What if law moved at light speed—not to block discovery, but to channel it? We sit down with the big idea that runs through today’s most ambitious missions: when ownership is clear and sharing is structured, innovation scales across nations, agencies, and even planets.

We start in orbit with the ISS, where inventorship follows astronauts and equipment, and use rights are negotiated before launch, so science never stalls at zero gravity. Then we shift to ITER, the global fusion project that separates background IP from generated IP and grants royalty-free, global, perpetual research licenses to every member. That single design choice turns competition into cooperation without closing the door on commercialization. On the lunar front, the Artemis Accords introduce interoperability and deconfliction zones—protecting operations without territorial claims—and bring private players under shared norms that reward transparency.

Back on Earth, Copernicus proves that open satellite data strengthens climate action, agriculture, and emergency response, while the International Charter on Space and Major Disasters operationalizes generosity with rapid, accountable data releases. We dive into NASA’s open source ecosystem—thousands of mission-grade tools vetted through NOSA and rigorous approvals—showing code as shared infrastructure that startups, labs, and agencies build on every day. Communication ties it all together: CCSDS standards give spacecraft a common language, royalty-free and openly published, cutting costs and accelerating cross-agency work. The Planetary Data System and the International Planetary Data Alliance extend that spirit to archives, harmonizing formats and metadata so scientists can reuse and cite with confidence. And the Interplanetary Internet—Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networking—demonstrates how open standards thrive when anyone can implement, test, and improve them, from deep space to disaster zones on Earth.

Across these stories, a pattern emerges: plan ownership before liftoff, design openness with structure, standardize where it multiplies value, and pair publication with credit. That’s how IP becomes the engine of trust, not the price of participation. If this conversation moved your thinking, follow and subscribe, share it with a colleague, and leave a review with your favorite takeaway so more curious minds can find us.

Check out “Protection for the Inventive Mind” – available now on Amazon in print and Kindle formats.

Jean Marc Seigneur – In Trust We Build: Designing the Future of Digital Reputation – Intangiblia™

What if your glasses could spot a deepfake before your gut does? We sit down with Jean Marc Seigneur, a veteran researcher of decentralized trust, to map where security failed, where it’s catching up, and how proof—not vibes—will anchor the next decade of digital life. From central bank digital currencies to NFTs that carry qualified electronic signatures, we unpack how legal recognition and cryptography can finally meet in the middle, turning tokens into enforceable rights and payments into reliable public infrastructure.We also go beyond buzzwords to the missing pieces: education and design. Friendly apps hide sharp edges, so we talk about why countries need their own experts, not just imported tech, and how wallets must evolve with safer recovery, better defaults, and interfaces that explain risk without slowing you down. AI raises the stakes, so we explore signed videos, verifiable identities, and provenance trails that help you tell a real voice from a cloned one at a glance. Reputation won’t live on a web page for long; it’s moving into the physical world as augmented overlays that can help or harm depending on what they reveal and to whom.Bias won’t vanish either, because human trust is social and local. We discuss how to balance peer signals with regulators’ oversight, why transparency about AI use will give way to tracking human effort, and what a time-based “work token” could add to creative markets. The red thread across it all—payments, NFTs, augmented humans, and AI media—is simple and demanding: protect freedom while proving claims. If we want technology that empowers rather than deceives, we have to design, debate, and defend the trust layer itself.Enjoy the conversation? Subscribe, share with a friend who cares about digital trust, and leave a review to help more curious minds find the show.Send us a textCheck out "Protection for the Inventive Mind" – available now on Amazon in print and Kindle formats. The views and opinions expressed (by the host and guest(s)) in this podcast are strictly their own and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the entities with which they may be affiliated. This podcast should in no way be construed as promoting or criticizing any particular government policy, institutional position, private interest or commercial entity. Any content provided is for informational and educational purposes only.

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