Welcome to the Protect Your Idea Challenge.
Welcome, welcome, welcome.
Come on in.
Get comfortable, get your pens and paper, get your note takers.
We're so excited to be serving you this week, helping you learn how to better protect your businesses and your ideas, your creative innovations, inventions, witty ideas, logos, graphics, using trademark law and patent law, just getting a great understanding of how
to do it.
We're so excited to be able to work for you.
For those of you who have been in a challenge before, we welcome you.
If you haven't been in any type of challenge before, this is a community event.
It's a little different than a workshop.
It's a little different than just a class.
We're so excited to get here. Whether this is your first challenge or a repeat, please drop in the chat, get your chat open. If you can open the chat in the Zoom, it's a little button down on the very bottom.
Introduce yourself, tell us where you're from.
And
you know, let us a little something happy. How happy are you today?
How happy are you?
Welcome, Andrew.
Welcome, Aurelio.
Welcome, Teresa.
Welcome, Tracy.
How are you?
I'm just south of Delaware.
I'm Larissa and I live in Maryland.
I'm here to keep the party going.
It's not really a party.
No, we have great fun here.
We have a lot of connections.
By the end of the week, you're going to have new friends and connections as well.
So excited.
Oh, so excited to see everyone.
Look at all this.
We've got Howard from Texas.
TJ Ward.
Do you go by TJ?
From Montana.
Cheryl from sunny Florida.
Hi, Brittany.
Brittany and me.
Exactly where you're at in Delaware.
I'm just down here near Ocean City.
Literally along the beach.
Welcome, Brittany from Colorado.
TJ, are you from Montana?
Are you from Columbia Falls?
I bet you meant MT.
Jessica, great to see you.
Brittany from Oregon.
Awesome.
Jessica, great to see you from Dallas, Texas.
Katul from Salinas, California.
Waking up early.
So excited to see everybody.
Everybody is coming in.
Good, good, good.
Keep going.
You're going to have to help us.
From Connecticut.
Hello, hello.
Tracy from Roanoke, Virginia.
Teresa from Maine.
She was right on it.
Are you ready to learn?
Are you ready to write?
If you're ready,
I'm going to give you a pen and paper.
It's a marker and pencil.
Write down the notes.
Replays will be released in a link
within 24 hours.
Peter does not broadcast into Facebook.
You will find out why.
There are terms and conditions that
Facebook has that gives them authority
over your stuff.
I'm going to give you a pen and paper.
It's all about protecting his intellectual property.
You're going to hear that a lot.
IP is a big mouthful.
bid. And that is your property. And it started up here in your
beautiful minds and your beautiful hearts. You're so
excited. If you know someone who was supposed to be here, they
said they were going to be here and they're not here yet. Give
them a ping, give them a text. We apologize. The short message
system to like give you reminders did not function
properly today. So for the praying people out there, we
would so much appreciate a covering with that. I'm kind of
watching this chat here. Teresa, that's why there's a replay. So
sometimes we just sit and soak it in and take notes on like
what time it was. So like when you go back, oh, that was about
30 minutes in. Oh, that was about 40 minutes in. Take a
little note. There's a little zoom. Anybody else have any zoom
challenge tips on how to catch the goodness and then remind
yourself where you got to go back and whatnot. During this
first hour, there's we have the normal challenge hour and then
there's you're able to upgrade to VIP for the first time ever.
Peter's actually made day one available at no cost. You might
be here just checking it out to see what goodness. Yeah, you
can glean from it to then get in for the full class. So this
first hour today on Monday is free. And so you can taste and
see if this is what you want to continue with. We're very
excited about it. And then we have a VIP class. So Peter
teaches during the first portion of first hour, and then he takes
questions during the VIP portion. So you're going to have
a lot of questions and if for nothing else, you've got your
paper and pencil or pen there to write down your questions. You
can also drop them in the chat so we can take inventory a bit.
So that is a bit how this works. Yay. If you have signed up for
the VIP say I'm going VIP. Awesome. Excited. Transcripts
are not downloadable.
And I don't even know if he has a transcript on.
Hey, everybody. How are you doing? Everybody's dumping in
nice. Nice. All right. Check this out. We got everybody. Yes.
You're a Larissa Lisa. Jimmy. Jimmy, what's going on, brother?
Good to see you. Anthony's out in Georgia. And I don't mean
like, United States, Georgia, either. I mean, like, Georgia,
Georgia, man, you're out there, brother. You know, I've been
looking forward to this like all week, quite frankly, because
this is when I get to really take all the different tools
that I have in all these different fields and just give
them all to you. Because I've been doing this for 25 years
plus, and I've handled everything from patent
litigation in Southern District of California to Eastern
District of Texas, to Florida, to New Hampshire, to
Massachusetts, patent prosecution in most countries of
the world, trademark prosecution, copyright, and
when you get all this different stuff, and you're kind of like,
all right, I enjoy what I do. But isn't there more to life
than just kind of saving people when they're in emergency
situations. And all of a sudden, this opportunity showed up,
which was to basically take all of this knowledge and give it to
you. Like anything you need. That's what I'm here for. All
right, I built like $600 an hour. You're not paying that
take advantage of it. I'm telling you, take advantage of
this opportunity, because you do not want to be paying my rate.
You don't want to be paying the rates of most lawyers. So if you
have questions, I see April here, too. It's so cool. A lot
of people I know here are great. And then a lot of new friends,
too. This is awesome. Yeah. So as you're going along, where
you're going to find is some of you are kind of thinking, well,
do I need this? Do I not need this? I'm not sure I signed up
because I think I do. People said I might. And what you're
going to find is as I start digging in, things are going to
be directly applicable to your own businesses. And you're going
to come up with all these questions. It's just going to
happen. It's happened, right, Larissa? It happens like every
time. It's like people start and then all of a sudden, they're
like, hold it. Oh my gosh, I hired GoDaddy to go do a logo
for me. I didn't realize I don't have any right title or
an interest to the logo. And they could sell it to somebody
else if they so chose because I have a non-exclusive license to
it. And therefore, I can't even build my business based on that
logo because I don't own it. What does that even mean? I
don't understand. I paid them to give me the logo. How is that
even possible?
You guys go into the Facebook group,
I'll take care of some home,
some kind of cleaning stuff first.
If you go into Facebook group,
someone just posted a video on this exact issue.
I didn't know this was gonna happen.
She, God bless her, she went into the group
and she told about her own personal situation
where she actually paid for a logo to be created.
And now the company who actually created the logo for her,
that she's going to be using for her company
has now come to her and say,
there's somebody else who wants to bid for it.
And we're thinking of giving it to them
unless you pay a higher price
so that you can obtain rights to it.
Are you kidding me?
Like you paid for the logo.
You need to understand that you,
that falls under copyright law.
And we're gonna go under every different area of IP law
so you understand all these different aspects of IP
so that nobody can play a quick game with you.
People can steal your ideas.
You can understand what assets you actually already own
without actually filing for anything else.
Like under common law trademark rights,
you have certain rights to names that you're already using
even though you didn't file anything with the government.
Under copyright law, you have certain rights already
even though you haven't filed anything with the government.
So there's certain things that you have rights to already
but there's certain advanced rights that you can obtain.
We're gonna go through them all individually.
And let me go through some housekeeping first
just to make sure everybody's on the same page here.
My name's Peter Nieves.
Larissa is the hostess with the mostest over here.
She's helping out.
She's amazing.
Ray Carter is here down there.
No, you're there.
You're down there for me.
There's Ray.
Ray is amazing.
She handles a lot of the backend work.
These are members of my team, okay?
So just like the same level of respect and honor
you would give to me, please give to them.
They're here to serve you.
We are all here to serve you.
We've got five days together, okay?
That's not, even though it seems like a lot of time,
it's not a lot of time when we're gonna be covering
patents, trademarks, copyrights.
I'll even touch a little trade secret if you need it.
VIP, let me give you a moment on VIP
because 20 to 30% of you who are not in it
are going to at the end of this first session,
go into emergency mode and ask,
how do I get in?
How do I get in?
We got you covered, all right?
Relax.
You'll be fine.
All of your questions,
you're still gonna be able to email me.
I'm still gonna review them for you.
Just so you know, I am working at a law firm
at the same time as doing this.
I chair the IP department in that firm.
We've been ranked as the number one IP firm
like literally eight years in a row.
So like I'm doing the work there,
but what I'm doing is I'm trying to host you
and take care of you.
So this is your time.
Ask your questions, email your questions.
This is all for you, okay?
I just wanna give you guys a little gauge
of what we've got going on here.
And then we're gonna dig in.
I've got a list here of countries
and states that are represented here.
Like we've got Maine, California, Arizona, Texas,
Florida, Illinois, Montana, Tennessee, Alaska,
New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York, Oregon,
Kansas, Colorado, Ohio, Washington, Vermont,
New Jersey, Missouri, Pennsylvania.
We've got Georgia, the country of Georgia.
We've got Buenos Aires.
We've got, and there's a list of more here.
So we've got a major part of the world represented here
and a lot of different corporations here.
So you're all in a network now.
Now, what do I mean by that?
There's a Facebook group, join the Facebook group.
Why?
You're gonna get to know each other
and your businesses can help each other out.
For some of you that are starting out
that I've called individually,
I know what you're looking for.
And there's other people in this group that can help you.
So go in that group, let people know who you are,
go live, don't be bashful.
You can't do anything wrong here.
Nobody's gonna reprimand you.
Nobody's gonna kick you out, all right?
Well, I take that back.
If you do something weird, I'm gonna kick you out.
But at least you can let people know what you're doing
so that we can see what kind of resources
we can get behind you to help you out, all right?
Network.
The other part is the VIP will be dropped by Larissa.
You can drop it now, people can see it later.
If you so desire to jump into VIP,
you're more than welcome to do that.
That's where you get to email me your individual questions.
I review them all one by one,
and I make the subject matter that I go through in VIP
based on what you're asking.
Some of you have already gone live.
I know that there are writers here.
I know that there are not only authors here,
but there are some-
I have specific companies, I know what companies you have.
So what I'm gonna be talking about
is specific to your companies.
If some of you are thinking, well, I need something as well,
go live, let me know,
cause I can cover any area of IP, okay?
I'm gonna take two minutes and kind of touch base
on who I am, my background,
and then we're jumping into trademarks.
And we're gonna go really into a deep dive.
Now, some of you are incredible note takers.
God bless you, that's awesome.
You don't have to freak out that you're not keeping up,
okay, it's all recorded.
I'm gonna give you the videos for 30 days
if you're in the challenge.
And then I'm also going to give you,
if you're in VIP, the videos for 90 days.
So you can take all your notes afterwards, okay?
If you have specific questions, you can bring them into VIP,
you can type some into chat and Larissa will see them,
she'll flag them, Ray will see them and flag them.
Some of them we'll get to,
we won't be able to get to all the questions.
That's what VIP is for.
VIP is all the hot seats and individualized questions.
A little bit about me.
I was born in Williamsburg, Brooklyn
before it became penthouses.
It was like projects, okay?
Single mom took care of me.
I spent a lot of time trying to take care of her
and then had a whole mess of bad things happen.
So I have a very protective nature about me.
You're going to find that throughout these five days.
I have two daughters, I'm Puerto Rican,
I am very protective, okay?
So there's a lot of protective nature about me.
So if I see you walking into a scenario
where I feel like you're either going to waste your money
by trying to get some legal support
on something that you really don't need,
I'm going to let you know, all right?
I'm not here to get clients.
Just to be clear, I am not here to get clients.
I'm here to serve you.
Now, if you so say, Peter, wow, you know what you do,
I really would need your support,
then you can email me separate from here, okay?
But the point is,
this is not about Peter trying to get clients.
This is about you getting what you need so you can succeed.
So after we go through our sessions,
the videos are going to be posted late at night
because I have to process the videos
and then you can rewatch them.
And as you come up with questions,
you can post them in the Facebook group
or you can email them if you're in VIP, all right?
Separate from that, as I let you know,
I handle litigation prosecution.
I handle all areas of IP.
I'm also an adjunct professor of IP.
So I'm not bashful when it comes to your questions.
I'll answer them, all right?
Now, if you feel like they're stupid questions,
there are no stupid questions, okay?
I've taught people with quote unquote stupid questions,
all right?
You don't have stupid questions.
I know who's here.
You're high caliber.
Ask anything, okay?
And with that, I think what I want to jump into first
is a scenario.
I want to show you something.
And the reason why I'm showing you this
is because some of you are going to look at this
and you're going to say, I have no idea.
I just posted a link.
It's a Google Zoom, it's a Google Doc,
and I'm going to walk you through the scenario
real quick intentionally.
I'm going to share my screen with you
in case you don't have that, you can't look at that.
So this is my screen.
I'm going to make it a little bigger.
Maybe I'll make it just a little, a tad bit bigger
and make sure everybody can see it.
Let's go to, 100 is going to be too big.
No, make it a little bit bigger for you.
Let's go to 120.
All right, there's a reason why I'm doing this.
I do this every single time.
And here's the reason why.
This scenario that I put up in front of you,
many of you are going to see this and say,
I don't know what areas of intellectual property
are like pertaining to this scenario.
And that's okay, all right?
Be patient with yourself.
This is the first time some of you have ever seen this.
All right, in this scenario,
in every single one of these sentences,
there's one or more area of intellectual property law
that pertains to this scenario, all right?
I'm doing this now because you haven't done this before.
After we're done on day five, we're going to do this again.
And you're going to see how you can identify
every single area of IP, all right?
Because what I'm training you in is issue spotting.
I want it so that when you go to a trade show,
you go, oh man, did I file a provisional patent application?
Oh man, am I using the TM on my trademark?
Oh man, did somebody put a circle R on there?
That's not allowed, I can get sued for that.
Those things you're going to be able to do by day five.
I'm telling you, you're going to get it.
So what I want to start out with is a basic scenario.
I'm gonna walk through it quick,
and then I'm gonna show you a sheet that I gave you,
and we're gonna jump into trademarks, okay?
Can everybody see the scenario on the screen?
Okay, good.
All right, so line number one says you own
a small company called Burger Town.
The name is in quotes for a reason, all right?
There's a hint.
Number two says the number one selling burger
is called the Belt Buster, okay?
It's in quotes for a reason, again.
Number three, you have a website.
Notice the word website.
A lot of you with companies have websites.
We're gonna go into how you can protect
your own copy on websites.
It says you have a website advertising the company,
providing a menu, and describing ingredients,
preparation techniques, and health information
regarding each item on the menu, okay?
There are multiple areas of IP associated with that,
one line.
The next line is kind of long.
I'll go through it quickly.
You have a new process.
Notice the words new process.
For keeping inventory of burgers prepared
and for determining loss of profits
by using a novel pressure-sensitive device
located within a grill used for preparing burgers.
Here's a hint.
Whenever you see nerdy terminology that I would utilize,
like, you know, trying to describing devices,
think patents, all right?
That's usually why it's there.
So then the next line says the burger is placed
on an indented surface of the grill.
During cooking, the indented surface
has a pressure-sensitive switch that is thrown
when the weight of the burger is detected.
And then software, notice the word software.
Within a computer is capable of comparing
the number of detected burgers to actual sale of burgers
to determine how many cooked burgers were never sold.
As an example, burn drop free replacements,
or as I did when I was working in a restaurant
claimed as a working benefit as a disgruntled employee.
Okay, that's kind of what we did.
So, and then the last line,
you also sell a new drink called HungerAid.
Notice the quotes that everyone loves
and nobody knows how to replicate.
All right, just out of curiosity
of all the people that are here,
how many here can like in each of those lines
was able to identify at least one area
of intellectual property?
Just by a show of hands.
That's a lot of people.
I just want to be clear, that's a lot of people.
So you guys are way ahead of most.
And for those who were not able to, don't worry about it.
We're jumping in now
so that you're going to learn how to do this, okay?
I'm going to show one more thing to you.
This is a sheet that everyone should have.
Pow, boom, there we go.
Does everybody recognize this sheet?
All right, if you don't recognize this sheet,
you should, let me do this.
I'm not going to do that now.
Thank you.
All right, there we go.
It should be big enough for everybody to see.
Let me just make it a little bit bigger.
Let's make it like one, let's make it like 120.
There you go.
All right, so every area of intellectual property law,
pretty much every single thing that could be created
is listed on this sheet.
I created this for you, all right?
So whatever you're doing,
you should be able to look at the bottom,
put your finger on that spot,
look up and see what area of intellectual property law
pertains to what you're doing.
As an example, if you're dealing with software,
you look up the word software,
and you can see in looking at the sheet here,
you see on the first line,
patents, functionality of software.
So the functionality of software is protectable by patents.
But then separately from that,
we know that software has what?
Computer program code, right?
So the code itself for the software is protectable by,
if you go straight up, copyrights.
You're going to be able to identify this as we go on.
I'm going to elaborate,
but I just wanted you to see this sheet.
This is for you to use.
Do not make a copy of this and give it to anybody else
because it's protectable by copyright law.
And I'm an IP attorney.
Violating an IP attorney's copyrights is a bad idea.
I'm just saying, I'm just trying to help you out here.
That's all.
That's all I'll say about that.
Okay.
So with that being said,
let's jump into trademarks.
Those resources are available for you to use.
Don't put them on the internet.
Just utilize them for yourselves.
So let's kind of jump into trademarks now.
Now, trademarks in general,
they're an identification as to a source of goods
or like some kind of source of good or service.
Even if you don't understand who that is.
that source of goods or services really is, right?
So if you think of the product,
think of the product, let's say like NyQuil.
Does anybody know who makes NyQuil?
There's like nobody's hands going up, right?
Oh, one person, TJ, who makes NyQuil?
Vicks, exactly, yeah, he's got it, yeah.
So, all right, so here's the thing.
Even though most of us didn't know
who actually provided that product, NyQuil,
most of us don't care
because we have an association as to a cost.
We know that we can buy it in a certain location.
Most pharmacies are gonna sell it,
CVS, other places like that are gonna sell it, right?
We know that it's available to all of us over the counter,
but that's all associated with just the name.
So here's the thing.
The name of your company is extremely important.
What you do is extremely important.
So trademarks protect names, they protect slogans,
they protect logos, okay?
Those are the things that people typically think about
is like, oh, well, there's like some kind of name,
like let's say like Nike,
or you think of Adidas,
why am I thinking of sneakers only?
I don't know, maybe I need new sneakers.
But separate from that, you might think of like Red Door.
That's a perfume, that's a perfume my wife uses, right?
There's actually a trademark associated with that.
So those are words and those are logos,
like the Nike swoosh, that is protectable by trademark.
But here's the thing.
There are other things that are protectable by trademarks,
like sound, color, smells, packaging in and of itself.
As an example, if I said to you,
what company uses the color brown for packaging?
Everybody's like UPS, everybody's like UPS, right?
So did you know that UPS actually owns the color brown?
So you as a company, you can actually own a color
associated with your own product or your own services.
So if there's always a certain color that you're utilizing,
think about that.
Fiberglass, the color pink, everybody knows.
There's a specific Corning.
Corning has fiberglass associated with the color pink,
right?
I have a client that I got the color blue
associated with audio receivers.
They own the color blue.
Nobody else can use that color.
So don't just think of a name and a logo.
Colors, smells, those are all protectable
by trademark as well.
Now, something that many of you have seen is the TM.
Has everybody seen the TM?
Yeah, I see a lot of heads going up and down.
All right, here's the thing.
You do not, please hear me here.
You do not need to file a trademark application
with any government of any world, of any planet,
of any anything to use a TM.
All you have to do is use the trademark
in interstate commerce, that's it, okay?
That's all you need to be doing.
And here's the thing.
Even if you're using it in intrastate commerce,
meaning within your state,
or you're using outside of your state,
you can still use a TM.
What you're doing is you're placing the public on notice
that this is my name, this is my logo, back off.
That's what you're doing, okay?
So if you have a name for your company right now,
if you have a product, you should be using a TM.
You should immediately be using a TM.
If you're not using a TM,
then what can be happening is other people don't believe
that you're claiming an ownership to your own name.
If you're not doing that, then other people may use it.
And then you run into problems
that we're going to talk about
in a lot of details very soon, okay?
So for use of the TM, you don't need to file anything, okay?
Now, the Circle R,
and we're going to talk about this in more detail
later today and tomorrow,
but I just want to kind of give you some top level stuff.
The Circle R, you cannot use a Circle R
unless you have a federal registration, okay?
Okay, does everybody know what the Circle R looks like?
It's a circle, there's an R in it, that's it.
Let me see if I can pull one up for you guys.
I saw one person say that they were not familiar
with what the Circle R looks like.
So Larissa, can you post the Circle R just in the chat?
Thanks, just so they can see what it looks like,
so I can continue, thanks.
So you cannot use a Circle R unless,
please, please understand this,
because people do this wrong all the time
and they get sued for it.
I don't want anybody here running into legal problems, okay?
You can't use a Circle R
unless you get a federal registration.
That does not mean you filed for a trademark application.
It means you get the registration.
It does not mean it's been allowed.
It means you get the registration.
I'm gonna explain to you the whole trademark process
step-by-step, so everybody's gonna be fine,
all your company is gonna be taken care of,
and nobody gets confused,
and you're gonna have the recording, okay?
But don't use a Circle R.
The reason why is because you can be sued
for what's called tortious interference
with business practice, for unfair business practice,
for all sorts of things,
because you told the world
that you had a federal registration on something
that you don't have a federal registration on.
So don't do it, all right?
Does everybody understand that?
So TM, yes, you don't need to file anything to have a TM.
Circle R, no, don't use a Circle R
unless you get a registration, okay?
Now that registration, just to be clear,
some of you are in Canada, some of you are in Georgia,
some of you are in the United Kingdom,
some of you are in other locations around the world, okay?
Now here's something that's very tricky.
What happens if you get a federal registration
in the United States,
but you're selling products in other countries?
This is where it gets confusing,
or you're providing services in other countries.
This is where it can get confusing.
You gotta make sure that your marketing material says,
next to your Circle R,
the country in which you have the registration.
You can't just, if you're saying Circle R,
and you're selling products in Germany,
you don't have a registration in Germany.
You don't have a registration in Canada.
So if you're using a Circle R in other countries,
you're falsely marking.
So you wanna make sure that
if you're selling in other countries,
the easy way around this,
the easy way that a lot of people handle this,
they do it very simply.
They put down the Circle R,
and then they put down, you know,
trademark rights in the United States, period, that's it.
Something simple to make it clear
what country they have the rights in.
Now, some of you who are, you know, have little,
have smaller stores, or have like salons,
or have like businesses that are just more local,
you don't have to worry about that,
because you're not exporting products, right?
But if you're selling on the internet,
you might run into the same kind of issues,
because you're selling product across state lines
and other countries.
So the easy way to do it is just to kind of
have a disclaimer that it says,
you don't have rights in the United States.
It's so simple.
It's a lot easier than trying to run,
than running into an issue later
where another country says,
well, you said you had rights in my country.
Well, no, I didn't.
I just sold into your country.
Well, then why are you marketing saying
that you have rights in my country?
Just put next to it, United States.
It's very simple.
IP can be very simple
if you understand how the rules work, all right?
So those are some basic overview things
before we start digging in a lot more detail.
Thank you, Larissa, for dropping the circle R.
So that's what the circle R looks like, okay?
Now, trademarks, the way trademarks work
is there are different types of trademarks, okay?
There are rights under common law,
and then there are rights that you get
through filing with a trademark office, okay?
Is anybody lost yet?
Are we okay?
Everybody's okay?
Okay, I see some hesitation.
Somebody, oh, yeah, I see that one.
I see that, Jewel.
All right, no problem.
We got you, we got you, we got you.
So I'm just gonna, I'm gonna take some time here
to explain what an application is.
I think that's gonna make it simpler, okay?
So here's the thing.
In the trademark world,
you have certain rights automatically
when you start using your trademark.
So either that name that's unique
or that logo that's unique, okay?
The question is, how do you know if it's unique?
Right?
Because you may end up coming out with this name
and you think, you know what?
I've got a name, Nike.
I think that's a great name to have for shoes, you know?
Because there's the Greek God Nike,
and, you know, or Greek or Roman God.
I always get those confused.
Any case, they're always lowercase G, so I don't care.
But in any case, the point is there's a Nike, right?
And so we think, all right, running,
God of delivery, messenger.
So for that reason, I'm gonna create sneakers.
Well, you never checked
to see whether or not that name was available.
Well, there's a thing called.
trademark search that every single one of you should be doing before you start using the name
for your company or the name for your products or the name for your services. It's called a
trademark search. I'm going to show you where you can do a top-level trademark search.
Now, as a disclaimer, and Larissa, this is when we start. Here we go. This is not legal advice.
Okay? Nothing that I say here is legal advice. Those who know me, they're already doing it.
They're already drinking. You're going to hear me say this is not legal advice many times.
Many, many times. There's this tradition that people have been through. Every time I say it's
not legal advice, they drink. I don't know what they're drinking. I'm just saying they're drinking.
All right? That's all I'm saying. Here's the thing. I'm going to show you the website,
the United States Patent Tribune. Yeah, those are good things. Yeah, those are good things.
Kombucha. Cheryl's good. Coffee's good. All right. So, let's see. I'm going to show you
the USPTO website. If you go to www.uspto.gov, I'm going to show you a resource that's available
to every single person here that's free, that you can play around with it any way you want.
This is the United States Patent and Trademark Office website, okay?
Now, it's at www.uspto.gov. Larissa, can you just drop that in the chat, www.uspto.gov?
All right. So, if you go to trademarks right here on the trademarks, you'll see under application
process an option that says searching trademarks. Do you see that? It's right here. Let me see if I
can. It's my three dots. Everything is so, there it is. Three dots. Let's make it even bigger.
Bigger. There we go. Is that better? I think that's going to be better for everybody. Okay.
So, there's trademarks and there's searching trademarks. See that? You click searching
trademarks. Now, right under there, you see search trademark database. See that?
You click on either one of these links, either this one that says TEAS or this button here that
says search our trademark database. They both do the same thing. So, you click on that. Now,
now you get to play around for free because you now know about the site, okay? If you click
on this link right here, basic word mark, you can type in the word like Nike and see what goes.
Oh my gosh, 178 records. Now, you've got to go through them one by one. I'm going to show you
a secret to the system so that you don't have to go through them one by one, okay? So, if you go back,
instead of choosing that first option, basic word mark, choose the second one.
It says word and or design mark search. Click on that one, all right? Now, you're going to get
a field to enter whatever you want. You can type in Nike again, right? But now you get this
drop-down box. See this drop-down box here? You click down and you can just select. You're going
to get the recording so you can do this on your own and play around with this all you want. And
I want you guys to kind of, as homework, I want you to go in and do a search. Search for your
own company name, okay? Whatever your company name is, search for your company name and see what you
see. See what pops up, okay? Just so you have an idea. If you never did a trademark search, it's
really helpful to know, am I using a name that actually belongs to somebody else? It's much
better to change things now than when you're way down the road and doing incredibly well and then
all of a sudden somebody comes out of the woodwork and sues you or sends you a cease and desist
letter because you're using quote-unquote their trademark, all right? So now, what you can select
here is non-punctuated word mark. That's the one I would use. You could select full mark, which means
it's the full trademark. I wouldn't select that because then you're only going to get the exact
same thing as what you type. But how many of you know that somebody might spell Nike, N-I-K-E?
But somebody might spell it N-I-K-Y? Somebody might spell it N-I-K-I-E? They all sound the same.
So since they all sound the same, you may still run into an issue with trademark infringement.
So searching for the exact same mark, in my opinion, is not beneficial. I would select the
non-punctuated word mark. So now, right now where it says Nike and non-punctuated word mark, if I did
the search now, I submit the query. Do you notice how it
It says the same thing that we saw before, 148 results.
Notice that it's the same thing, right?
Well, if I go back, I can use the second field
to make it, to get the search more narrow, okay?
So I'm gonna show you how to do that now.
And then tomorrow we're gonna go into it in more detail.
And we're gonna talk a little bit more about trademarks.
I'm gonna take a few of your questions live also,
which I haven't done before,
but I'm gonna do it anyway, so.
All right, so if you click and,
now you can come in here and you can describe
whatever you want.
You can say, well, this is gonna be for sneakers.
So I'm gonna type in sneakers.
And then I'm gonna come over here in the field
and I'm gonna say,
those are the types of goods and services, okay?
Goods and services.
Now, if I submit the query,
when you do the search, you see how nothing came up?
Do you know why that is?
I'm gonna show you why.
Let me show you why.
Now, I just did three different searches.
This is why you have to be careful
if you do a very narrow search.
I did three different searches.
I did one search for the word Nike alone had 148 results.
I did a second search for Nike and sneakers,
because I figured, well, Nike has sneakers, right?
But when I did the query, nothing came up.
So I might think that Nike is clear.
But then I went in and I said,
well, what about like footwear?
Nothing came up.
So then I looked up shoes and that's when it came up.
So when I click on this,
you know, here's Nike athletic shoes with spikes
and athletic, there's the information.
Since 1972, it was filed.
It's a registration.
Last owner, Nike Corporation.
So why am I going through this with you?
What I'm trying to show you is that
what I just did is a very top level,
and we're gonna do it again tomorrow in more detail,
but I just, I wanted to show you something real quick
to give you an idea.
I just showed you a very top level search,
very top level search, okay?
You should not depend 100% on the search
that you do yourself.
The tools that you're gonna be learning here
over the next five days are things to make it
so that you can work better with your lawyers,
spend less time with your lawyers, right?
So you're not spending,
you're not searching 10 different terms.
You're searching two with your lawyers
because you already knocked out eight of them, right?
That's gonna decrease your legal costs.
Okay, because you're gonna go to your lawyers
for things that you need to talk to your lawyer about.
How many of you here go to a car mechanic and say,
can you please look at my car
and fix everything that's wrong with it?
Just by a show of hands, just raise your hand.
What, nobody?
Are you serious?
Oh, oh, okay.
Jewel, are you rich, Jewel?
Do we not know that you're,
okay, I just was checking, all right?
So the point being that you don't do that.
Why?
There's a lot of things that could be wrong, right?
A lot of things.
And you can end up spending more money on fixing your car
than your car is worth, quite frankly, okay?
So what I'm showing you here are tools to make it
so that you become more efficient,
you decrease the number of issues
that you bring before your lawyers.
And then when you go to your lawyers,
it's on like one or two things.
It's gonna decrease your costs,
I'm telling you, exponentially.
And it's gonna make it so that you're more at peace
when you work with attorneys.
It's gonna be easier when you work with attorneys
because you know the lingo
and nobody can try to sell you
something that you don't need, all right?
I'm not saying lawyers do that.
I'm just saying nobody can try to sell you
something that you don't need, okay?
All right.
I'm gonna dig in a little more into trademarks.
Take a few questions here.
Let me see if there's any good questions
that have been posted here.
Connie asked, do I have to do a search again
if I already searched?
Good question.
All right.
So there are different types of searches here, okay?
What I'm showing you is what I call a top level search.
It's a knockout search.
You should not rely upon your own searches.
Do not rely upon your own searches, okay?
What you're doing is you're taking all of your options
and you're decreasing the number of trademarks
that are potentially available for you to own.
So you had 10 different names.
You brought it down to two.
Now you take your two and you go to your attorney and say,
hey, I want you to do a trademark search for these two,
a professional search on these two,
and tell me which of these is available
because you already knocked out eight of them.
The alternative is you would have gone to your lawyer
with 10 names and they would have charged you $800
per search from Thomson Reuters plus $400 for their review,
maybe $1,200, let's round it down to a thousand.
You would have spent $10,000 in trademark searches
unnecessarily when you could have knocked out
eight of them yourself.
That's what I'm showing you how to do
is to knock out the things that are unnecessary.
Now you go to your lawyer with the two instead of the 10
and it's two grand instead of 10 grand.
Is that helpful?
Does that help you guys?
That should make your life a lot easier, okay?
And tomorrow we're gonna go into deeper
in how to do a trademark search
and all the parts of a trademark application, all right?
Just so that you understand it in more detail.
So you're doing this top level search,
that's your knockout, now you can go to your attorney
and say, hey, I need a professional search done.
Now they can use,
there's a company called Thomson Reuters.
You can look this up online.
They will get you, this company is awesome.
You know what I'm gonna do?
If you're not in the Facebook group,
you gotta get into Facebook group.
I'm telling you, get in there
because I'm gonna be posting links for you.
I'm gonna be posting bonuses, resources,
they're all gonna be in there, all right?
So if you're not in there,
you're gonna miss out on a lot of good stuff, okay?
I'm gonna post the link for Thomson Reuters in there.
You can actually hire this company yourself
but I would strongly suggest you do it through an attorney
because you're not gonna know what to do with the results.
So make sure that the lawyer
actually looks at the results for you
and tells you what you can use and what you can't use, okay?
All right, Aurelio is asking questions
about music and clothing, that's trademarks.
Music goes into, I'm sorry, is copyright.
We're gonna cover that in two days.
Clothing designers, logos.
When you're looking at logos,
logos are protectable by trademarks.
Think of the Nike swoosh.
Think of, gosh, there's so many of them,
so many different trademarks that are out there.
So, I mean, think of the Apple logo.
All those are protectable under trademark law.
So we're gonna talk a little bit more about trademarks now.
Let me go into something that's a little more simple first
because we just went a little thick.
So let me go a little simple here, okay.
How many of you here have filed the name of your company
with the secretary of state
or with some kind of state entity?
All right, so that's the name of your company, right?
Now, how many of you actually did a trademark search
before you did that?
Yeah, okay.
I wanna explain something to you, all right?
When you go onto the secretary of state
and you search under the corporate names,
that is not a listing of trademarks.
That's a listing of corporate names only, okay?
What does that mean?
That means that the company that you filed for,
the name that you filed for may in fact
still infringe trademarks of other people.
That's really important to understand.
There's a number of people in a number of groups
that I'm involved in where I've done searches on my own
and kind of pinged them and said,
hey, you might wanna look into your name a little bit here.
I don't tell them what's going on.
I just say, you might wanna look into your name,
just gotta give them a heads up
because I don't want them to get into trouble.
But the fact of the matter is you need to do
a trademark search for your corporate name.
When you go to the secretary of state site,
you're going to see a way to search corporate names.
It says, type your corporate name here.
You click search.
Every state has one.
The name, if it looks like it's clear,
that just means that nobody filed for that name
with that corporate name in your state.
That's all it means.
It does not mean that nobody has a federal registration
on that name.
So you may in fact, get this,
you may in fact be able to file for Nike shoes
as a corporate name in your state,
even though Nike owns the trademark.
That makes no sense whatsoever, but you could do that.
And then all of a sudden you end up in a lawsuit.
We don't want that.
So the mere fact that you have your corporate name
registered with your state does not mean
that you can use it.
So I want you to understand that.
Get a trademark search done.
Make sure that it's clear.
I've had many times that I've gotten calls.
I got a call, what, two weeks ago?
Woman in Canada is providing,
some of you may not understand this,
but heart healing, right?
Emotional heart healing kind of work, okay?
And so she's been through a program
and so she's providing those services
and she had a name.
for a company.
She received a cease and desist letter
from a company in the United States,
exact same name,
said you're committing trademark infringement.
Guess what the other company was providing?
Heart healing services, same thing.
They're both Christian companies,
but one of them had rights to the name,
the other one didn't,
and the other one had to get shut down.
So she had to change the name of her company,
her website, her services, all sorts of things.
So get it right in the beginning,
then you don't run into any of these issues, okay?
All right, oh, that's a good question.
Jewel just asked about DBAs.
Okay, that's a good question, Jewel.
So DBA, that's basically like doing business as, right?
So let's say my company's called ATE Challenges,
but I might have like DBA Elite Challenges, right?
That might be what I go by, okay?
You should be searching for both,
what you're registering for and your DBA.
You should be searching them both,
because either one you can run into problems with, okay?
Now, when you file a trademark application,
which I'm gonna demonstrate in the VIP session,
I'm gonna walk people through
filing a trademark application.
In VIP, you'll see there's an option to select on the form
when you're filing your application,
you can select the DBA option,
and then you type in your DBA, okay?
So we'll go into that tomorrow in the VIP session.
All right, let me talk a little bit about
rights that you may have already,
because we're talking about a lot of things
that some of you haven't done searches,
now you know you need to do a trademark search.
We're gonna do another search tomorrow.
So I just wanna give you kind of a preview
of what it looks like.
You know what a site is,
you can go online and play with it yourself.
Nobody's charging you.
There's no $600 an hour,
you can do it all yourself for free.
And you guess what?
You can go live and say,
I did the search and it didn't work.
What's this guy?
I don't get it.
Go live, say that.
And then we can jump in and show you how to fix it.
Like for these five days,
you can get all the guidance you want, like do it.
Okay, because this does not exist.
I'm telling you, there are no lawyers out there
seeking to help you for 95 bucks.
Just so you know, it does not exist, okay?
All right, so let's talk about what rights you may have now.
All right, under what's called common law.
Somebody type in the chat common law.
Oh, thank you, Aurelia, I appreciate that.
Yeah, some people are actually asking,
do you do the deep dive trademark search?
And yeah, we do that in VIP.
I'm gonna do another search tomorrow with people quick here,
but in VIP, we're gonna go really deep
into doing it step-by-step
and allow people to ask questions while we're doing it.
All right, there we go.
Common law, common law, awesome, thank you, common law.
The reason why I'm asking you to do this
is because most of you will never have heard that term,
and that term is gonna save many of your companies,
and many of you have never heard of it, okay?
So this principle here, there you go, common law,
that's what I wanna see, good, all right.
Listen up, this may save your companies, okay?
There's a gentleman who was in the last challenge.
He is amazing.
He has a cookie company, right?
Many people know who he is, they're already smiling.
He is, I love him as a brother.
He's amazing, brilliant guy, great entrepreneur.
But the problem was that he had a name
for his company a while ago, right?
Then he received a cease and desist letter
from a big company, big, big company,
and says, you can't use that name.
Stop using that name now.
That's what they said, okay?
Now he, you know, little startup said, oh my gosh,
I don't want litigation, I don't want a problem, okay.
So he changed the name of his company,
pulled product from the shelf.
Like this is expensive, guys.
If you guys are not like serial entrepreneurs,
what I'm talking about can cost tens to hundreds
of thousands of dollars to fix, all right?
Changed his website, changed the stencil on his packaging,
pulled packaging from the shelves,
changed his marketing material, everything,
and had to start over, right?
Now here's the thing that he didn't know, okay?
Under common law, he actually owned the name.
That blew his mind.
Like when he learned that, he said, are you serious?
Do you have any idea how much money I spent fixing that?
I said, yeah, yeah, I know, I know.
So this is the way common law works.
If you use a trademark in interstate commerce,
that means across state lines,
or even in interstate commerce, okay?
And you've been using it, and somebody else comes along
and gets a federal registration.
on that exact same name, listen to this,
you get to continue using it in the geographical regions
where you're already using it.
That's called common law rights, okay?
Now, I'm not telling you to go do that.
Talk to your lawyers,
make sure it pertains to your specific scenario.
I'm telling you what the law says.
Under common law trademark rights,
if a person has been using a trademark
in a specific geographical region,
and somebody gets a federal registration after them,
the person with the federal registration cannot stop
the person who's already been using the trademark
in interstate commerce, cannot stop them.
Now, the person who's already been using it
cannot branch out and get other states.
They can't get other geographical regions.
They're now stuck where they are.
So to give you a practical example,
let's say you've been using the name Feshir, right?
F-E-S-H-I-R, I just made it up, Feshir, okay?
I don't believe anybody owns it.
Do whatever you want with it, I don't care.
So you're using that in, let's say, Destin, Florida,
and you're using it for a vacuum cleaning service, okay?
Now, all of a sudden, Samuel, Samuel, he's smart.
Samuel's like, man, you know this name, Feshir?
I don't know, it just came to me out of nowhere.
I didn't even know that Sheryl was using it,
but it just came to me.
But Samuel's been through this course,
and Samuel says, look, I'm not playing games.
I'm gonna get a federal registration on that.
I'm gonna own all of the United States.
I'm not just gonna own my state.
I'm gonna own all of the United States.
So Samuel goes and he files for Feshir throughout.
Now, I'm not trying to make Sheryl and Samuel fight.
It's not what this is about.
Just giving you an example, all right?
So here's the situation.
Samuel gets the federal registration.
Now, Samuel sends a notice over to Sheryl, says,
hold on, hold on, I got a vacuum cleaning company
that's like all over the United States.
You gotta stop using that name in Destin, Florida.
Sheryl says, no, that's not the case.
Under common law rights,
I can continue using it in my geographical region.
Now, I can't go into like Cape Coral, Florida,
or I can't go into some other location in Florida
or any other state since Samuel now owns every other place
because he got a federal registration.
This is why if you're using your trademark
in interstate commerce,
stop playing games with state registrations and go federal.
Don't play games.
There's no reason for you to be filing a state registration
if you sell your products and services
outside of your state.
It makes no sense.
It's not that much more expensive
and you own every single state in all of the United States,
which means you can branch out anywhere you want
and nobody can stop you
and nobody can use your trademark.
It's yours, okay?
So under common law,
just remember under common law,
you can continue using the trademark
in your specific geographical region
where you're already using it.
Even if somebody gets a federal registration later,
but this is why you wanna file your federal registration
because a federal registration
gives you all the United States, okay?
Now there is a thing called a state registration.
I'm gonna close on this
and I'll probably go live later tonight
in the Facebook group just to give you some elaborations
and help you out on questions and stuff
just to interact with you just because this is fun.
So what I'm gonna do
is I'll probably elaborate a little bit
on the common law issue for you.
So if you are selling your product
or providing your services only in your state,
meaning nowhere else,
you're in California,
you don't sell product outside of California,
you don't provide services outside of California,
then you would likely do a state registration
because that's called intrastate commerce.
That's used in your state only.
But here's the thing,
with the internet,
I just gave you the example,
we're covering different countries here.
We're covering different states here.
So why would I file for ATE challenges
only in New Hampshire or in Massachusetts
when I've got people,
brilliant people here from California,
Florida, Illinois, Ohio, like everywhere.
So I file for all of the United States
and then I own all of the United States, okay?
Let me take a few questions here.
If you have questions,
just raise your virtual hand
and let me go through here and look real quick.
All right.
So Cassie says, Cassie has a really good question.
She says, so would I file federally,
not at the state level or would I do both?
That's a good question.
Okay.
All right.
If you file federally, you don't need state.
Cause when you file federally, you own state.
So if I'm located in New Hampshire
and I file a trademark in,
if I file a federal trademark application
with the United States Patent and Trademark Office,
then I own New Hampshire and every single other state
that my daughter would sing over and over,
covering from A to the last one in that song
that she did over and over
so she can memorize all the states and I can't memorize it.
So that every single one of those states,
you would own every one of the states.
So you don't, don't do yourself a favor.
Don't waste money filing state and then federal.
That doesn't make sense.
When you file federal, you own state.
You don't need to do it again.
Don't do it twice.
It's a waste of money.
Okay.
All right.
I don't see any virtual hands up.
So that's good.
So let me just look at,
I'll answer like maybe one more question.
Then we're going to jump into VIP.
Let's see.
Peter, we, good question.
What about international?
Like if you're going to be doing business
in multiple countries.
We're covering that tomorrow.
Okay, great.
Yeah, tomorrow we're going into international stuff
when we talk about applications.
Yeah.
Let me answer.
Let me see.
Tracy.
Tracy, how are you?
I'm wonderful.
This is awesome.
It's incredible.
Oh, that's awesome.
I'm glad it's helping.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
So with all the trademark information then,
are you really better off to go ahead
and do your full,
the actual legitimate trademark search
then before you get your LLC,
before you file for your LLC in your state?
Oh, absolutely.
100%, Tracy, 100%.
Because this is what people do.
They spend all their money like filing their LLC, right?
And then they go and they do a search
and they find out, oh my gosh,
the name that I use actually is owned by XYZ Corporation
and I'm liable for trademark infringement.
Now they got to change their name.
So now they got to go back and refile and modify things.
And that costs a lot of money.
So the way that I say it, as an example,
I have like, I don't know if people know Todd and Tamara.
They're amazing people, like absolutely amazing.
And so what they've actually incorporated
into their program now is a way,
they will create a 508 for you.
If you guys are looking at trying to create a nonprofit,
you guys need to look up Todd and Tamara.
They have a 508 formation entity.
They are incredible.
It's low cost.
There are more benefits than the normal 501c3s.
It's just incredible.
If you never heard of 508, look it up, all right?
Reach out to Todd and Tamara.
We can drop their information.
I'm happy to promote other people here
that are good at what they do,
that I know have a heart to help.
And they do.
So in their situation, what they do is
they close their offer.
And as they close their offer and people are secure,
like working with them and creating their 508,
they actually are going to provide a video
to train people on how to do a search.
So that before they actually file,
even though that they've closed on the offer,
which they need to do to take advantage
of what they're offering them,
they're getting a search done
before they actually use the name
to do in that case, the 508,
to make sure that they don't have to fix it.
Because if you follow an LLC
and then you've got to start over,
you don't have to do everything again,
but you have to file something
to change the name of the entity.
And now you've got to get lawyers involved
and it just costs a lot of money.
It's easier to just do it right the first time.
Yeah, okay.
So yeah, because you were talking about
with names of businesses,
you don't necessarily have to file,
but yet, because mine's going to be regarding real estate
and I plan on not just limiting it to Virginia.
So even though, because I've already done
the basic word search,
actually the two that you talked about,
I've already done that.
And there has been,
there's nothing on there with the name that I want to use.
However, there are like two things that I've seen
that are completely different fields
that actually have that name.
Only two that I've seen.
But it's completely-
Are you a VIP?
I'm not.
DM me.
Okay.
You need to be a VIP.
The reason why,
we have to figure out how to get you in there
because there's,
your specific scenario,
what you want to do is look at the-
international class to see whether or not there's an issue, right, to see if there's a likelihood of confusion. The other thing that pertains to your situation, or in this, this is not legal advice, I'm just saying, in general.
The other thing that kind of pertains is, if you're not using a trademark yet, there's a thing called an intent to use application. Nobody knows about this. Like, you know, one of the hardest things to do is to come out with a new name.
It's like, it's really hard. I've represented many, many corporations, from like startups and individuals to like billion dollar corporations, like Brookstone and like, you know, I represent Constant Contact, MIT, Harvard, others.
The number one thing they have problems with is coming up with an original name. So when you come up with an original name, and you're not providing the service or the goods yet,
you don't want to sit on that and run the risk that somebody else files for before you. So you can actually file what's called a 1B application, which is called an intent to use application, which we're going to cover tomorrow, briefly, but we go into a lot more
detail in VIP, Tracy. So if you can get in there, you want to get in there. Because right now, like we got to jump off because we're about to go really deep in a dive there. So anybody who is not a VIP who wants to get in, we've dropped the link. I'm going to drop off.
Larissa is just going to ask you like what you think about what we've done, just go live and let people know. Your homework assignment on the Facebook group, go live. What's your number one takeaway that you have learned today? Your number one takeaway, something that's important, something that jumped out at you, just go live and say what that number one takeaway is.
Not only are you going to help yourself, you're going to help other people here. Because when they hear it from you, it's going to spark something in them. People learn from each other. And so please go live and do that. Say this is my number one takeaway. I didn't know this or wow, I didn't see this perspective before. You know, this is good because of that. Whatever it is, go live in the Facebook group. If you're not in the Facebook group, get in there. Because tonight I'm going to start dropping even more stuff for you.
I'm going to jump off. Larissa, you can finish what you do. And then I will see all of you in VIP there. And if you're not there, I will see you tomorrow. Bless you guys. We'll take it day by day. Tomorrow is probably going to be the thickest day. And then it gets a lot easier as we go along. All right. All right. Talk to you guys later.