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The guys discuss Fixed, the company that fights parking tickets in San Francisco. They also answer "In our industry a few competitors have very very vague patents. For example one has patented "exit intent" technology that pops up something when a user is about to leave a website. This feature essentially can be replicated in a few lines of code. Do patents like this hold up in court? Especially when there's lots of prior art? Should these patents prevent us from innovating or should we ignore them? Should we consider patenting our own vague features?" Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And this is Matt Staub. NASIR: Matthew Staub joining us today. Welcome to our business podcast that we cover business legal news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. MATT: I guess, if someone’s listening to this for the first time, they will not realize that I have been on the previous 73 episodes as well. NASIR: As a guest, right? MATT: As a guest. It’s the intro of Saturday Night Live where you have the actual cast members and then the featured players. I just got the bump up to the actual podcast host. I was a featured player for 73 episodes. NASIR: No, you’ve been downgraded to just a guest. You were a co-host. Now, you’re just going to be a guest from now on. MATT: All right, that’s fair. NASIR: Sorry to inform you in this method but it was the best way I could think of and I think we should do a new service. Like, if we want to do a demotion or firing of someone, if one of our listeners wants to do that, they can send in the name of the person and have them listen to the podcast and we’ll do it on-air for them. MATT: That’s like George Clooney’s business that he worked for in “Up in the Air” where he would travel around the country firing people. NASIR: Yeah. Well, new service. MATT: Which, I mean, I guess that would probably actually exist somewhere at least, right? NASIR: Well, if anyone knows one, we’ve been trying to find a guest like that because we’ve talked about terminations in the workplace are one of the hardest things for a business owner to do – not only because it’s difficult to actually logistically do it but, also, it poses a lot of liability. And so, finding someone that has experience in that, that’d be great. If so, if anyone knows anyone, that’d be great. MATT: Yeah, that’s true. I mean, there are a lot of things you need to be careful with. A lot of people would probably be fine with it but I would assume there are managers out there who don’t want to do it and they’ll probably bring in someone outside. That’s got to be the worst for an employee. You’re getting fired and your boss doesn’t even… He can’t even come in and fire you themselves. It’s pretty ridiculous. I wouldn’t be happy. NASIR: Not to extend this off-topic but it reminds me of one of the very early episodes of The Office where Mike the boss is supposed to fire one. MATT: Yeah. NASIR: Not only does he fire somebody and then takes it back and then he brings someone else in and then considers taking it back and then doesn’t want to take it back because he just took it back with somebody else. That was a great episode. MATT: Yeah, it’s pretty good. Actually, for those of you who stuck with it all the way through in the last season – well, after Michael Scott leaves – Dwight actually hires back that guy who got fired in that episode. Devon, I think, is the name. NASIR: Really? MATT: Yeah. NASIR: I didn’t see that. MATT: Yeah. Well, it was towards the very end. I think it might have been one of the last couple of episodes when Dwight took over. He’s like, “Yeah, actually, I hired Devon back,” or whatever his name was. A nice little callback. Yeah, because that was in the first season and one of the first episodes. NASIR: Yeah, it was in the first season. I’ll have to check that out.