Hi, let me tell you a story about a good idea at the wrong time and how I tried to patent it. So the story starts in early 2007 I was at the gym doing my workout as I do I'm a bit of a gym junkie and I actually have qualifications in the field I'm actually a qualified fitness instructor although I've never really taught any classes are done in personal iteration I am actually qualified anyway. I was at the gym and back in the day back in 2007. What's that 11 years ago now? Um, everyone had these newfangled ipod II things had been around for a while but like everyone had an iPod hardly anyone was using their phone to listen to music right? It was very popular and I thought you know it like I know sometimes I have my notebook from my workout and stuff like that.

usually I did classes but anyway I was doing my own workout and this sort of you know, occasionally and like had a notebook of you know, like exercises and stuff I was gonna do how many sets, how many reps of what exercise and stuff like that. So I got to thinking everyone's got these iPod things What if I actually had the instructions in my ear? That sounds like a good idea, right? But you know how can I do that right? Yeah, I could use like a voice recorder and actually record it and stuff like that. but I thought hey, wouldn't it be cool like everyone's like listening to music while they're working out. What if they could actually get instructions at the same time? Aha the light bulb went off so that's when I came up with the idea for this which is still there it dates from, you can see the date at the bottom to February 14th 2007 Pod Sweat I called it um because like iPod and sweating sounded like a good name.

Anyway I came up with I what I thought was a really novel idea and I think it well it was and hence the point of this video. it was a really good idea at the time it was just really bad timing so let me go into it. I wrote this in I wrote the program on in short order in Visual Basic don't know I think I was Vb6 was it at the and basically what it did is it was a program you would hear it is how it works is that it yet that's a screenshot from the program. Here we go.

So we had this program here which are no longer works. it needs you know some old like old deals and stuff like that. couldn't be around with it trying to get it working on a modern Windows 10 machine anyway. huh? You can probably download it somewhere anyway.

it basically this was the main screen and it would like allow you to put in you like your weights and your reps and do like in frequency and it an auto increment your weights and your reps like every second or third day or so or a second or third workout or something like that. and but anyway it was. It was like a Windows program that allowed you to do this. But the the magic in this is that my program would actually modify the tags inside mp3 files because if you're not aware, mp3 files actually have like a like a tag at the beginning that has all this meta information.

You know, the song title, you know how it can pop up on your iPod or your iPhone or whatever you're using these days, your car radio, whatever it pops up with the song and all that sort of stuff. All that information is embedded in tags in the Mp3 file and I won't go deep into details. I can put links in if you want to go check it out. anyway.

what it did is actually embedded the exercise information into those Mp3 tags, so on your iPod when you actually loaded it up, it would show you the the exercises that you have to do, how many reps, how many, and all that sort of stuff. But not only that, the program actually embedded a voice at the start of each Mp3 so you didn't even have to look at the screen. So if you had like one of those small iPods that didn't really have the screen or was inconvenient was in your pocket, you didn't want to look at it. It would actually tell you in your ear before your favorite song came on, what your exercises you had to do and then you do your exercises to your favorite song, then the next song.

Come on, you do that and give you that announcement and the way it did. this is one of the you could actually choose the voice. one of them was Microsoft Sam if hands up if you remember Microsoft Sam Anyway, that really wasn't good enough, but of course Microsoft Sam computer-generated voices are really shitty right? So here's the actual all the source code and stuff like that. I used the lame encoder and you know, because that was that was the encoder back then to generator like I think I can't remember how I joined the mp3 files together anyway I put a lot of work into this program and learning about the intricacies of mp3 files and tags and how to join mp3 files to, you know, can concatenate audio and stuff like that anyway.

I wanted a human voice and of course my voice is crap right? So wonder I do a radio show I make a living from this. So what I did is I actually got Mrs. Eevblog to record. Here we go.

Forty-four kilohertz, 16-bit mono. All of these different WAV files are. There must have been more than exercise names. Yeah, all these exercise names.

So all these different exercises I got her to actually record these. So if we go in here there we go play that again. Alternate dumbbell curls so bent knee, flat, bench leg raises, um blaster curls So and then I got her to record all these numbers like you know from 1 to 10 and then multiples so 30, so 30 and then say you know two thousand two thousand So if you wanted the number you know 2031 then the software would convert that number into it had know that it needs to that the word mm you know end 30 and 1 and to join all those audio clips together and then it would encode those into an mp3 file and then it would concatenate the mp3 files along with the exercise name and everything else. So we actually had a you know, a human voice at the start of every track.

and anyway I thought that was a really cool idea I thought like I looked around like this had never been done before, right? So I thought it would take the world by storm. You know, like how many people are exercising in one A a thing on that worked with not only iPods but worked with any mp3 player. Didn't matter what it was iPod one of them, you know the guy I had a creative Zen or whatever it was. tiny little single, double, a triple a thing or whatever or it could be could have been your phone at the time for example.

but unfortunately this was February 14th 2007. So I thought this was a fantastic idea. I told my brother-in-law Phil about it. who I might have you seen on the blog before? you might know he's a patent attorney and at the time he was like he had just started being a patent attorney and you know, wanted the experience and stuff like that.

So he said we can patent this. We could let me let me paddle, let me ride up the pattern for this. Okay, so that's what he did. He rode up the patent.

it's like huge, right? Well and no, the patents not being. This is like all the email correspondence you know, and all the other stuff anyway. um yeah, I actually filed a provisional patent for this and of course he did it for free so it didn't cost me anything to have the patent drafted which would normally be many thousands of dollars. could even you know, three to three thousand dollars depending on how much time that they spent could be a lot more than that.

Actually, not only doing the investigation to see if it's a viable patent idea which Phil did the searches and he assured me yeah, this is like yeah, this would probably get granted, you know, and you could own the market for embedding for putting exercise information in mp3 files and I thought that's a killer so you know, even though I'm not a big fan of patents, I do actually technically have one from a former company that I have for underwater acoustic type stuff I'm a Co names Co on the patent you know a Co patent holder on that I got paid by one dollar from the company. at the time they had to pay me $1 so the you know sign the rights over to the company and stuff like that I remember I went out and bought half a muffin. muffins were $2 at the at the company canteen and for my Wonder I put it chipped in an extra dollar and I had my there's a half a muffin tasted great anyway so I thought this was a great idea I'd get at Patterns and he did it for free and I think it cost me 80 Yeah, I've got the receipt in here and then it cost 80 bucks to get the provisional patent application and what you do in that instance for a provisional patent application it means like you just put it in early and from that date it was at the time I believe don't know if it's changed now and this is for Australia might be different in other countries but from that date when you file the provisional patent application, you don't have to pay as much to actually put that in. but then from that date you have a year to decide whether or not you want to apply for a full patent.

and at the time you know full patterns like five six thousand dollars at the time, it's probably more now and that didn't cover all the countries I Wandered in so it was a lot of money. so I thought I'll look, let's just put in a provisional patent. Eighty bucks. That's nothing right.

might as well put in and then I'll see if the program becomes popular and whether or not you know I want to spend the full money on the full patent. So yeah, we got our provisional patent back in March 2007 Beauty. So I thought hey, you know if there's a chance these patterns gonna get granted. it's kind of cool.

it's novel I think it has really wide appeal. Who knows it might be. You know the idea might be worth something down the track. So I actually released my program I got some bida testers and and stuff like that.

you can download it on my website. it was all free so I was just going to give it away and you know maybe I'd have like a paid version down the track and stuff like that I think I might've even. yeah I was working on like a pro version like a paid version which had extra stuff or something like that. anyway so it was all looking pretty cool.

until Tada June 29th 2007. There it is the date that will live in infamy when the iPhone was released and of course the big thing about the iPhone was that not that it was a good phone or whatever. like who cares, right? it was just another phone. but it had apps and well I'm not sure that like the apps really.

I Don't think they had the apps at the time, but they were all. They only had the Apple apps like you couldn't actually design your own apps and stuff like that that might have come a year later I Don't know I had don't don't have the info, don't quote me on that. but I don't think that the apps were available straight away. You know, like everyone's writing an app these days, right? and back then right you can remember this is 2007 apps basically weren't around as we know them today.

You know they don't have you million different apps that do absolutely everything. So that's why it was a Windows program was bedding the Mp3s. There was really no way to run an app. I just you know wasn't a thing.

Back then, the technology didn't really exist and it didn't really exist for another couple of years before apps would really take on not only on the iPhones but also you know, but then Android would come up and other phones and stuff would have apps and things like that. So anyway, it came to the twelve-month point in like you know, March 2008 and Phil's Hustle Me Dave Do you want to pay the five or six grand or whatever and get the full patent application for this thing? So yeah, you know the program like people were using it and stuff like that, but it really wasn't I catching on all that much. And then these I I realized I sense that these apps were going to be a huge thing, right? not only in iPhones but on every phone like you know, smartphones had started and that was you know that what made a smartphone really were the apps that you can download for it. and I could see that.

you know people aren't going to be carrying two devices. these modern smartphones as I even called smart phones back then. I don't know. Anyway, I thought you know, like people are probably going to be, they don't want to carry two devices, don't want an iPod and an iPhone or you know, some other phone.

it's going to listen to the music on their phone and if they got the phone, they've probably got a world. They have the ability to download apps and I saw that you know apps would. It would totally dominate this thing and really, yeah, my idea. As novel as it was that I thought yeah, it didn't really have a future in the app side of things so it still could have been used in an app in terms of embedding exercise music in an mp3 file.

and I don't know, maybe I could have made a fortune from it, but I don't know at the time I decided that yeah, it really wasn't worth the five. Six thousand dollars at least I couldn't see my return on investment on that thing and I decided yeah, I'll let it lapse. So anyway, there you go. I could have owned the patent on pudding exercise information inside an mp3 file, but whether or not that would have been used in apps down.

I don't know if you're I don't use exercise app. So if you do use exercise apps, let me know, see if anyone's using my technology that I invented in 2007 are they embedding voices into and mixing them with the mp3 files? because I'd have to read the whole pattern the exact wording of the patent again and see exactly what I was claiming so you know it's it's very specific wording and it's not that hard to get around patents if you know what you're doing, especially if you're a big company and things like that. But and so you gotta be you know very like it goes on and on. There's like like I don't know did 24 claims like knows more.

there's like 30 claims or other things I don't know I don't know whether or not it would have been granted, you don't know until you go through and you spend a couple of years and wait and things like that. And here's the and here's some jazzy diagram stick. typical pattern stuff you know at the flowchart of how it works and things I Love it. look at like that.

This is pure wanker. II You know. Anyway, that's what patent attorneys do. They just you know, turn your good idea into gibberish and useless.

You know, incomprehensible diagrams and stuff like that. But yeah, basically whether or not it would have been like worth anything I think it probably would have been easy to avoid it in terms of like an app. avoiding it in terms of it just like if just speaks, it speaks it directly. it interrupts your audio stream and just boom, you know you're not joining them, you're not doing it, saving as an mp3 and and and I'm doing stuff like that so it it probably would have been easy for any app to overcome this pattern, but you just never know.

And then of course if some company did actually like technically I think what I thought would have been violating my patent even if was granted. what am I gonna do about it like I'm a one-man band a typical to win a patent case. it cost several million dollars minimum like it's not like you can do it for. You can go to your local lawyer and say hey, I'm gonna sue in for patent infringement and it's going to cost you 10 grand.

50 grand Hundred grand, Two hundred grand Half a million. No that'll just buy a lunch with the partners. No, forget it. Um, it's it's gonna cost you a couple of million bucks to win.

Of course you can try and and then it becomes the whole pattern thing. If you can, you know, try and tell them. hey. look.

I've got this I'm threatening to sue you. You know you can send them a cease and desist letter or whatever you're violating my patent. They just might go screw you. You know, especially if it's a big company.

Sue us and what do you? Yeah, you just have to walk away if it tells between your legs. So the idea of the pattern actually being worth anything would have been from the point of view of a company going. oh, this is rock solid. You know this is like we can't get around this.

This guy owns this technology and you'd have to, you know, hope that some biggie buys out your patent or licenses or whatever. and I really didn't say see that happening So yeah, just didn't seem worth it. So yeah, could have been rich, but most likely not. Anyway, if you've got an interesting similar story about a pattern something, you tried a patent and it was just or maybe an idea for the you know, a good idea at the wrong time, let us know in the comments.

So anyway, hope you enjoyed that little story. let me know your comments down below. Catch you next time.