides of our brain. And I enjoy that. I enjoy being in what I think to be an elite class of legal scholars and practitioners. That’s exciting to me because it completely capitalizes on my background. So it’s been an interesting journey.

凯蒂[00:01:55] What scientific background do you hold?

Angela[00:01:59]所以我通过训练成为了一名分子生物学家。我在路易斯维尔大学获得了生物学乐动体育266和化学学士学位,分子生物学硕士学位,然后去了礼来作为我的第一份大工作,在那里是一名研究科学家和临床科学家,研究遗传学超过10年,大约12年,13年。太棒了。我非常喜欢它。我喜欢它的一切。喜欢在实验室里。喜欢我的同事。我有一个伟大的事业,带我环游世界。我参加了各种各样的科学会议,你知道,展示我的研究和解释。真是太棒了。但在我的职业生涯中,我想要一些不同的东西。你知道,长大一点,展望未来,意识到,你知道,好吧,这很好,但我不知道这是否是我余生想要做的。你知道的?

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凯蒂[00:03:07]是的。

Angela[00:03:08]并开始调查,好的,还有什么?那里还有什么?你还做些什么?并发生在专利法领域。I didn’t know anything about lawyers, didn’t have any lawyers in my family, weren’t really exposed to lawyers and certainly not African American lawyers and just didn’t have a clue that that kind of law or practice of law existed. And a female attorney at Lilly—she was one of the highest positions in the field said “Angela, if you ever wanna study law. You got to practice law. Go talk to the patent attorney.” And I’m like “What is that? That’s a thing? Like that’s a real thing?” So kind of chased that path and realized that there was this whole practice of law that kind of capitalized on the whole background I’d had as a molecular biologist and scientist. And I love it. You know, I loved every bit about being able to use that knowledge and experience to translate into a different profession and a different career.

凯蒂[00:04:19] Yeah, I bet that prepared you really well to see really both sides of the equation. So see it from—

Angela[00:04:27]这完全正确。

凯蒂[00:04:29]是的。

Angela[00:04:29]感觉就是这样。你知道,我在研发,研究和开发,制造这些东西和新发明。现在我在创新管道的另一端,帮助我的客户保护他们正在进行的创新。这是我在生命科学,生物技术,食品,农业,你知道,然后是生物技术制药领域的实践。所以很刺激。这真的是我以前的生活和经验的应用。人们问我,你后悔没早点做吗?我说,一点也不。我不知道,如果没有这么多年的经验,我能做到这一点,不仅仅是,你知道,学习,而是在实验室里,看看创新是如何发生的。你知道,管道和研究开发,药物开发,临床试验,所有这些仪器的工作。我是说,我做过几项专利申请,我做过那个实验。你知道,那台机器是我开的。我很清楚他们在说什么。

凯蒂[00:05:42] Yeah. It’s really—it’s beautiful that you’ve been able to meld those two paths together in such a powerful way. Can you share with us some of the products or methodologies that you’ve worked on patenting recently?

Angela(00:05:56)好吧,都是基于客户啊ugh, right? And my clientele. And my clients are diverse. And so they do develop everything from technologies to protect food, the freshness of fruit and food that we eat every day, to methods of treatment of various diseases or research diagnostic tools, equipment that we would use in the lab, different kinds of tools and technologies that you would use in research. So, it’s a little bit of everything. And it just depends on the client, whatever it is that they’re inventing that are somehow in that kind of biotech research space and then branching out into different types of more industrial technologies. So that’s one thing that’s really fun about it. It’s always something different, right? You never, kind of, know what’s coming down the pike and what you’re going to be working on day to day because it’s all different stuff. And that’s fun to me.

凯蒂[00:06:58]你知道,知识产权对创新和创新团队至关重要。不管你是一家初创企业,还是在一家大公司、创新团队或研发部门工作,你总是要质疑创新是否,你知道,是否能够获得专利,是否能够得到保护或版权保护,是否应该这样做。

Angela[00:07:24] Right.

凯蒂[00:07:25] So take us through a little bit. Assume that some of our listeners know a lot about this process and assume that other listeners maybe don’t know as much about this process. So tell us, at the very core of it, how do you make a decision about whether something is able to be protected from an intellectual property standpoint?

Angela[00:07:45]是的。所以让我纠正一个问题,因为它不是我们的作业来确定是否可以保护。这是专利局的工作。但是,我们的工作是为了确保客户拥有最好的机会来保护这本发明,而且我认为这个问题真的是,最好的方式是如何做到的?Because if you have any kind of valuable asset that you are generating or producing, innovating—whether you’re a large company or small company or entity—if it’s worth any real economic value, it will be, you know, infringed upon, taken, stolen. So the question is, often, particularly for smaller companies, is the revenue that you plan to generate off that product worth the expense of getting it legally protected? And will the longevity of the product cycle justify the time that it typically takes to certainly patent a product?

凯蒂[00:09:10]那是多久了?

Angela[00:09:12]是的。这通常是我对客户的谈话,因为它通常是教育过程。我们这样做的原因是因为它是您必须知道的法律代码的整个不同的部分。通常 - 再次,现在我在生命科学。Remember—biotech—for different technical fields, the patent cycle to actually get issue made patents may take a little shorter or longer, depending on what you’re in. You know, typically I tell clients about two to three years, two to five years maybe.

凯蒂[00:09:50]是的。

Angela[00:09:50]但这需要一点时间。我的意思是,这不是什么,你只是,哦,我有个好主意,你知道,明年你就可以申请专利了。但是当你申请专利申请,寻求保护,法律保护,联邦保护时,你就可以在你的产品上贴上专利申请印章,向人们表明你正在申请专利。并不是说你今天有专利,而是你在这个过程中。这就是,你知道的,针对人们的营销通知。当你考虑与投资者交谈时,这通常具有重要的价值和重要性。但是你问了-你知道,假设这个过程有不同程度的信息。通常是这样的。我要向你们的听众们恳求的最大的一件事是,你们知道的,他们是企业家,希望,在他们正在生产或制造的产品上创业,你们知道,他们正在把它推向市场,请,请看看,至少考虑一下,专利是否是一个保护产品的过程。有时候,不管你怎么保守秘密,最好还是保密。这叫做商业秘密。对吗?你保守秘密。你保护它。确保只有特定的人可以访问它。那当然便宜些。但不同的是,当你申请专利的时候,你是在权衡时间框架。正确的。如果你获得了专利,那就值得20年。你有20年的独家保护权。而对于商业秘密来说,只要是秘密就好。但如果有人发现了,你的保护(词不清楚),句号。所以,你知道,任何一个企业家,一个正在创新、发明东西的人,在匆忙走向市场之前都应该考虑保护问题。很多时候,我看到年轻的企业家们,尤其是冲着市场来的。正确的。如果没有在特定的时间范围内完成的话,会有一个信息披露会阻止你申请专利。所以,你知道,在这个过程中需要考虑一些因素。

凯蒂[00:12:24] I’m really glad you brought that up because, you know, enterprise innovation teams and large corporations running research and development operations, this is—these are well-known processes. They’ve been patenting new innovations for decades typically. And for startups, this is such a different—for many startup founders, this is a new area for them to understand. And I’m thinking especially of that tension that you already brought up, which is between the need for intellectual property protection, but also the need for investors to be able to get behind and get a return ideally within, what, seven years or so. And so if the process of even getting something patent takes three to five years, but you really only have, you know, five to 10 years to build the company and make an exit to return the investor dollars. Can you share a little bit of your perspective on how startups balance that equation?

Angela[00:13:24]是的,这是一个挑战。我的意思是,这是挑战。我把帽子带到所有年轻的企业家身上。老老少少。我一直说年轻,因为我正在处理很多,你知道,刚刚追求的年轻企业家。它令人印象深刻。但这是挑战。这是挑战的,你知道 - 特别是追求专利并不便宜。所以它是耗时的,这是昂贵的,没有安排。它不是任何类型的日常计划,年轻企业家或年轻的企业甚至可以预算。 I’ve had clients ask me, give me a budget. You know, tell me how much I need to plan for, for this year and next year. And I do that. But it could be right or it could be absolutely wrong. Just depending on the patent office and those kind of things. So it is challenging for entrepreneurs. But again—and that’s a real consideration is whether you spend the money. And again, I say it’s expensive, but it’s all over the course of those two to five years. Right. It’s not all at once or any bulk. But again, I appreciate that for, you know, a young business that’s trying to get its grips or, you know, even seek investor dollars. It can be challenging to, kind of, predict what those expenses look like and what considerations. But it is possible. And I think my best advice would be to seek some counsel early. You know, I mean, at least go talk to someone, legal counsel, about whether, you know, that’s necessary. Sometimes it’s not. Sometimes the best protection, like I said, is just keeping it secret, particularly—and not all the time, so this is not. Ain’t none of this is legal advice. But it’s certainly worth considering that, you know, for software when things change so fast. Right. You know, you’re already onto the next iteration, the next validation, whatever it is— that sometimes it’s better to just keep it to yourself and do it and make those iterations. But it’s worth seeking counsel? You know, what does concern me and I’m seeing as trends is all these entrepreneurs that are jumping into business without necessarily having, you know, good legal counsel, which you need for things like this. You know, just to—do I need to worry about, you know, trademark? Do I need to get a trademark? You know, is it worth getting a trademark? And some of the balances, I mean, of the good and the bad. The pros and cons. There are plenty of clients who I say, go file the paperwork to start. Like you can do that. You know, I’ve had clients—they’ve gotten their own trademark. Like, it just depends on everyone’s needs. But having a good attorney you can trust, particularly in business, small business. You mentioned these companies and you’re absolutely right. These large companies, they’ve been doing this for years. They know the players. They know the industry. But when you’re a startup, how do you jump into that? You’ve got this great idea but how do you know? And oftentimes it’s as easy as trying to at least get some type of search on your product. It’s not always the right answer just to run and get—go file a patent application. Sometimes it’s better to just see what’s out there and see if you would even be able to get a patent before you spend the time and money trying to pursue it. Maybe somebody in Europe or, you know, in Texas has already invented that. You just don’t know. So once again, all considerations. Right. I mean, and that’s kind of what it is. What works for you and your business? What makes you comfortable? That’s how you proceed.

凯蒂[00:17:34]是的。它似乎也依赖于行业,当然也是由商业规模的。所以让我们转移一点。非常感谢你,因为我知道这真的很重要。这些都是创新社区的重要考虑因素。让我们稍微转动齿轮。我想了解更多关于您的女性兼高科技总统的信息。所以。

Angela[00:17:57]哦,天哪。

凯蒂[00:17:58] So, tell me more about this organization.

Angela[00:18:01]哦,我的善良。所以这就是我所说的 - 我想我刚刚在这一刻创作了这个,但我的激情项目。像女性和高科技真的是一个组织。我不知道我对任何事情感到充满热情。这是一个20年前在印第安纳波利斯成立的组织,由一位女科学家和莉莉的女性一位女性科学家在印第安纳波利斯。所以露丝在莉莉和一个女学术在IU。同样,20年前,只是围绕着妇女在科学的妇女的重点。当时,它是 - 然后尚未创造出来。正确的。所以这是女性和高科技,他们定义了这些行业的内容,但现在他们是我们认为的词干:]科学,技术,工程和数学。 And just really began as a support organization around women and, you know, realizing that there are so few women, right, in these areas. And how do we promote more and make sure there are more of us? And it literally, over the course of the last 20 years, has become, you know, the same organization but much bigger. I mean, I’ve been involved for six years now and the amount the organization and the activities and the programs and the outreach that we are doing just now for when I started it, it’s just amazing. I mean, we focus on women in STEM from K-through-12, collegiate, and professional. We have STEM days. That’s an event that we’ve been doing for like the last eight years. It’s basically a STEM day for the public to come out and just see various facets of them and get them exposed and inspired about what the cool way STEM can manifest itself in our lives. So we do that. We give college scholarships out to collegiate women. Last year was our 20th anniversary, so we had a 20th anniversary event. We planned to give out twenty thousand dollars’ worth of scholarships, and we gave out thirty thousand. It was awesome. 17 young women from many universities, different girls around the whole state. It was just awesome. So this year is our leading light awards, which is coming October 1st. We’re going to do the same thing. It’s the 20th anniversary of our first leading light award, which happened in 2000. So we’re going to give another twenty thousand dollars of scholarships away. We’re super excited. And it’s just a fantastic organization that just does good stuff to not just promote girls and women, but now we have a particular focus on diversity and equity and inclusion of all girls and all women and just make them have the opportunities to be exposed to STEM, to know that they can excel and advance in STEM, that you can be independent and just build that confidence in young girls so that the next generation of women in science, technology, engineering and math, you know, don’t face some of the same obstacles that me and my generation have. That’s all you can do, right, is try to instill and invest in the next generation. So that’s what Women & Hi Tech is all about. I’ve been blessed to be the president this year. And it’s just been amazing. I mean, I just remain, you know, just in awe at passionate my board is, my colleagues. We’re an all-volunteer working board of directors. And I had a partner a few years ago who was also the president of Women & Hi Tech. She’s who got me involved. And she used to say that we’re an all-volunteer working broad. And I never understood what that meant until I got involved. And I’m like, oh, yeah, you know, like work.

凯蒂[00:22:11] Yes.

Angela[00:22:11]我们工作。我们没有员工。但是,人,我的意思是,我们被激情推动,我们举办了很棒的事件。你知道,我们为我们所做的事情和受影响的人感到兴奋。你知道,我们只是在这个城市获得越来越多的影响。我们刚刚为印第安纳波利斯的所有女孩干学校留下了筹款人。肯定的第一个在国家之一,也许甚至是国家。而且,你知道,我们非常兴奋。我们很高兴与那项倡议一起参与,以及印第安纳州中部的女孩童子军。每个女孩都可以栓。 So, you know, it’s just like the real momentum around women in STEM. And, you know, International Women’s Day and, you know, just all these things that are kind of really culminating. And diversity, equity, and inclusion. That has all kind of been culminated into our mission. It’s just a good time for the organization right now. We’re celebrating a couple of awards and some of our board members are being recognized for their expertise in leadership in the community. And we’re doing good work, you know, affecting real change, real people. And I’m excited to be involved with this.

凯蒂[00:23:33] I love the mission of the organization. And it’s clear from looking at some of your social media work that storytelling and story sharing plays a big role in how you interact and how you empower and encourage, especially, young women to go into STEM fields and for established career women to be able to think of themselves as mentors and continue to find mentors as they continue to grow in their professional lives. It’s such important work.

Angela[00:24:01] Yeah, it’s important. And, you know, it’s empowering. You see, you know, in some of these STEM days and these girls, you know—we have an event called Ignite Your Superpower with Indy Women in Tech and Conner Prairie. And it’s specifically for diverse girls in some of our schools who, you know, may otherwise not have the opportunity to be exposed to them in a way that may truly encourage them or excite them or intrigue them. And it’s awesome. I mean, it is just an excellent day, an awesome opportunity. 800 young girls that some of them truly have the opportunity that they wouldn’t have otherwise had. It’s typically held on a college campus. So they get exposed to campus life and what that looks like. We get to talk to students who let them know that you can come to school, too. And, you know, all those things. It’s just a good opportunity to continue to build the future. These are going to be the young girls who, you know, are the next generation. So it’s exciting to invest in them and provide role models, because, again, I told you, I didn’t know patent law existed. I just wasn’t exposed. So I truly believe exposure is critical. You can’t be what you can’t see. You know, it’s hard to imagine what may— what things look like if you’re just not exposed to them. So we try to do that on a regular basis.

凯蒂[00:25:34] If you’re also inspired by this conversation, you can definitely check out on all social media channels, Women & Hi Tech. That’s H I T E C H. And you can follow Angela Freeman on LinkedIn, as well as Barnes and Thornburg, which is @BTLawNews on Twitter and on other social media accounts. And Angela, I’m so grateful for the conversation. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Angela(00:25:59)哦,谢谢你邀请我。它’s been great talking with you. I hope there was some value in this, but I certainly appreciate you giving me an opportunity of seeing. It’s been great speaking with you.

凯蒂[00:26:09]谢谢。感谢您在本周的剧集中听。请务必在社交媒体上关注我们,并将您的声音添加到谈话中。您可以在未销售内容中找到我们。乐动体育足球

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