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Nasir and Matt attempt to do a World Cup themed episode, as they discuss the recent Supreme Court case about patents and answer, "If I sell items online, can I have them agree to the contract by checking a box that no one reads?" Transcript: NASIR: Goal! Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business! This is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And this is Matt Staub. NASIR: And welcome to our business legal podcast where we cover business in the news and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. Welcome to our World Cup themed episode. Everything we’re talking about is World Cup. We’re not even going to talk about the law. It’s become a sports podcast only for today and only the World Cup. MATT: I don’t know if you saw and I don’t want to get too off tangent but, well, I guess, from what you said, this isn’t off tangent. We’re recording this the day after the US lost in the group stage but ended up advancing. I don’t know if you saw Denny’s when they posted something on their Twitter – how they were really sad that the US lost because they thought they were eliminated but they ended up advancing because they didn’t understand how the rules worked. NASIR: It may have just been like an automatic thing. Like, if they lose, just automatically tweet this or something. But that’s kind of embarrassing. I wonder how they corrected that. MATT: Yeah, only in soccer could you lose and the team that’s possibly take your spot could win and you still advance somehow. NASIR: That’s not true. MATT: I understand how it works. NASIR: That is not true. No, no, no. First of all, the NBA playoffs are the same way, by the way, because you can lose a game. MATT: What I’m saying is you can’t lose your last game in a certain round and advance in any other sport. NASIR: Okay. Yeah, I can see that. MATT: Yeah. NASIR: That’s true. It is a point system but anyway what’s our first World Cup story for the day? MATT: Well, I don’t know if this is World Cup. NASIR: I promised everyone World Cup theme so we’ll have to tie it in somehow. MATT: I’ll see if I can. This comes from the Supreme Court in the United States who has made the World Cup Final 16s. NASIR: That’s right. MATT: That’s the tie-in. But it’s more patent stuff. It’s a topic we frequently talk about on the podcast because, you know, I think I can speak for both of us. We’re both anti-patent trolls and I think a lot of people are other than the few attorneys that are holding on to these patents and trying to make money off of it. NASIR: Just to specify, I am anti-patent trolls but not anti-troll. MATT: Okay, good to know. Good clarification. The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 – a shut-out in soccer terms – basically saying that you actually have to make something in order for the patent to be legit. It can’t just be an idea. We’ll post the link and people can read the specifics but, I think, overall, obviously, this is going to be a really good thing moving forward. We’ll see what kind of effect it has but this is a good step in the right direction. NASIR: Yeah, I think it is, but I started actually reading it and seeing some of the commentary, it just seems like this was a bad example because, if you look at the actual patent, it was just very general and it had to do with some financial trading systems and this is actually a ten-year-old case in the sense that this has been developing for a while with multiple lawsuits. But, just to break it down in simple terms, the original patent was to patent an idea of how they do a certain financial analysis and let’s just do this financial analysis using a computer. I know that sounds very generic but, from what I’m reading, it wasn’t more specific than that and the Supreme Court just made it very simple that that’s not patentable. I think the criticism for this particular decision – or at least as far as the reaction to it – is that, in reality,