Mentor Assessment #3

Name: Abel Philips

Mentor: Kumar Vinnakota
Date: 03/31/17
Analysis:
I had planned to record more footage for my documentary during my meeting with Mr.
Vinnakota today. However, the client we had planned to interview today cancelled their meeting
last minute for an unknown reason. There was no one else coming in that day until very late at
night, so I would not be able to film that day. Thus, I needed to find something else to do and
reschedule the interview to another day. Mr. Vinnakota suggested that I instead work on a
storyboard and planning the structure of the documentary.
While a hefty amount of relevant footage is a very important component of a
documentary video, I believe that the connections from scene to scene are of equal or greater
importance. The way someone chooses to explain, connect, and present their footage gives a
documentary a feel of flow and cohesion. I have decided to go about this through narration. I
plan on doing this narration myself. Narration will also be necessary in introducing the audience
to the topic and issues that the documentary covers. The introduction will cover this by giving a
brief overview of patents and patent trolls. I plan on having media footage, articles, and other
material to supplement it as well. This footage will be used to express how the media often
misrepresents or confuses the definition of patent trolling. I will then use some accompanying
narration to explain why what they are doing is incorrect. This will be an introduction to my
main talking points which will follow.
To back up the arguments and points I speak about I have two main sources of evidence,
the interviews with various stakeholders and online sources. While the credibility of interviews is
easy to control and mention in the documentary, the online sources are trickier to manage. Online
sources can be notorious for their levels of bias, and I want neutral sources to provide support to
my arguments. Thats why I have decided to filter sources down to those that display the most
unbiased viewpoints and base their source on fact alone. To find these sources more easily I am
using the databases provided by the school. I can find scholarly articles on patents and other
topics easily using these resources at no further cost to me.
I have currently planned my first talking point. I plan on addressing how non-practicing
entities are not a new trend. A non-practicing entity is a person or organization that does not
commercialize or create the product they hold a patent to. Instead they bring suitcases against
anyone who produces said product without their permission. Often, people call these non-
practicing entities patent trolls, and the media only furthers this message. However, many do not
realize that non-practicing entities have been around since the beginning of the patent system in
the United States. For example, Eli Whitney, inventor of the famous cotton gin, failed to
commercialize the product himself. However, he could make large sums of money suing others
who created cotton gins without his approval. Whitney was, for all intents and purposes, a patent
troll. He made his money by suing those infringing his patent but never utilized the patent
himself, making him a non-practicing entity. The reason Whitney and other non-practicing
entities can do this is because of the very power given to a patent holder. Patent holders can
restrict the access to their patent to anyone. It does not mention anything about them having to
use it themselves. I will also be addressing Edison and Ford later in this section of the
documentary.