Good evening, everyone and welcome to the latest installment of our series. Tonight were pleased to have with us orly lobel, author of you dont own me. She attended Harvard Law School and a fellow at Harvard Centers for ethics in the profession, Kennedy School for government and Weatherhead Center for international affairs. She has taught and lectured worldwide including law schools that yale, tel aviv and beijing. She is the professor of law at university of san diego and the author of awardwinning business book talent wants to be free. Her most recent book you dont own me was recently described in the new yorker as as a hairraising account of an epic tale in the Financial Times described as a real page turner of the decadelong court battle between Toy Companies mattel and mga over the ownership of the immensely popular brats dolls. Please join me now and welcoming our guest for the evening, orly lobel. [applause] thank you. So this is really special for me to be here at the Harvard Book Store because i spent many years as a graduate student here at Harvard Square come here Harvard University just roaming the shelves and loving it and really being inspired by all the different disciplines in a way that still continues to impact my Research Come , my writing, y thinking about ethics and Market Competition and justice, and all the interesting stuff that we see around us, how do we create culture, how are social icons made, equality and fairness. This is really also how i got to this book. So i will tell you a little bit about how why started thinking about writing this book and how it open so many windows into a lot of different issues really of the moment and we really care about in so many ways. So you dont own me start in our current times. It starts when barbie, blueeyed, blonde, tiny waist, very large breasts, very cold and never changing has dominated our markets, our images of womanhood, our childhood and our parenting for basically 60 years, since her introduction in the American Market by mattel in 1959. The story starts when finally after really dominating 90 of the market around the world, for the First Time Ever without mattel ever expecting it, suddenly through almost, you know, right now in current times in the beginning of the 21st century suddenly the Holiday Season brings a new doll, a different kind of doll, bratty doll, a fuller, more multiethnic, more sassy, United States, something that more reflects what the taste of children, girls have right now. Suddenly it comes out on the market without mattel expecting competition and as the judge in one of the many moments of the trial says, knox barbie offer pedestal. And so the story begins with a very unlikely hero. Think about a shy out and john, a very creative young designer, Carter Bryant, who always dreams about being a fashion designer, has been sketching some childhood, all sorts of angels and fairies and he describes himself as being sort of that awkward boy when he was growing up in los angeles who, what of the boys were maybe playing with trucks and cars and with balls outside, soccer, he was actually playing with barbie and reading fashion magazines, and his mother was very supportive. He actually testified in court about all of this. He wants to be in high fashion but the secondbest when you are working in los angeles is of this conglomerate mattel the control such a big market share and that such huge purchasing power of talent, and he takes a job designing barbie clothes. He becomes really frustrated with the culture of mattel. He feels like its been very stagnant. Theres not acceptance of new ideas. Barbie is never changing, and actually when i did a lot of the research and interviews and kind of intense discovery of the Corporate Culture of mattel, i actually uncovered this term that mattel executives use about not introducing competition to barbie. And they say we dont want to cannibalize barbie. They dont want to eat up what is so dominant in girls playrooms and in what we call the pink shelves of the toy stores. So he goes away for some time, takes time off mattel. He goes back to missouri picky sketches some sketches, and theres a lot, part of the roller coaster decadelong litigation is how do you actually show a moment of eureka and what is innovation and creativity come from, but he has inspiration when he is way from mattel, also weekends and nights, that becomes a big defense that is part of the trial that he was not working at mattel when he thinks about this idea of a bratty doll, and he sells it to a competitor and they develop without mattel knowing, he leaves mattel and they develop a huge empire that they said knox barbie off her pedestal. So i want to read to you actually to set the stage the very first paragraph from not even the first chapter, the introduction of you dont own me to give you some sense of how the story begins. She was blonde and beautiful, statuesque with lungs slender legs, tiny waist and the chest so large that finished researchers claimed any similarly endowed woman which surely tip over. Four years Carter Bryant dutifully served her. He styled her hair, trester in skirts, dresses and luxurious gowns, adorned her in jewelry and even apply for makeup. She always looked fabulous. Day after day, week after week she was unblemished, shiny and new. Any in a 3 billion industry shd dominated over 90 market share for five decades. Perhaps that was what carter despised, or perfection. The absence of a single flaw. She never changed. While people gain weight, their skin wrinkled and sagged, their hair got great here barbie stayed perfect and frozen against the changing world. While treatment ageless and pristine, the world that shed been born into ceased to exist. Everything was raunchier and more perverse. Barbie remain maddeningly clean. A real artist, congress of judy in the broken, the peculiar, the clear, perhaps even the grotesque. Like many creative people, trapped in deadend jobs experienced the angst of a servant whose goal had become the master big imagine a new icon that that reflected the modern world come using the beauty of real people. Carter had not intended to assault barbies persona come her public image for those invested in maintaining it. He had not even plan to confront his master. He could not have consciously dare to dream of the millions he would make from his rebellion, the millions in losses and the decadelong legal battle that were not only change barbie and the mattel corporation, will forever alter both entire toy industry and the very laws governing creativity and competition. He certainly could not have foreseen the incredibly ferocious feud between his over priority x employer and rosa gambled and missed it all to take a chance on him. Nor could he predict that lawyers would drag both his life partner, richard, and his mother, jane, to testify on his behalf asking them to reveal deepseated intimate details of his life and passions. Most certainly his dreams would not have included suffering depression and a stroke at the age of 41. Carter bryant only wanted to build his own dream house away from barbie. So the story begins with Carter Bryant, but what is fascinating and what drew me to tell the story that i thought had to be told was that in order for barbie to be knocked off her pedestal and in order for a new doll line to thrive really like a greek tragedy, that parent had to be written off. Carter bryant the individual becomes sort of a pawn and then just disappears really from the scene. This is still a david versus goliath story, but the david here is not Carter Bryant. Its actually a much more powerful david. It is isaac larrikin, a jewish iranian immigrant who starts, violence his own toy company and is really that bold, used the owner owner now because of brats, of the largest most lucrative privately held toy company in the United States because he really has that ability to go over, after a resist the goliath, mattel, that as the story unfolds you see how it really uses everything it can to fight off competition, different expressions, images of barbie that they dont control. So going after not just toy makers are going after artist the represent barbie in a different way, musicians, film producers. Theres just sort of a roller coaster story of who mattel views in the scene of presenting challenges. Another thing that was fascinating is how much history repeats in this sense. Because when you actually go to when i start uncovering the history of the cells and his cultural icons, it turns out that barbie from a very inception was also not really created by whoever thought she was created, or just like mattel said that they own bratz because an exemployee have thought about the idea for bratz. Barbies in section also be traced to litigation between the new world, mattel, the american company, and the old world where she was pulled. Theres a secret, dark history there of her german origins that mattel didnt really want us to know about. It also allowed me to open these windows and to how was it that in the 50s suddenly a fashion doll came into the scene . Because before that the girls would play with baby dolls, kind of imagining themselves as mothers may be. But for the first time they are playing with a real, not very realistic, but a grownup one with unrealistic proportions, and you start seeing these colorful characters from the past, and begin seeing how history repeats in that sense. So i will read to you a little bit about, if you watched madmen, you know about some of the history of advertising and marketing in the 50s and 60s in the whole culture there. This is the real kind of madmen, and so they hire this guru, another immigrant, austrian immigrant who really transformed the way that marketing is done and mattel to truly innovative in using, using consumer psychology, freudian psychology in marketing and advertising. This is the marketing coup they had picked in the 1950s, he transformed products beyond their mundane function. Soap was about sensuality. Not personal hygiene. Tobacco really stress, symbolized a really Advisory Board or a good day at the office. In smoking and health concerns, everest to reduce the amount of smoking, a willingness to sacrifice pleasure order to massage their feeling of guilt. Guilt feeling may cause harmful, physical effects, not at all cost by the cigarettes used which may be extremely mild. Such a guilt feelings alone may be the real cause of the injurious consequences, rather than of people have, tobacco smoking, he said, was comparable to sucking at the nipples of a gigantic world press. I apologize for the audience that brought kids. One campaign displayed a man smoking next to his date captioned, smoking rounds of the forms of enjoyment, illicit sex then along with tobacco was another reward for a good day at the office. Lipstick also was a phallic play on that desire, and subconsciously hinted to women and men buying makeup for women in invitation to flash her. He marketed cars to trigger mens fantasies of a mistress. He writes all of this like he actually is very, very clear about what hes trying to do in his marketing. Suddenly hes asked, well, how about marketing to children . How do we convince mothers to buy a sexualized doll for the little girl, and theres a lot of thought that i sort of uncover in the book. The other thing that a want to say about what drew me to tell this story, which again is sort of this legal thriller that opens so many questions about our contemporary types of how we compete, is that this case really i started looking at it when i was writing my previous above, talent wants to be free, and then i was showing sort of more in my Research Field how employers have this mindset of not letting employees use their own ideas and not letting them move from competitor to competitor, and how that not a hazard will cost cost of the lives of workers and our careers but actually on regions and what kind of products we have and what consumers can experience, and how innovation happens and how collaboration happens. And i was very honored and fortunate in the summer of 2016, i actually got a call from the white house. I like saying that so i will say they can. I got a call from widest to talk about talent wants to be free before people from president obamas policy team and a representative from the treasury department, the department of justice and the Labor Department as well as representatives from the state, the various states. They were really concerned about noncompete policy that i was researching and a lot of scholarly articles i published and in talent wants to be free. I became part of the working group that in october 2016 was kind of culminated in the president s called action to the states to try to curtail this rise and trying to since the mobility of employees. The more and more i look at this case in you dont own me of mattel, it became pragmatic to me its not just about the kind of pure noncompete clauses, but theres a lot of different areas of law and ways of contractual ways, like in this case of asking employees, and weve all signed these contracts with whatever industry you work at, asking them to assign all of their ideas, all of their knowhow, all of their creation, creativity, innovation, inventions, weekends and nights included, to the employer and really de facto creating these fences, even if you dont use the blunt language of you can move to a competitor. I started delving into this case, but when i did, of course the cinematic quality and the roller coaster, wild facts and the color for personalities of this case just became very, very clear. It became clear that its not just about that. That we have here a case that opens questions about the american dream, the rise of feminism, the making of icons, about marketing and consumer psychology, the trial, racism, one of the reviewer said its a civil action set in toy stores and another reviewer said elwood referring to legally blonde, with eat this story alive. What happens is in the trial, really when you read it you get a sense of how much the kind of battle or a dispute that starts as though its a contractual dispute between an employer, a powerful corporation and a previous employee. You see how it becomes really about the emotions, compassions and the rationality a lot of time of executives are operating in markets and how there is oftentimes this use of the courtroom as a sledgehammer to kind of work things out but to be worked out in the market context. One of the things that is really fascinating is how much these personalities matter. You can see this because this trial happened twice, and this is what i keep referring to as a roller coaster event. The same fax and the same plaintiff and defendants, when they come before a different jury, two sets of juries, two sets of judges, two sets of attorneys because the teams of attorneys change, it becomes a completely different environment, completely different trial and sort of study in the courtroom, and claims about sort of the corporate ethics of the corporation that initiated the trial come about, in this kind of next rounds of the trial. One of the things that starts happening, very important, is that mga who was sued by mattel as having stolen this idea for a bratty doll because they hired a former employee, they find out a lot of details about what mattel has been doing to them and other competitors. So i will read to you a couple paragraphs on that. Mga couldnt figure out how mattel was anticipating its every move until the mattel insider jump ship and reveal shocking information about mattel practices. Jennifer keller who is determined that comes on board later and really shifts the whole jury emotions told the jury that mattel was the worst type of offender in the corporate espionage world. The kind that maintains its own corporate espionage department. They had a manual in the courtroom that was called how to steal manual. That was integrally used. She described to the jury motels conduct as unlawful, averages, despicable, and argued it costs mga tens of millions philosophy mga presented evidence that while mattel was preparing for its final attack on mj in the courtroom is also engaged in the illegal espionage, nj transit its motels scorched earth strategy as the worst type of market battle. Together, these two frontiers, litigation and spine, he came motels greatest weapons in innovation war stick litigation brought to drive competition out of the market and spine to gain an unfair advantage over the hearts and dollars of consumers. As mga told the jury, barbie was flailing, and barbie was failing and mattel executives were in a state of panic. Mattel desperation grew as bratz popularity exploded. Mattel operated like a well oiled undercover rifle in internal memos mattel employees were instructed to use the codename nahb, instead of mga. Can you crack the code . In hb is one letter off mga, brings to mind another shift in letters in space odyssey, the computer how is often thought to be based on a one letter shift from the name ibm. This has been denied by the director. Mattel denied that nhb was a code. But when it comes to the next hot plastic toy, loose lips can sink a plastic toy ship. So all of these questions that came, and the facts that were discovered in the courtroom really bring a lot of pause not just to the tour and Entertainment Industry, but how we battle and how we create markets and how we create culture. Im happy to talk about a lot of different aspects about the book, but one of the things that becomes very clear is that right now theres this moment of a lot of uncovering of Corporate Culture within me too movement, and what i want to suggest to you is that a lot of these contracts, its really two sides of the same coin, that we see a lot of attempts by concentrated markets to both silence the speech of insiders when they see wrongdoing, when they see misconduct, whether its Sexual Misconduct or other misconduct. And they also have this mindset that they do own us, or they do own me in the sense that everything that is created can be owned, all ideas, so of this idea of intellectual property expanded and expanded to infinity. As i said, the cinematic quality of the case really drew me to tell this story, which is just come had to be told. Ive been very pleased that while i thought, actually when is doing some of the interviews i would ask the people that are interviewed, the insiders, the attorneys, the jurors, the judges that i sat down with, my final question was, so if the was a movie, who would play you . And now i really am feeling very pleased that a lot of the reviewers in the new yorker and Publishers Weekly and the wall street journal are all sort of talking about this cinematic quality of, you start the case and you dont know where it will lead you and the drama of a decadelong litigation is just, kind of opens up, as the poet says, its the nest where the entire world meets. Thats what you dont own me is for me. So thank you and im happy to take any questions. [applause] the most basic question, you can hear me. The litigation that happen, the cost of the litigation was hundreds of millions, right x. 400 . 600. 400 from mattel legal fees, and 200 for mga. So the legal frenzy is feeding this to generate these kinds of . Thats a great question because the turn of events of one attorney that interviewed that worked on this case said this is the greatest reversal of fortune that he seen ever in the case where, you know, in one trial one litigant wins ownership over a billion dollar industry, or brand line, and then when theres a reversal of fortune, the other side gets hundreds of millions of dollars. But the actual winners i have learned, the more i study the case and the more i talk to the people involved, the actual winners are really only the attorneys and legal teams, that as you mentioned, have taken in an astounding i actually think very problematic amounts of money, especially when were talking about a publicly held corporation. Its not clear that a truly justified. Its not clear that we executives make decisions to litigate, its a rational and right decision. Insiders that talk about how there is kind of that repeat representation by law firms that kind of push to the limits this idea of scorched earth litigation, take to trial cases that are losing cases. And i describe a lot of these cases where mattel took artists to trial for, like the barbie song, you know, i dont really want to sing on cspan, but im a barbie girl in the barbie world, the danish band. That action was another case where mattel decided okay, theyre using the word barbie, were going to litigate against them. Time and again with that case, in other cases where an artist, tom forsythe put barbie in a a blender and all kinds of positions and photographed her, they sued him. Time and again, actually the ninth Circuit Court of appeals in california said no, you cant control culture in that way, and thats not what intellectual property is about. There is at of this doctrine of fair use. There is a commonplace where we share culture and not allow one company to control the images of the icon. But what actually kind of interesting is that they didnt stop. They continue to litigate, and i do think that part of it is misguided legal advice where, again, the losers and winners become more complicated when there are the legal teams that have their own interests. It sounds like from what you said in addition to the financial costs, there was quite a personal cost as well. Can you say a little more about carter and how he survived these ten years . So carter really didnt survive in the industry at all. One of the things that is important to understand is that when we have a culture of very, very broad contracts that curtailed the ability of movement of people, creative people in the industry, its not only that it chills the likelihood of them actually moving, but when they actually decide to move, its much more likely that the move to another big competitor that can actually protect them, indemnify them. And so its pattern in that way that it depresses Talent Mobility but it also very much curtailed new entry and entrepreneurship where he wouldnt go at it alone. And, indeed, in this case you really kind of disappears from the scene. He wants to remain anonymous partly because hes afraid, and thats why the whole litigation starts a couple of years after bratz is such a smashing hit. Theres an anonymous letter that arise from hong kong. Theres an interesting side story about that, that suddenly tells the tale, you know that employee, Carter Bryant used to have . Hes actually the creator of bratz. So he is dragged into court when he really is not a lot of interest anymore in the case. They sue him and mga, but he settled before the trial ever starts. He gives up all his millions. He loses and also moves away from the toy toy industry, movs away from los angeles, but he is still in the first all sort of is trying to explain, explain how he was within his rights, how he was inspired when he was away in missouri, when he saw schoolgirls coming out and he thought they are so different in the cold icy white, never changing dickies barbie. He has the story about the weekends and nights and all that, but you see him so different. There sort of the Carter Bryant in the first trial and then the Carter Bryant in the second trial picky doesnt want to sit through weeks and weeks of testimony, and basically he is dragged into the court. He again has no interest anymore. Hes a witness and he is dragged into the court by a court order because he basically disappeared. He just, you see him not responding, you know, responding very, very short answers. And as you saw when i mentioned when i i read sort of at the beginning, he has Health Issues with all this. There is also, again, you will have to read the book for all of these interesting details, but theres also a lot of problematic decisions that were made about what he could testify about in the first trial. Hes question really about his sexuality, about finding pornography on his computer. And the second judge actually says i cant believe all of this was actually part of the first testimonies. And so the second judge puts order in some of that. But Carter Bryant is i think an extreme example of how much of this has mattered personally to people, but actually use all of the actors. So the mattel executives basically ousted from mattel after these years of litigation, bob eckert leaves the toy industry, and then isaac, the colorful, very energetic entrepreneur who takes on mattel, he told me when i sat with him in the boardroom, in his boardroom, he told me my wife always told me i have to be completely crazy not to settle with these people and to be dragged into court for years. He finally wins, and some iteration of the trial he is weeping and he says i missed a lot of the childhood of my son. And again, its sort of that question of how litigious are we when we can spend so much of our Creative Energies and actually innovating and developing better products, whether its in tack, you can take the story to all industries. I have been writing about apple versus samsung, and theres uber with the automated carpet you see the dynamic of, what was said many years ago, we turn every issue into a legal issue and we are diverging a lot of resources from what we really need. I love the way you celebrate disruption, and i just wondered in doing the research of these particular set of cases and stories what was added to your ideas of disruption and the paradigm of disruption . Yeah, and i, you know, disruption, most of the time really celebrated deathly where i i come from now in california, silicon valley, disruption both of business models, of technology, of industries, but even kind of legal destruction is celebrated in canada going between the lines and testing new methods. I think that the story, like i said, the cannibalization worries of concentrated markets, is just exactly like economists predict. Kenneth arrow many years ago, and Nobel Laureate in economics said if we had a company that has such a big market share, they dont have incentive to disrupt their own product. You will see the same exact market or same exact product offerings, methodologies, just staying in power for so many years because of theres reallo incentive to compete with your own success. Thats what i think one of the most important things that we can do in all of these industries is to make sure we have competition, we dont have to concentrated markets, and that we have new entry, as i said, not just pattern it with two conglomerates battling it out but also individuals and smaller new entrepreneurs. I think theres also a disruption that sometimes can be very problematic when you are trying to push the lines into unethical behavior, make sure we are drawing the right lines in these areas. Because as i mentioned one of the dynamics that you can also see, july in the book is how it is that, when there is a mindset that you control resources, including human resources, there will be a lot of ways to sort of find the next loopholes, right . People have this intuitive understanding of the tax system, like you close, one policy and then some way of evasion or some practice that you dont want, so Something Else pops up. It sort of shows that dynamic between what can be done by contract, by using legal tools, what then cannot be done when we pronounce that and enforce it through lawmakers, through legislation or the courtroom, and then how again Companies Use their creativity may be to disrupt, but maybe not in the most productive ways, by dint disruption. [inaudible] information about these companies . I assume there would be very protective over the information. Thats a great question. For me, it was sort of a new challenge that i took to tell a full story, Michael Lewis style, expose about our Corporate Cultures and insider play, and i so to take place very seriously in this book. I was very fortunate that this epic battle plays itself out over decades of litigation in the public courtroom. So the first step was really to read thousands and thousands of pages of transcripts and testimonies, you know, a lot of internal memos that were presented in discovery that for sure the companies were resistant, you know, not happy that they came out but they were under those settings and requirements in the court. But then the next step for me really when i thought i knew everything that i could know from all the documents was ready to Start Talking to the insiders. As you should just in the question, it wasnt without resistance. It turns out that attorneys are very happy to talk. They were the first gatekeeper and the first people that were just kind of opening their thoughts to me. I interviewed attorneys on both sides and got a lot of the back story of the dynamics and why they chose the different strategies that they chose and how they viewed the litigants. In classic life imitates art, the executives on each side really almost, and a right about this in the book, to me they felt like they were emulating the dolls that they were selling and marketing and image controlling. We have the kind of sassy, bratty immigrants jewish, iranian entrepreneur who actually aims the first bratz doll after his daughter, jasmine. Very open to talking. He invites me into his company and wants to tell me his david versus goliath story and his rags to riches story. And his opinion about all of these people that hes been battling. So, for example, hes very passionate about the toys he makes and he brings his kids into the courtroom, and he brings them into the products that he creates and he says, bob eckert who is counterpart, ceo of mattel at the time, says he comes from cheese because he was the ceo of craft before that and he knows nothing about toys. He repeats that and shows evidence about that. That ceo people, like bob eckert, were much kind of colder in, sort of like barbie, like an icy front, quiet, didnt want to engage and he did want to be in court. It was very clear. The judge actually had to tell bob eckert that he has to sit in court, and he was not happy about that at all. There are a lot of anecdotes about that in the book. I did manage to well, i got an email, very polite but very short email from bob eckert site say i no longer work for mattel and i do not give any comments about the company. I did manage to talk to some insiders on both sides, in the toy industry. One of the really most terrific things that i got to have like inside, and insight from the conversations that i had with jurors, which was really great to get their perspective of how they saw all of these actors battling it out, but really you can talk about legal doctrine and about the statute and all that, but really what they cared about was the fairness, the passion of the two sides in the narrative, the story, who controlled the story and what they believed. And that also i sat down with a very controversial, then judge kozinski, judge Alex Kozinski who actually just after the book was published, he was involved in allegations against him about Sexual Misconduct in the way that he treated his clerks, and he resigned from the ninth Circuit Court of appeals where i describe in the book is a set to the chief judge of the ninth Circuit Court of appeals and how important his jurisprudence and intellectual property and copyright law has been. I was fortunate to sit down with him and ask him about his many views on the case and his decisions in these cases, several cases on mattel. Ill tell you one of the anecdotes that i describe in the book and the new yorker, the review that just came out this week, picks up on. I sat down with him at a told him i was raised by a mother who is a psychology professor who taught me that barbie sends a wrong image or a wrong message about the body images of young girls. He looked at me kind of puzzled, and he said, i dont see anything wrong except when i looked up her skirt i see nothing. Right. So you can actually see again some of his personality coming out, and i describe again his history, his previous before this scandal that kind of making resigned, his previous investigation by the Court Ethical community, committee, about having some pornography on a private server. Theres a lot there that i try to convey by both interviews and everything i could read and get hold of office documents. How did the case in the . Are not going to give spoilers because you have to read the book. And in truth, its almost never, it is basically never ending because there was a reversal of fortune. There was a victory on one site and a victory on the other side, but the two sides of action said we are not getting up and now will move to state courts and more claims. I mention theres claims about pricefixing and antitrust violations and economic espionage. There was questioning on the stand of mattel executives about why didnt they recall quick enough toy products that were produced in china and when you presented health risks and toxin, risks that were really causing deaths of children. So again it kind became bigger and bigger. I can tell you that you dont own me, in this sense, inns in the victory with judge kozinski is guidance it is remanded to a new trial and with i think a judge that sees the full picture and guides the new jury in a kind of structured way. Suddenly, this new court says no, you cant just claim an entire doll empire just because its a former employee. And we should give weekends and nights to employees, and we should be very cautious about having these really, really long assignment clauses that say anything that you can see above, even if its the most abstract idea, even if its not copyrightable, really broad language. We should have these limits because we have to make sure that we have a vibrant public domain, that we have culture that anyone can remix, that every competitor can compete on equal playing, and in that sense i think the case is a real victory to creating more icons rather than less, more speech rather than less. More creativity rather than less. You were talking about in this case in terms of competition. How do you see the connection between intellectual property in the employee and employer space and antitrust, because they both deal somehow with competition . I think thats a really good question and something, not only attorney should be worried about by the public in general. We focus a lot about on drawing the right lines in patent law, and copyright law and trademark law, but really i think weve become very, very sort of bought into the idea that intellectual property is just property, and people really own things that are not naturally owned. We have to remember that, so i teach intellectual property, and historically intellectual property was, in fact, a field of antitrust law. It creates an unnatural monopoly over knowledge, over information, over the ability to create, remix, build upon the shoulders of giants to create progress in the arts and sciences. A lot of this we have forgotten some of these very visible battles i mentioned, apple versus samsung, and many other, you know, the google books battle over scanning all books. We have to remember that intellectual property has limits and, therefore, we also have to understand that even when its not litigated under, or understood under the statutes that sort of are the pillars of intellectual property when were talking about employment relationships, contract relationship, theres also those kind of limits that we have to understand there is a purpose in our policies for all of these laws. And if they are subverting the very purposes that the constitution talks about which is progress in arts and sciences and they are competing progress, thats what are really operating at that antitrust field of monopolizing and preventing the next step. Is there any train that you see . I would be coming more litigious, less . I dont think that this is, that we are becoming less litigious. I think that we are becoming more concentrated as markets and then we have a lot of litigation by big competitors. And a special again in these fields of trade secrecy, of economic and intellectual property weve seen over the past couple of decades an increase in litigiousness. I think a lot of resources are being spent on it, but i also think that are not seen, when we look at sort of just count the number of cases, you said this is a onceinalifetime case, so this is a very special case because we had defendants who were willing to take it to the end. What he want to warn is that you see kind of these personalities that are really strong and you can see why there is now a victory against the goliath, but this is only the tip of the iceberg. Theres so many decisions along the way by people who are silenced, who are looking at these trends, or maybe we see the cease and desist letter that youll never see or sign a contract that they will never test in court. So below this kind of tip of the iceberg that is just huge amounts of sort of use of the threat of litigation to pattern what we do and what we cant do. Again, it should really resonate with what we are seeing now with the Entertainment Industry and the toy industry. I wrote about in Southern California and so many other industries where just now with uncovering a lot of practices that were silenced for years, everybody knew about but a lot of people were worried about speaking out. Theres a much bigger footprint of the Litigation Practices on all of us who might never become litigant, but this case will matter, what matter to what we do, can do, what we see, what we have as consumers, what we have as parents and as inventors, as creative people. Well, i think i will thank everybody. I hope you enjoy the book and share and spread the word and review it, and i would love to hear all of your thoughts about you dont own me. Thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] the National Book critics circle comprised of literary critics, authors and members f the Book Publishing industry announced its finalist for the outstanding books of 2017. Some of the finalists include the look of gulf of mexico. Russianamerican journalist report on the generation of russians who came of age during the putin regime. And the art of death, and a memoir hunger. Booktv discovered several of the skiers finalist. Most of us, it means an income losing people we love. One thing i learned from reading this, especially the dying writers were writing about their own death, and even with my parents one of the things i realize that time people want to tell us is to live. Like live the best life you can, live it so you dont have any regrets at the end. Do we do, the living, find that message . You know, i think we want to put that in the back of our minds. Most of us are not, you dont really want to concentrate on our mortality because its depressing. But one of the things that Christopher Hicks writes in his book mortality is that he found that at the end or even before the end he was living dying only. If the differences youre constantly aware that you have an expiration date. For most of us its a possibility, its something that lies ahead. But for dying people they know that every single day is a gift here normally, ideally i think would be great if we all live like that but it also, it would also be stressful. You can watch these programs in full online at booktv. Org