Innovators Question & Answer with Brian Wassom

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Innovators Q & A with Brian Wassom 

I have been very fortunate to meet a lot of interesting people that are “movers and shakers” in the world of Augmented Reality.  Brian Wassom is one of those people.  It was only fitting that Brian Wassom would be my first guest on the Innovators section of AR Dirt.  Brian sees things from a different perspective and brings his legal expertise and insight into the world of Augmented Reality.  I hope you appreciate his perspective and intensity.  He is a true innovator and will continue to influence the Augmented Reality world in a positive way.  Read more about Brian and his blog at AugmentedLegality.com.

Biography of Brian Wasson:

Brian D. Wassom is a First Amendment lawyer in the broadest sense of the term. He litigates copyright, trademark, publicity rights, entertainment, and related IP issues, all of which involve drawing the boundaries of legally sanctioned monopolies over creative expression and otherwise-free speech. He also assists media companies and journalists in exercising their freedom of the press, by helping them obtain access to information and defending them from claims of defamation, invasion of privacy, eavesdropping, and the like. Brian advises religious organizations as well, whose rights to free exercise and separation from government are likewise enshrined in the First Amendment.

Brian authors the legal blog Wassom.com, which addresses the law of social and emerging media. A regular feature of that blog is “Augmented Legality,” one of the first publications dedicated to analyzing the legal principles that will govern the revolutionary technology called “augmented reality.”

ARDirt: How would you define Augmented Reality?

BW: I define augmented reality as “technology that gives us more to see, smell, touch, taste, or hear in the physical world than we would otherwise get through our non-augmented senses.”  I take that from my blog post on the subject, which unpacks that thought a little more:  “Defining what is Augmented Reality.”

ARDirt: As an attorney, what brought you into the field of Augmented Reality? Why do judges, attorneys, civil and criminal legal experts need to pay attention to AR?

BW: What first got me interested in AR was my love for sci-fi and futurism.  Of course, I had seen several examples of AR at work in such movies as Terminator, Robocop, Minority, G.I. Joe, Iron Man, and Serenity, just to name a few. But no one in those movies ever called it “AR,” or even drew much attention to the technology; it was taken for granted.  Then at some point several years ago, I started thinking seriously about where today’s technology was headed, and what the hot new items might be 5, 10, or 15 years down the road.  And every time I thought about it, technologies that we would now call “AR” seemed not only inevitable, but right around the corner.

So I started looking online to see if anyone was working on this yet.  That’s when I first discovered the term “AR,” and that there was an entire industry sprouting up around it.  And it also became apparent that very few people were yet thinking seriously about what a world with ubiquitous AR would look like.  That blew my mind, because it seems obvious to me that AR’s impact on society will be significant.  And there was no one yet talking about AR from a legal perspective.  So it just seemed like a natural fit for me to begin developing a legal practice around this technology that had already captured my imagination.

I’m not sure judges need to put AR very high on their priority list just yet.  They have enough to do already, and so far there has only been one adversarial legal action taken dealing with AR.  The same probably applies to most attorneys.  But those legal practitioners who, like me, are interested in where business and technology are headed would do well to start learning about AR.  I believe this technology will eventually shape society at least as much as the cell phone and the Internet itself have over the past couple decades.  Anything that impacts human behavior that much can’t help but raise an equally significant number of legal issues.

ARDirt: It is obvious you have spent a lot of time and energy thinking and speaking about the current and future impact of AR, What are some of the major legal areas where AR will crossover into the litigation realm?  Tell us the purpose of AugmentedLegality.com?  What kind of feedback have you gotten from the people that visit your blog?

BW: I started Augmented Legality to get the AR industry thinking ahead about the legal challenges it will face in the near future, and to help equip them to meet those challenges.  The feedback has been tremendous.  In public comments and private conversations, AR pioneers have thanked me for giving their industry the attention it deserves, and for starting these very important conversations about what’s in store.  I’ve been privileged to have multiple chances to speak publicly on the topic, and to meet some of the leading minds in the field.

In a sense, the term “AR law” is a misnomer.  AR will be used in so many different settings and contexts that its impact will be felt in nearly every facet of society.  So, eventually, specialists in nearly every legal field will be thinking about AR.  I’ve written about several of these, and just recently I posted my “5 Predictions for AR Law in 2012.”  These are five areas in which I think we’ll see litigation and other disputes start to take place in the near future.  They include copyright and trademark infringement disputes, and a personal injury lawsuit by a user of augmented content.  I’ve also blogged and spoken extensively about the first legal complaint concerning AR, which was filed with the Federal Trade Commission in October 2011.  That involved an AR-based marketing campaign for Doritos, which the plaintiffs claimed “deceived” its teenaged audience.

ARDirt: The purpose of the Innovators Q&A is to hear from influential people / innovators in the field of AR.  Are there any innovators that have influenced you and your work?

BW: Well, the nature of my “innovation” is a little different than most others in this field.  I don’t invent AR technologies, but I have been trying to blaze a trail nonetheless by thinking ahead about how those technologies will affect society and by starting conversations that no one else is yet having.  In that sense, I draw inspiration from Dr. K. Eric Drexler [metamodern.com]. Back in the 1980s, he wrote a book called Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology.  He foresaw the inevitable progress toward molecular-level engineering, and recognized the wide-ranging and profound effects that would have on all facets of society.  And he even founded an organization called the Foresight Institute to start conversations about what policies we should adopt to guide the development of this technology and avoid its dangers.

At the time, no one was publicly using the word “nanotechnology,” and he drew a lot of flak.  But my friends and I on our high school debate team read his stuff voraciously, and had much success advocating his arguments.  Things have progressed more slowly than he expected, and not everything has yet happened quite the way he predicted.  But here we are decades later, and we see “nanotech” references everywhere.  It’s one of the hottest areas in patent law.  And ever since 2000, we’ve had the federal National Nanotechnology Initiative [nano.gov] doing more or less what Drexler wanted: gathering industry leaders across multiple disciplines to encourage nanotech research and think ahead about its consequences.  He may not have gotten all the details exactly right–at least, not yet.  But he saw something coming when no one else did, and I think society is better for it.

I didn’t make the connection in my own mind between Drexler and my work until after I had launched Augmented Legality.  But I was definitely influenced by Drexler’s visionary spirit.  If AR lives up to its potential, it will radically affect all aspects of daily life.  I can picture much of how that might look, and I’d like to help us get ready for it as a society. Since my professional experience is in the law, I contribute to that effort primarily as a lawyer.  But I’d like to think that my efforts will at least be analogous to the impact that Drexler made.

ARDirt: It might seem like an overly broad question but has Augmented Reality changed your life? If so, how?

BW: In a manner of speaking, sure.  Discovering the AR industry has given me a context for focusing my futurism-inspired thoughts.  And the warm reception that my blog has received from those in the industry has given me a platform from which I can help contribute to the technology’s progress.

ARDirt: Here is a fun question.  If we could go into a time machine into the future five years from now – Where will Brian Wassom be and what types of AR/ legal projects might you be involved with?

BW: Five years from now, I’d like to be known as the guy who was thinking and writing about AR legal issues five years earlier, back in 2011, when no one else was doing so on any sort of regular basis.  And, as a result, I’d like to think that I’d still be a thought leader on the subject, as well as actively representing several AR companies and entrepreneurs.  Perhaps I’ll be writing copyright and trademark compliance guidelines for creators of AR content, or helping to draft legislation that modernizes IP law for the augmented age.  And for certain, I’d love to represent some of the people involved in the first actual lawsuits dealing with AR.

ARDirt: Is there anything you want to say about Augmented Reality that you weren’t asked? And…Do you have a message for other innovators exploring the world of AR?

BW: I would advise other innovators to dream big when it comes to AR.  This technology is one of the closest things to magic that humanity has yet dreamed up–to make images appear out of thin air, floating in space, with the ability to completely customize every facet of how a user perceives the word around them.  There are a lot of factors that could inhibit the development of AR’s potential, including: lagging innovation in hardware; mindsets that remain tied to 2-D, screen-based displays; skepticism at some of AR’s more radical possibilities; and even distaste with the term “AR” itself.  Don’t be sidetracked by these influences; those same people would have scoffed at you 20 years ago if you tried to explain Facebook to them, much less claim that 1/7 of the world’s population would be on it.

At the same time, however, try to remain grounded enough to avoid a messiah complex.  AR may feel magical, but those powers can be used for good and for ill–just like the internet itself.  AR is simply a medium; it’s up to us what we make of it.

ARDirt:  Thanks Brian for your thoughts and insight.