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Nasir and Matt talk about Airbus's strategy to patent everything, including bicycle seats. They also answer, "Hi guys. I'm thinking of creating a university professor rating website just like RateMyProfessors.com but for my country (Lebanon). Can I do that? It's not gonna be an exact replica. Some things will be different. Do I need to take permission from RMP to do this? What about the universities? Now, I'm thinking about ways to keep it clean and moderated, but how legal is it for me to create a sort of medium to judge professors? Thanks." Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome! This is Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And this is Matt Staub. NASIR: And welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions that you can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com but also we have a Twitter account now but I don’t know what it is. Actually, I do. You would think it’s, like, @legallysoundsmartbusiness, but I think it’s too long. So, I had to get @askbizlaw so you can tweet us there for questions as well. MATT: @Askbizlaw, yeah. Looking at it right now. NASIR: We have a total of three followers and they encompass myself and Matt and Pasha Law. Wow. Nice start of that. MATT: It’s also following the same three people. NASIR: Yeah, exactly. That’s a good start. MATT: It is brand new and you didn’t even tell me about it. I just saw it because it was following me. NASIR: That’s true. MATT: We haven’t really promoted it at all. NASIR: This is the first time. MATT: Yeah, we can’t even expect anyone to find it without us telling them beforehand. NASIR: I didn’t even want to mention it in the podcast just in case it blew up. Twitter would kick us out for how many followers we would get. So, I was just kind of reluctant about that. MATT: Yeah, it’s done that with other people. NASIR: Yeah, don’t follow us right away – stream it out over the course of time if you would. Thanks. MATT: All right, let’s get into the story that we have for today. This deals with Airbus and I’m not really that familiar with Airbus. I mean, I looked into it a little bit after reading the article but the story here is that they’re seeking a patent for bicycle seats in the cabins. People hate flying as is but, having these bicycle seats instead of normal seats, I can only guess would make flying worse. But, if you look into the article a little bit more, it’s not that simple. Basically, their strategy is this, they’re filing all these patents legitimately just in case the industry shifts over time and maybe all planes will eventually have these bicycle seats. They just want to have this locked down just in case that happens. I guess they do this with a lot of other patents. They just try to guess where the future’s going to go. If it goes that way, it’s good for them. But I can’t see planes shifting to these bicycle seats because no one’s going to want to fly on a plane with this. NASIR: Yeah. Well, Airbus is basically the competitor of Boeing. Maybe people are more familiar with that. Boeing would be based in Washington, right? I think they’re moving or something. But, anyway, it looks like these seats are basically stacked like cattle. I think that’s the main component of this because, I don’t know if you’ve flown lately but it used to be that you used to have space on the plane, but now it’s like stacked up to the brim and I think they found a way to get more people on there. MATT: It has to be the reason why they’re doing it the way they’re doing. “To increase the number of cabin seats, the space allotted to each passenger must be reduced.” I mean, like I said, no one’s going to want to take a flight where they’re sitting on a bicycle seat. I don’t like riding a bicycle because of the seat to begin with. I guess these can be nice, comfortable bicycle seats. But, even then, it’s still not very comfortable.