Topic Talk 3 with Adrian Graham: Intellectual Property Rights Overview (Policy 2024-2025 Topic Breakdown)

5:36 - Topic Talk with Adrian has returned with a new episode. We are once again stealing some fabulous debate stuff from Adrian Graham (with his permission, of course), and today Professor Graham is going to explore the Intellectual Property Rights Topic for the 2024-2025 Policy Debate season.

Adrian's email: eadriang17@gmail.com

You should check out the video of his episode here:
https://youtu.be/8SpKBLBuQe8?si=TjxLFSnAdoB67OEW

And you should also binge his YouTube channel full of all sorts of debate goodies here: https://www.youtube.com/@ProfessorGraham

For notes and details about the episode, check out the website post here:
https://www.oneclapspeechanddebate.com/post/topic-talk-3-with-adrian-graham-intellectual-property-rights-overview-policy-2024-2025-topic-brea

If you have any ideas or requests for topics to explore on the One Clap Podcast, shoot Lyle an email at lylewiley@gmail.com or check out our blog and social media here:
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Transcript

Adrian Graham: 0:04

Hello debaters and welcome to the topic talk.

Lyle Wiley: 0:08

Happy summer friends. Welcome back to the One Clap Speech and Debate podcast, your podcast home base for coaching, learning and inspirational resources for speech and debate competitors and coaches. I'm your host, lyle Wiley, a high school English teacher and speech and debate coach in Thermopolis, wyoming. And yeah, it's been a while since I've recorded for the podcast, but it's good to be back in front of the mic. I've just recently returned with my super cool Bobcat team from the National Speech and Debate Tournament at Des Moines, iowa, and you know it was a really great time. We traveled in a shared bus with Worland, laramie and Rollins the best folks and the best time for sure. Congratulations to all of our competitors who performed and debated at Nats on the biggest stage for our amazing activity. Congratulations to the coaches who put in yet another long season to do what they could to try to help students have opportunities and find success. You all make us so proud. I'm excited to have some downtime for summer and I hope that everyone is having a good time so far. I'm taking some time to recharge my batteries. You know I'm reading a lot of books, watching action movies, researching Nicolas Cage, hanging with my family, taking pictures of my dog like tons of pictures of my dog going on long walks in the park. You know stuff like that. But I do have some plans in progress for Camp One, clap 2. So be on the watch for some spooky updates on the second season of Camp Soon.

Lyle Wiley: 1:33

Today I'm back to share more great content from Adrian Graham on the podcast. Adrian continues to work on debate videos on YouTube and they are awesome. His newest video explores the 2024-2025 policy topic and gives an overview of intellectual property rights, and he has some future videos about the new topic in the works as well. I'll be linking to his YouTube channel in the show notes and on the website. Most of you who listen to the podcast are probably pretty familiar with Adrian, but here's a quick bio.

Lyle Wiley: 2:04

Adrian Graham is a senior at the University of Wyoming, where he is majoring in secondary education history and video games. He is also a speech and debate coach at Laramie High School, and when he was in high school back in the day, adrian attended Cheyenne East where he competed in policy debate, winning many speaker awards and tournament championships, including the state championship. Anyway, here is the current policy topic for the 2024-2025 season Resolved. The United States federal government should significantly strengthen its protection of domestic intellectual property rights in copyrights, patents and or trademarks. Today, adrian provides an overview of the topic and discusses big picture affirmative and negative ground arguments. Time to jump into the topic. Talk, let's go.

Adrian Graham: 2:53

Hello debaters and welcome to the topic talk. On this episode, we'll be talking about the 2024 to 2025 policy debate topic of intellectual property rights. So, without further ado, let's jump into it. Happy intellectual property rights day. Without further ado, let's jump into it. Happy Intellectual Property Rights Day, everybody. I figured today was just as good as any to post a grand return, and so I hope that you appreciate the timeliness of it all. Okay, this video will be split up into three sections. We're going to be talking about a basic overview of intellectual property rights, talking about the AF and then finishing with the negative. Let's start with a basic overview. The resolution that we'll be debating is that resolved. The United States federal government should significantly strengthen its protection of domestic intellectual property rights in copyrights, patents and or trademarks. This is pretty lengthy, but I'll do my best to break some stuff down.

Adrian Graham: 3:45

Intellectual property rights are defined as rights given to persons over the creations of their minds, or at least that's how the World Trade Organization, or WTO, defines it. Brief primer this is a legal topic which is very different to the many years before it. Last year was a pretty simple topic. The year before that was just a fun foreign policy one, nothing too scary or complex. They're easy to digest. Legal topics, on the other hand, take a little bit more effort to understand. And that's a double-edged sword, because on one hand, it's really tough to get a grasp on some of these things like liability and inventorship and ugh torts, but on the other hand, it is set up to explicitly reward those of you who do understand the intricacies of the legal system. Knowledge will carry you very far and now more than ever, the mantra of you get everything that you put in is true. So let's look at the topic at large. There's three topic areas patents, copyrights and trademarks. Let's look at each of these individually. To talk about what they look like.

Adrian Graham: 4:52

Patents are pretty easy. Patents are licenses or proof that someone owns an invention for a set period of time. It's an exclusive right over that invention, meaning that nobody else can make or sell a product that is similar to yours. So if I patent a toaster that actually untoasts toast, then I would have sole ownership over that idea. And if somebody ever made a technology like it, I would have the legal ability to go after them for violating my patent claim. And if somebody ever made a technology like it, I would have the legal ability to go after them for violating my patent claim.

Adrian Graham: 5:20

Copyright laws are similar, but typically pertain to literary or artistic works. You can copyright songs, speeches and poems, and they typically tend to cover related rights of the performers of these works as well. Copyright also happens to pertain to generative AI content, which means whatever the AI produces may or may not be subject to ownership. Copyright has to deal with tangible things, so you can't copyright abstract ideas like freedom. The last area our topic permits us to talk about is trademarks, which are pretty universally defined as a sign or combination of signs that are used to distinguish a good or a service. That funny rat Pikachu is an example of a trademark where people can recognize the little guy as a symbol for the Pokemon company.

Adrian Graham: 6:07

Are there other types of intellectual property rights? Actually, kevin, yeah, there's a lot of other instances of IPR that go beyond just those three areas. One major one that I anticipate a lot of people will weasel their way into is called trade secrets. Trade secrets are a subset of intellectual property rights that has to deal with intellectual property that's not public. So things like recipes, secret processes or ravioli ravioli give me the formuolis. There's a bunch of advocates which argue this as a categorically distinct section of IP rights. So winning the tea debates should be manageable, but you know people like to be untopical.

Adrian Graham: 6:45

That brings us to the big question what is the resolution actually asking us to do? This is intriguing because it shows a stark contrast in how other resolutions have been structured in the past. Frequently, resolutions tend to have the affirmative, on the more liberal or progressive side of the political spectrum reducing income inequality, reducing arms sales, increasing immigration, etc. But this year the AF is tasked with increasing intellectual property rights protection, which is very different. Increasing protections for IP rights can be both seen as a progressive and a more conservative approach to dealing with these questions. On one hand, you can sometimes result in smaller companies having more power over their own patents, copyrights and trademarks to push back against larger companies for infringement, but on the other hand, increasing protections also enables larger companies to bully smaller ones, and only the large companies have the resources to maintain these lawsuits and use these increased protections more effectively. That's not to say it's not a gray area, though One of the more incredibly interesting parts about this topic is that it is actually quite contentious about whether increased patent protection helps or hurts innovation. It's not bidirectional, meaning you can go either way is the affirmative, but it is weird.

Adrian Graham: 8:06

I do want to touch on the history of US IP laws, though, before we jump into anything wild. Ip laws don't really change all that much, so there's not going to be a whole lot of cool topic thumb burns. There's also a ton of specific laws with specific purposes, so I'm going to try to talk about some of the largest changes, and I'm sure we'll talk about more when we have specific episodes on each portion of the topic. Back in 2011, obama signed into law the AIA, or the America Invests Act, which changed the US patent system from a first-to-invent to a first-to-file system. This was fairly historic, as there have only been three countries who have ever adopted a system different from a first-to-file system. This brought the US in harmony with basically the rest of the world and how most patent dispute issues are resolved globally, and was a fairly drastic change in patent law. In fact, it's the largest change in patent law since the 1950s, blatantly known as the Patent Act.

Adrian Graham: 9:00

Back in the late 90s, we passed the DMCA, or the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which I'm sure you've heard of, at least in name, before. It specifically addresses the intersection between new technology and copyright laws, like providing protection for service providers if users of their platforms engage in copyright infringement. It also gives creators more protection over their own digital work to enforce these copyright issues. Finally, in the area of trademark, the US Trademark Modernization Act is also really important. Probably I know this because it clarified the burden for trademark owners seeking injunctive relief and provided new mechanisms for challenging applications and registrations on non-use. We clearly all know what that means, so I'm not even going to try to bother to explain it here. It's just a waste of breath for me. So I hope you understood, and I think that just about covers it for a basic overview.

Adrian Graham: 9:52

Now it's time to talk about specific arguments. Let's shift gears to what common AF ground is going to look like. I want to start with a conversation about the most popular arguments I expect to pop up, and then we'll talk about advantage ground and necessary things to include in your affirmatives. And then we'll talk about advantage ground and necessary things to include in your affirmatives. First and foremost, there may be three sections to this topic, but you would be a foolish fool who foolishly assumes foolish things to not assume that patents are going to be far and away the most popular.

Adrian Graham: 10:19

Patent AFs have access to some of the most common impact scenarios in traditional policy debates. You aren't going to prevent war by giving Taylor Swift even more protection over her own work or letting McDonald's sue anybody that uses the color yellow, but you might be able to stimulate innovation in the military-industrial complex with increased patent protections for specific technologies. Outside of the obvious advantage ground patents affords you, there's the added benefit of having the most amount of real, substantial changes. There's a reason that, out of the 10 proposed novice topic areas, that half of them were patent AFs. People write a lot about patents and less so about the other areas, but what do these AFs look like? That's a great question, kevin. These AFs will typically do what you expect increase patent protections, but this is a very unhelpful term. So looking at some examples might show what this looks like in practice.

Adrian Graham: 11:12

Some mechanisms might look like finding and closing legal loopholes. The Baht-Doyle Act had a provision that lets the federal government seize drug patents to control drug prices. Removing this provision would increase patent protection by letting the companies have more control over their own products. Another example the PTAB, or the Patent Trial and Approval Board, is home to a bunch of evil people who deny 84% of all patents that enter their domain, also known as the Patent Death Squad. Wiping them off the face of the earth would help solve this problem. Wiping them off the face of the earth would help solve this problem. One last example the Patent Eligibility and Restoration Act closes loopholes for frivolous patents and explicitly states what kind of technology should have increased protections. Passing this would again be a specific policy that results in some kind of change. Confusing explanations aside, I hope this helps to indicate that these AFs will absolutely be complex. Saying in your plan text that you're going to be increasing protections might be sufficient, but most of these AFs demand specific actions, like repealing and creating laws to accomplish these goals.

Adrian Graham: 12:21

We've already talked about a few ideas, but these are pretty specific proposals. What about areas that people just want more patent protection in? Climate tech, emerging tech, telecoms, ai, biotech, space, smart cities, healthcare, seeds? The list goes on and on. These sector-specific apps are going to be popular because people can focus on and talk about the impacts that they want to. Honestly, you can just kind of pick a sector and go feral.

Adrian Graham: 12:48

I actually don't think what I just said is right, but I think it's worth discussing both sides of this. I'm going to assume that people will do this, but I don't think it's what the topic demands and nor is it real world. Saying that you're going to increase patent protection in the area of climate tech, for example, doesn't mean anything, because a policy can't really change how judges feel about any given patent case. If you read a statute that says, hey, yo, buddy, maybe be a little bit more strict on whether you think they have a real case here, that doesn't really mean anything. Without objective changes being made to the system or the laws, it's hard to argue that there would be any real change. Additionally, how do you word a law to increase protections on, specifically, climate tech? What's included in that umbrella? Like, obviously, things that pertain to solar, wind and hydroelectric, but what about nuclear or carbon capture? Realistically, I think many teams will just try to force these sector afts, especially again because some of them are even novice topic areas. But I don't think that's real world and I definitely don't think that the literature is on your side here either. That's a good point, kevin. If you were a copyright or a trademark AF, you might have an advantage about why Nickelback should have gotten away with stealing songs from people and that Nickelback is key to the US economy. Sure, that sounds good, and if it's a trademark AF, then maybe the Fine Bros should have gotten away with coining the term React, and that's also good for the? U, for the US economy, writ large so you can have some econ impacts. That sounds fun.

Adrian Graham: 14:31

Jokes aside, there's a lot of proposals under these categories as well For copyright apps. You're probably dealing mostly with the arts, so increased protections for music and the likes. Almost inevitably, the terror that is AI inventorship will become the bane of my existence, as people argue that increasing patent or copyright protections for AI is necessary to promote innovation. This will cause me an unbelievable amount of pain, and so I hope that none of you read this. Ironically, the affirmative could also argue that this falls under the patent section as well, so maybe the gut check that people won't read copyright apps is probably still correct. That being said, people will talk a whole lot about EU harmonization of our laws to keep them similar to our allies. This usually is just run as an AF advantage scenario, but a plaintext that brings our standards in line with the EU and argues that harmonization is good generally, is certainly not impossible and is a very large part of the copyright literature. Trademarks are probably still the weakest link of the bunch sporting apps that stop trademark trolls and ones that cut down on like counterfeit products. The early research of this area does not paint a particularly flattering picture for Affirmatives to increase protection in these areas. I agree that Teemu is probably a less-than-optimal place to buy a Nintendo Switch from, but the idea that counterfeit products can get anywhere close to those traditional policy impacts is just a pipe dream.

Adrian Graham: 15:49

Last part of the AF what do you need to include in every affirmative to beat back some common negative positions? Well, for starters, I don't want to put my party hat on too soon, but we might be free from the reign of the state's counterplan. According to the Constitution, that's right, that Constitution. According to the Constitution that's right, that Constitution Congress has the enumerated power to promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing, for limited times, to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries. You heard it here first, folks state's counterplan is always cheating and you should never respect any negative debaters. To not read the state's counterplan and also because I just saw these very worrying articles about trademarks being a shared issue and other articles talking about why IP rights infringe on states' rights. No-transcript, but on the whole, definitely in a much better position than most domestic topics, so maybe you're good to leave the Fed Key Warren out if you're feeling brave.

Adrian Graham: 16:55

Another necessity is you want a good explanation of how your AF solves for innovation. What I mean by that is that if you have evidence that argues that increased protections increase innovation, that's not sufficient. You want to argue why increased protections solves issues that innovators have like decreasing the barrier to market entry, justifying startup costs. It means that they can recoup their investments, etc. You also want proof that your kind of innovation works. If you're an AF that helps out small companies and tech unicorns, that you want to explain why that kind of radical innovation is better than what big companies can produce now. If you're an affirmative that relies on other actors and countries to solve your impacts, like vaccine and climate tech distribution, you need to explain how increased patenting means that they can still get access to those technologies, because with increased protection comes increased trade barriers. You've got to explain every part of your link chain, because that's what debates are going to come down to, and we'll talk more about that in the next section.

Adrian Graham: 17:58

One more thing If you're running a more specific AF, you're probably going to want some solvency evidence that explains how you increase protections for IP rights. Doing things like repealing the PTAB may not immediately click with folks as an increase in patent rights, but it's up to you to explain why it is. Don't let complexities get the best of you and just find good authors for your AFs. The last thing that you want to have is a killer AF but nobody to back it up. And also, you're not topical.

Adrian Graham: 18:27

Before we move on to the negative case, I do just want to throw out there the possibility of people running courts' AFs. I doubt it'll be a particularly large portion of the topic, but I've definitely seen some proposals that make it seem like the Supreme Court has at least something they'd be able to do to IP law if given the chance, whether it be reversing some decisions that have brought us here or doing some quirky new stuff to fix problems related to agencies, again like the PTAB. Now that we know more than enough about the affirmative, let's talk about the neg. In this section we'll be covering popular off-case positions and a couple case strategies to couple with our offense On the whole, this topic doesn't really have a fabulous DA. I know, I know econ, but like, first off, most AFs will already be reading econ contention, so that's mostly just the case debate anyway. And second off, econ sucks. There I said it. What are you gonna do about it?

Adrian Graham: 19:24

A common argument of legal topics is the idea of court clog. Basically, since the dinosaurs were wiped out by the ginormous meteor, there has been one constant on this earth the us courts must have the most ridiculous backlog in history. This sets upa really nice da where you get to argue that if the us makes even more of an incentive for people to go to court to defend their patents, the system becomes even further overburdened. It sounds good in theory, but there's some obvious problems. Court-clogged DAs always suck because the courts have been clogged for forever, so it's not like adding new cases is going to change the status quo. Additionally, most of the time, the best policy-esque impact to read on the DA is around the idea that patents need to go through the courts to support innovation, which isn't really an option.

Adrian Graham: 20:15

When that's the affirmative, I think the better way to read this DA is probably just as a solvency takeout and argue that there's a huge delay on the affirmative's impacts. But also this is definitely a threat because you can just kick it in the block and still carry over all your solvency takeouts that are baked into the idea of the DA. So you can have it either way. It's just that one option might be better than the other. There might be something that becomes more apparent as we work through the year. The USPTO DA could be popping, but I doubt it. There's probably something to do with trade scenarios from increasing IP protections, but that also just kind of seems like econ with extra steps. That only really applies to patents. So I'm not totally sold on that idea either. If all the specific stuff sucks, then maybe some generics would push us in a useful direction. So let's look at the classics, as we talked about when discussing the affirmative.

Adrian Graham: 21:06

I don't think teens will get away with federalism in states. It seems pretty clear that IP is a right reserved for the federal government and the federal government alone. But again, I've seen people read states in far worse instances than this. So who knows Now politics? On the other hand, that intrigues me. Obviously it's an election year, which does drastically change the validity of the elections DA, making it super good from a card quality standpoint, as well as really good recency arguments to say that the AF could influence the election. There's a problem with this, though, and it lies in the link debate. I don't really think the negative is going to have fire cards arguing why strengthening IPR is going to influence the 2024 election. There's plenty of evidence that proves that there's severe dislike of Biden weakening IPR, at least from conservatives, but the reverse, causal evidence that says that either party cares all that much about it getting stronger, is a lot less common. Not to mention, the average citizen probably doesn't care about that stuff at all. Politics, scenarios, elections or otherwise will probably end up being very popular, but understand that the quality of these DAs just may not be as good as we're used to.

Adrian Graham: 22:18

Remember this topic is weird. It's not strictly a more liberal or more conservative direction that the affirmative goes, and it's a strange middle ground that'll make it tough to pin links on some of these affirmatives. I think that just about covers it for the DAs. What about for counterplans? I'm quite certain that this topic will be difficult to generate good counterplans on.

Adrian Graham: 22:39

Remember that the purpose of a counterplan is to soak up a lot of the affirmative's advantages by doing a policy that is distinct enough from the AF that avoids your offense. That seems difficult because I don't know how else you solve innovation without IPR. Most advantage counterplans are just straight up going to lose to the affirmative's arguments about why IP protections are key to innovator incentives. If they structure their AFT properly, these counterplans will just not be able to answer these questions. Maybe you could make an innovation fund to give people cash payouts for their inventions, but that doesn't solve the patents still being worthless. Nor are there particularly easy ways to sidestep reform for copyright or trademark laws in a way that could absolve the core issues of the AF.

Adrian Graham: 23:25

One direction I could see counterplans taking off, as is an interesting place to do the case debate. The affirmative goes in the direction of increasing protection, but the negative could get a little fancy with it and, instead of advocating for the status quo, could argue that doing more fair use policy could be a good thing. That way you set up the negative as more than just the status quo, but rather a reversal of the affirmative, and can accentuate even more warrants as to why their solution to innovation fails. This seems like a really unique use of counterplans and seems like a kind of fun debate to have. I don't know, I'm intrigued.

Adrian Graham: 24:00

Topicality I actually don't have much to say. I'm sure people are going to lose their marbles over the word significant, because of course they are, and I'm sure that the phrasing of strengthen its protection will throw people for a loop and not mean anything by the end of the year. We talked earlier about how that dictates the direction of the topic, so I'd better not see any of y'all doing weirdo stuff like making patents weaker on the affirmative or making it easier to content farm on TikTok. You hear me? Lastly, for our off-case arguments, we're talking critiques. Baby Cap is where it's at. I don't know about you, but when the affirmative is forced to say that big business is good, that is just the kind of language the capitalism critique is looking for. Additionally, most affirmatives are going to be tech-oriented, so arguments about our endless quest for overconsumption and a lack of sustainability will actually be pretty good. I don't know what else the critiques hold in store for us this year, but I'm excited to see where they go and we'll provide updates if that's much different than the direction of capitalism. Are those really all of our options? Unfortunately, kevin, I'm pretty sure our options on the negative are quite limited from an off-case perspective. I'm not a fortune teller, but I am going to tell you now that the coolest debating will be happening on the case Speaking of which we should at least talk a little bit about what that debating looks like. I think that case debating on this topic is about to be lit With not a lot of really good off-case generic positions. The specifics are bound to be amazing. I'm going to talk about a couple good strategies here, but we'll be exploring some more complicated next strategies further in the future. First up the straight turn Affirmatives on the topic will be defending the idea that stronger protections are key to innovation, but the overall consensus of the literature is far more torn on this question.

Adrian Graham: 25:48

Some people fall into the camp that fewer protections for IP is better because it means people have easier market entry and duplicative and refined innovations and ideas can become the standard much more quickly and more people are able to join the proverbial battle. This is especially true for technology like renewables and vaccinations, where fewer patenting protections may reduce radical innovation. It's not like we need all that much more development in green tech or mRNA to prove that wind turbines or, you know, vaccines actually work. The real challenge is getting those technologies to market faster and more affordably, which is where duplicative innovation might actually be better. I keep using patents as an example, but this obviously applies to the other parts of the topic as well. The other option is playing it incredibly defensively and just using your bad off-case to carry you. There's a lot of really good defensive arguments on the topic about the resiliency of the patent system and about the negligible impact that increased protections in the area of trademarks, copyrights and patents actually have. I very much look forward to watching neg teams go feral on the whole. China steals all our tech, so innovation doesn't matter kind of case arguments as well, because I think that's awesome.

Adrian Graham: 26:59

There's obviously a lot more nuance here and we'll get more in depth when we talk about specific sections of the topic. If you're looking for some easy places to focus your work against affirmative impacts, I think obviously you're going to want to focus on making sure that you've got answers to innovation generally and any impacts that you think people are likely to garner off specific types of innovation. Some ones that come to mind are US-China war, climate, disease, space and funky AI stuff. I hope that helps and that's what I've got to say about the start of this topic. Basically, I'm pretty sure it's going to be like 50% patent debates, 40% AI inventorship and some people are just going to try to have fun.

Adrian Graham: 27:39

But you never know, it's still super early in the season. Opinions may change, Arguments may become refined, fire cards will be discovered, but the only thing that will stay the same is this video. So if you have any questions or things that you want to discuss, leave a comment or shoot me an email. I'm happy to talk about these things forever, and I'm sure I've either missed something very important or some major developments will happen later down the line. But before we go, got anything to say. Kevin, can you keep a consistent upload schedule this year? I don't know, can I? Oh geez, dude, that hurt.

Lyle Wiley: 28:13

Many thanks to Adrian for sharing more of his great content with One Clap and spending so much time working to make cool debate resources for our speech and debate community. Be sure to check out his YouTube channel, which we will link to in the show notes. If you'd like to join the discussion here at One Clap Speech and Debate, shoot me an email at lylewiley at gmailcom or reach out on the One Clap Speech and Debate podcast website or social media linked in the show notes. Be on the lookout for news about Camp One, clap 2, the clapocalypse. Thank you for listening to One Clap Speech and Debate and remember your voice matters and we'll catch you next time.