Designing in the Wild: The Industrial Design Podcast
Designing in the Wild is the podcast where industrial designers, inventors, and changemakers reveal how they turn messy, real-world constraints into market-ready solutions. Each episode unpacks the mindsets, methods, and aha-moments behind sustainable innovation—whether it’s re-thinking plastics, hacking circular supply chains, or simply sketching faster under pressure. If you’re passionate about design’s role in a resilient future (and can’t resist a good behind-the-scenes story), this is your campfire.
“Real-world design stories for a world that needs better ones.”
Designing in the Wild: The Industrial Design Podcast
#008: Blood In The Water: Americas Assault on Innovation - Kip Doyle - Patent Process, Product Innovation, Defending Patents, Napkin Sketch to Manufacturing
We sit down and speak with the amazing, Kip Doyle - Author, Inventor, Patent Defender. We talk about her painful story of inventing a product and then going up against Big Tech to defend her patents. She offers up invaluable insights on how to go about protecting your IP, which lawyers to hire, and her new book release, Blood In The Water: America's Assault on Innovation.
BOOK LINK: https://amzn.to/3LxUm3Y
CONTACT
Email: ANGRYMOB@BLOODINTHEWATER.COM
Instagram: @cardsharkwalletskin
OTHER REFERENCES
USInventor.org
cardsharkskin.com
I was watching my own parade go by. I was watching every company manufacturing my idea, Speck, Casemate, CM4, or 3, I can't even remember, you know, Incipio, Otterbox, all of them. All of them are sitting on my patent and I'm trying to figure out how come I can't get in on my own ride.
SPEAKER_01:Well, welcome, welcome everybody. Hey, design community. I'm Robert when your host back at it again with another episode of designing in the wild today. I'm super stoked to have Kip Azoni Doyle with me today. Uh, I've known her for a number of years now, but wanted to get her on the show. She's got a lot of great things coming up around the bend and also recently released a book called blood in the water, America's assault on innovation. And I know there's a lot of, uh, A lot of my listeners out there, you guys are all product designers or creatives in one fashion or another. And I wanted to get her on today to chat a little bit about her experiences bringing products to market, writing the book, patenting, things like that. So her name is, well, I already mentioned her name. So Kip, hey, good to see you. Thanks so much for joining today.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, Rob, thank you so much for having me. I'm very flattered. Hi, you all out there in design land. Yeah. It's good to be here.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Kip. Yeah, so I mentioned a little bit about your book, but can you give us a quick background on your story and life?
SPEAKER_00:Sure. So I couldn't imagine any other title. A But there's just no other way to describe it. And so Blood in the Water, America's Assault on Innovation. Aside from the fact that I had to have a shark straight out of Jaws on the cover, I wanted to really set the tone for what an independent inventor is facing in today's United States patent and trademark system office. The patents were... For an independent inventor, the first thing you want to probably do is really focus on how can I protect this idea? So for me, I didn't know going in 2003, I started this process. I had this idea and I didn't realize that the patent system really was going to sort of, the bottom was going to drop out and I was going to be faced with this new world, not necessarily a good one for us independent inventors. Backstory to why I wrote Blood in the Water is because I needed to somehow find the positive in what was a very defensive posture as an inventor. Once upon a time, a long time ago, the founding fathers felt so strongly about our rights to invent, that they created and built into the Constitution an exclusive right to discoveries. Article 1, Section 8, the Powers of Congress, Clause 8, to promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive rights to their respective writings and discoveries. For two centuries, this held. and we were able to have the best products and we were number one in the world for innovation. What has happened since then has been a complete destruction of the patent system that is there to protect us independent inventors. So that was really the boiling point for me. It was my story of struggle, but then the minute I started to ask a few questions, meet a few other independent inventors, I realized I was actually still kind of you know, coasting along and managing through this while I've watched other inventors lose everything, everything. And so that was really the impetus for me writing this.
SPEAKER_01:Wow. Yeah. That's a great backstory, Kip. I appreciate it. I wonder, I'm hoping maybe you can take us back a little bit farther for a moment. I know you've been writing for a time and you enjoy also obviously reading and, and, and you have a, Yeah, you've been kind of working through these ideas which come to fruition now, the book, and we'll talk about Card Shark in a little bit. But were there moments in life and time when you were reading and writing as you developed your passions for innovation and invention? Were there moments where you can remember kind of making that switch or having kind of these light bulb moments or epiphanies?
SPEAKER_00:Sure. Um, gosh, every day there's something, right? Uh, I always, I always like to, um, first of all, to me, invention as I am a writer, first and foremost, that's what I studied. I went to, you know, NYU Tisch. I studied journalism at undergrad and then graduate school, uh, in, in dramatic writing, screenwriting. So for me, um, I have this other side of the brain, which is totally about screenwriting. And I have a slate and I have a website and you go in and you see all the different scripts that I've written over the years. And they're a bunch. But to me, if you invent an idea or you invent a story or you invent a product, it's all invention. So that all needs to be protected. So whether you're dealing with copyright infringement or whether you're dealing with trademark or patents, the notion is that you have that moment, you come up with something. And as they say about an invention, a good invention is you solving a problem, having a solution to a problem you never knew you had. So whether it's a script and it's a story about something that you've never been made aware of or you didn't know existed on the other side of the planet, that's all sort of invention, right? So for me, those aha moments, man, they better try and have one As often as I can. But I think it's just so healthy to take a moment, even in the day, I don't know, walking. For me, it's a walk to see the sunrise. I think about how many people on this planet Earth have never seen a sunrise. And that's just tragic. First of all, it's free.
SPEAKER_01:That's right.
SPEAKER_00:And it's there for you if you just... Take the time to open your eyes and look at it because there's beauty in just those moments where you're not doing. It's like the time between time
SPEAKER_01:sort of thing. That's a great point. I think finding inspiration in nature for me is also kind of a place where I go as well. I know you have a place up in Maine, which is also beautiful. I'm sure you take many walks up there as well. Uh, but, um, so the invention process, so as you've been, you've been writing, you've been copyright doing, you know, um, looking into copyrights, making sure that, uh, your ideas are protected. Uh, talk, walk me through the beginning stages of, uh, of the, of your book was, was it, was it based on solely the card shark process and kind of what you gleaned out of that, that whole, you know, the trials and tribulations were, or did it stem from other things as well?
SPEAKER_00:That's a great question. I'd say that the card shark process was the trigger. But for me, it was just like I had to write this. First of all, it's super sassy and I curse like a sailor, so sorry. Yeah,
SPEAKER_01:I have to say, reading it, it's hilarious. You have such a... Such a great, I mean, you're just a general bubble of great energy anyway, Kip. So it definitely comes through in the book. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Well, it was like, come on, let's take a ride. We're going to ride down this crazy trail. And it reminds me of like the Dr. Seuss book, The Places You Will Go, because it's the ups and the downs. Like you have a minute where you're You're just riding on this cloud thinking, oh, my gosh, I've just gotten my patent pending and now I can go out to the world. So. Ouch, because then the next step is like down into the trough. So that's just life. I figured the book was the best way for me to have if I could ever have a little bit of fun and find some sort of humor, sassy and sarcastic as it is. It was a brutal experience. And I'm not going to lie. Hence the title. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So
SPEAKER_00:us little fish, we're swimming with the big fish. What has happened and the reason why the process began with me, yes, very much about the card shark. The card shark is a credit card wallet skin. It's a credit card on the back of your phone case, basically. Everybody looks at it and they're like, oh my God, you invented that. One guy who I hired said, who became, has been my rock on this project, Eric Hurwitz, his attitude was like, there's no frigging way you invented that. I must, there must be a typo in this. And I said, no, no, apparently I've invented it. And he's like, that's just, that's impossible. I said, well, we did it. So he's come on board and he's been with me for this entire crazy ride. He's actually in the book because his insight has saved my rumpus.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah,
SPEAKER_00:whatever.
SPEAKER_01:So,
SPEAKER_00:So the point is, is that I didn't know anything. I didn't know anything. I wanted to trust in the system. I wanted to trust in the lawyers that I found. Rule number one, if this is helpful to any of you, do not, do not go pick the biggest law firm on Park Avenue in, oh, fabulousville, New York City. I did. And they were happy to take my money. Huge firm that like represents, you know, all the big corporations and then little me. So, It was painful and it was a lot of money. And I urge all of you to get with the local, like a local lawyer or God, even a law student. These law students are hungry, smarter than smart. They want to prove and they want to do. So I was like, dude, you know, maybe I find a lawyer who's a lawyer in the making, and ask them, like, make this your senior thesis or whatever.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:Represent me. So what we've ended up doing over 10 years is to actually... I do all the cease and desist letters through a couple of law students down at University of Chicago. And they're smarter than I'll ever be. And they... But you see, you can bring the costs down on that. And so... You get a big law firm like I did and you just get gutted, right? Yeah. It takes a lot of money to patent something. And then your patents are only as good as the money you have behind it because the process has changed so dramatically and poorly for the independent inventor. 10 years ago, the world went like this for us. So the patent system suddenly became... sort of overrun by, we'll say big tech, okay? And if you guys are designers for big tech, God bless. But the problem is, is that big tech has really manhandled the patent system and they own it and they've got it in their pocket. And it's really, really difficult. The AIA, America Invents Act, came into being 10 years ago. And the minute that happened, development of a system You'd get your patent approved on this side of the building. And while it was being approved, on the other side of the building was the PTAB, which was Patents Trial and Appeal Board. And it was that system that would negate patents, would just completely wipe them out. So under the AIA, I have some statistic here, but basically... something like 96% of the patents were being wiped out. So you'd get a patent and then they'd eradicate it through a process called an IPR, inter-partis review, which by the way is just, you may as well just line them up and because it's just a death squad for a patent.
SPEAKER_01:The beginning and the end. The
SPEAKER_00:beginning and the end, right.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so I know we have a lot of inventive people for our listeners as well, and I'm wondering if you could take us back pre-cease and desist to where you had maybe a napkin sketch and you had this idea. Can you walk us through maybe even that story and what your subsequent steps were to getting this IP on a roll to make sure that you were protected? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So I ride motorcycles. I was out on my Ducati. I was stopping for gas. And I was like, I got my gear. I got my helmet, my gloves. I got on my gear. It was 2003. The world was taking their credit card cases and slipping their credit cards behind the skin. And the skin would rip. And it would peel. And you'd be like, you'd have all your gear behind your silicone slit. So I was like, well, that's silly. And I'm out on my bike and I'm thinking, okay, I got to take my helmet off. I got to take my gloves off. I got to get the key out. I got to get up. I got to get off my seat. I've got to get my wallet out so I can put my credit card in and pump my gas with my helmet and all this stuff has to come up. I was like, and then bang, aha. All of a sudden I'm like, wait, wouldn't it be great if I could just have all my gear so I didn't have to get my wallet out of the seat and get up and all that just to be able to go grab and go. take my credit card out, punch it in while I'm still geared up and gas up into my tank instead of having to do all this stuff. So that was really it. That was the moment. And I was sitting on my bike on the Hutchinson Parkway North at the mobile station. And I'm like, that's it. And I laughed about it because I thought, you know, the phones were then BlackBerrys and everybody was moving into this world of mobile phones and the texting was still, wonky and everybody was still geeky about it.
SPEAKER_01:T9 keyboards and whatnot.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, yes, the clickety-clack. So anyway, that was going on. So I immediately took a mail billfold, like just a simple wallet billfold thing, and I duct-taped it to the back of my phone skin. And that was the first iteration of the card shark.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, wow.
SPEAKER_00:And I thought, and that was really it. And a friend of mine who was an architect said, you... better keep quiet. And I thought, well, okay. And he said, just shut up. So I did. And I then had it sketched on a napkin and I took it to a buddy of mine who worked for a plastics manufacturer. And I was like, what do you think? And he said, I like it. And this is a guy who sees a thousand things a day. So for me to walk in there and have him say, I actually like that. I think we could do something was a big deal. So While I was doing that, I had NDA signed. I said, you know, you can't talk to anybody about this because the key to this whole thing is just shut your mouth. Protect your idea. Do not do not tell anybody because whoever you tell might have a friend who's a friend who's, I don't know, drafts patents and then you're out of the deal. So it happens all the time. And stories that I've heard even since writing the book, people chiming into me saying I invented this and you can't believe the likes of which. So I just sat down, got quiet. We drafted this. We didn't go with a design patent. We went with a utility patent, which is a much bigger deal. It's a big block of documents and it's here to wear with all the through and all this
SPEAKER_01:crap.
SPEAKER_00:this jargon that made my head spin. Um, but they wrote it, they drafted it, uh, they happily charged me and I'm like, and, uh, basically we came away with the first patent application. Um, it takes what it takes. I went the expedited route thinking, Oh, I'm going to, you know, move this thing along. Hmm. Not really. Uh, not really. doesn't move the needle that much, especially in today's world with the tech stuff happening so fast, but we got it done. And
SPEAKER_01:so can you get, can you give me a, just a broad sweeping timeline on that for myself and the, and the listeners?
SPEAKER_00:Was it
SPEAKER_01:a couple of months, a couple of years? Are we talking? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Months, like nine plus months to years. I mean, it takes, it could take like.
SPEAKER_01:And you get your provisional.
SPEAKER_00:Right. Right. Right. So once you have that, though, you can you can pretty much just get to work.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:Once you filed, you should feel like, OK, I'm in the I'm in the line. I'm in the I'm in the process. Right. The problem. So somebody is Eric Hurwitz. My guy described to me many years ago. He said it's like you're running out. It's the wild, wild west and you're running out to stick your stake in the ground for that land that is unclaimed. Right. That's what this is like. You're trying to get your stake in the ground. And the problem is, is that it's all sealed. So you have no idea if you were the first one there and you got to wait and wait and wait and wait. And it'll drive you nuts if you
SPEAKER_01:keep
SPEAKER_00:clicking through to check your patent process. You just, you just never know, but you just keep going. There have been instances in today's crazy world where people have actually faked prior art. Prior art is a really big term. Prior art is that discovery of that people scour the globe and they scour now the internet to go and just discover if somebody got there first, right? If somebody designed this crazy idea before you did. So some people have been even known in today's crazy world to fake prior art to predate your timeline. I mean, it is a really... wild world out there
SPEAKER_01:so uh you know maybe a hot tip for everybody out there would be uh make sure your books and notebooks are bound and dated as you develop things uh from the beginning whether it's even 100 yeah or or whatnot yeah do you have any insights on that that i didn't i that i didn't cover right there i mean it seems like you know having your art work and submitting it and making sure that it is verifiable and whatnot. Like, were there any other details around that, Kip, that you can share? I
SPEAKER_00:would just urge everybody to, yeah, really keep a documented timeline. Yeah, a folder, a binder, and email it to yourself or email it to some, you know, if you're working with a team, just make sure that you've got it it's like sometimes they used to say with a script, you mail the script to yourself and that shows the time that it was, you know, the mail date, whatever. But to me, it's, I think the key is that you want to have that information yourself. So, because, you know, lawyers change. I can tell you, I've had a lot of lawyers and I've had some terrific and I've had some crazy stories, but it's, The key is to just keep it all with yourself. You know, the document that said, hey, this is your patent and here's the binder it came in. I don't even know which lawyer has that now or which guy I had on this project because it's unfortunate. But when you have a good idea and a good idea is just that simple, simple. This is a really simple idea. But over the years, I guess people are going, hey, that's that's not a bad idea. So yeah. Just be wary and try and keep it close, but definitely timeline. But also because if you are faced with a lawsuit or somebody's coming after your idea, you want to be able to have that testimonial. So you have to write that. I've written it so many times to prove myself. When you are threatened, you write a cease and desist letter to somebody who's infringing on your idea, your patent. And they counter you and you're back and forth with this exchange. Ultimately and eventually, you're going to have to come up with a testimonial, you know, exactly why, when, how, all the things we're talking about. So just do it while you're in the mode, while you're in the moment. Just just write it down, write down to the point like I had this idea and I didn't have a name for it. And I was like, oh, I'm going to call it stealth. I was like, I'll never get copywriting. Stealth. Because everything's stealth, stealth, stealth,
SPEAKER_01:stealth.
SPEAKER_00:And I thought it was a funny play, like you're stealing my wallet, but it's stealth because you can barely see my credit cards. So then I was sound asleep. And the process for me is always having a notepad and paper, you know, notepad and pen by my bed. Terrifying to wake up to some of the things I've scribbled in the middle of the night. But this moment I woke up. Got
SPEAKER_01:to get it out though, right? You got to get it out. Yeah, I woke up and I was like. Get it on paper.
SPEAKER_00:What is that? And so I woke up to what I had written, and I must have woke up in the middle of the night and written down card shark. The notion that the credit card, the case is going to eat your credit cards and hold them strong and all that stuff. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Love it.
SPEAKER_00:So the card shark was invented. The name came in a scribbling by my bedside, middle of the night. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:There it was. The waking moments of the dawn of the mornings and whatnot. It's amazing how there's been so many things invented and created in those kind of waking moments where your brain is in a state where it's not thinking about the tasks to be done for the day, and it's still in that kind of slumber of operation where... Yeah, I think the scientific table was organized and arranged and invented in the waking moments of a scientist's morning light. Yes, pretty wild. I
SPEAKER_00:think, yeah, it's like that twilight consciousness. And I think the Aborigines call it the time between time, which is the most creative time, which I think is so fascinating. And I agree, that is
SPEAKER_01:fascinating.
SPEAKER_00:It's like where all the dust settles and you see clarity. Yes,
SPEAKER_01:absolutely. Okay, so you started getting the IP drafted. You shipped it out to get the provisionals. During this time, were you overlapping the work being done for that along with sourcing a designer or sourcing creatives to help kind of bring this to life, like maybe on a 3D model level? Or were you also sourcing vendors and such? Walk me through that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so the process took, while I was waiting for the patents to either yes or no, I mean, spraying and all that, and that was really stressful. But I was like, okay, I can't focus on that. I've got to keep going on this other track. And now that track was manufacturing. Okay, now here's probably one of the most important things that I learned. I mean, if you are a trust fund baby, God bless. And you can afford to manufacture. The
SPEAKER_01:tooling, the molds. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So there are three tracks that you have to worry about. The first is that you want to get this patented. So that's going to cost you, especially if you did like I did and went to the biggest law firm. So stay small with your law firm because you got to get that patent. OK, drafting that patent is expensive. Getting a patent is expensive. Then you've got to defend that patent eventually, right? So you've got patent process, defensive patent, the only as good as the money you can throw behind it. And the third is manufacturing, okay? I was watching my own parade go by. I was watching every company manufacturing my idea, spec, casemate, patent. CM4 or 3, I can't even remember. You know, Incipio, OtterBox, all of them. All of them are sitting on my patent and I'm trying to figure out how come I can't get in on my own ride? So defense of that patent is a cease and desist. I couldn't afford to manufacture, okay? So I couldn't afford to do all three buckets at once. I tried to go the manufacturing route. I hired this firm, and they built the tooling. They built the mold. We figured out how many. You could do an eight-cavity mold with manufacturing. I put out 3,000 units. I had no idea how I was going to sell them, and I couldn't compete with all the others. So what happened to me in the beginning was I- So did
SPEAKER_01:you license this then, ultimately? Sorry, I didn't mean to jump
SPEAKER_00:the- Yeah, no. So- Well, I went to Apple. I went to Blackberry back then. And they were like, wow, with Apple, the guy in charge of product development said, I've card-sharked my Apple. I was like, holy mackerel, I'm golden. Well, something happened between that 2004 period. Something happened all of a sudden. Everybody went silent on me. I'm like, well, they're probably busy launching a new Apple, whatever. Turns out that... another company, Speck, who was big and powerful, usurped my market. They got in there and they took, and all of a sudden, my dream of like manufacturing all these card sharks and getting them to Apple, I got like left back there. So all of a sudden, somebody texted me and said, you know, Speck is in the Apple store with a credit card phone case. So I was struggling with, obviously all of that was really hard to tolerate and swallow, but the notion that I was trying to manufacture and do licensing deals, converting infringers into licensees, which requires the cease and desist letter with the terms for a license. I was facing the fact that the patent system had bottomed out and this AIA meant that any small inventor was going to come up against these bigger companies that had really deep pockets, who could just say, hey, we would rather infringe and then steal from you. And then when you try and stop us, we're going to throw this thing down called an IPR, which is, as I said, the death squad to any patent holder, because the scale is so weighed in the favor of big tech now that the little guys are just getting squashed.
SPEAKER_01:So what's the IPR acronym there?
SPEAKER_00:Inter Partis Review.
SPEAKER_01:Got it.
SPEAKER_00:And that basically means that anybody bringing a, here's, well, it's complicated because what it basically has done is that angel investors and the lawyers who are willing to go on contingency, like for someone like me, have just fled this space when it comes to this small inventor space. Because the big corporations are so often wiping out patents of the little guys. That's the 96% patent invalidation. And that's just a fact of the way the patent system is today. The head of the patent system, Michelle Lee, a couple years ago, she came from Google. So she basically, she was very much in favor of her own agenda or their agenda. And what that's done is it's really just hindered the ability for the little guy to be heard. There's a new, obviously there's somebody new who's just been nominated and I think she's been awarded the position of the USPTO head. And she makes Michelle Lee look like a kindergartner. So we have our work cut out for us. But, you know, I got the book, by the way, here. So visual. I have now been asked. I sold a bunch of the books and 700 of them are going out to the heads of, you know, all the all the every politician in D.C. So we're going to walk it down. Oh, excellent. I work. Yeah, I work with the U.S. inventor dot org. Um, Josh Malone is heading that and his story is also in the book, but he has very kindly taken on this, this challenge to try and get the little guy's voice heard. So, uh, Senator Durbin and, and some of these, these people on the committee, uh, have read my book and actually wrote me a note and said, Oh, very interesting. You know, love the, love the topic. So the context, sure, sure. We're getting word out.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So, um, I'm curious, have you been through a number of, just to switch gears back to the car chart for a minute on production side, did you do a couple of rounds of different materials or different colors or things like that for samples? Walk me through kind of what that sample process looked like if you did.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so I don't have the, the very first iteration was a silicone case and it was basically a slit on the back of the phone case. So the actual back of the phone was the back of the pocket. There was no inner planner layer. So the first patent was just that slit. So it was just the phone case with a slit in it, basically. And then I was realizing, you know, I really want to protect the back of the phone. Some people are kind of interested in that. And I've always envisioned it having the case having its own sort of silicone textured back so that the phone was protected from the credit cards would slide in and out. They could scrape the back of the
SPEAKER_01:case.
SPEAKER_00:And it was just more of a substantial case. So the inner planner layer was the second patent. The first patent was the patent that established this credit card on the back of the case. Then I took the second patent and I added the inner planner layer and the finger cut out. Because the hardest thing to do is just try and get credit cards out without some sort of a finger, you know, where you can
SPEAKER_01:push the credit cards up. There's a surface area to kind of push it out, right. Right.
SPEAKER_00:So I think it's pretty witty. We use this, you know, we have the little card, the shark fin. Oh, yeah. And then we have, like, the waves.
SPEAKER_01:I love it. Those little design details. We're just having so much fun. Can you talk about some of those design details? So that's neat. I didn't realize that that's there. And it's kind of playing on, obviously playing on the name of the product. How did those ideas come about? Was it kind of just a conceptual, just through different drawings and iterations?
SPEAKER_00:So we came a long way. So from the silicone version, I actually... decided, well, first of all, it was just not going to be able, something that I could, it was before Instagram and all that stuff. So we had made this version. I liked it silicone, but it didn't slide in and out of the pocket. And I'm like, oh, because it's all about like the skinny jeans. So the skinny jeans, you know, you couldn't get it in and out without it sort of sticking. And it was a little bit clunky. And I also really wanted that inner layer, that inner planner layer. So so we kind of shelved that. And then we and then I just focused hard on licensing because that was the only way that I was going to be able to afford to ever come up with my own version.
SPEAKER_01:Sure.
SPEAKER_00:So it was a long game play. It was really difficult because I saw everything in the licensing experience. I would send somebody a cease and desist letter. Then I'd get sued. Like, oh, they'd countersue you and you're suing me. So a lot of, you know, a lot of that stuff was really hard. That's why I kept saying I got to write a book because I should have some sense of humor about this because this is going to just cripple me. So I went that route for 10 years. So, bang, finally, it was pretty odd that at the 10 year mark, I actually get the book out. And along comes my own version of the credit card phone case called The Card Shark. So long time. I have a great, great kid. He's David West, and he was a design engineer at Northwestern right up the street. He joined forces with me. And all of a sudden, shazam, we go from, you know, thinking about some sort of a case to, well, let's have a military-grade carbon fiber. Let's pick the weave. Let's have different colors. Let's do the wave along the edge. Let's do another patent, which is going to include... And this is a design patent, actually. So we have three utility patents, and now we're in the process of a design patent. Which, by the way, as you build your patent portfolio... very important for the extension of the life of your patents right um the design patent in this case it's it's really technical but basically we called it the shark's teeth and it is teeny little knobs or shark's teeth inside the inner planner layer that's going to keep your credit cards inside the case because sometimes you only want to put one card in and You put your thing down, and whoo, there goes your license or whatever across the room. Oh,
SPEAKER_01:it goes flying, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So we decided that we were going to add those shark's teeth on the inside so that you could then just sort of carry one or two cards versus, I carry like four. I mean, the thing holds it. And then we're going to do another sort of variation is to take the inside the case, because sometimes you want to carry another phone, you want to carry a card like, but knock on wood, you don't need to use like your insurance card. So those cards are going to, you could stick them behind your phone inside or some cash, you know, the cards that you don't use that often.
SPEAKER_01:Sure.
SPEAKER_00:And you can put those in. So we're creating sort of a, a, a, a recessed area within the back of the case here so that you could actually have a bit of a, and now this is, this fabric is the silicone. So it's, It's pliable, and it has a little bit of stretch to it, so it holds the cards in place. Inside, we've logoed the design of our credit card... Sorry, card shark design.
SPEAKER_01:Yep.
SPEAKER_00:And on your product, you always have to mark it with a patent. That's like by law.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So you've mentioned the utility and the design patents on this. Can you give the listeners a bit of an idea of like... Because I... Correct me if I'm wrong, but the design patents can tend to be not quite as laborious or pricey. Can you elaborate?
SPEAKER_00:So a design patent basically, a utility patent sort of combines the utility of this is a credit card case that's going to hold credit cards and it's for your phone. So that's like a utility. Design could mean I don't like the slit here, I'm going to put the slit here. Or I'm going to change the texture or I'm going to change the where the access of the portal is to put your credit cards in. So it's a much less robust process. I was always very, very hesitant of using that.
SPEAKER_01:Sure.
SPEAKER_00:One of my infringers, it's in the book, but it was a big, big deal for me. It was a company that has and is still to this day infringing aggressively. And I could make a lot of money if I could take them down. But They had a design patent that sits right on my utility patents. The problem is that the guy behind the whole company is so powerful that he actually tore up my patents and came over the table at me in a meeting, hashtag me too, not you. It was really intense. But he was basing it on a design patent, which had nothing to do. Wow. As it was described to me, the utility patent is the big lily pad in the pond. The design patent sits on top of the utility. So the little lily pad sits on top of the big one, right? So the littler, less coverage, less protection of a design patent, not as robust as a utility patent, which is, like I said, like a ream of designs and, you know, CAD drawings and all that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and I think the... The beauty of the design patents within the sphere of the utility is that you can, for instance, depending on what families of products you're making, the utility can embody the base of that product, but then the design patents can be an overlay protection for different products down the line where you're differentiated over time or over different product applications, correct?
SPEAKER_00:Yes. Yeah, and... Truth be told, I mean, this is way out of my realm, but like, I mean, for tech stuff, it's become so complex, right? I mean, the tech world changing so fast. But I think that when you're talking about a product, yes, it's like it's layering on top of the existing utility patent, different iterations, whether that's, as I said, like the the quality or the, uh, the product, if it's made of a carbon fiber or if it's made of silicone or whatever that sort of nuances.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So, uh, you've, you've talked a lot about, uh, and, and offered some really great insight on your process Kip and, and some of the, some of the takeaways such as, uh, you know, um, you know, documenting your, your process, finding local, even students or graduate of lawyers, uh, graduate lawyers. And I'm wondering if there are some other takeaways from this whole experience that you've had for people, designers, inventors, whomever, who are coming up and have ideas that want to move forward with getting their things out into the market. Can you elaborate on any other thoughts around that?
SPEAKER_00:Sure. Thanks for these really good questions because they really make you stop and think about it. And When you're in it, it's really important you're not alone. I think that I felt really alone and I didn't go to school to design and I didn't go to school to be a lawyer. And sometimes I felt like, gosh, you're the lawyers. You guys should know this stuff.
SPEAKER_01:You're
SPEAKER_00:making me ask. One thing I'd like to just stop the clock because things go super slow and then they go super fast. So wherever your idea, wherever you envision your idea being launched, and I mean Timbuk frigging too, if you are going to see your product out there, you've got to think about getting global protection, right? International patent. That was something that was offered to me like that. And then, oh, she can't afford it, so let's just keep moving. So I never got to be able to internationally patent my idea. But if the product... is being sold in this country, it's a US patented idea, then I can take it on. But I see things in Australia and I'm like, I can't do anything about it because I don't have, if a company in Australia is selling a card chart, I can't, or a card chart design idea, I can't do anything about that. So I would urge you to really, try and scrape together enough to be able to go the international patented
SPEAKER_01:route.
SPEAKER_00:U.S. patent system is not terrific today. It's attempting to be better. There are other countries where it's better, like Ireland and Belgium. I mean, we used to be number one in the world. We're now number 12 with Italy today. We have slunk that far down. Now, if you wrap the globe three times, that's how far ahead China is. And there's nothing wrong with Italy. I love Italy, but we're not designing things from the times of Michelangelo. We're the United States of America. And so it's really important. Well, first of all, most importantly, think about that when you're in the process. Any good lawyer is going to make it really clear to you why that's important. Second, Don't do it alone. I mean, I have my website and I have my email, which is angrymob at bloodinthewaterbook.com. I urge you to email me. I mean, I want to help anybody I can. That's why I wrote this book. And I mean it. I am here for all of you because it's so much more important to me that you guys have support and protection and somebody who's been there. Like, shoot, we'll sit down and have a virtual cup of coffee and I'll tell you maybe some things that work and some things that don't. Whatever you want, just don't feel that you're alone. usinventor.org is a really good group of folks. That's who got me through this. usinventor.org, it's a great resource. It is something that I urge you to sign up for their newsletters. There's a petition on there. So when policy changes come down the pike, that's where you find them. And that's where you want to sign that petition, whatever you do. So there's a policy out there right now that is really important to trying to claw back some of the rights for us independent inventors. So that kind of stuff, HR 5874. Restoring America's Leadership in Innovation Act of 2021. That is all on the usinventor.org website. Read about it. You'll see why it's so important to stay connected with people who are in the same boat.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's great. That's great information, Kip. I appreciate that. It's kind of, as you're mentioning that, it comes to mind how ridiculous that we have to It created a whole new restorative act on something that was originally founded to be a protection right for those who invent. So, yeah, great information. Okay, so we've talked the book. We've talked a little card shark. We've talked some pain points. Can you talk me through, you know, what kept you sane through some of these hardships? Did you have any routines? What places did you go? get out, get away from things? What kind of activities did you do? Because I think, you know, inventors are going to come up with, come against a lot of these hardships as they create, as you did. And I think it's nice to maybe know or have some balance to kind of reset you sometimes. Any techniques that you used along the way?
SPEAKER_00:Well, it was a, I was in New York City, you know, the kids were, I was a single mom and it was a little bit challenging um yeah so you know that kept me really busy but it was also really uh you know financially it was stressful so that that was obviously on my my mind um i would say the most important thing for me absolutely the balance i mean sports have always been a really big part of my uh release outlet the motorcycle you know what do they say anybody who's on a bike the shrinks are running after them i mean that's like your that's like your reset button For me, that was always and always will be. I mean, I think anything with speed, anything with wheels makes me a happy camper. But I mean, sports, you know, getting out and just, you know, moving that muscle, changing that thought, really bringing it down to some of the super simple practices of you can't just sit and toil. I know that this pandemic has been extraordinary on the kids and young families and all that, and just people in general. I honestly have to say my hat is off to all of you. I couldn't have done it and I'm lucky because my kids are older now, but I just don't know how people have been able to balance all of that. So I think like anywhere, you can get yourself outside to get some fresh air, just walk around, music, like just a real, find that zen zone and just try and balance it out because it is stressful, but I always, there are two quotes that I really love. By the way, I think the quotes and reading from people who have done things intensely, like who've invented or created or written before us is always really humbling. So got to keep it humble, got to. And so Ayn Rand wrote, an inventor is a man who asks why of the universe and lets nothing stand between the answer and his mind.
SPEAKER_01:Love it. That's great.
SPEAKER_00:I love that too. So I stick that on my, I stick that post-it right on my screen and I just go. And then Einstein, you know, nothing happens till something moves. So you got to move, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:The thing about inventors is we're just a wacky, crazy lot. And by the way, if you tell me no, thank you very much, but I'm going anyway. That stubbornness, it's not because, you know, we're risk adverse. There are 80% of the world is risk adverse. Even fighter pilots are risk adverse. Basically, you know, you got this job and you do it. even if you're a fighter pilot, but an inventor is somebody who's like, uh-uh, I'm gonna figure this out. So you can't rewire that brain and then you shouldn't. So embrace it and know that you're different. Like you're different in a really good way. I make fun of it in the book, like, because it's just, you're wired differently and that's what makes it so exciting. But the key is, and I'm going to say it again, you're not alone. It's so great when you can speak to another inventor whose idea may be, oh my God, like the guy who invented holograms. I met him. Nice. And beam me up Scotty, that guy. So it's just important that you get to bounce that kind of same shared type of personality with somebody else who gets you.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. No, that's great, Kip. I echo your sentiments for sure. Before I let you go, any practical kind of applications on your phone, note-taking techniques for people who are in the midst of creating a thing or just in general productivity? Any tips there?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Well, I'm a big, yeah, I'm a big note taker. I use, I basically, my office upstairs is just, it's not a whiteboard. I hate whiteboards. So I painted the whole wall that Crayola chalkboard.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And then I threw a little glitter on it and, you know, wow. But it's all about color for me. But that's what inspires me is that you have a big chalkboard and you just start writing. When I'm writing a script, I go blank. Big time old school. And it's all about note cards. Oh, yeah. And I do like a good pen, you know, like I like the I like the feel of it. I like it. But it's all about note cards and I color them so that I can. Well, for a script anyway, you know, they're different settings. If you really think about that, you break down a story. You've got one setting in the woods and then in the school. And so you break it down with coloration. And that way you. You could sort of keep your scenes straight. Similarly with invention. I would say that the most important thing is really don't build, in a sense, you're building the plane while you're flying it because who knows how this is gonna go, but you can't really, luck is not a good strategy. So in a sense, you kind of have to have a game plan And some of us I know as inventors, we don't really like that because we just want to like make it happen. But you've got to know, okay, I've got this product coming in. For me, the card shark, I got this product coming in next week. What by when? What am I going to do? When, where, how, right? Because I've got to sell these products. And the more that I sell, the more I can build my line around them because there's many expansions we can do off of this similar thing. We've got a cutout area. We're going to, you know, try and get it to the corporation. So everybody's on their phone and you can see my logo glow in the dark, whatever it is, you've got to know the strategy of how you're going to launch it. Okay. You're going to go Instagram. You're going to do your YouTube. You're going to do design channel that describes the whole process. So have a game plan and definitely build that business model or more importantly, I know what I know and I know what I don't know. So I'm going to lean on somebody who knows because you don't need to know it all. The first mistake is, hey, I'm everything. I'm like Mr. Ego here. That's a curse of death because the minute you know it all and you're not willing to share your idea or share it with somebody you trust, you've got to build a team around you. You can't know it all. So get the guys and gals who know how to get your message out. Get the guys or gals who can help you build that system of structure and get the guys and gals who can get your documents in order. That'd be the legal team. Get your patents in the process. Just build out around you. You're the center with that idea, but the best thing you can do is let go of it to share it with the team who can support you. And if you keep it all to yourself, it's... I guarantee you.
SPEAKER_01:Probably not going to get off the ground quickly. No. Yeah, delegating expertise. Well, Kip, I couldn't have done this interview alone, and I appreciate your time here. I want to let you get back to strategizing in your world. But real quick, did we miss anything? Anything else on your mind? I
SPEAKER_00:mean, come and see me at CardsharkSkin.com. And then it's on Instagram, Card Shark Wallet Skin. But, you know, this is going to be coming out. It's for the 13 and the 13 Pro. So we've got herringbones and carbon fiber, like real legit carbon fiber, not just plastic that looks like carbon fiber. It's military grade and all cool designs. And then the book is bloodinthewaterbook.com. It's on Amazon. I know. I know there's irony in that, but I'm not I don't sit around and I didn't want to wait nine months to get this story out on, you know, through a publisher and all that. So I self publish on Kindle. Good idea. But it is Amazon. So it's a little ironic. But Blood in the Water, America's Assault on Innovation. It's a sassy read, but you might get some points out of it. There's some really good interviews in there with folks who have just as I said, they've lost everything or they know everything. And so I leave it to them, the experts in the field and really, really good insights from folks who have been at it a lot longer than I have. So that's where, that's what we got going on. Thank you so much, Rob, for including me in this. I'm super flattered. And what you guys do when you design is, is, is incredible. It, it, It's exciting for all of us because we just get to see these. You have an idea and you tell someone like an architect like you, Rob, or a designer and you say, hey, I want to do this. I want it to go like that. And then whoosh, out of nowhere, you come up with ideas that reflect my soul. So I've had the experience and pleasure of having you do that for me. And I can't even thank you enough.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks, Kip. I appreciate it. Yeah, we'll be doing another review of your house here soon. Can't wait to show you. I'm sure you're waiting on the edge of your seat. So thanks again, Kip. You guys have been listening to Designing in the Wild. And this was Kip Doyle with her book, Blood in the Water, America's Assault on Innovation and her new invention, Card Shark. Check it out. And thanks, guys. Hey, everybody. Thanks for tuning in for this episode. If you like what you're hearing, go ahead and smash that subscribe button. I'm just kidding. Listen, we've got a website. It's theidpodcast.co. Check it out. We've got a lot of great stuff on there, including, obviously, the podcasts. Also, tools for the trade of design and being creative. A lot of interesting and fun things to pick up there to expand your exploration and being creative. This is Rob, signing off for another episode of Designing in the Wild.
