IP Issues Upon Entering the U.S. l Misconceptions of Protection

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Shmuel Silverman had the pleasure of being interviewed by Stephen Anderson from Marquis Advisory Group. In this 2-minute interview, Shmuel discusses the many miconceptions when it comes to developing IP and how this translates into protecting your business.

In this clip we talk about:
1. Common IP misconceptions & myths
2. The value in protecting your business

Marquis Advisory Group is a global growth strategy firm specialized in U.S. market entry for foreign tech companies.

The Death of Privacy

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Co-authored with Matthew Cahill

Navigating through our day-to-day in a world with information at our fingertips is a current reality that we all seem to enjoy. The ease with which we can access information allows us to look up lyrics, movie times, check company profiles and gain instant insights into the people that we meet. While we barely have time to reflect on this current phenomenon, let’s consider the next iteration/evolution of this all-to-easy-to-access information technology? When will real-time data continuously feed into our everyday activities with distilled insights that then shape decisions, relationships and, eventually, our institutions?


Imagine a world where Artificial Intelligence (AI) displays graphical information that not only shapes opinions but hacks our minds and becomes the message.


Technological advances in civilizations are best understood as extensions of some part of ourselves. Nature replicates itself in a wide variety of ways and humans are but the latest iterations of evolution. The wheel extends the foot. Hammers and guns extend our hands. Computers extend our brains. The internet extends our reach. With each come some unintended and intended consequences. We place different value judgments and often recategorize after the fact.

The pace of information delivered to us in real-time has increased over the years. Augmented reality glasses and individual augmentation with other devices has been limited by communication bandwidth capabilities. When we move from 4G to 5G wireless communication, we also enable all these devices and human augmented reality. This upgrade in network capabilities brings cloud server AI and decision support recommendation systems closer to us with the ability to influence our perceptions based on context such as location, the person or activity we are currently engaged with, and so on.


For example, the AI can act as a die detector service using biometrics to instantaneously determine if what you hear or see is true or not. It will fact-check in real-time and display colors that indicate true or false? Or, if when you walk into a room, you can scan and see a real-time reading of each person’s net worth? Whether or not they have a transmittable virus or disease? The entirety of an individual’s digital activity can be synthesized into singular graphics and icons for easy consumption. This new AI tool can help you make better decisions about who you choose to engage with and how you interact with each person.


Marshall McLuhan wrote in 1964 that the “Medium is the Message” when television (3 channels of sanitized, homogenized, formulaic content) started ushering in the Information Age. As an early intellectual pioneer, he sounded a bell-weather then that was largely ignored in favor of our unbridled bias for technological innovations. We’ve blindly embraced media, in all its glorious forms to watch producers continue to chase each other in creating content that is more and more emotionally provocative. Emotions are the hooks that shape and frame EVERY message we consume. Our brains have an almost insatiable demand for new data and record into our collective memory a string of binary stereotypes. The context is King. Context matters. It makes all the difference.


Consider the following:

  • What do you do when you know when someone is lying?
  • What do you do when you know how much money each person in the room makes?
  • Do you still choose to interact if you know a person has a life-threatening illness?
  • Do you still shake a person’s hand if you know they’ve watched porn earlier that day?
  • Did you automatically think the person in question was male? Does it make a difference if it’s a woman that’s watched porn earlier in the day?

Are you making the world “safer” if you know who in the room has a criminal record? Where sex offenders are? What about if someone was only accused? Can that “news” somehow be scrubbed from their digital profile? The assumption that we can effectively use distilled, filtered real-time data to assist us in deciding who to engage with is overlooking implicit bias. Even with a carefully curated filtered list of criteria, when our brain is presented with the distilled, graphic information, what do we do with it? If it makes us feel good, chances are we’ll still make decisions that fly in the face of reason. Humans have proven over and over again that we are not logical or rational.


How we adapt to this technology cannot be foretold. Our historical pattern has shown that we overvalue and blindly embrace technology that appear to make our lives easier. There will be unintended consequences and potentially irreversible changes. It’s a conversation worth having in the hopes of creating more thoughtful practices to mitigate our worst impulses and design policies to protect our public spaces and personal boundaries.

2020 and Beyond: 5G Technology with Shmuel Silverman (Part 1 of 3)

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Shmuel Silverman, had the pleasure of being a guest on the Silicon Valley Podcast with Shawn Flynn. The podcast discusses the impacts of data on fleet management, as well as the future of trucking and 5G technology. The Silicon Valley Podcast is part of The Investors Podcast Network, an exclusive business podcast network educating professional investors and business people all over the world since 2012.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

  • What is the timeline for 5G implementation in our daily lives, how long to build out the infrastructure?
  • How will cities be reimagined with this technology?
  • How will the collection and security of the massive amount of data be changed with 5G technology?
  • How will existing businesses be potentially impacted? How will the cost of computers, cellphones and other electronics change?

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Tweet your comments about this episode directly to Shawn Flynn and the rest of The Investor’s Podcast Community using #TIPSiliconValley.

5G — Privacy Not Included

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5G technology and infrastructure are being rapidly introduced across the globe, but that isn’t news. Starting as early as 2017, countries such as South Korea, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States have been rolling out some form of 5G. While the newly emerging business opportunities are rising, the anonymity and privacy we have become accustomed to are quickly fading. Even though most aspects of our privacy have been diminished by the internet and social media, 5G is going to bring bigger challenges that are not only concerning but potent.

To understand just how we will get ourselves into this privacy nightmare we must look at the Internet of Things (IoT), specifically new sensor technology, ‘smart’ glasses (e.g. Google Glasses), and the impacts of Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

A Sensor Filled World

The Internet of Things started when we connected two or more machines together. Today, we have billions of machines connected by both wired and wireless technology. For the most part, it’s this connectivity that creates the World Wide Web that we all know and love. More specifically, part of this IoT world includes sensors and visual device connectivity that collect either real-time or close to real-time information and sends this information back to the cloud for processing. While this technology isn’t necessarily new, companies like Wiliot are finding new, better ways of managing and powering sensors by using inked, wireless BLE sensors that harvest energy for its use and communication without the use of batteries. These sensors can be dropped anywhere and survive independently, collecting and transmitting data to the cloud. Yet, what is missing for this technology to be adapted is the bandwidth.

The number of these devices capable of functioning within a network filled with sensors is limited to the bandwidth required to upload their data, this means we cannot have a high concentration of them in one single area or else we won’t be able to effectively communicate. While this is one major problem for companies like Wiliot, there is a relatively new solution on the horizon, 5G. With the 5G network, we can pack a large number of sensors in a small area and have the bandwidth to communicate continuously to the cloud. While yes, this is great, what does it mean for our privacy? How will these sensors be used and will they further impede our privacy? My guess is yes, it’s just a matter of when and who will be the first.

A New Smart Glasses

In April 2012, Google announced a new product, Google Glass. These glasses are a cool, augmented reality tool that can be used to support multiple business models. The need for data indoors and outdoors exists and the use cases are plenty. While the product exists and the capabilities and functions are ready, the product has never been fully adopted by consumers due to a lack of bandwidth. This, as we’ve discovered during our previous 5G discussions, is a huge barrier for new, emerging technologies.

To use smart glasses we need cloud-based AI systems to help us understand what we see and augment our reality with real-time information. While this is an available technology, the problem is just the same as with Wiliot; when we place many smart glasses in a small area we do not have enough wireless bandwidth to communicate back to the cloud. This is again where 5G comes to the rescue and enables all of these unique use cases. We say glasses, but some companies are developing contact lenses that will work just like the Google Glasses we all know. We can add other human augmentation devices that can communicate, collect data, and share information with us in real-time via 5G networks.

In Conclusion

Imagine yourself going to a restaurant, a coffee shop, or entering a conference room where every word you say or whisper is recorded and attributed to you. Every move you make is videotaped and analyzed in real-time. Your body posture, skin temperature, heart rate, pupil dilation, breathing level, gestures, tone of voice, the language you use are analyzed and conclusions and suggestions are communicated to those who come in contact with you via their smart glasses or other AR-like devices.

Even more so, imagine a world where every move you’ve made can be archived and viewed at a later date. Will you feel safe? How much of your everyday activities including your biometric state at every moment are you willing to share with everyone? Dying to know more and what exactly this means for our privacy as we know it, read my next piece, The Death of Privacy.

Also published on Medium.