What's going on, what's going on?
I see a good number of faces I recognize, that's awesome.
Some new faces, awesome, this is great.
This is awesome.
Let's see, Larissa, you got me pinned, awesome, Larissa, you're awesome.
I think that's five times I said awesome within literally 30 seconds.
I think that's a record for me.
So I've been looking forward to this literally for probably 30 days straight.
I love doing this.
This is my heart's into this.
I'd love to see you guys succeed and what you guys are going to learn here is probably
going to blow your mind.
Now I just want to put a precaution out here before we do anything.
First of all, I want to honor you in that you registered because a lot of people are
trying to obtain this knowledge, but they don't know how to actually obtain it.
You actually somehow found out about this, either through somebody telling you about
it or Facebook ad or whatever it is.
So you've learned about it.
Congratulations.
That's awesome.
Now I want to give you a warning, all right?
You're going to learn material that probably by day two, I'm going to say this gently,
many of you are going to start panicking.
Okay, now what do I mean by that?
You're going to learn that you've been doing things wrong.
You're going to learn that there's certain legal problems that you've been lining yourself
up with, and you're going to learn that there's certain unfortunate situations that could
have manifested.
That's okay.
I want you to be patient with yourself, okay?
You didn't know this up until now, all right?
This is new knowledge.
When you obtain new knowledge, that's something that should empower you, something that should
be a new tool that you can utilize so that you become more successful, so that you advance
in life, so your business is blessed, your colleagues are blessed.
Don't look at the information, then all of a sudden go, oh my gosh, I've been using the
Circle R wrong, I've been using TMs wrong, I've been using copyright notice wrong, and
I need to do five trademark searches and 10 trademark applications and this.
Don't do that.
It's information that you can utilize and compartmentalize and use it piece by piece.
I like to give that warning because I found when I didn't give that warning two challenges
ago, people freaked out.
Literally they were just trying to figure out what do I do with ... Now all of a sudden
I realize that there's seven IP issues that I was doing wrong.
Which one do I do first?
How do I fix it?
You'll know.
By the time we're done with the challenge, things will be nice and organized.
There'll be certain things that you probably still have to do afterwards, but be patient
with yourself, please.
Don't panic, you'll be fine.
Let me also give you a moment just to talk about VIP.
I'm not trying to make you buy VIP, I just know that about 60 to 70% of the people end
up going there.
I want you to know about it real quickly, so if you do choose to go there, it's available
because we start 15 minutes after this challenge.
We go right into it with your questions, with some hot seats.
You'll be able to email me questions directly that I review and then in the VIP, I select
specific ones to go through.
A lot of the subject matter, I customize based on those emails, but separate from that, we
do a live trademark application filing.
That in and of itself is priceless, meaning you'll learn what are international classifications?
How do you figure out where your recitation of goods and services falls?
What's a specimen?
How do you select the specific classes that you need to file in?
Every single part of it, I go step by step on how to file an application.
Ray just dropped the link.
What I would suggest is if you're interested, even vaguely interested, jump in now because
then we're going to go right in there.
What happens a lot of times is people try to figure out where the link is at the end.
It's going to be a lot easier for you to do it now and then just go right in later.
Now, if you don't want to go on VIP, that's fine.
Don't feel like you need to.
I'm just letting you know if you're interested in any way, shape, or form, just by learning
how to do a trademark application in and of itself will save you tons of money.
With that, let me say one more thing and then we're going to jump in.
What you're going to be learning here, these are tools that should make it so that you
spend less time and money on attorneys.
I'm not trying to get rid of attorneys.
Just to be clear, you didn't sign up for this so that you never talked to an attorney again.
I mean, some of us would like to never talk to an attorney again, but that's not what this
challenge is about, OK? The challenge is here to give you the tools to minimize how much you
need to bring to them. So think of it this way. When you go to a mechanic and you say, hey,
can you fix my car? Everything that's wrong with my car, can you fix it? I mean, how many of you
realize you're going to spend more money on the fixing of the car than probably the value of the
car, right? It's the same thing with lawyers. If you go to an attorney and you say, here's my
scenario, please figure it out, unfortunately, you'll get a lot of situations where they're
answering all sorts of things that really aren't necessary because they're just trying to do a
good job, and they're really not in tune with what your business goals are or understanding
all the different aspects of your business. So they can tell you, file a provisional patent
application instead of a utility, and that'll save you $6,000. Or why don't you use common law
instead of doing a federal filing, and that will give you no cost. There's different ways to do it.
So when we go through all this training, what you're going to find is you're going to know what
you need to put together to bring to your attorney. That should bring down your costs.
If you have everything together and your cost does not change, something's wrong,
all right? As an example, for a trademark application, you need a specimen, recitation
of goods and services, you need the name of the corporation, the address, state of incorporation,
you're going to learn all this tomorrow, okay? You need all this, a specimen, you need your data
first use, all these things. If you have the whole package together, when you give it to your
attorney, your attorney doesn't have to explain things to you. It doesn't have to say this is
wrong, get another thing. So you cut down the amount of time that they're spending. By decreasing
the amount of time, guess what happens? You spend less money. See? So I'm trying to give you the
tools to make you more efficient and to make sure that you don't get in trouble legally,
and separately to make sure people don't steal your stuff, all right? Now, let me give you a
little background about me. I see a few emails here that are going on with VIP. I'm going to,
Ray, I'm going to leave that for you, okay? So let me tell you a little bit about myself,
all right? So my background is electrical engineering. I'm a patent attorney, trademark
attorney, copyright law attorney, trade secret attorney. I'm a litigator. Jeez. I'm an adjunct
professor at UNH School of Law. Father and husband, okay? So I love what I do. Like, I really
love what I do. I've been ranked as Laureate of the Year, Best of the Best, Woodward White, Super Lawyer,
all that stuff. I give God thanks and praise for that. I don't know how that happened. Somehow I
got on something and somebody liked me. So I'm just grateful for that. So what does all that mean?
That means my billing rate is $600 an hour, okay? Now, you're not paying that.
So take advantage of that, please. Like, if you're a VIP, email your questions.
If you have certain things that you're not really quite getting during this challenge,
we're together five days, one hour a day, all right? We try to start on time and end on time,
although we tend to go over, don't we, Larissa? Or let me correct. I tend to go over a lot, right?
Just to kind of answer people's questions. But just understand that you have that advantage.
You spend $95 for five hours of training, which essentially is like $3,000 at least in cost. So
take advantage of it. Ask your questions. Think of your business and figure out how it applies
to your business. And then you can type in, hey, what about this? What about that? Like, just try
to take advantage of it if you can. It's going to make your life a lot easier. All right. And
a little bit more about my background. I chair the IP department in a law firm in Massachusetts
and New Hampshire. We've been ranked the number one IP firm eight years in a row. I don't know
how that happened either. I'm not doing any of this stuff. So as we go through this, I'm going
to be going at a steady pace. Today we're going to be covering trademarks, and tomorrow we're
going to cover trademarks, okay? So today is part one of trademarks. Tomorrow is part two of
trademarks. There are replays available. I strongly suggest that you come live. Why? Because then you
can type things, interact with other people, and say, hey, I don't really
quite understand that. And then Larissa or Ray, they'll ping me and say, can you explain that
again? One more time. You will know the difference between trademarks and copyrights when we end.
Okay. You will understand that. You also understand how patents work, how you can stop
others from making, using, selling, or importing. You're going to learn that as well. There's a lot
of content. Because there's a lot of content, I give you replays. Okay. Now, if you're in the
challenge, the replays are available for 30 days. If you are in VIP, the replays are available for
90 days. I give you three months of replays. Okay. Now, some people ask, well, why don't you just
live stream into Facebook? Let me explain that to you. I don't know how many of you are nerds like
myself, but I actually read the terms and agreement for Facebook for anything that's actually placed
on Facebook. Okay. Yeah. Dee gets it. Do you see Dee? Dee's like, oh, my gosh, I gave away my child.
Like, literally, Facebook takes possession of anything you place on their platform.
So, I don't live stream into Facebook, because they could legally get this.
They could legally take my videos, turn them into a package, and sell them.
All right. That's why I don't live stream into Facebook. What I do instead was I record it. Of
course, you know you're an attorney. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like the only one that actually reads the
agreements when they hand them out, you know. So, my wife gets a little frustrated with that. But
it works. So, that's the reason why I don't live stream into Facebook. All right. So, that's why
the videos take a little more time to be available for you. Okay. Now, everybody should have received
by now two things. All right. First of all, you should have received the email that gives you to
dial in for this. Obviously, you're here. So, I'm assuming that works. I heard Larissa talk about
the Facebook group. Make sure you're in there. I am going to be throwing bonuses at you like,
like, I don't know what. You're just going to keep seeing stuff thrown at you.
Why? I want to, as I'm learning who you are and what you need, I know what's going to help you.
So, if you're musicians or you're doing videos and you're thinking, man, I need free background
music, I'm going to be dropping links. I'm going to be telling you, look, you know, you're in Canada
and you need to do a trademark search. I'm going to drop the Canadian trademark office website for
you specifically for searches so you can do your own searches. Like, my job to me is to help you as
much as I can for these five days that I'm with you. That's my heart. That's what I want to do,
help you as best as I can. And if I can succeed in that, awesome. Then your only obligation is to do
a, at the end, we're going to hand out, what do we call them? Their, those, those forms,
feedback forms. Yeah. So, at the end, you'll get a feedback form. Please fill that out. Most people
forget. If you can remember, that's great. That's the only time I'm going to ask you. So,
all right. Now, there's a second thing that you should have received. I'm going to show you on the
screen. Let me pull it up for you. And the reason why I posted this, there's actually a few reasons
why I posted this, but this document here should make your life a lot easier. Okay. So, everybody's
seen this, this document here? Okay. You should have a copy of this. It's also in the Facebook
group. Okay. So, what I would do, let me see, can I make this larger? I can. There we go. Is that,
that should be easier for you to read, right? Okay, good. All right. So, the way this thing works
is, on the bottom portion here, these are all different creative works down here. You've got
books. You've got movies. You've got anything from like a machine that's over here. You've got your
words, your logos over there. Whatever it is that you've created, chances are very high, about 95%
of those things are on this list. So, you should be able to find that thing and then just go straight
up. And it tells you, oh, trademarks. Need to look at that for trademarks. It's a painting. Oh,
copyrights. Now, there's certain things that fall into more than one category.
As an example, software. Software, what you'll find is that the software itself can fall into
more than one category. So, for software, you've got computer code. You'll learn this on Wednesday.
We'll go into this.
For software, you've got the computer code itself, that's protectable by copyright law.
But then you've got the functionality of the software, which is protectable by patents.
So this is yours, right? This document right here, I'm handing this to you.
But what I want you to realize is what I'm giving you is protected by my copyrights.
Now, I'm a litigator. OK, so I'm very good at enforcing legal rights.
So that's a gentle way of saying don't take my stuff and give it to other people.
It's a bad idea. OK, this is for you. You purchased it. I want to bless you with it.
I hope you do well with it. But I should not see any of my work getting placed on Facebook or Twitter or like actually can't be on Twitter or TikTok or anything.
This is for you. You do not have rights to make copies or to distribute. OK, so I've covered that.
You know that. Now, finally, we're going to walk into a scenario.
Is everybody with me so far? Can you drop the link for the PDF?
Yeah, it's actually in the Facebook group, but I can most certainly I'm very happy to drop that for you as well.
Here it is. Right. Click. Copy. So in the Facebook group, everybody, what you will find.
There you go. That's the that's the scenario. And then the handout is right.
Here. Right, click, copy and paste.
This one here, this is the handout. I'm just going to write the word handout next to it.
There you go. That's the handout. You can click on that, too. OK, well, you'll find is the majority of the things that I'm sharing with you.
I'll actually post in that Facebook group. That's why Larissa said, make sure you become a member of the Facebook group.
OK, I'm taking a lot of time with the administrative stuff now because once we get going, we're going to go.
So to make sure everybody is in the right place and everybody is ready to excel.
So. You have the you have the bonus handout, that's all set.
I'm going to show you now a scenario. It's a very basic scenario.
After I show you the scenario, some of you are going to wonder what in the world is this guy talking about now?
Today's day one. You haven't started yet. You haven't learned trademarks, copyrights, patents or trade secrets.
By Friday, you will understand every single area of intellectual property law associated with this scenario.
OK, you're going to answer the questions on that day.
So what I'm going to do right now is I'm going to share with you the scenario.
Here we go. Let me share my screen. And there it is.
Share. OK, here's the scenario. It's a very basic scenario.
I didn't make it too difficult on the technology. So I'm just going to walk through each of these one by one.
And I want you to think to yourself, as a matter of fact, let's have some fun.
You type in the chat what areas of intellectual property law you believe pertains to each line as as I'm reading them.
OK, and what that means is you type in if you think it's something protectable by trademark.
Copyright, patent or trade secret, just type it in and nobody is going to make fun of anybody.
We're all learning together. I'm assuming everybody is on day one because today is day one.
So nobody is going to be left behind. OK, so here's a scenario.
You own a small company called Burger Town. Right. That's the first part.
Type in the chat what area of intellectual property law you think.
Look at that. Look at this. My gosh, people, that's really good.
That's really good. That lets me know I can go deeper with you guys. That's good.
OK, number two, you have a Web site advertising the company.
Providing a menu and describing ingredients, preparation techniques and health information regarding each item on the menu.
What area of IP? OK, OK. Yeah, yeah.
All right. Yeah. OK. All right. Next one.
I skipped number two. It says your number one selling burger is the belt buster.
What area of. Look at this. Suzanne's actually typing down what is covered by copyright.
Go, Suzanne. That's so awesome. Number two. Yep. Very good. Trademarks.
OK, let's go to number four. Now it gets a little more difficult.
You have a 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.
The burgers 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.
I made this up by the way,
I should have actually filed something on this.
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,
meaning burned, dropped, free replacements were provided
or claimed as a working benefit by a disgruntled employee.
That was me when I worked in restaurants.
Okay, so you've got,
look at that pressure sensitive device pad.
You got trade secrets, you've got trademarks.
Yeah, everybody's writing all sorts of stuff on that.
Okay, okay, trade secrets.
All right, and the last one finally,
you also sell a new drink called HungerAid
that everyone loves and no one knows how to replicate.
What area of IP for that?
That's number five.
Okay, all right.
Well, now I have a good idea of where you guys are.
Look at that.
That's good, that's good.
Okay, all right.
I have a really good idea of where you guys are.
So with that, we're gonna start jumping
into the trademark law.
Now that scenario,
some of you were looking at that and thinking,
well, how's there a copyright issue there?
How's there a trademark or trade secret issue?
You're gonna learn all this, okay?
So we're gonna go piece by piece,
but for now, you don't need any of that.
We're kind of done.
The Facebook group has all of those documents posted already
and we dropped the links for you.
So let's jump into trademark law, okay?
All right, now, trademarks.
Trademarks, they're basically the way they work
is they're an identification as to a source of goods,
regardless of whether or not you know
who that source of goods is.
Now, what do I mean by that?
If you think of, here's a really,
an example I've used multiple times,
the product DayQuil, okay?
Most people have no clue who makes DayQuil.
Does anybody actually know who makes it?
All right, we have a few people who know.
Yeah, I didn't know.
And most of the people I asked,
I'd say about 70% of them are not really sure who makes it.
It's actually created by Vicks, right?
But nobody cares.
Like, what I care about when I hear the name DayQuil
is I can take it during the day.
It's not too expensive.
I can get it over the counter.
Like, I can get it.
I don't have to actually
get some kind of prescription for it.
It's readily available
and I get some kind of results, right?
And I don't fall asleep.
Those characteristics are associated with that name.
So if you spend money on that name DayQuil
and somebody else says,
you know what, I'm just gonna take that name also
and I'm gonna create a product called DayQuil,
and they put it on the shelf, what happens?
Everybody who wants those characteristics
that you have provided for your products
or your services or your business
now get guided over to that other party.
Why?
Because everybody fell in love with that DayQuil,
that product, right?
So now they're looking for it
and somebody else grabs that name
that's called trademark infringement, okay?
But just keep in mind,
it's not so important that people understand
who the source of goods is.
It's more important that they understand
the features of the product or the service.
So you'll understand why that's important pretty shortly,
but just keep that in mind
because you may think to yourself,
well, my name's Anders, nobody knows me,
like how many people actually know
everything about my business?
So I create some kind of name and I'm thinking,
well, I'm guiding people to this product
so they'll purchase the product,
but nobody knows me, nobody knows my name.
That doesn't matter.
That part does, it's not as important, okay?
So don't get so stuck on the fact of
how do I choose a name that has my name in it?
I'm gonna tell you that
if you file a trademark application for your name,
most of the time it's gonna get rejected
because the United States Patent and Trademark Office
does not allow you to register your name
unless you're famous, okay?
Now, I may be infamous, but I'm not famous, all right?
So for that reason,
there's a difference between the meanings,
if you're not sure, you have to look that one up.
So for that reason,
I can't take my name and just file it,
Peter Nieves with the United States Patent
and Trademark Office and get a registration.
When it comes to trademarks.
I know a number of you are starting your own company.
So you're thinking, well, I want to use my name
as the name of the company.
And then you're thinking, well,
I want to file a trademark application
for the name of the company.
You may run into a problem.
I just want to kind of let you know that upfront
before you're investing money in your LLCs
and all your other corporations that use your actual name.
Now that doesn't mean that you can't use a name.
It just means that you may not be able
to get a federal registration.
Why do you care?
If you get a federal registration for your trademark,
you get to stop anybody from using any name
that is similar and would result
in what's called a likelihood of confusion.
We're going to go over the elements
of a likelihood of confusion test.
I'm going to give you this stuff, okay?
So there's like nine to 12 factors.
I'm going to actually give you a printout
and post it in the Facebook group too, okay?
We're going to cover that shortly.
But the main thing,
the main reason why I'm going over this first
is a number of you have emailed me and done lives
talking about how you're starting new companies.
I just want you to think,
if you're starting a new company with your name in it,
you may not be able to get that federal registration.
I just want you to know that right up front, okay?
So that's a business decision
you're going to have to make internally, all right?
And what the intent of the trademark is,
is to protect your goodwill.
What's goodwill?
That's all the money you're spending on marketing,
on advertising, on protecting your name,
on getting the public to know who you are
or to know your products or your services.
That's called goodwill.
You can spend tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands
to millions of dollars protecting your name, all right?
So trademarks make it so that
other people can't use that.
That's not the same as copyrights.
We'll talk about copyrights shortly,
but trademarks protect your name or a logo.
Now I'm going to share something with you
just so you could see.
There's on your form actually listed different things
that are protectable by trademarks, right?
You should see it in that list, okay?
But I'm going to share my screen with you again,
just very quickly and kind of go large on this here.
These are examples of different types
of classes of trademarks.
Trademarks can be words, they can be slow.
So as a word, like Nike, Nike is a word, right?
Now there's also just do it.
That's a slogan.
It's not just a word, that's a slogan.
That's protectable too.
But then you can also protect designs like the Swoosh,
the Nike Swoosh, that's protectable, okay?
You can also protect certain things
that you probably have never heard of.
You can actually protect the color.
Now let me give you some examples of colors.
If I told you a mailing service that uses the color brown,
somebody type in the chat what company that is.
UPS.
UPS owns the color brown.
Now I want you to think about this.
Think about the power.
Think about the sheer power in owning a color in your class.
You may be a coach.
What if for all your coaching,
all your, let's say like your flow charts or your software
or what are your ads or whatever it is,
you always use a certain color
and you're getting to be known for that color.
You could actually file a trademark application
for that color.
I guarantee you nobody else is doing it.
I filed a trademark application for the color blue
for Macintosh and we got it.
It's one of a few trademarks in the world for colors.
So now no other company in the world
can use the color blue for an audio receiver
or they infringe upon a trademark.
That's powerful.
That's very powerful.
So just think about that.
The other thing is like smells, perfumes.
Their smells are protectable by trademarks, okay?
You've also got like packaging shapes
and there's other things that you can protect.
So any questions on that so far?
Like what's protectable by trademarks?
If you do, type it in the chat
so I can take a look at it as we're moving along, okay?
Just put it in there.
Now, what I wanna show you here,
I wanna show you one of the biggest mistakes
that entrepreneurs make, okay?
Difference color blues are just one shade.
That's a great question, D.
All right.
It's the specific color.
So if somebody gets like powder blue versus Navy blue,
it's that specific.
specific shade. Okay, so they can't just own any blue, it's that specific shade. Very powerful.
Viola asked a really good question as well. Can I use a fictitious name instead of my name? Yeah, absolutely. And the beauty of that is it's actually not your real name so then when somebody tries to say, you can't get a federal registration
you can say, I don't think so, I fooled you, that's not my real name, ha, give me my registration. So, you know, that's a possibility. Now, you can actually obtain a federal registration for a name on a book, right, for a trademark if, now there's a big if, if it's a series.
Okay, so some of you here are authors. I've seen your lives like and some of you have sent me some messages and said I'm an author, I got this book I want to protect everything that I can on it.
And so you're thinking, you know, there's copyrights for the text, there's, you know, there's a logo on there I want to protect that potentially by trademarks, but then I've got a name I got a title.
I want to file a trademark for that. If it's the only book that you have with that name you cannot file trademark application for that.
There needs to be a series.
Think like Harry Potter.
Think like you know Tale of Two Cities or you know like things like that there needs to be a series for you to get that that registration. Otherwise it will get rejected.
You can try. I'm just telling you that how many makes a series, great. Viola, are you going to be the person with all the excellent questions because like every one of your questions are perfect.
I would say three.
I would say if you're going with three or more.
It's a good chance you're going to get your registration to go through. If you're at two, you can get some pushback, you know, but usually when I see three.
That's a sweet spot, you know, from there and on, you're going to do well. Okay, now I want to show you something here, something that people, a place that people make mistakes, all the time, so I really want to share this with you.
Before we go any further.
Actually, let me ask you a question before we before I show you this.
How many people here are forming a company, like right now, you're in the process of forming a company. Alright, so we have a few people. Okay. All right.
Okay, let me show you something.
Share my screen. This right here.
This is the Secretary of State landing site. Now this is for New Hampshire, every single state has one.
Every single state I don't care where you are. It may not be listed as under the Secretary of State may be listed as under something else, but they all have this place, and they all have this little spot here that says, search for the name of a business.
Okay, so you think to yourself, I'm going to start a company, and my company is going to be called, let's say,
Night Rocks, right, so N-I-T-E-R-O-C-K-S, let's say that's it, Night Rocks, right.
So you go in and you type the name, Night Rocks, and you search. And when you search, if somebody has Night Rocks, that's going to be really weird.
But no data found, there it goes. So it tells you that there are no registrations for that. So this is what most people do.
They find the website for looking at for business names, and what they do immediately is they type in the name, and they look for it, and they say, oh, that's clear.
And so they start using it. They go and they file for registration.
Don't do that.
The site I just showed you is only showing you all of the corporate names that have been registered with the state. That is not a trademark registry.
They are not the same.
If you're starting a company, do not rely upon the corporate name filing in the Secretary of State to tell you whether or not you can use that name.
They are not the same.
I've seen multiple parties get sued or get cease and desist letters after they hire a corporate law attorney to file for an LLC.
And the corporate law attorney goes in there, does a search. Oh, it's clear. Great. They file the application for an LLC. Great. We're in perfect position.
Two years later, they get sued for trademark infringement. And they say, I don't understand. I hired a lawyer to see if the name was clear.
And the corporate lawyer says, it is clear. I did a search.
Because a corporate lawyer doesn't handle intellectual property law.
Make sure that the lawyers that you hire
understand the areas of law that pertain to your scenarios.
You should not be talking to a IP lawyer about something
that has to do with bankruptcy.
You shouldn't be talking to a corporate lawyer
if you're trying to figure out something
that has to do with wills and probate and estates.
It's not the same.
And it's the same thing with intellectual property law.
You got to be careful.
Don't hire a corporate law attorney
to tell you whether or not your name is safe to use.
So if you did that search in there
and you saw that your name was clear and you filed an LLC,
you need to do a different kind of search.
Now, in VIP, we're going to be doing searches live
and digging in detail.
And here, I'm going to actually show you
how you can do some top-level searching.
But I want to make that clear.
Because I've seen too many people get into trouble,
get sued, get cease and desist letters.
And what happens is you then have
to change your websites, your funnels, your stencil,
your marketing material, your business cards, your domain
names, everything.
Think of all the money you've spent towards marketing,
now doing it all over and starting over.
Don't do that.
So hopefully, you don't run into that scenario
now that I've shared that with you.
Instead, if you are going to do a search,
there are multiple types of trademark searches
that you can do.
So I'm going to take a second here
and kind of give you a preview.
Ray, do we have that wheel thing ready, by the way?
Because I want to take a break.
All right, cool.
All right, so this is what I'm going to do.
I know we're getting into the thick of things,
but I want to kind of keep it light on day one.
I don't want you guys to dig in so deep
that you drown on day one.
So I want to give away the first prize, all right?
So this is a $50 Amazon gift card
that we're giving away right now.
Now, all of you who registered in the last hour,
I don't know if we got them, Ray, or not, but we did our best.
We got a couple of them.
OK, cool.
Ray's amazing.
So yeah, so we're going to share.
We'll share the wheel.
All right, let me share my screen here.
Let's see if, oh, there it goes.
All right, so go ahead and spin that.
And let's see who wins the first prize today.
We have to be here live to win.
Yeah, you do.
Chris Merriman.
Chris Merriman, are you here?
Is Chris here?
No.
No?
Oh, let's spin again.
All right, spin it again.
Suzy Coulters.
I know, Suzy.
She is not present.
Oh, man, the odds are getting better and better.
All right, do it again.
Do it again.
Kim says she's here.
Yeah.
It's going to break down if people aren't here.
Jim Holmes.
Is Jim here?
Nope.
So important to say that.
I want my name in it now.
The chances are getting better.
If somebody is signed in as an iPad,
can you rename yourself so we know at least your name?
Nathan, Nathan's here.
Nathan, congrats, Nathan.
That's awesome.
So Nathan, I'm going to email that to you later tonight,
OK?
So you have that.
And you can use it on whatever you want, obviously.
So all right, so now what I want to do
is take a few minutes and show you guys the United States
Patent and Trademark Office website, OK?
I'm going to show you it at a top level,
and then we'll kind of dig in a little more.
But I want to give you a little tool
that you can play around with while you're at home.
And it costs you nothing.
That's the beauty of this.
All right, so if you go to USPTO.gov,
I'll drop the link, copy, paste.
Paste.
There you go.
That's the link right there.
I'm going to share my screen.
OK, this is the United States Patent and Trademark Office
website.
We're going to be referring to this a few times this week.
All right, I just wanted to show you around it a little bit.
And then I'll explain a little bit more on trademarks.
Then in VIP, we're going to dig in deeper there as well.
So, okay.
You see right here, the word trademarks, right?
If you hover over that,
then right over here, you see searching trademarks.
Click on that.
Now, the button over here that says
search our trademark database,
it's the same thing as the words over here.
So don't try to figure out,
I don't know which one to push.
Doesn't matter, they do the same thing.
Now, three options open for a trademark search.
Basic word search, word or design mark search,
and then word or design mark search in free form.
Now, this third one here, I would not touch
unless you're really familiar with like,
gosh, Boolean searches and kind of using Boolean logic.
If you're not familiar with that,
I wouldn't bother with that.
I would use one of the top two.
The one that I strongly suggest you use
and the one that we're gonna talk more about tomorrow
is the second one here, all right?
This search here, to me,
it would be the best for you to do a top level search.
Like, and what I mean by top level,
I mean, you would use this to knock out
multiple candidate trademark applications.
So let's say you're thinking of five different names.
You can actually look up each name here for free.
So let's say I'm looking up the name,
let's say like, let's see, Knight, Knight, Knight, Knight,
Niter, how about Niter?
There you go.
So it doesn't even spell right, so I just typed in Niter.
And then let's say I just did a search for that alone.
Nobody's ever filed anything for Niter.
Probably good, because it looks really weird.
You could type in your names one by one.
Now, under the fields, you can select different fields.
Tomorrow, we're gonna go into detail
on the different fields so you understand.
A full mark means that it's the entire trademark.
The ones you're likely gonna use are these two here,
a punctuated mark or a non-punctuated mark.
We'll go into this in more detail tomorrow.
So let's say Niter, you're gonna use it for, let's say,
so let's use one that's gonna be more common.
Let's say like Nike.
We'll use Nike, and instead of,
we're gonna select right here for the mark.
It's not punctuated, right, non-punctuated mark.
Punctuated obviously means like hyphen,
exclamation point, stuff like that.
So it's non-punctuated, select that.
And then on the next field, you can describe
like some of the goods that are associated with it.
So let's say I'm gonna use it for computers.
I'll just say for computer.
Then I would come down here and I would say,
those are the goods or services.
I mean, it's really self-explanatory.
We'll spend more time with it tomorrow.
So for the name Nike for computers.
If you do the search like that alone,
every occurrence of the word Nike will pop up
and every occurrence of the word computer for goods.
You don't want that.
You want the name Nike for computers.
So instead of being or as the operator,
you're gonna change it to and,
and then you submit a query.
And when you do that,
you see a bunch of different trademarks pop up.
When you select them, you see,
oh, there's the word computer.
Who actually knew that Nike owned
the trademark for computers?
See, this is how you actually do,
you can do a search for free on your own, all right?
Now tomorrow, again, we're gonna dig in more detail,
but tonight I wanted to give you a little tool
that you could play around with on your own, okay?
Just to kind of look at it.
I'll share it with you one more time.
Somebody says, I didn't see the or, and.
All right, let me show you that.
I'm gonna go back on my screen.
It's all the way over here.
It says operator.
Can you guys see that?
Or so on the operator there, make sure that says, and.
Now what happens is you look up the name
and you can put down the kind of goods that are similar.
Now, the tricky thing with trademark searching though,
is you gotta be careful because what if
nothing popped up for Nike,
but somebody has a trademark for N-I-K-E-Y?
If somebody does own that, see like, here's a good example.
If I search for Nike for computers with N-I-K-E-Y,
look what happens, there's no trademarks.
But if I get rid of that Y,
now there's a bunch of trademarks.
Do you see that?
Okay, what I just showed you is the importance
of doing a trademark search properly.
You may believe there's no trademark infringement
and you may walk into trademark infringement, okay?
So this is why I'm telling you just kind of
at a top level today, what I'm showing you here
is a tool that you can use yourself,
but it's a top level search.
You wanna get professional searchers.
After you break down from let's say
five potential trademarks down to like two,
then you should give those two
to somebody who knows what they're doing, all right?
But here's the thing,
you're not spending the money on five searches.
You're now spending the money on two.
So the tools that you've learned here
will decrease the amount of work that you request later.
Do you get that?
So what I'm trying to show you is
I'm gonna teach you how to do searching.
We're gonna go in way more detail.
I'm gonna train you on like the parts of an application,
but what you're learning should be
to decrease the amount of money that you spend,
not to alleviate the use of people
that know what they're doing, okay?
It should decrease it, okay?
All right, let me go back a little bit
and talk a little bit more about trademarks.
Let me actually look at some of the questions.
But I get in trouble using the why
because it sounds like it.
Come on, D, that is a great question.
The answer is yes, yeah.
And we're gonna be going into that
in a lot of detail tomorrow.
How do you determine trademark infringement, okay?
There are nine to 12 factors, all right?
And those factors that you look at,
you'll consider things.
We're gonna go into this tomorrow,
so don't feel like you have to write this
in blistering speed, everyone, okay?
But you look at things like, does it look the same?
Does it sound the same?
Is the cost price similar?
Is the audience similar?
Do you buy them in the same forum, right?
So if you buy, you can't buy Air Jordans for $30,000,
like the high-end sneakers.
You can't buy those at Target.
So the chances of that name Jordan
being on a cheap pair of shoes,
the likelihood of confusion is lower
because nobody's gonna be buying Jordans at Target, you know?
So there's a number of factors
that you actually consider to determine
whether or not there's trademark infringement.
We'll talk about them more tomorrow.
All right, so let me go back and talk a little bit
about one more thing.
Yeah, I think I'll close on this.
I said, let me answer one or two more questions
before I close on this.
Let me see.
So do we need to get our business name trademark
or is there a financial level our business should be at
before we trademark it?
All right, Kathleen asked a really good question.
This is a really good practical question.
So let me go into this.
When do you actually file a trademark application, right?
If you're starting out a company
and you have a name for that company,
I would strongly suggest before you start doing work
on the name of that company,
you do at least a trademark search immediately.
Why?
Because if you start doing business under that name
and somebody else has a federal registration for that name
on similar goods or services, you can get sued, okay?
That's part one.
Part two, you can get sued.
Okay, that's part one.
Part two is you're starting to build up the goodwill
so people get to know who you are.
It'd be great if you had the same name when you're growing.
It's annoying when you start a brand,
like my business is ADE challenges, right?
I own the trademark challenge whispers.
I own a number of other trademarks.
I own protection portal.
I own, I don't know how many domain names, Ray.
We own so many.
I own a lot of domain names.
Maybe a hundred.
Is it about a hundred?
Yeah, it's probably up there, if not more.
So like I own Kingdom Lawyer, right?
I own a bunch of other things like that.
So when you start a business, it's really valuable to say,
okay, well, this is the name I'm going to use
for this business going forward.
Do a search, determine if that's clear.
The search cost for you to do a top level one is free,
right?
It's not costing you anything.
Now that you reduce it down to maybe two things,
you can actually hire a professional searcher
for 500 to like $800 for the project.
And you get the results of that.
Now that you know it's clear,
I would not wait to file a trademark application.
Why am I saying that?
If you start doing business under that name and somebody likes that name, I guarantee
you that they're going to file for the domain name immediately.
And they're going to blackmail you, right, to try to get you to spend money on buying
that domain name.
I mean, look, Pedro Deo, like, love him like a brother.
He announced the name of something at one of the conferences and somebody in that room
bought the domain name.
In the room.
Are you kidding me?
Like that's the guy who's training you.
Are you kidding me?
Like, you don't do that.
So if if they would do that, their chances are very high that they would do it for you.
So don't don't go out there letting people know about these great names that you have.
Kathy asked, what does it cost to file trademark application?
Good question.
If you use what I am training you in these next five days, your cost should be low.
Why?
You're going to know all the components of a trademark application.
You're going to be able to get them all together and you're going to be able to give them to
your attorney.
Typically, as an attorney, the place where I spend the most time is trying to get you
to understand what I need.
That's where I spend the most time.
And here's the thing.
We as attorneys.
We don't sell products.
We sell time.
So the more time that I'm speaking to Mandy saying, no, Mandy, this the specification
that like the the specimen that we need, it needs to actually show for your services your
it needs to show your services on the website.
You can't just show me a picture of a receipt or you can't show me a business card or, you
know, or your website's not showing the services.
Every time I'm telling her that, ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching, like I'm making
money for just explaining these things that you're learning right now.
So if it is the case that you learn all these things, then you should be able to provide
a complete package to your attorney.
Your attorney should then be able to look at it and go, OK, there's this, there's this,
there's this, there's this.
Yep.
That specimen does work.
That recitation of services does work.
Give it to their paralegal.
Paralegal puts it together, files it.
Now the attorney or puts it, puts actually the electronic filing together, sends it to
the attorney.
Attorney looks it over, says, yep, that's good.
Should cost you like 500 to 800 bucks.
That's it.
You should not be spending $2,000 for a trademark application.
And most people are.
There's no reason for that, as long as you understand what's necessary for this.
Is this helping you guys?
Yeah.
OK, good.
So you should understand that if you know all the components of a trademark application,
your costs should be like half of what it normally costs, because that means the attorney
is not doing that work and you're not paying that money.
All right.
Makes your life a lot easier.
Do I need a domain matching my trademark?
I'm going to answer this because I love this question.
OK.
This is a really good question.
I'm going to tell you something here that a lot of you may not know.
If you're not ready to buy a domain name, don't search for it.
OK, I see a lot of people looking at me like, what?
All right.
Now, a lot of the Web sites where you search for domain names, they have an engine that
lets them know whether somebody is interested in that domain name.
So when you go on the domain name and you search for the domain name, but you don't
buy it immediately, they now know that there's an interest.
Well, what do you think is going to happen if multiple people are interested?
Exactly.
The multiple people are interested.
What happens?
You start searching for that thing again.
The price is going up and you're like, but two days ago it was 895 on Namecheap.
Why is it like two hundred and seventy dollars today?
Because you searched it.
That's why.
So what I'm telling you is this is the sequence that I would do.
I would do your trademark search.
I would determine if it's clear.
If it's clear, then the next thing that I would do is file a trademark application.
Right.
But as I'm doing that, I would also at the time of doing the search for the trademark,
when I find out that it's clear, I would go by the domain name.
That's what I would do.
I wouldn't wait for anything.
The second I know that it's clear, I'd buy the domain name.
I personally would not buy a domain name if it's not clear.
Why would you do that?
There's actually an area of the law that most people don't know about.
It's under ICANN.
And the way that it works, ICANN.
It's called a domain name dispute policy.
If you have a domain name for the exact trademark
that somebody else has a federal registration for,
they can file a complaint against you through ICANN.
It's called a domain name dispute.
They spend a good amount of money,
and they can actually take that domain name away from you.
So don't think to yourself, oh, man,
I can buy Nike.com, not if you're showing sneakers
on your website.
Now, if you're showing pictures of deer, yeah, go ahead,
or pictures of your kids, or pictures of yourself
shoveling snow six months of the year,
which is going to happen very soon because I'm in New
Hampshire.
Sorry, I'm going through withdrawals.
So I just had an emotional moment.
Sorry.
So if that's the case, then you're OK.
But you cannot show sneakers because now Nike
will file a domain name dispute against you
and get you to literally give that domain name to them.
Come to Nevada, Peter.
Yeah, I know, D. Oh, it goes for a long time.
I'm going to cover one more question,
and then I think we're going to close here.
We covered a lot of material for day one.
I try not to overwhelm you on day one.
Just kind of touch base on a number of different things.
Abram asks, can only attorneys file trademarks?
That is a beautiful question right there.
All right.
Abram, that's a great question.
The answer is no.
Anybody can file trademark applications.
All right.
You do not have to be an attorney
to file a trademark application, OK?
But what I'm going to strongly suggest
is if you never filed a trademark application before,
don't try it on your own.
Why?
Because if you make a mistake, many times you can't fix it.
Many times you can't fix it.
Now, what do I mean by that?
Let's say you file a trademark application for whatever it is.
And in the recitation of goods, you
say this is for wallets, for cell phone holders, and for,
let's say, like, I don't know, for cup holders.
That name's used for wallets, cell phone
holders, and cup holders, right?
And you think to yourself, oh, I forgot.
I'm also using this for luggage tags.
I totally forgot.
You can't add it.
After you file it, you can't add it.
Separate from that, if you file your application
and the name was misspelled, you can't fix it.
Because it asks you all these questions
to make sure the material is correct.
So you can't go back and now change the trademark.
You've got to file a whole new application, OK?
And there's also some other nuances
that have to do with the recitation of goods
and services, which you'll learn about tomorrow.
And VIP, which we're going into in 12 minutes,
I'm going to end in two minutes,
because we had a lot of admin stuff today.
But in VIP, we're going to talk about this in some more detail,
a lot more detail.
But what I would say for you is, at least
for your first and second apps, make
sure you're using somebody who knows what they're doing.
Because it's so painful if all of a sudden
you've got to pay all the fees all over.
And I've had many people come to me because they made mistakes.
And the problem is somebody else is waiting on the side.
And then they file before them.
And now they can't do anything about it,
which is really unfortunate.
So I'm going to stop there today.
I think that's a lot of material for day one.
That's day one, guys.
It's day one, all right?
So is this helping you guys?
You guys good?
Yeah?
OK, great.
Now, I changed the time intentionally.
I made it at nighttime for you guys
because I used to have this at 12 o'clock during the day.
And a lot of people were having trouble
because they were working.
And so I decided to make it at 7 PM.
So hopefully, this helps your schedules a lot more
than in the middle of the day.
And so separate from that, if you're in VIP,
again, we're going to be going there in 10 minutes.
If you haven't registered for it, I would highly suggest it.
You'll find out why when you get there.
And then separate from that, if you are in VIP,
you can email me your questions.
You can email them to support at, Ray,
can you type in the email?
So it's support at elite-challenges.com.
Yep, I'll send it in.
OK, great.
And with that, I'm going to jump off.
Larissa is going to finish.
She's probably going to ask you a question or two.
do. And then I will see you guys over in VIP. And if you're not
there, I'll see you tomorrow. Same time. Okay. All right,
catch up with you guys later. I'm going to jump off