{"id":1051,"date":"2015-02-25T16:23:29","date_gmt":"2015-02-25T16:23:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nd.edu\/patentlaw\/?p=1051"},"modified":"2015-02-25T16:23:29","modified_gmt":"2015-02-25T16:23:29","slug":"decoding-the-matrix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/patentlaw\/2015\/02\/25\/decoding-the-matrix\/","title":{"rendered":"Decoding the matrix"},"content":{"rendered":"

A post from our student blogger Roberto<\/em><\/p>\n

As an undergraduate I remember waking up one morning and everything changed.\u00a0 Before that day I remember straining my brain each second trying to memorize every piece of information my teachers went over in class.\u00a0 When the time came to prepare for the test I would work through the notes and redo all the practice problems hoping to just re-learn all those examples from class.\u00a0 Then exam day would come and the questions would be different. As a result, I would be forced to exercise my creative knowledge on test day.\u00a0 As if those tests weren\u2019t hard enough I would later learn that this method of studying made them far more difficult than they had to be.<\/p>\n

As I said, there was a day when this all changed.\u00a0 Maybe it was a result of staying up all night in computer lab trying to figure out which sign change I needed to make in order for my code to work but one morning I woke up and everything was different.\u00a0 It was almost a matrix-like moment, for all of my Keanu Reeves fans out there.\u00a0 Rather than furiously copying down everything I saw on the chalk board I was found myself taking very few notes.\u00a0 I had finally connected the dots, I had begun to piece the concepts together.\u00a0 I actually began to look at problems and see the numbers and underlying concepts behind what was going on.\u00a0 I would take pieces from my other classes and use them to predict what the teacher would say next.\u00a0 Before long I had unlocked a whole new level of learning and understanding.<\/p>\n

When I was going through bootcamp here in the MSPL I realized that I had to become a student of something entirely different than the engineering coursework I was used too.\u00a0 My reset button had been pressed and back again were the days of tirelessly scribbling notes I would probably never make sense of.\u00a0 Initially, it was a bit of transition for me going from engineering to law.\u00a0 I was not used to analyzing words so carefully nor was I accustomed to memorizing statutes and laws.\u00a0 While I knew all of our classes had been carefully interwoven together it was hard for me to see the common thread at first.\u00a0 Each time our professors lectured or we listened to guest speakers I was amazed at the level of knowledge they possessed of the law.\u00a0 They spoke about the law so fluently and eloquently it was as if I was in a foreign country.<\/p>\n

After a while the hard work in the classes started to pay off.\u00a0 I began to put the pieces together and I started to truly understand, rather than memorize, concepts.\u00a0 While I was studying for the patent bar I began to realize the true intent of the system and that answers to questions would always flow from that understanding.\u00a0 It was a really great to feel like I understood what patent law was about and what the goal of it was.\u00a0 The closest comparison I can make is that when you were young your parents instilled in you a sense of right and wrong, a moral compass.\u00a0 At first, it was difficult to differentiate right from wrong and we would often pay for the price for it.\u00a0 After a while though we began to trust our moral compass and simply ask ourselves what would be the right thing to do.\u00a0 Rather than memorizing rules we relied upon our understanding of much larger concepts.<\/p>\n

For my news tidbit of the week I (regrettably) once again turn our attention to the Seattle Seahawks and their running back Marshawn Lynch.\u00a0 As many who follow the NFL know, star NFL players are required to be available for public media interviews after games or at league scheduled events.\u00a0 Many stars, including Aaron Rodgers<\/a>, Jordy Nelson<\/a>, Eddie Lacy<\/a> and Randall Cobb<\/a>, rarely make headlines for these interviews.\u00a0 Some players however have utilized the venue to air grievances<\/a> with coaches, opposing players or teammates.\u00a0 Lynch made headlines this season not for what he said, but what he did not say.\u00a0 After refusing to answer questions from the media during the majority of the season<\/a>, and being subsequently fined by the NFL, Lynch decided to answer all media questions with the simple word \u201cyeah\u201d. <\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The next week Lynch answered all questions with \u201cNope\u201d and over the next few weeks all questions were answered with \u201cThank you for asking\u201d, \u201cI appreciate it\u201d or \u201cI\u2019m thankful\u201d. <\/a>\u00a0Many wondered what Lynch would say during \u201cmedia week\u201d, which is the week before the Superbowl. \u00a0Rather than answering questions with one of his already coined responses or not answering at all, this time Lynch responded to every single question with a variant of \u201cI\u2019m just here so I won\u2019t get fined\u201d<\/a>.\u00a0 Now, a few weeks after that now famous interview, Lynch is attempting to file a U.S. trademark on the phrase<\/a>.\u00a0 Presumably, Lynch intends on reproducing his famous line on his own personal brand of clothing<\/a>.\u00a0 As you may know, this trademark would allow him to stop others from reproducing that phrase. While Lynch\u2019s series of interviews will go down in sports lore it is awesome to see intellectual property coming into play and I am excited to see what he does with the phrase.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A post from our student blogger Roberto As an undergraduate I remember waking up one morning and everything changed.\u00a0 Before that day I remember straining my brain each second trying to memorize every piece of information my teachers went over … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":649,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29602],"tags":[29581,49331,29575,49348,29592],"class_list":["post-1051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-student-blog-posts","tag-ip","tag-mspl-student","tag-patent","tag-patent-agent","tag-patent-law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/patentlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/patentlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/patentlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/patentlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/649"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/patentlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1051"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/patentlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1052,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/patentlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051\/revisions\/1052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/patentlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/patentlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/patentlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}