Expressing Your Creative Self and Conducting Patent Searches

Intro (00:09):
Welcome to innovations and breakthroughs with your host Rich Goldstein, talking about the evolutionary, the revolutionary, the inspiration and the perspiration and those aha moments that change everything. And now here’s your host, Rich Goldstein

Rich (00:33):
Rich Goldstein here, host of the innovations and breakthroughs podcast, where I featured top leaders and the path they took to create change past guests include Joe Polish, Roland Frasier, and Joe de Sena. This episode is brought to you by my company, Goldstein paddle law, where we help you to protect your ideas and products we’ve advised and obtained patents for thousands of companies over the past 26 years. So if you want this, if you’re a company that has software product or designing one protected, go to Goldstein patent law.com, where there are amazing free resources for learning about the patent process. And you can email my team@welcomeatgoldsteinpc.com to explore if it’s a match to work together. You could also check out the book I wrote for the American bar association that explains in plain English, how patents work it’s called the ABA consumer guide to obtaining a patent.

Rich (01:19):
I have with me here today, David Goldstein, David is the co-author of the bestselling book creative view, which explores the ways in which personality type impacts creativity and how understanding your own personality type can, can be an access to creativity. David runs a patent search company, GIC, which has been been performing all of the patent searches for my firm for more than 20 years. David is also an internationally recognized artist. He was commissioned by the pan American health organization to create their symbol for world health day. Um, David has also my brother and my brother. I don’t mean a close friend that I consider a brother. I mean my actual brother in the sense that we have the same parents and grew up together. I’m very pleased to welcome here today. My brother, David Goldstein. Welcome David.

David (02:05):
Nice to see you. I haven’t seen you in a while. Actually. You look good,

Rich (02:09):
Dave. Excuse me. Do you mind if I call you Dave?

David (02:12):
Oh, no, that’s fine.

Rich (02:14):
Okay, great. Yeah, that’s true. So, um, no, I mean, ordinarily at this point we talk about origin story. So, um, where you came from. Um, so I mean, what was it like, um, you know, growing up, you had a roommate, what was it like sharing a room with that roommate of yours in those formative years?

David (02:34):
Yeah, I, I liked, uh, I liked having a younger brother actually when he was first born. I wasn’t very pleased. Um, and I was given a tour. I still remember what the toy was, but, um, soon after that I got over it and I appreciate having a little brother who is really wonderful to have around.

Rich (02:51):
All right, great. Well, well hopefully I made up for it over the years. Um, and, um, but yeah. And then just in, in terms of, um, um, you know, your, like your background, so you went to, um, you went to college for, um, imaging science. So you studied kind of, um, technology related to imaging, um, kind of before imaging became the thing that is now, especially digital imaging, right? It was, it was real photographic science when I started it and it was really about the photographic process. And I worked as a chemical engineer for a little while making the emulsions photographic film. Uh, but as I was in college, it was changing at the digital and we started taking classes more with electronics and the digital imaging and, uh, actually changed the name of the major while I was going to school from photographic science to imaging science.

Rich (03:44):
Interesting. Um, and, um, and so you, you had that background and then also, and that kind of led you into you, you did further work in digital imaging, you were selling equipment for a while. Um, back when, uh, a workstation to do graphic arts was tens of thousands of dollars, right?

David (04:03):
That that’s right. I was a systems integrator. I had my own business, uh, selling equipment. At that time, you needed a real technical person just to attach the monitor to the CPU. And, um, we had digital printers with color, which was unheard of at the time. Um, what’s kind of interesting. It went for quite a while, and it was evolving as a company. And, um, one of the difficulties was the technology was growing so quickly that I was spending a lot of my time learning and keeping up with the latest technologies. Cause I was recommending to my customers what was latest and greatest. Um, one of the side notes to this was it, the clients sometimes took so long to make the decisions. I would price it close to cost. And then by the time they made the decision, it was six months later the is, you know,

Rich (04:59):
But the price they committed to was the, exactly, there’s actually some profit, I guess, in there

David (05:05):
I was winning a lot of bids by pricing things at cost and then waiting for them to make the decisions. And then, uh, exactly. Um, the downside to all this was the amount of time I was spending making proposals, uh, and, and keeping up with it. I was just myself and it was just a lot to keep up with, uh, at the time.

Rich (05:25):
Absolutely. Well, I mean, I think you’re probably a little bit too early into something that became huge. Eventually. And, uh, you know, and, and you, you transitioned into, um, you into patent searching, you created a patent search company and, uh, we’ve been working together now for 20 something years at this point.

David (05:45):
That’s right. And even before that, uh, my computer company transitioned into an internet company way before the internet took off, I’m talking about 1992, 1993. Right. And, um, I had, everyone was interested by, I spent all my time teaching them what it was about. I was teaching people how to do HTML or coding. I was doing all kinds of things, but, and then I created my own website, which was kind of like a Yahoo. It was a graphical Yahoo. It’s still out there called old town crossroads. And I kind of threw my hat in the ring trying to get into this newest technology, uh, to create an index. This was before the indexes or search engines. And, uh, mine had won all kinds of awards and things, but we didn’t figure out how to monetize it. I had a partner who was a graphic designer and we worked together on it. And, um, at the time, you know, I had to pay my bills and Richard was up in New York. He was a patent attorney. He was like, David, you need to pay bills. And, um, why don’t you figure out how to do these searches? I keep sending these big projects down to companies

Rich (06:51):
Know technical background, you understand technology. And so, um, so yeah, so that was, uh, a good fit. And I guess the rest is history. Yeah. I, you know, it’s funny, like I, I forgot about that. The old town crossroads, um, um, websites it’s, that was truly kind of like that’s what other companies did years later, which was make, um, websites that were centered around the location, you know, city and all the different restaurants and the things to do in that city. But you, you really did it before anyone and that must’ve been 1995 maybe or some more

David (07:27):
I’m out of it by 95 almost. Well, yeah, 93 to 95, who would do that?

Rich (07:32):
93 to 95. That was early internet days.

David (07:37):
Um, it, uh, pre-image most of things on the web, we had everything figured out in a small, neat, uh, way

Rich (07:44):
HTML links. I remember, you know.

David (07:47):
Uh, and I wish I had the understanding to patent all those ideas at that time, because we have everything from wedding registrations to how the city hall runs the work to libraries, to, um, everything on that site.

Rich (08:03):
Yeah, absolutely so interesting. Um, and you know, I think the thing that ties it all together is creativity. Um, and so like in terms of creativity, like there’s different forms of that’s taken for you, but one of them is art. And so back when we were kids, you were into sketching, an oil painting. Um, and, um, uh, like I think the main subject that you like to paint was ships like, um, like the, the sailing ships of, you know, the, of the Explorer error or the, the, the 15, 16, 17th century type, um, you know, clipper ships I’m even cook giving it the right name, but that was your favorite subject. And, and though, and that’s evolved over time too. So you’ve done quite a bit, um, in art and, and, uh, and eventually like that was a hobby back then, but it, it, it took on a much bigger role, um, uh, kind of, much more consistent part of your, your day. Just, tell me a little bit about that.

David (09:01):
Sure. And, uh, well, I, I did come home from school and just enjoy creating at the time. And, um, I, I was picking a major for college. I was also very into photography. I had a black and white dark room in my house. Uh, I was on a yearbook staff and, um, I w I was always interested in creating something. Uh, the, the major I took imaging science, uh, I thought it would be somewhat related to photography, but it’s really all science. Uh, really, I went to work after college. I got an MBA. Um, I kinda gave up with artwork and creativity for quite a while. And then around the year 2000, my wife was always relaxed by watching TV in the evening. And I was not, I had to do something. I was really busy during the day, and I set up a little table in the same room, so we could be together. And I started painting and drawing, and then, um, taking watercolor classes, uh, beginning watercolor classes also. And, um, little by little, this turned into more of a, than a hobby. I said, hanging the paintings in my house and people wanted to buy them and it’d be turned into a portion of my profession.

Rich (10:14):
Absolutely. That, and, and you very prolific, I mean, like at a certain point, um, when, when, uh, you would show the, the work that you’d done lately, it was, you know, kind of drawers and drawers full of, of artwork. You were, I guess, creating about a painting a day at a certain point.

David (10:33):
I, I think so. Yeah. Um, and one of the things I like about watercolor then I was doing oil, but watercolor is, you could actually complete it in a shorter amount of time. So it had this vision, execute it, and be done with it and move on and then learn from it and do something else the next time.

Rich (10:51):
Right. Well, we’ll leaping out something there, you said, have a vision and plan it, right. Plan it, like do lots of planning and then executed, right. That’s part of your modus operandi for, for creating the work.

David (11:03):
Absolutely. And that’s what I ended up writing a book and spending eight years researching.

Rich (11:08):
Well, that’s where I was going with it. I was going to say, we’ll bookmark that to get back to, we talk about the book, but yeah, like, um, that style of creativity, you, I guess you came to discover, like, this is your way of being creative, but it wasn’t the same for other people.

David (11:22):
That’s right. And I was taking, I took four different beginning watercolor classes. And because I had confidence, you know, mom gave us a lot of confidence. She praised everything. We did

Rich (11:39):
Richard look like, can you hear how he plays? The piano is new, which is awesome. I mean, I’m, I’m saying it that way. It’s just, but it’s true. That encouragement was always there. Right? Yeah. Back to

David (11:51):
Early childhood, dad was always there to drive us to little league or to, uh, Cub Scouts. He always had the equipment we needed. We needed something for a project. He would bring it home from Manhattan. And that connection,

Rich (12:03):
Lots of support in different ways, right? Like lots of support from dad to make sure we had what we needed to do, what we, whatever we wanted to do to support the hobbies that we had. And lots of, of like support for mom in terms of encouragement and things along those, those lines.

David (12:20):
Right. And going with that support, I felt that I can do these paintings. I had teachers who were beginning watercolor teachers had their own way of being creative. And to me, it was discouraging. I like to plan in advance and you sometimes use photographs and they would say, no, has to come from spontaneity. It shouldn’t be planned and this shouldn’t be finished. Or they would say, I’m not using the right color. And I would use the colors I felt were expressive. And they would tell me it was a wrong color, which was kind of crazy, but I had the confidence to keep continuing. And along that time, I had met my neighbor who was Otto Craig. And he won the world renowned experts in personality type. And he took me to some seminars teaching me about Myers-Briggs and how everyone has different personalities. And I saw the connection between personality type and how we create, and I realized we all have different ways of being creative. And we’ll often discourage the way from our creativity, by someone who’s very creative, very generous to show how they do it. But if we don’t do it the way they do it, we feel like we’re doing it wrong. It’s not, it’s not right for us.

Rich (13:29):
And that experience could have been like at, even our art teacher in school and like where, you know, sometimes, you know, and there are some artists who will talk about like an art teacher that they really kind of connected with and, and mentored them. And then there are all the times when there was disconnect where it’s like, the art teacher wants me to do this way, but that doesn’t work. And a lot of times that’s when we stopped, you know, that’s when we stopped creating and it became frustrating. And, you know, we, we would, we might say I loved painting when I was a kid, but I don’t know, for some reason I stopped doing that at some point. And, and, uh, and it just very well might’ve been that the, that it was a teacher or someone else that we were working with. I mean, it could have even been, you know, um, a boss, like, like if it was, if we were working in, in, in, um, a field that involves artistic work, you know, someone who it essentially became a block to our creativity simply because they looked at creativity different than, than we did.

David (14:33):
Absolutely. And I interviewed so many people and they said, well, I used to be creative. He used to do this. And then I was discouraged away. Uh, the kids in the class laughed at me because I painted the sky purple or the teacher didn’t like the way my new dance step when we create anything original, we, Oh, says we want things that are original. But when we see something that’s different, we kinda laugh at it or we don’t accept it so well. So it takes a lot of courage in yourself to stand up on the table and say, this is my new idea. And not care if people laugh or not, and realize that I’m working within my own strengths, this is my personality. And this is who I am. And the more we understand your own personality type, the more we can know own strengths and what we do. Good. And that’s why it’s so important.

Rich (15:22):
Yeah, I think that’s great. And so you teamed up with Otto and so Otto is a best-selling author of books on Myers-Briggs personality types. He was one of the leading experts in the world and bestselling author, um, uh, a fantastic man and, and he was your neighbor. And so I kind of like through noticing this on your own, and then kind of getting to confer with, um, with Otto about it. You, you came about the idea of, of making, writing this book, creative view

David (15:54):
That’s right. Uh, and we try to find creative individuals of each personality type with this within the Myers-Brigg system, there’s 16 different types. And we try to show that every type is creative, even at the time, the Myers-Briggs kind of pointed to it, a few types of being creative, but I saw creativity in everyone. Some of the most detailed traditional people are creative by creating within a system. They know how to work within a system, uh, solving immediate problems in the moment. And it’s, it’s very different than a different type of creative person who might be like an Elon Musk who’s pie in the sky. Uh, anything is possible, but the two different ways, and we broke this down into 16 different ways to see how different people can have a starting point to understand themselves better. And to know what they’re bringing to the table often, it’s the outlier that our unique skills that we’re bringing to the table, if you’re a policeman and you and everyone is kind of a policeman type, but you come in and you’re kind of a different type. You’re bringing something very different to that profession and you swimming against the stream, but you also have the ability to create tremendous value. So understanding how we unique allows us to be, uh, create lots of volume,

Rich (17:13):
Right. And be an asset because it, I mean, it sounds like, I mean, w w one of my views is that creativity is about, is about knowing the rules and, and breaking the rules. Right. And so, like, if you are, um, if everyone in your field is creative in a certain way, and your bringing something different that kind of is, is kind of the essence of creativity. You’re not following the same rules as them. So there’s an opportunity for you to be creative in a way that they haven’t been, or aren’t currently.

David (17:47):
Right. Right. Absolutely. And, and just knowing the environment where you, um, creative, um, some people thrive in a brainstorming type of environment with lots of people around them, like Otto my coauthor. So we have different styles and Otto coauthored with is an extreme extrovert, very charismatic. And his style was to, when we had a new idea was to gather people around and test things out. And, um, my style was to do more research in the library as an introvert. I love time alone thinking, researching. And, um, the two of us together, we would combine these two approaches and talk about it, and it would make a much stronger collaboration. And often when we build teams, we find people similar to ourselves when we have someone who is different than ourselves, and we understand the differences, we could use this very powerfully in a way of collaborating. So it’s not just understanding ourselves better. It’s understanding the other people around us and building teams.

Rich (18:49):
Yeah, absolutely. So, so then it’s, it’s not just about like, Hey, how do I, how do I get back to, to, to drawing and painting? It’s like, how do I actually learn how to understand all the people’s creativity styles so that we can collaborate better or whatever. Yeah. Yeah.

David (19:08):
And even as far as the art goes, you think of it as a very solitary type of process. But if you are an artist who is selling your work, it’s a small business, like anything else. And I’ve collaborated with curators and promoted as, and people who say, Oh, look at David’s work. Oh, we should hang it. They go out to places to figure out what a hang artwork. And, uh, they’re more out there and more extroverted. And they’re adding a piece to the puzzle, which I can do, but I don’t enjoy doing it. And what we talk about when we talk about personality type, we talk about our preferences, what we prefer to do. Now I could do it. I could knock on doors and find places to hang the artwork. And I could generate a mailing list and people to show up to an event, but it’s not going to be my best work. I could, our best work happens when we’re working within our preferences. So when I’m creating within my preferences, when I have alone time, when I, I to get into all the aspects of it, but, um, I’m doing my best work. And when I using my non preferences, I could still do it, but it’s not going to set the world on fire.

Rich (20:20):
Got it. So then, then, um, people understanding their preferences for how they, they prefer to create, um, then gives them access to creating their best work.

David (20:30):
That’s right. And it gives them a window into who to know who to collaborate with.

Rich (20:35):
Awesome. Yeah. Awesome. Cool. Well, um, um, so I think, um, you know, in general, like we can talk a little bit about patent searches. Um, maybe we just, just go over to that for a few minutes. So, um, I mean, when you are, when you’re doing patent searching, I mean, I often tell people about the advantage of the type of search that we do compared to like, just doing an online Google search. So, I mean, do you want to maybe just take a couple of minutes and eliminate that from your standpoint, having done thousands and thousands of searches over the years,

David (21:10):
Right. Um, there’s, there’s a couple aspects of trying to do your own search. Um, one is, I think if you have your own invention, you have this mentality, a mindset that it doesn’t exist. And when I get a search from Richard or another client, the first thing I have my mind set is this absolutely exists. And I’m going to use all my effort to find it. So that’s a different mindset to even start the process. The other part is that, um, you can do a keyword search, but there’s so many different ways things are described and you get somewhere, but you’re not going to get a real thorough good search. The patent office has 250,000 classifications. So it’s almost like going into a supermarket going, this is the bean beans aisle. This is the produce aisle. This is the international aisle. And the more you understand how things are classified, you know, don’t go up every aisle.

David (22:02):
If you need a can of beans go into the canned goods aisle. And this is kind of what I do. I strategize to understand where I need to go to look, and then I’ll look through all the canned beans and I’ll find the Gabel and soybeans. And I said, garbanzo beans, because they can be called chickpeas. If you keyword searching for chickpeas, you’re not gonna find everything. So, um, it’s classified by subject and that’s really the way to go. And, um, you could find classifications to look at, but it’s a combination of having lots of experience doing it too. And it’s almost like a game of concentration seeing thousands and thousands of searches and seeing what you’re not looking for. You kind of know what to look for next time. So even though there’s 250,000 classifications, what I love to do is try to guess it’s almost like those games of three-card Monte, which cup am I going to pick up to find the results at a 250,000 cups? I’m usually pretty good at finding the three or four that are going to have the inventions I’m looking for. Right.

Rich (23:09):
And like playing the game of concentration, I guess, by analogy, it’s like, okay, I saw that. Where did I see that before? What is it? And so just, you know, like remembering the different classifications and subclasses that you’ve looked through and like, kind of like, yeah, I think, I, I think I know where to look for that one. And then you can look down that road, check it out and then try and check out something different, but cover this way. You can cover a good amount of ground, um, to, to really find the best results possible.

David (23:41):
Right. Cause you could look for in the wrong place. The key is to find the right place to look a very well-targeted search is really how to stop going with it. And, uh, it, it’s an odd in a science and I’m open the artists and the scientists. So it kind of fits well. Somehow I fell into this thanks to Richard and, um, I, I love doing it. Um, I think it’s something that, um, it’s something I really enjoy.

Rich (24:04):
Cool. Yeah. Thank you. And thanks for that detour, but, but I mean, I, I enjoyed talking, you know, talking about, um, creativity and your path, um, in creativity and, um, if you happen to be seeing, um, the video version of this podcast, you could see some of David’s paintings in the background, but if not go to David B goldstein.com. I mean, he really has incredible artwork. Um, and, uh, and his book creative view is available on, on amazon.com. Um, I mean, I, I actually, um, kind of have the honor of having many of David’s paintings in my house. And I think I was just, I got lucky, you know, because Dave, when you moved to Hong Kong for a few years, you left them with me for safekeeping and then like, um, you know, and then ultimately like I put them up on the walls and you said, well, you know, you can hang on to them.

Rich (25:00):
But, um, but it’s funny. And I met like, um, some years ago, David used to only sell, um, prints of his, um, work, not originals. And like, I, I would meet Dave’s friends who had bought many of his prints and it would say like, wow, you really, you own an original, like, how did, how did you, how did you do that? Um, but he, you know, he, he actually does, um, sell originals of his work down when his branch out from watercolor into, um, acrylic, um, cool, like really great stuff. So, I mean, you could check that out, David goldstein.com and, um, and, and, um, again, create a view on, on Amazon. Uh, and I don’t know if I stole your thunder for the, my final question, which is, if people want to learn more about you again, touch with you, how do they go about doing so

David (25:53):
Well also, as you said, David B goldstein.com. The B is important. There’s a million David Goldstein’s out there. So it’s David B goldstein.com. Uh, I’m also on Instagram and, um, you can find my book, creative view anywhere, uh, Amazon Barnes and Nobles bookstores around the world it’s even been translated to Russian. So, um, if you’re a Russian language person, you could look for that. It’s been very popular among inventors, creative people, teachers, uh, thought leaders, a lot of thought leaders and coaches find it to be a useful book. So,

Rich (26:30):
Yep. Great book. Um, and, uh, Dave, um, you know, as always, um, you know, great to see you, um, great to talk with you, but thanks. Thanks. Thanks so much for doing this interview and being on this. I’m

David (26:44):
Happy to reach out to see you in person soon.

Rich (26:46):
Absolutely.

Outro (26:52):
Thanks for listening to innovations and breakthroughs with your host, rich Goldstein. Be sure to click, subscribe, check us out on the web@innovationsandbreakthroughs.com and we’ll see you next time.