Awesome.
Let me do this.
Gallery view for me.
Just real curious.
I want to make sure you guys are all getting the emails at night.
If you have not seen the emails,
everybody is getting them?
Good.
If for some reason you miss one,
don't worry about it.
The email I sent you on Friday will have all of them listed.
You know how each day there has been another email
that shows you a recording for today?
Let's say you lost it.
If you lose it,
I will have every single link
listed one-by-one.
You will be absolutely fine.
You don't have to worry about it.
I will give it another minute or two
for everybody to jump in.
A lot of people jumped into VIP
as we got started,
but we will let you know in the next couple of days
how you can invite more people.
Absolutely.
We will talk about that tomorrow as well.
Let's see.
I don't think
.
Was today easier to follow?
Good.
Copyright is not really a very difficult area.
It is just an area
where there are a lot of different areas
that are protectable.
There are a lot of things that are protectable by copyright.
In trademarks,
you typically think name, slogan,
logo.
There are not a lot of people out there that are creating
.
In the copyright world,
there are a ton of people
that are creating different artistic works.
From sculptures to books,
to computer code,
to pictures, to paintings,
to sound recordings,
to dancing, to choreography.
Peter,
I had asked this question in the earlier chat.
Where in an artwork
would you put the copyright mark?
You would not put it on a sculpture or painting.
That is a great question.
I find a lot of people do it in one or two ways.
A lot of high-end people
create a separate sticker
.
I have seen that a lot.
Very high-end paintings,
it is almost like a metallic-looking sticker.
They put it on the back.
You do not want to touch the face of your work.
That is crazy.
You can put your signature there.
Even when people put their signature,
if you put it on the back of your painting,
that would be detrimental.
I would put that notice on the back of the work
or underneath the work.
In a place where people can find it.
That is what I would do.
We want to place people on notice so they are aware
of the legal rights.
We do not want to mess with the original work.
That is a great question.
Samuel,
how are you?
I am doing well.
I have a question for you.
When I went to the copyright website,
it showed you could copyright a database,
which I never knew.
Where would you put that copyright symbol?
That is a great question.
If you have an electronic database,
do you know how,
let me give you an example.
Have you ever written code?
Great.
In a software app,
you have on the graphical user interface,
there is a notice somewhere that shows you
how you are packaging the software.
you'll see the copyright notice, right? So, for a database, you can place it within the script
itself, but what people commonly do is they put it on, if this is a physical device, like I have a
five terabyte device over here, right? So, on that, you can place it on there, but what people
typically do is they'll put it within the code itself, like in the metadata, or they'll put it
in something that's related to the code. Here's the thing, you don't want your notice to be hidden
so nobody sees it, right? Because then you're not placing anybody on notice, right? So, if you're
going to place people on notice, you want to get it in front of them. And so, typically, when you're
looking at code, like if you're doing JavaScript, or you're doing HTML, or you're doing, you know,
whatever it is, you'll see like metadata there, like you'll see something there that kind of
talks about things like this. It'll say, you know, owned by blah, blah, blah, copyright, blah, blah,
blah, it's all there right up front. So, that's typically what you'll have. In database situations,
it's kind of been like that. It's not very often that people file copyrights just for a full
database, you know, because think about this, what's the essence of the database?
Like, where's the essence of the work? So, let's say there's a database that has
two terabytes worth of data, right? And somebody copies three lines, is that copyright infringement?
Because it's such a low percentage of the entire work, that one would argue, it's not really the
essence. So, if somebody grabs, you know, it becomes difficult, like, you know, so this is
what I tend to tell people, if you're dealing with code, if you're dealing with some kind of
original work, find what's most important in that work, and file that separately. So, let's say in
your 50 pages of code, these two pages are like the crux of it. This is like the core of it. I
would file those two pages alone, so that nobody can touch those pages ever. Now, you can do,
since it's only 65 bucks, you can file for the entire thing, and then those two pages alone,
you can do that too. But the point is that if your work is so incredibly big, like a 5,000 page book,
and somebody copies, let's say, three lines of it, and incorporates it into their work,
it becomes difficult. I'm not saying you can't enforce it, I'm saying it becomes difficult to
enforce it. You know, does that help? Yeah, it does, it does. Because typically, databases are,
I don't really think of them as something copyrightable. It's like, it just contains the
the result of work that's, you know, it's sort of like a byproduct, really, than the main thing.
So, I'm just curious. Right. No, you're exactly right. So, it's like this massive amount of work
has been placed in the one, you know, one area, and they're filing for that at once. And
I don't tend to, I mean, I guess one of the reasons why you might do that is like,
if you're going to end up in litigation, you want to say, look, the database that was copied,
because you do have situations where people steal a database, you know, like, employee leaves,
takes a pen drive out, you know, copies the entire database, you know, or takes one of these
five terabyte, Western digital drives that you can fit literally in your pocket,
and takes the database, and you could say, hey, that entire database is copyrighted. That's
copyright infringement, right. So, that's something you could do. But what I tend to tell people is,
find within that database, what's really important. And make sure you own that.
Now, you could kind of as a an overcompensating way to to kind of cover everything or all your
bases, you could file on the database itself. It's just, just becomes a little more difficult
to enforce. That's all. I mean, it's better than nothing. But, but, you know, there's 500
million documents in there, and somebody copied one line on one page. I'm like, that's going to
be hard, hard to enforce. So, yeah, for that reason, I'd be careful about that. All right,
I want to take a little bit of time here to go into the copyright side a little bit more here,
just to make sure that people really get this.
Share my screen.
There we go. Okay. And then I want to go through some real life practical examples,
because people are probably trying to figure out, well, how does this
work in real life? Like, where, where do you get the data?
Do I have infringement issues?
Where do I, how do I enforce rights?
And so we'll talk a little bit about that too.
I'm also gonna talk about cease and desist letters
because I think people use them very aggressively
and they don't realize they can end up in litigation.
So I'm gonna talk about that a little bit
but let's just kind of look at the site
for a second together.
So this page over here kind of talks
about the registration portal itself.
It tells you right off the bat,
it says you may register up to 10 unpublished works
on the same application, right?
So you don't, actually, let me just continue here
but you must select the new application
for a group of unpublished works, okay.
So I just wanna explain this part right here
because this is a little confusing.
So you can file, you can register 10 unpublished works
in one application and it says,
but you must select the new application
for a group of unpublished works, right?
So if you're doing an application
for multiple unpublished works,
you're not gonna select the normal application,
you're gonna select the group, okay.
So I just wanna highlight that
because what people do is they start filling out
the application in a lot of detail.
They get to the point to submit and they say,
well, how do I add the second work?
And they did all that work
and now they're like starting again.
You don't need to do that.
Like in the group of unpublished works,
there are certain requirements that are there,
one of which is that the same artist
is associated with all of them.
And so you don't need to re-enter for every single work,
your name, your address, your blah, blah, blah,
you shouldn't have to do that.
If you find yourself writing that over and over,
something's wrong, you've got the wrong application.
So you shouldn't have to do for 10 different works,
identify yourself 10 times, something's wrong with that.
I wanna highlight that for you
because a lot of people get that wrong,
but that's okay, it's all in the learning process.
The other part is in visual arts.
I just wanna explain this in visual arts.
How many people here are painters?
Are there any painters here?
Okay, great, there's a painters, multiple painters, okay.
All right, so in the area of visual arts,
okay, you see here it says examples of visual arts include,
there it tells you exactly what's covered.
Paintings, sculptures, photographs,
those are the main areas.
So if you're gonna do a painting,
you're gonna file under a visual art category, okay?
The reason why I'm showing you this
is because a lot of people,
what they do is they go over here.
Let's see, I've seen people go into photographs
and start filing a photograph application
for their paintings.
Even though you would think like paintings
are different from photographs,
people get that wrong all the time.
And so I wanna make sure you don't go down that route
of filling out a photographic application
and then realize, oops, it doesn't belong there.
It actually belongs under a visual art, okay?
This other category here, other digital content.
All right, this one, if you're doing NFTs
and you're doing graphical works,
you're probably gonna deal with this, okay?
So these are other digital contents, okay?
So there are people that actually create
computer graphic works off of original works.
My daughter deals in that area.
A lot of people I know do,
you're gonna be looking in this category as well.
So just kind of look around in here and see what's covered.
I just wanna take a second
and kind of explain something here.
If you're the artist on the original work
and somebody takes the original work
and then makes a computer rendered image of it,
all right, that's a derivative work.
They can't do that.
So if you find out that someone's taking
your original artistic work and they're doing something
and putting it in another medium,
or let's say you create a painting, all right?
And you're at a conference
and you create your painting during the conference
and it's on display.
Now, somebody tell me what happens.
What do the people start doing?
Type in the chat what people, yeah, exactly.
They start taking pictures of it.
And then they, what do they do after they take pictures
of it?
Put it on Facebook, on Instagram.
You know, they use it as a background on their website.
They use it, you know, they use it in TikTok.
They use it in.
Instagram, they use it all over the place. All of that is
copyright infringement. Every single instance of that is
copyright infringement. So I'm telling you this, not only to
minimize, you're doing that, because it actually takes away
from the funds that the original artists would make. Because now
the artist is losing out. Like I know a number of artists who
have come to me, practically in tears, because they're
remarkably gifted, but they're making no money. And they say,
I don't understand why am I making no money when I'm so good
at what I do? And I said, Well, the reason why is you've given
everything away from free. So if you're an artist, this is what I
want you to start doing. If you're an artist, and you have a
painting that you created, do not take high res pictures of
your of your paintings. Use very low res, low DPI, low dots per
inch. And then watermark the low DPI with a good program that
cannot be reverse engineered. By doing that, your name, your
label, whatever it is, your company is watermarked on there,
the resolution is so low. So what happens is people can't
just take your picture, and then go to the corner store and say,
turn this into a painting for me, or turn this into a, you
know, a, a larger picture for me. All right, I mean, I have
right here a lion, and underneath the lion is a soldier
on his knee with a sword and a shield, right? That's not the
original work. I bought that from the original artists off of
their website. But I don't have the right to now take a picture
of that and make it a background on my website. Now,
does that mean we all follow that? No, we violate the law all
the time. I mean, look, I was a kid. I used to do DJing stuff. I
used to create my own mixes. Every single one of them was
copyright infringement. Every one of them. You know, I mean,
so I did it all day long. And then what did I do? I sold the
tapes. That's like mega comp copyright. Not only was I doing
copyright infringement, I like doing triple, quadruple
copyright infringement. So maybe this has been my repentance
becoming an IP attorney is making up for the years of
infringement that I have done in being of service to people so
that they don't have to happen to them. Right. So I'm telling
you all this because I know that all of you artists work very
hard at what you do. It takes time. There's a lot of passion
behind it. And it's kind of heart wrenching when, you know,
you create a certain work, and all of a sudden, it's all over
the internet. And you didn't get a penny out of it. Like, how did
that happen? Because of copyright, copyright law, you
need to use copyright law. So now what you're going to do is,
if you have a website where you're showing the images of
your paintings, you're gonna have a copyright notice right
there. You're gonna say right up front. Every image here is
protected by under copyright law. All rights reserved. No
rights to make derivative works make copies. None of them are
provided. Any violation is infringement, like you'll make
it very clear. Like when I post the videos for you, you notice
in my in YouTube, there's a notice on there. I mean, people
will be silly to actually download my material because
that's copyright infringement. And I'm IP attorney. I mean,
that just would be that's not smart. All right. So like, like
you don't, you just anyways, I'll do a bit of that. This is
not smart. So the same thing for you use your copyright notices,
upload and load DPI, use the watermark. All right. Now one
more thing. If you're going to show your paintings to an
audience, put some kind of what I've seen a lot of people do is
they put some kind of sign on the painting. So as to make it
so people don't take pictures of it. Now, the problem with that,
obviously, is that if you're using like scotch tape or
something, then when somebody pulls it, it can damage your
image. So I would not suggest that in any way, shape or form.
I recently was at a conference where the artist was so
desperate that she literally did that. Because everybody was just
massively taking pictures and, and it was really bothering her.
And so so for that reason, she did that. But you know what the
people did? They moved the image, they moved the piece of
paper, they took the pictures anyway. So you know, if you want
to stop the stampede, make sure you don't provide something
that's going to cause the stampede.
I know I took some time on that, but the reason for that is because I just, I've seen what
happens, the damage that happens out of it.
Let me talk a little bit about software, software, the code is protectable by copyright.
The functionality associated with the code is protectable by Samuel.
The functionality of the software, boom, Samuel, tomorrow is Samuel day.
It's going to be awesome.
We're hitting patents.
Come on.
It's going to be so good.
So we're going into patents tomorrow.
We'll have some overview of other things too.
So we're going to kind of combine copyright and trademark and patent and then finally
day five on Friday, we're combining everything and we're going to go through that scenario
and you're going to see how you actually know what every single area of law is associated
with that scenario.
Where on day one, you're kind of like, what, I don't understand.
All right.
Chris Patio, Patel, Patel, Chris Patel, hey Chris, it's Patel, Patel, it's way simpler.
Like I get, I get Patel, what's up bro?
Like for me, I get Neves, knives, Neves, Neives, and I'm like, it's Neves, it's Neves, it's
so simple.
All right, go ahead, what's your question?
So the question is earlier you talked about dropping books in series, so shown intent.
So I heard that problem, like from the author of JJ Virgin, she does like health stuff and
the keto and she mentioned, I really wish I would have, I knew I was going to write
more books.
So how would it be best to like show intent for a series?
Would it be best to drop the series right there?
Or like, I guess that's my question.
Yeah, that's a great question.
I mean, part of it, part of the answer to what you're talking about is going to depend
upon the publisher that you're working with, if you're using a publisher, because some
publishers are going to want to advertise that there's a series and other ones want
to use it as a surprise.
So it depends on, you know, how you're doing this.
If you're doing it yourself, then you might want to, you know, towards the end of the
book allude to something else coming, right?
So you can do that.
But as far as the, as far as copyright law goes, you can, you know, you file them as
individual books, as far as trademark law goes, once you get your second book, you could
say it's a series and you could file for the title as a trademark application saying it
is a series, look, I've got two books, boom, give me my trademark, right?
So trademark law doesn't care.
Copyright law doesn't care as much either.
The rest of the part, as far as letting the public know about when, you know, the next
version is going to come out, you got to be careful because in publishing you have what's
called windows, right?
So anybody who's an author will probably relate to this.
There's this thing called windows.
So I publish a book.
Now I've gained a following.
Now, since there's a following, I need to publish my next version within a certain amount
of time.
If I've made the public aware of a series and I don't deliver on that series within
a certain amount of time, I'm going to lose interest.
Okay.
So this is why with certain publishers, they'll pay you for a series.
Like I have a friend of mine who's paid, I think it was like 150,000 for four books,
right?
And so, but they're not like massive books, they're just kind of four books.
But he has a schedule, like they told him, your mandatory schedule is, this is coming
out at this date, this is coming on that date, this is coming on that date.
And then within that, your first draft is due on this date, your second draft is due
on that date, your editing is due on this date, the illustrations is due on that date,
like it's very scheduled.
Now that's not to mean, just to be real clear, it's not to mean that it works because artists,
publishers, you know, writers, authors, they hit blocks, you know, like they hit these
mental blocks where all of a sudden something's just not flowing.
So then you've got to figure out, do I need to go back to the house that I was at, where
I created the original work or where the experience happens so that I have that experience so
now I can follow up?
Or do I need to take some time off of this?
Like they have to figure that out.
So you've got to be careful when you work with a publisher on that schedule to see whether
or not that is adjustable, or if they're going to decrease your compensation based on that.
Because if they're going to decrease your compensation because you missed a date, that's
a big problem because you're really subject to yourself.
Like am I flowing?
Like I can sit down and write a patent.
in six hours, like there's not a lot of attorneys in the world
that can do that. Okay, it's a very rare gift. But I've got to
be in the mode. Because I've had times that I sat down 60 hours,
and I can't write a patent, because I'm just not in the
mode. It's not working. So for you, when you work with a
publisher, and you have that schedule, and there's going to
be a series, make sure there's some leeway for you and that
your salary or your payment that you receive is not directly
locked to an exact day. That may be hard to do. I just kind
of warn you, it may be hard to do because publishers are
thinking about marketing, they want to make their money back
plus, right? So they know when they're going to hit the
internet, when they're going to hit eBay, when they can hit
Amazon, when they're going to hit, you know, whatever, when
they're going to go to the bookstores, the few that
actually exist anymore, right, they know they have that all
scheduled. So just as a warning, in your legal language
is determine whether or not your compensation is linked to a
specific date. And if so, see if you can get some leeway.
Because I've just seen too many times writers get these writer
blocks, and they're not delivering. And now they're two
weeks from the deadline, and they got like 300 pages to
write, and they're freaking out. And I'm sorry, when you're
freaking out, it's really hard to write. You're not in the
mood, you're not in that mode. So does that help, Chris?
Yeah, it was very helpful. I'm gonna be probably self
publishing. So I think okay, so you're fine, then. Yeah, but it
just kind of puts me in the right frame of just how I'm
going to drop everything and just a little extras I'm going
to put in there. So
just make sure that since you're going to be self publishing, if
you're referring to a series, that's that's very powerful for
marketing purposes, right? And that you have a serious but
remember that, that expectation has to be satisfied. Right? So
one of the reasons why I don't announce, you know, my
challenge in later in the year, five months beforehand, is
because if I get somebody in that group five months
beforehand, they're going to forget about everything by the
time the challenge comes. I've got to put them into active
campaigns and email after email after email and, and get them
you know, to be excited about this again, and it becomes quite
a bear for them and for me. Right. So for you, if you're
building up that expectation, that next book should be coming
out, like, if you can six to eight months, it should be out.
You know, you shouldn't be three years, two years down the road,
because that's not a series that's, you know, it's, it's a
second book, but it's really like, a rebirth, you know,
there's a series where you're like, bam, bam, now I want the
next one, bam. Then there's like, Oh, yeah, do you remember
that thing from a few years ago? Oh, yeah, I need to read that
book to remember it. So I can get into the next book. That's
very different. So
Karen.
Thank you.
Hey, how are you?
Good. Good. I have multiple copyrights. But I don't have
any physical, you know, like hard copies. You know, like you
said, there's like a certificate or a letter. I don't have any
of that. So now it's making me wonder if I actually have the
copyrights or if I've moved too many times and they didn't catch
up with me.
Well, what's let's, um, let's use an example. So you said you
have multiple copyrights, but you don't have anything
physical. Do you mean you filed for copyright with the copyright
office and never got a document? Okay, gotcha. Perfect. So what I
would do is I would call the copyright office. And I would
say, Hey, hello, like, I need my certificate. Like, I'd like you
to mail me my certificate. Now. I don't know if this happened or
not, I would have to check with my paralegal. Maybe I'll check
with her and I'll ask her and then I'll let you guys know
tomorrow. Okay. The copyright office and the USPTO changed a
number of things. They went like the USPTO went purely
electronic, meaning they didn't mail stuff out anymore. Right?
So with with COVID, they didn't want to deal with touching
things and all the potential liabilities. And so they went
purely electronic. So I'm not surprised to hear that you don't
have a certificate. I think you can actually if I recall
correctly, I believe you can actually when you file you
automatically get one but I believe you have you may have to
pay like a small fee to have them mail it to you now. Because
of the whole COVID thing, they decided to shut things down. And
so you would think they would do digital then.
That would be so right. I mean, you should have a digital
certificate of some sort. Let me talk to my paralegal. I'll talk
to her and I'll ask her because she she takes care of a lot of
those filings. And, and I'm kind of curious myself as to whether
or not whether or not they went pure electronic, like the USPTO
where you don't get, you know, we used to actually get these
envelopes. Oh, my gosh, like, every Monday, we'd have dozens
of these envelopes. Now you got to open them. And there's like
20 pages of them. And it's an office action. And now you got
to figure out which cases is associated with and then pull
the file from the shelf. And then, and when you've got
thousands of cases, that's a pain. So when they went
electronic, oh, it's so perfect. Like my paralegals just love it.
My administrative assistant loves it. They just go, they
drag it over to the folder, let it go. And it's right there. And
they're like, all done. So but in your situation of you, you
should be able to have something that you can send to
the other party, because you don't want to just send like
your serial number. Right? Because that because you want
them to be able to see it, you know, there's a much bigger
effect. And along the lines of what you were saying there, let
me just kind of talk for a second here about cease and
desist. All right. Because this is really important for
everybody to, to understand because I don't want anybody
getting into trouble here. All right, cease and desist. Here's
a big thing on cease and desist. Somebody infringes your
copyright, or your trademark, or your patent, and you're mad.
Right? Grr, I spent all this time and money working on this.
Like, you can't do that. That's bad. I absolutely agree with
you. It is bad. They can't do it. Absolutely. But here's the
thing. If you send them a notice letter that says, you're
committing patent infringement, I'm going to sue you unless you
stop using this. They now are in this is why you need lawyers.
Like, don't just go doing this on your own. Okay, talk to your
attorneys. Okay. They now have a strong suspicion or expectation
that you're going to sue them. All right. If a party believes
that you are going to sue them, they can file what's called a
declaratory judgment action against you. What that means is
you are going to be the plaintiff, you are going to
assert your rights against them. You just became the defendant.
What they did was they filed a complaint against you with the
court asking the court to render a decision saying that your case
is garbage and should be thrown out. But now you just switch
like you change positions. So now instead of being the
plaintiff in front of the court appealing to the court saying
your honor, such and such took this, here's my proof. You know,
here's my document showing my certification on my
registration. You now are on defense. Now the other party is
going to the judge saying your honor such and such threatened
me this way and they were going to file a lawsuit. So I filed a
DJ action against them because they shouldn't have rights to
that trademark anyway, because it's merely descriptive. It's
just describing a red door. So how in the world did they get a
trademark on a door that's red? Doesn't make sense. They never
should have gotten that. So your honor, we're filing a declaratory
judgment against them. Now you're the defendant in
litigation. That's not fun. You don't want that. So for that
reason, if you believe somebody is infringing, you're going to
call an attorney. Okay, make sure to do diligence is done.
Make sure they don't have a right before you. They don't
have what's called a preemptive right. All right. Go back to the
example I gave you in trademark law. In trademark law, I showed
you that you could have a mom and pop shop using the name
McDonald's for burgers. And all of a sudden this big company
says, man, we should use the name McDonald's. All right,
let's start using that. And they started using that and they get
bigger and they get bigger and they get bigger. And they're
using it all over and they file for federal registration for the
trademark and they get it. Then they go back to the mom and pop
shop. They say, hey, you're committing trademark
infringement. Now imagine if they did that with a cease and
desist letter. If you don't stop using the name McDonald's I'm
going to sue you. What can the mom and pop shop do now? They've
been using it more than one year prior to the other guys. McDonald's
just came into their geographical region. You know,
I'm in like Daytona, Florida, making my burgers McDonald's all
of a sudden
Excuse me, I've been using it for five years.
You know what I can do?
I can sue McDonald's.
McDonald's is in my geographical region.
Under common law, I have rights already for trademarks.
McDonald's is infringing upon my rights.
So now McDonald's who thought,
hey, I'm gonna boss everybody around,
now they're actually a defendant.
That's an actual case that happened, what I just told you.
That really did happen.
Okay, it wasn't in that state,
but there's a little mom and pop shop called McDonald's
and McDonald's tried to go after them.
Didn't work.
So you gotta be careful when you're shooting out
these missiles at other people saying,
you're infringing, I'm gonna take you out.
Make sure you're not infringing upon them
because at the end of the day,
you could end up in court
because you're threatening people, right?
So just be careful.
I'm gonna call on Heather
because Heather has not asked any questions before.
So I'm gonna call on Heather first.
Hey, how are you?
Hi.
Thank you so much.
I appreciate it.
It's really good to be a part of this call today.
Thank you so much.
I have a couple of questions,
but I don't know how much time we have here.
So I may have to ask the second one later
because they're two kind of completely different.
And you can tell me which one is more applicable to today.
And just something that you said today
triggered this actual thought.
And I do have an investigator going on this already.
I had an ex-husband who started an Instagram account on me
and he was using it without my permission.
What do you mean by on you?
It's about you?
Oh, yes.
It was directly pictures of me.
Yeah.
Okay.
So yeah.
And I found out about it through a third party people
that found the site.
Were they pictures that you took or that he took?
That he took.
Okay.
Yeah.
And so I have no idea really exactly what was posted.
I have found a couple of people that have found the site.
So I'm going to be talking with them about that.
One of the things that I had forgotten about actually
was he did not, in doing this,
he had not been careful
with all of these copyright laws as well.
Just a second.
And I saw my picture on different people,
on different advertising.
And I was like, what is going on?
Yeah.
So there's a number of things.
There's a number of things here.
There's copyright issues,
but there's also privacy law issues.
So you want to,
what I would do is I would reach out to an attorney
who deals with privacy law.
That's the first thing I would do.
Okay.
Because there's certain expectation of privacy,
but then, so it depends upon what the form
and what's the pictures taken.
There's also, there's a whole number of things.
Like if he's doing, this is not legal advice,
just to be clear.
I'm not giving you any advice.
Yes, I understand.
You're just pointing me in the right direction.
And I appreciate that.
I will join all of you.
God knows I needed it.
I didn't understand about how to protect myself for years.
Yeah, I would look for an attorney
who understands privacy law.
That's the first thing I would do.
Okay.
That's a tort.
They should be able to look up privacy law for you
and give you some guidance on that.
That's part one.
If any of the images are yours,
then obviously you can look at copyright issues, right?
So if not, if they're of you,
but were they pictures that you took
where you own the rights, in which case,
you know, if somebody, if I have my,
like my camera here, right?
So I've got a Samsung,
I've got a Samsung S20 Ultra, right?
It takes really good pictures.
So if I take as an example, here's a picture.
There you go.
I don't know if you guys will be able to see it on here.
There's a picture, right?
That's a sunset.
Oh, it's gorgeous.
At my house, right?
That's, it's just such a blessing.
I love that picture, right?
That's on my camera, okay?
I took that picture,
which means it's my copyrightable work, okay?
Now, if you took the picture and he takes your phone
and then he goes and, you know,
or whoever takes your phone and then starts distributing
and doing stuff like that,
they could be a copyright issue there
because it's your work on your device, right?
But if they took the picture,
then I'd be looking at privacy law.
I'd be looking into that issue.
Then separately, if somebody's speaking negative things
about me, you know, now you're looking at any spoken lies
and how that's actually affecting you personally.
Like, I'll just say myself, I use myself as an example.
I don't, cause I'm not.
Yeah, I don't want to kind of like, say that I'm giving you
legal advice on this. I'll use myself as the example. Okay. So
somebody takes my phone, takes my pictures, post my pictures in
a certain derogatory way. The way I'm going to look at this is
I'm going to say number one was my fault on my phone. That's
potential copyright issues. Number two, were those pictures,
you know, if they were taken by them, in a privacy set in a
private setting where I had an expectation of privacy, that's
another issue. Separate from that, are they putting me in a
false light that's having a detrimental effect on me
personally? I mean, my job, like meaning like my, you know, my
family members, my kids, my whatever, right? So there's
spoken lies, and then there's written lies. Written lies are
called libel. Spoken lies are called slander. Right? So I'd be
looking for myself, I'd be looking in the area of like
libel, you know, because there's that they've written
lies, or they put them in a false light, all these things,
a good attorney should look at all these things, put them all
together, create a package and set a nasty ground to this
wonderful individual. They cut it out, and pull everything off
now. Now, if these things, if these things were like I was in
public settings, when people just took pictures of me, I
can't do anything about that public setting. You know, it's
just it's just, I can't do anything. But if they're saying
lies about me, and it's affecting me, then I might have
something that's actionable.
Well, actually, it was done while we were married. And it
wasn't derogatory. He was using it to build a following, which
he got it over 100,000. And then he was making money popular.
Yeah, I was. I was at one point,
what I would say for you, honestly, though, is talk to an
attorney, because they need to look at your exact scenario. And
they need to see he took it. Okay, thank you. So you're
saying that it was your site, and he took your site?
No, he created it. He created locked me from viewing it. And
then in the divorce, he took it.
Yeah, attorney, attorney, but when you talk to the attorney,
ask them, do you understand privacy law? Do you understand
liable? They don't understand what those words mean. So thank
you very much. Have a nice day. Okay, that's, that's it. You
need privacy law and you need liable. They need to understand
how those things work. They don't get it. Then, you know,
they're not gonna, those are kind of nuances that are really
help you out a lot. Jenny, I don't think I've answered a
question for you. Does that help you out, Heather?
Yes, thank you so much.
Absolutely. I hope things work out for you.
I'll let you know.
I love your like how energetic and you know, happy you are just
thank you. Absolutely. Jenny, I don't think I've answered a
question for you before.
Okay. Hey, Peter. One late person to another. I'm pretty
slight girl.
Oh my god. Yes. Yes. I saw your email. Yes. So you're posting.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yes. Yes. So I wrote this book as a personal memory memorabilia,
which later I just thought it was going to be for the family.
But I decided to publish it. I self published. Okay. On
the Amazon money. And so I it's getting a little more popular.
I'm starting to have more of a following of women who decided
that they wanted to have a t shirt this year. And I thought
it was gonna be simple. And it really wasn't because I showed
this book to one of the local stores. And then pretty quick,
they had a t shirt out saying they didn't have pre slate girl
exactly, but it was really close. And so they use Lake Life
girl. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So I don't know. And you're what is
yours? Again? priest like girl. Yeah. Okay. I don't think
anybody would ever be able to own rights to late girl in
general. So it really is the rest of it that's going to be
important. I know late girl has been established like in 2004.
And they have really popular. In fact, I'm wearing their
sweatshirt right now. But I wasn't sure if priest like girl
was a generic term because of location or if that was
something that I I'm putting a TM on my t shirt just so that it
stops people because it's intellectual property in that
it's it's aligned with this this book. Yeah. Yeah. So what's your
question? So my question is, I wasn't sure if I had any way to
really talk to them. And and if my trademarks that I have on my
second page of coffee, I mean, my copyright of 2019 have would
have would have protected me in any way.
Let's address the first one of what you said, which is
contacting another party where you think
that you may potentially need rights from them.
Let me just kind of talk about that in general.
Okay.
Okay, because that's actually a really important issue
that's going to pertain to everybody here.
So let's say you do a trademark search, right?
Or you do a patent search.
Patent search is actually a better example
because it's more common that people will license patents
than trademarks.
Trademarks, to license a trademark,
you have to monitor the use.
You have to make sure that the goodwill
is lined up with the way that you do it.
So meaning, like, if you have the trademark for Nike,
somebody, and somebody gets the license
and then they use it for bowling balls,
they're not really related to sneakers.
So that's a problem.
They have to use it on similar goods.
It needs to be maintained, the quality the same,
costs right around the same.
So there's no confusion in the public side.
So let's say you do a search and in your search,
you find somebody owns a trademark
that's very similar to what you want to use.
So you say to yourself, man, you know,
I want to use that trademark, right?
Like I've been using,
let's say I've been using for four years
and now I want to go out there
and file a federal registration.
And so I do a search and I find out, oh my gosh,
that exact name is owned by somebody else.
You got to do an assessment at that point.
You got to determine, and I call, when I call this person,
is that person going to go,
thank you for telling me that you now owe me money.
Not everybody has a good heart.
I'm just making it clear, okay?
Not everybody says, oh, what a welcome opportunity.
Maybe we can work together
and enter into the market together.
Some people are just like, get off my lawn.
Like, take your dog, get off my lawn.
Like, don't even come close to my lawn, right?
There are people like that.
Now there's other people that say,
leave your dog and get off my lawn, all right?
And that unfortunately happens.
It's mean, it's nasty, but that's what can happen
if you don't understand what you're doing
when you call another person to ask them
whether or not you can obtain rights
to what they provide, all right?
So one thing that I would do
before I ever call another party and say,
hey, I noticed that you had these rights
for quite some time and guess what?
I've been using them for the last four years.
Like, I wouldn't do that.
I wouldn't go down that route.
The first thing I would do is I do some research
on the company to see if they're using
that trademark aggressively.
If they are, chances are very low
that they're going to license it to me, all right?
If they're barely using it,
then I might reach out to the other party and say,
hey, I've got some interest in using this trademark
or in using the technology of this patent.
Is it possible to either get permission from you
or to get a license from you?
Because I noticed you have certain IP rights, right?
I wouldn't go out there disclosing,
hey, I've been using it for four years.
Nope, would not say that.
But here's the other thing.
The second you reach out to the other party,
they now know your name.
They're now going to do research on you.
So chances are very high they're going to find out
what you're doing because you called them, right?
So the second that you call them,
it's not like a random, hi,
your car warranty is about to expire.
It's not one of those.
It's like, this is a call you're going to listen to.
And so because of that, they're going to do research on you.
And if they do research on you,
they may actually, they might sue you.
So you need to do an assessment internally and say, okay,
how long have I been using this?
Oh, I've only been using it for a few months.
Okay, well, if they get mad at me,
damages are practically non-existent.
Chances are very low that they're going to hire a lawyer
to come after me
because damages are practically non-existent.
There's no money associated with this.
So for that reason, I'm okay with calling them.
But you need to do an analysis
before you call another party and say to them,
hey, I'm looking to license what you have.
You need to figure out things
before you make that phone call.
Does that make sense, Jenny?
It does.
I think what, in the way it was,
they saw what I had and they decided to use that,
that kind of thing.
So it wasn't, I've never seen it at the Lake before
in that store that, you know,
I haven't seen every t-shirt they've made either.
So could have been there.
What I would say is if you have a name
that's kind of similar to another name
that somebody else is using
and there's a little concern
towards trademark infringement, maybe,
you know, you're like, oh, they're kind of close.
I wonder if there's an issue here.
The beauty of it is if you're both kind of like,
Um, I think I will talk to this a little bit.
If you're both kind of like cordial, like amicable and you're like, oh,
I like the business you're doing. I'll support your business. You support mine.
You know, we both can coexist. That's great. Um, that's beautiful.
Make sure you get a written agreement. All right.
Why did I say that?
I have seen friends go at the throats of other friends when money comes
involved. All right.
I had a group of three individuals come into my office and the Boston office
said, we wanted to start a company.
One of them was an inventor on patents,
which we're going to talk about tomorrow. Uh, and he was the brainiac.
The other two was really good at marketing.
And then the other one was really good at infrastructure and, um, and say,
and sales and not sales and, um, um, manufacturing and stuff like that.
So they made a good team.
The inventor says, I want to keep the patents in my name, right?
I red flagged it immediately. I said, guys,
the one guy out of you three, your court, you're creating a corporation.
You're having one guy of you three that owns all
right to earn an interest to everything that the entire company depends upon.
Bad idea, horrible idea. They're like, no,
like we went to school together. Like, you know, we, we are best friends.
Like, you know, I was like, I don't care. I don't care. You're best friends.
She's like, I know their kids and their wives. And you know,
we went to a barbecue. We went tuna fishing. I don't care that it
doesn't there, there are no violence playing here for you.
Because at the end of the day, when that company starts making 30 million,
60 million, 70 million, that inventor is going to say, hold it.
The entire background of this entire corporation came from my brain.
Hold on a second. I should be paid more.
And that's exactly what happened.
That one individual Mark made a phone call to the other two and
said, I'm leaving the value associated with my IP is so
high and I own the patents.
So I'm going to start another corporation with my IP and
you guys can't use it anymore. Shut them down.
So in your situation, Jenny, and I'm using this example for everybody,
because some of you are just starting out,
but some of you are growing like fast and God permitting,
you'll continue to grow very fast. You know? I mean,
I want you all to be highly successful.
That's why I'm teaching you these things.
So if you end up in a situation where another party is using
a name and you're going to use a name and the party says,
no, no, you're okay. You can use a name.
You want to get a signed document. All right.
Which is called a covenant not to sue. That's what it's called.
It's called a covenant not to sue. Okay.
It's essentially like a coexistence agreement,
but the other party is not going to sue you. That is very important.
That one document can save you an entire corporation. All right.
So it was a really good opportunity to share that with you guys.
So, yeah. So if they're okay with it and you're okay with it, you're like,
oh, that's awesome. And there's another reason for it.
It's not that they're just going to become some greedy idiots.
What if they sell the company and somebody else buys the company?
It's not the same nice people that you met.
Now it's some other like young tycoon who came out of New York city,
who's overly aggressive and says, why are you using that name? And you're like,
oh, Alice and I had a really good agreement. He's like, I don't care.
Like that's a violation of my trademark.
And so now, or it's a violation of my copyright or whatever it is. Right.
So amicable agreements are great,
but get some kind of thing in writing to make sure they're not going to sue you.
That's really important. Okay. Please. It's because I don't,
I don't want you in a situation where you're calling me trying to get out of
chaos, you know, and then it becomes difficult.
Now there is an area of law called latches. I'm going to,
I'm going to answer like maybe one or two questions and then we'll be done until
tomorrow. So, um, there's a thing called latches. All right.
Well, latches is,
is if infringement has happened for like over five years going towards like that
seven year mark, then,
and the other party hasn't sued you, then the government says, well, hold it.
If it's been more than seven years that you've been doing this thing and they've
known about it, that's essentially the equivalent of permission.
It's like, you've known about it. We've engaged.
we've worked together and you haven't sued me yet now all of a sudden eight years into doing this
so if they sell the company is the covenant not to sue still in hold it
what does it say where's the chat my chat moved very fast right there that was a really good
question and i want to see the question why can't i see the chat so if they sell the company
is the covenant not to sue still enforceable yeah that's a great question so this is why
you want the covenant not to sue attached to the company not to an individual so if
if the company has the the asset and they sell the company to another
then when they buy the company they're buying the company
with all of the baggage they can't just all of a sudden say nah we're not going to obey any of the
agreements like there's an agreement there with the company so that's something that it should
extend are there situations where that might not happen yeah it's possible but most of the times
it will extend all right let me does that help the okay what i just walked through so remember
covenant not to sue i've also taught you about covenants not to compete and you already know
about non-disclosure agreements okay use them effectively they're very powerful all right let
me take one more question and then we'll close tomorrow we will go into more detail licia all
right we're gonna go with you go ahead go for it there we go um i'll be kind of quick um so i do a
lot of powerpoint presentations webinars speaking create programs like for organizations that's what
i'm going to be doing and so i'm assuming all that will go under copyright correct yeah but then any
of the logos that are on your material that could be trademarked any of the name you know if you
have like your if any of the materials that you're providing to others have have your entity name
that might be trademarked as well but predominantly copy like material that i'm going to give to
another party like write-ups powerpoints flow charts those are usually all going to fall under
copyright law so what about say i do a presentation i speak i'm in front of everybody i do a speaking
engagement and somebody records it and now they're putting it online do i have copyright
infringement that's copyright infringement so if i if that speech it's do i need to
copyright that particular speech like all right let me this is gonna this will be the last thing
i talk about today and then tomorrow obviously we'll go into more stuff okay what you just raised
is something really important here all right how many people here get paid for speaking engagements
anybody here there you go okay when you when you sign the agreement for the speaking agree
engagement you notice there's there's usually an agreement that you have to fill out or if you do
like a podcast they usually have you e-sign and click a form if it's if it's a professional podcast
they're usually going to have some kind of e-signing and some kind of form all right that's
just usually what they do the reason why is because they want to be able to do what they want
with the audio or with the video okay now if you're if you're working on somebody else's platform and
you're speaking technically it's their platform it's their material so if you got hired if i get
hired to go to 100x at the conference and i'm doing a presentation to everybody on trademark law
i'm saying hey guys i love absolutely love that you're doing your corporate formation and you
took advantage of the llc opportunity um here's the thing before you file in your llc is let's
make sure that you don't run into any potential issues with trademark infringement so let me teach
you a little bit about trademark search the different type of trademark searches blah blah
where am i i'm on their stage i was hired to be on their stage i was paid to be on their stage
so arguably what i'm saying belongs to them but you have to figure this out with the party
most people don't think about this stuff you will going forward okay you need to figure out
for the forum in which you're speaking who owns all right title and interest to the audio and to
the video you got to figure that out before you speak now as you come up and up and up as a speaker
You're not going to be in a situation where you're just kind of trying to figure that out, you're going to tell them what's going to happen.
You're going to say to them, hey, look, my fee for speaking is $10,000 for the hour.
All right. And on top of that, I own any of the audio and video rights.
I'm willing to give you a non-exclusive license to keep it as part of your package, like your video recording of the entire conference.
But you have no right to split out my portion and sell that for like $300 on the side.
You have no right to do that. That's my right.
You have to lay out those terms beforehand.
Because what most people do is they're so excited about the opportunity to speak that they go speak.
And then all of a sudden they find out, oops, I don't own anything.
Now what they're doing is they're asking the person whose platform they spoke on, can I get rights to the stuff that I just said?
And just to be clear, I've been there. I've done that. I still do that.
I've been on podcasts where I'm like, man, that was good.
Like, that was really good. I need a copy of that.
Right. Like, like God was moving, like things were changing.
People's lives are being transformed.
Whatever the case is, like business people are coming to, they're seeing the light and their lives are being transformed.
I need a copy of that.
I just had that happen with Josh, like Josh from he's with 100X now.
I did a podcast with him, was powerful.
So what did Ray and I do? Reached out to him and said, Josh, I know you own everything.
I need a copy of that, brother. Like, are you OK with that?
And he said, yeah, sure, Pete. No problem. Because he knows me. Right.
But that's stuff that you, Alicia, you got to think about that.
You got to think. All right. Who owns this forum? Who's recording this?
What if the audience makes a recording beforehand? Here's the thing.
Very hard to enforce. Very hard to enforce. All right.
I can't tell you how many conferences I've been at that I've recorded.
Was I supposed to do that? Nope. Did it anyway.
You know, so that's why sometimes when you have certain conferences, it tells you up front, no recording allowed.
You'll see that it'll actually be in the ticket that you purchase.
So as some of you actually start creating like big ticket conventions, conferences,
you may want to actually have that as a requirement, as a checkbox for people that are going to your event on your funnel,
have a checkbox where they can't check out until they check that box.
And the box says. I understand that I'll write title and interest to everything that's spoken here at this conference is owned by ABC Corporation.
I have no right to to audio record or video record any of the content.
Any such actions are strictly prohibitive and in violation of copyright law.
And will be enforced, period, like something like that. Now, the person goes, oh, these guys know what they're doing.
These guys get it. They're going to be taking that material and making clips and selling them on the side.
They get it. Does that help? Yes. Yeah. So just look at your agreements before you engage.
Very important. All right. All right. I'm going to close up today. We've got Connie, Axel, Krishna, Janine.
So tomorrow we're going to start out with you four. OK, we still have two more days together.
All right. So we'll jump into your questions then. Be sure to go live in the Facebook group.
I love how you're doing that. Again, it's great feedback for me. It's also helping other people.
The other part, it just makes great clips, quite frankly, like some of your clips are like really good.
And so I use that to actually train other people. I say, look, this is some of the stuff that we teach on.
And then the people go, oh, wow, there's a normal person who's applying it into their own life.
And it makes their life a lot easier. Larissa, I'm not taking any more questions. So what was your point?
You had your hand up. OK, you're good.
All right. So we'll we'll touch base after. I'm going to jump off. Larissa is going to close off.
I hope this is helping all of you. I'm like, I know I'm pouring a lot of stuff into you, but I'm trying to help you guys every scenario that you come into.
So bless all of you. I'm going to jump off. I'll let Larissa finish off and you guys have a great evening.
All right. Thanks, Peter. You're so welcome. Absolutely. Thank you. You're welcome.
Thank you so much.