We scratched the surface in the area of copyright law.
As you can imagine, there's a lot more in copyright law from the area of fair use,
which is an exception to copyright infringement, to just all sorts
of different ways to share rights with others.
But what I wanted to do now is kind of take a little twist here and talk about licensing.
And the reason why is because if you have certain rights under intellectual property law,
what it does is it opens the door for you to license your IP to other people, okay?
Now, you can do this with trademarks, with patents, with copyrights.
You can't really license trade secrets.
Trade secrets are like, those are things that nobody else can reverse engineer.
Like, so you can't, let's say, sell a phone and say, well, there's a trade secret
to the phone, meaning that there's a secret sauce to it that nobody else can figure out.
Well, once you put it out in the market, somebody can open this thing up,
take each one of the ASICs, you know, every single chip,
determine all the PN junctions on things, determine where every single pin is on things,
determine all the software associated with it.
So that's not protectable by trade secret.
What's protectable by trade secret are things that nobody else will be able to determine.
So let's say you have, like, a back-end software platform and people interact
through a website with you, but they don't have access to the software.
They just have, like, when using an ATM machine, right,
it gives you a graphical user interface.
You enter in the card, you enter into your name, or you enter into your PIN number,
and then you select the dollar amount you want, and then, boom,
the money comes shooting out, right?
The functionality associated with that software,
the way that it actually gets your information from the strip on the card,
the way it accesses your bank accounts, the way it takes certain funds
and electronically reduces that amount from your bank account, all that stuff,
nobody has access to that.
That's in the back-end.
So you could actually technically say that you can maintain a trade secret to the software
on the back-end as long as nobody could access it.
But you'd have to make sure that nobody, nobody who, you'd have to make it
so that the only people who see it are those who must see it.
It's not on a general computer on a local area network where anybody else could see it.
You're not sharing it with the public.
Only those who have to see it can see it, and anybody, and this is actually a requirement,
anybody who actually sees it who is not required to see it, within 30 days,
you have to kill them, or you lose the trade secret, okay?
That's, no, I made that up.
I made that up.
That's not true.
That's not true, okay?
It's not true.
Some of you are like, literally, like, this is great.
You were like, hold it, 30 days?
I have to kill them?
Really?
I was wondering, I was like, is that a different reference to term?
What does he mean?
It was so great just to watch the faces.
It was so perfect.
So, the situation is that nobody else can access it.
It's not on a local area network, nobody else, and you're limiting access, very important.
If that's not the case, you can't say it's a trade secret.
It doesn't work.
There's a lot of law in the area of trade secret law.
So, some of you may be thinking, well, I'm going to maintain this as my own,
but you're selling the product, and you're saying,
I'm just not going to tell people how to make it.
If you're selling the product, chances are somebody is going to be able to reverse engineer it,
and you're not going to be able to maintain it as a trade secret.
That's just, 99% of the time, that's the case, okay?
Or if it's software, somebody like my cousin is going to be able to hack it, you know?
I mean, my cousin's probably, not my cousin, my nephew, is probably one of the worst infringers
of copyrights that I know.
And his uncle is an IP attorney, and he's got like copies of every software program you can think of.
He's got pirated copies of it, and I just, I'm just thinking, oh, my gosh, this is not good.
But, in any case, so that's trade secret law.
Now, let's talk about licenses.
Okay. So, if you have, let's say, as an example, a trademark,
and you want to allow somebody else to use that trademark.
You can do that under a license agreement.
Or a copyright.
Let's say you have a painting.
And you want to give somebody a temporary right to make copies of that painting.
Or to display the painting.
You can do that through what's called a license agreement.
Okay?
Here's the beauty of a license agreement.
You can make it say whatever you want.
I mean, you can put whatever conditions you want on this thing.
You can put geographical conditions.
You can put subject matter conditions.
Meaning the types of embodiments of the idea that you're going to allow to be licensed.
So let's say it's a painting, right?
You can say, as a geographical limitation, I am going to allow Catherine to use my painting in California.
That's my non-exclusive license.
And in return, she's going to give me $10,000 per month.
Okay?
So that's a license agreement.
All right?
Now, I could also with Catherine decide, you know what?
Instead of a geographical limitation, I'm going to give a specific subject matter kind of limitation.
Which is, I'm going to give you the right to make digital copies of my painting.
But nothing else.
So you get to make digital copies.
Or I could even go so far as to say, I'm going to let Catherine, actually, I've given Catherine all these rights.
I'm going to go to Mandy.
I'm going to give Mandy the rights to make NFTs off of my painting.
Mandy's like, yes!
Yes!
That's what I was waiting for!
It's a picture of a monkey with a cigarette.
It's worth $10 million.
I don't understand how people pay that much money for a monkey with a cigarette.
I don't get it.
But apparently it works for somebody.
So now I've licensed to Catherine certain rights, and I've licensed to Mandy other rights.
And those rights aren't conflicting with each other, right?
Because they're different legal rights.
So I can license a ton of different people.
And I can provide a certain royalty, meaning I get paid back a certain percentage off of every sale or off of every display.
Like when people buy a ticket to see this thing, I get a certain royalty back, a certain percentage back.
Or I can make it so that somebody pays me a flat fee.
So I say, Mandy, for you to create the NFTs and to sell the NFTs, I want $100,000.
And Mandy says, no problem.
I'm worth $100 million anyway.
Here you go.
Here's $100,000.
And she goes out there, she starts selling these NFTs, and she's making like $1.7 million, right?
She doesn't have to pay me more than $100,000.
It's whatever was the agreed upon amount for the license.
So a license will have a dollar amount that you should be making off of it.
It'll be either a flat amount or it'll be a royalty, meaning a percentage, okay?
The other thing is you can limit the rights in a license through a geographical location.
Or you can make it like a specific right that they get only.
The rights that you're licensing off are the rights that you have under IP.
So as a copyright owner, you have the right to make copies, to make derivative works, to display the works.
I can give Diana the right to display the works.
I can give Mandy the right to make copies, and I can give Andrews the right to do something else.
I can give different people different rights and make money off of every single one of them.
That's how powerful licenses are.
A good licensing plan, like MIT is one of my clients.
They have probably one of the best licensing programs in the world.
They make tons of money off of licenses for the patents that I write for them.
Okay, so I write the patent.
They find some corporation that wants legal rights to that patent.
They license it off for half a million dollars.
Now the two new technologies made, and MIT adds into this agreement, you know, maybe some other rights that they're going to get back based on that.
So they're not making just the money.
They're also making other things.
That's smart business.
That's the power you have through intellectual property.
Now you may be wondering, well, hold it.
I'm not selling a lot of volume yet.
I may in the future.
How do I deal with that?
Like, what if I'm making a new product or a new book
and so I want to give a certain royalty rate
for the first hundred books,
but then a second royalty rate for the next 2000 books
and then a different royalty rate for the next 5000 books.
You can do that.
That's called a step license.
A step license.
That's where the royalty changes based on the volume
or based on a certain action.
So I have a book.
I say for the first hundred copies,
you're gonna get a dollar off of the book.
For the next 1000 copies,
you're gonna get 75 cents off the book.
For the next 5000 copies,
you're gonna get 50 cents off of the book.
Like I can change it.
That's called a step license.
A certain activity happens.
And with that activity happening,
the royalty rate changes.
Okay, that's very powerful.
If you use step licenses, you can do very well.
Any questions yet on licensing?
It's kind of a very top level review I'm giving you.
But I want you to understand what they are
because if you really understand it,
you can do very well financially.
Very, very, very well.
No questions on licensing before we go into copyright?
I just want to touch base on that.
Carrie, did you have a question?
You have to unmute.
I know, yes.
Oh, there you go.
So what if someone abuses it?
What if they misrepresent you?
They will.
Yeah.
They will.
Especially in the area of franchise law.
Oh my gosh, like, you give the name Subway to this location.
You make them pay for the location
and has the same look and feel as every other Subway.
But then instead of like using three pieces of turkey,
they use one.
Right.
And so now all these sandwiches are like skimmed off
all these sandwiches are like skinny mini sandwiches.
You're like, what is going on here?
Like, this is not representing me.
So you have to make,
as a condition of your providing the license,
you want to actually provide some language in there
that talks about your right to police the use.
Right.
You're policing the use of the IP intellectual property.
So you are going to monitor it.
That should be part of the conditions
of your license agreement.
So you want to make sure when you do a license,
you're using a lawyer that understands licensing.
Like it's really.
So I assume that also means
that you have to be very particular
in how you describe what you're doing.
So it's not just that we make sandwiches
and you come through the line.
It's, you know, we use three pieces
and you have to have these choices and whatnot.
So.
Yeah, what I would do is I would make sure
that you have your license agreement,
but then you have an appendix or an addendum to it
that lists the procedures that must be followed.
Right.
So it's not just,
you're getting a license to use the name,
let's say,
Meadeys, right?
Meadeys, because they sell everything meat, right?
So Meadeys, right?
So you get the license to use the name Meadeys
and we're really well known
because we provide more meat in all of our sandwiches
than anybody else.
And you're like, yeah, I'm going to save on the inventory
and put only one piece of turkey on there, right?
And so you should have the right
to monitor what they're doing.
So you make an addendum that has conditions
that must be followed,
but then separate from that, you say that with,
and what I would do is a way to word it
that's actually more amicable than others.
The way I do it in my own license agreements,
I just give you a little insight into this.
It's not legal advice.
I'm just giving you like what I do, okay?
So what I do is I say
with five days notice,
I have the right to come to the establishment
and determine whether or not things are being followed
the way I want.
Now, I also have other agreements to say
within with 24 hour notice, right?
I shouldn't just randomly walk into their stores.
Like that's just weird, right?
Unless I really want that right.
I mean, you may feel like I have the right
to stop by anytime, then put that in your agreement.
Right in your agreement that I can, without any notice,
come into your store, your location,
and determine whether or not you're following my policies.
I have full access to your facilities at all times.
You can do that.
You can make a license.
And this is the beauty of a license.
It's like buying a house, right?
You can charge as much as you want or as little as you want.
Now, somebody is going to have to agree to it.
So if you make it too difficult, you
may get nobody to agree to your agreement.
So it's just up to you to determine
what's the standard in the industry,
like what do people typically do,
and then do something that's kind of similar, maybe
a little more stringent.
But if you're making it more stringent,
then it should cost less for the license.
You'll see it's all a balance, right?
So if you have a lot of restrictions to the license,
they're not going to want to pay you a lot.
If there's almost no restrictions,
you should get paid a ton because you're minimizing
the number of restrictions.
So it's all a balancing test.
It should be about even.
All of the agreements, one thing I teach people
when I train on licensing, it should be a win-win situation.
If it's not a win-win situation, the other party
is going to try to find ways around your agreement
the entire time they're in the agreement.
And it leads to an adversarial relationship instead
of an amicable relationship.
In a license agreement, an amicable relationship
is very valuable because you can end up
with a licensee for the entire life of the IP.
My parents have owned the same penthouse in Yonkers for,
gosh, 20 years, maybe?
20 years?
And of the 20 years, they've had the same person renting it
out, I don't know why, for 15 years.
They're really the perfect person to rent from.
They don't bother you.
They tell you, we're going to stop by twice a year.
The place better look good when we stop by.
If not, we're going to kick you out.
So people take care of the place.
They're respectful.
And they have a good relationship with them.
So if you have a good relationship with a licensee,
you can make a lot of money.
And remember, with IP, you're not making anything.
You can actually own the intellectual property
and never make something.
Now, if it's the trademark world,
you have to be selling something.
Because trademarks, you can only own trademarks for as long
as, actually, I'll teach you guys something here
that most people don't know.
If you have a trademark on a product,
a logo for a product, and you stop
using the logo on the product for two years of five years,
then you lose your rights to the logo or to the trademark.
You must be using it for at least three consecutive years
in a five-year period.
If you stop using it for three consecutive years,
you can get into problems.
So is this where we saw the renewed?
The renewals.
OK.
Yeah, so when you're looking at following your Section 8,
your Section 15, your Section 9, all those things,
those are renewals to your trademarks.
And so you've got to make sure that you're
continuing to use it.
If you haven't been using it for at least three years
or the last five years, it's gone.
You can't renew it.
And that kind of stinks if you're like Coca-Cola
and you just decided, well, we're
going to go to a new brand.
And you just kind of ignore the original trademark
and it's not being used.
It's gone.
So somebody else can file for it.
OK.
Cool, thank you.
Yeah, you're welcome.
Starting out, I'm just hearing cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching,
renewal, trademark, all of this stuff.
For somebody starting out, how do you
determine what you're going to trademark,
what you're going to, like you could
be spending a fortune as a brand new company just getting going.
So how do you determine what do you trademark?
What do you copyright?
What do you, I mean, I can understand.
Number one, the first thing you do is what you did.
You signed up for this challenge, right?
So by signing up for this challenge,
you know how to do a trademark search.
So if you were going to go after 10 different trademarks,
you should not be filing for 10 different trademarks.
You should be in a trademark search
to determine which two actually look good.
So now you're down from $10,000 to $2,000.
And you didn't spend a penny, right?
So you just saved $8,000 for a $95 investment.
That's a pretty good deal.
So that's the first thing you did,
was you decreased the number of things
that you could potentially own.
But now you ask a great question, Sherry,
which is, which things do I go after and when?
Like, when do I go after them immediately
or do I go after them over time?
Well, the beauty about copyrights,
like I taught all of you today,
is you have certain legal rights and copyrights
without filing anything.
Like, you don't even have to file
and you already have legal rights in the copyright law.
The other thing is copyrights only cost $65.
That's very inexpensive in the IP world.
Patents can cost you $12,000 for one patent, one patent.
When trademark typically beginning to end,
it depends on if you get an office action.
Because if you get, aw, hi, buddy.
If you file a trademark application
and that was a complete distraction, Sherry.
I just want you to understand,
that was a huge distraction.
I love animals.
And so if you get,
if you're going to have to trademark application,
you do your own search.
Then after you do your own search
and you reduce it from 10 trademarks down to two,
you select the one you really want to go after.
Then you hire a professional to do the search on the one.
So now you're paying maybe a thousand bucks
to maybe 1200 for a professional search.
Because the searching entity like Thomson Reuters
is going to charge you $800 for a search.
And then the results have to be reviewed by an attorney.
They'll charge you maybe about 400 bucks to review them.
So that's about 1200 bucks for the search.
The trademark application itself,
you know the parts of the application now.
Through this challenge,
you guys should be saving probably 40 to 50%
of the typical cost of a trademark application,
just by the fact that you did this challenge.
And there's many testimonies of people
who've done this challenge that have found
that when they give everything together to their attorney,
all the attorney has to do is basically
put the stuff together, review it,
make sure it's okay and file it.
They can do that within an hour or two.
Versus five hours of going back on,
what's your recitation of goods?
What's your international class?
Give me a good specimen.
What's a good specimen?
What's a bad specimen?
Like it takes a lot of time to get that.
You should know what to do now.
So if that's the case,
then for a trademark application,
it might cost you 800 bucks or $1,000,
including the USPTO fee of $250 or 300, 275, 250.
What was it?
250 or 275 yesterday?
250?
250, right?
250 to 350.
Yeah.
So the 350 is if you write it yourself.
The other one is 250 if you use their way of doing it.
I would suggest you use their way of doing it.
That saves you a hundred bucks.
So now the rest of the fee is the attorney's fee, right?
So now you do that, you get it filed,
and then you wait to see if the examiner rejects
or allows it.
If he allows it or she allows it,
all you gotta do next is a reporting letter
for your registration,
a reporting letter for publication,
might cost you another 500 bucks.
So you're done beginning to end around two grand
for a trademark over a year,
where about maybe a thousand bucks is upfront, right?
And then there's like reporting.
And then if you want to assign your trademark over,
you have to sign an assignment document
and it has to be docketed.
So that might cost a couple of hundred bucks
in the pattern.
So the key is though,
you need to reduce the number of things
that you're filing on.
What I tell people do not do is don't just say,
man, I like these five names.
I'm gonna just file in them all.
No, you should be doing trademark searches on them.
Find out which ones are in fact protectable.
If they're not protectable,
don't spend the money filing on them.
But you now know how to do a quick search at a top level.
And tomorrow I'm gonna be mentioning something
that is an offer for you guys,
where I'm gonna,
I don't wanna lose all the fire on this thing,
but basically one of the features I'm gonna be giving you
is something where I will work with you
on doing a top level search as a group, right?
So, I mean, people literally come out to me
just to find that opportunity.
So what I would say is look at all the things,
start out, step number one should be
list all the things you think you wanna protect.
Number two, decrease the list.
That should be right off the bat.
Decrease the list.
How do you do that?
Decrease the list, trademark searching.
That'll decrease the number of things
that you can actually protect, right?
Determining whether or not that domain name is available.
But the second you do not search
for that domain name until what?
Until what?
You're ready to file.
Don't search for that domain name until you're ready to file.
Like you do that search, you know, for the trademark
and you go, oh, it's clear.
I'm ready to file.
Great, you're going to file.
Now you can go over and do your domain name thing, right?
I would personally buy the domain name before you file
and I would do it on the same day.
That's what I would do.
Because I'm telling you guys,
there are people that monitor every trademark that is filed.
I'm not making this up.
This is what they do for a living.
They watch the trademark, they watch the trademark site
and they say, oh, new trademark application.
They go right onto Namecheap.
They type in that exact name
and they buy that name.com immediately.
So do not submit a new application
until you buy the domain name,
but do not file the domain name
or purchase the domain name until you do a search.
So step number one, become creative,
come up with a new idea, a new name.
Step number two, do a search.
Step number three, get ready to file your application,
but in the same day, purchase your domain name.
Then file your trademark application.
That is, in my experience,
that is the cleanest and least expensive way
to get through the process.
And you probably save yourself hundreds,
if not thousands of dollars by doing it that specific way.
The alternative is somebody buys a domain name.
Now you got to buy it off of them for 2,500 bucks
or some other situation.
I mean, I was remarkably blessed.
One of my students, like in my training,
called me up and said,
hey, kingdom.law is available.
If you don't buy it, I'm going to buy it right now.
I said, wait, wait, I'm buying it.
So I went and I bought kingdom.law.
Then I had another person who I've been working with
and that person came out to me and said,
kingdomlawyer.com is available,
but kingdomlawyers is not.
I said, well, that's an act of God that that's available.
I'm taking it right now.
So I bought kingdomlawyer.com.
So, you know, you just got to understand the sequence.
So Mandy, let's go to you next.
Awesome, thank you.
I have a couple of questions.
I know you mentioned earlier that,
like a character, a work of art,
it has to be in a fixed form for it to be protectable.
So for example, if you have like a character
that you've drawn,
if somebody else draws that same character
in their own art style and claims it to be their own,
like what is the boundary there and how does that,
like how does that work, if that makes sense?
You created it originally?
Right, like this is a theoretical,
but like if I were to design a character
or even more vaguely like a race of characters
and somebody were to create a character within that race,
because it's in their style,
does it at that point depend on who did it first?
Is that how that works or?
All right, so let's put it this way.
Let's say, do you remember Star Wars?
Right, you remember the Ewoks?
Yeah.
Let's say that Ewok is the character, right?
Mm-hmm.
And then somebody comes along and creates a type of Ewok.
So you have, let's say like four or five different Ewoks,
and then this other person creates like a tall Ewok
that has like a bigger nose and earrings, right?
Something like that, right?
The question is, is that a problem?
What you have to do is you have to look at the new work
and compare it to the original work
and see whether or not there's a likeness to the two, right?
It's not, copyright is not a,
the test for copyright law is not likelihood of confusion.
The test for copyright law is whether or not it's a copy
or a derivative work.
That's not likelihood of confusion.
Likelihood of confusion is broader.
That's why copyrights only cost 65 bucks
and trademarks cost 350, right?
The stronger the legal right that you can obtain,
the more expensive they are.
So, in your situation, what I would say is if you create a character like an Ewok,
somebody else comes along and creates, let's say you create a male Ewok,
somebody makes a female Ewok, I would try to argue that that's derivative work, if you can.
You may not win on it because copyrights are for, you know, that look.
Like, you don't own the general look and feel, you own that look.
So, it can be tricky, it can be tricky.
But copyright is definitely one of the things I would use to go after the other party.
I'd say, all you did was put perky lips on it, you know, long eyelashes and, you know, longer hair.
Like, let's just say that's what you did.
And now you're saying it's a female Ewok.
That's a derivative off of my original.
My original didn't have long eyelashes, you know, didn't have longer hair and puffy lips.
Right? But it's a derivative.
So, therefore, you need to stop immediately.
I would take an aggressive stance on that.
Otherwise, you could lose your whole line of characters, you know.
And if you get the federal registration, the beauty of a federal registration is
that people understand that there's potential attorneys, potential attorney fees
and guaranteed statutory damages that scares people.
If you just send a notice letter out to somebody to say, you can't do that, that's not right.
Like, I did that first.
I need you to stop.
Good luck.
That's like, there's no room in a courtroom.
There's no place in a courtroom for whining.
Doesn't accomplish much.
Not even the judges like it, like juries hate it.
They hate whiners.
When when somebody's in front of you pleading in case and they're whining, there's a difference between
pleaing and whining.
Whining gets you nothing.
I also haven't. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off.
Oh, go ahead. I have a different question as well.
And it kind of connects with what Kerry is asking about names and movies being protected.
But in my case, like for a theoretical, I guess, if you were to, say, write a script for a like a
sequel to a movie series that exists, but you haven't been commissioned by the company to do it.
Is that what not not not not to claim the copyright for yourself.
But I guess in theory, this is how do I ask this question?
I don't know if this is really even a legal question, I guess.
I'm just going to wait for you to finish.
Don't do that.
It's going to wait. My question is more along the lines of not.
Can I take it for myself?
But can I like offer it to the company?
That's a very bad idea for a number of reasons.
The fact is, you created the work.
Therefore, you created a copyright infringement.
Now, just so we're clear, but just so we're clear, let's be clear about this.
It is copyright infringement.
This is not legal advice, all right, OK, there there there is a.
I'm kind of unique as a lawyer in that I know the law, but I'm also a business person.
I know how to apply it right.
And there are certain times when you say, yeah, I know the law, but I don't care.
I didn't tell you to do that.
That's not what I just said.
What I'm saying is you need to weigh the pluses and the minuses in all circumstances.
There may be a situation I never I'm going to let it be recorded.
I I'm not telling you to do this, but there may be a situation where there is a potential
infringement issue and you go the potential gain is so incredibly high.
And the potential loss is so remarkably low.
That I may take a step to doing this again, I Peter did not tell Mandy Harris today to
commit copyright infringement and go to jail or like, you know, pay a massive fine.
I didn't say that. Well, I'm saying it's sometimes you do an assessment of the
circumstances and you make a decision based on that assessment.
And that's in everything in life, you know, like that party you wanted to go to and your
parents are like, you can't go to it.
And you're like, I go to this party, make it grounded for a week.
But my best friend just showed up from Maryland and this is the only time I'm going to
see her. And like, I'm never going to see her ever again.
I shouldn't be disobedient.
Should I, should I not like that's a weighing your weighing of the circumstances.
Right. Now you can plead your case.
Mom, I really want to go. I'm not saying you're young that you have to talk to your mom. I'm just
saying I have kids so I'm using kid examples, right? Mom, I really want to go. This is my case,
blah, blah, blah, right? You complete your case and maybe you win, maybe you don't win, right?
But the fact of the matter is at the end of the day, I have had clients come to me and say, Peter,
that is the best legal advice that I've ever heard. You are worth every penny and more.
Thank you. I'm not listening to you. They've done that. Some of them have ended up in lawsuits
where I had to protect them. And others of them have made big deals and gone off and done very
well. So I understand that there's a business call you need to make. My job is to make sure
you know what the law is. After that, you're the one running the company. You got to make a decision.
I think that was my other question too. Sorry, I'll be done after this, I promise. But
I'm very new to screenwriting as a concept. And so I'm just trying to understand how that would
generally work because I think typically a company would contract out and then that probably be like
a license, would it be? Or how would that work usually, if you don't mind,
if you know anything about that? It depends on what they're doing, right?
They can outsource to you, in which case, if they outsource and you're creating the work
for that entity, they can hire you and have you assign all right title and interest
over to them for your created works. Chances are they're not giving you a license because
they don't want you to do that, right? They're granting you some kind of legal right so that
some kind of legal right so that you don't get sued, but they're not going to give you a license
to do the thing because they're the ones that want to do the thing. So let's say you're Star
Wars, Empire Strikes Back. Does anybody know all these things? There's like five, right?
Oh, all the names. I don't know. I could list all the parents of the Caribbean ones, but
there's like five of them. So let's say you come up with a new one, right?
The Mama Returns, whatever it is, right? That's the next version of Star Wars. Mama Returns,
bad name, but let's say that was the name for the next one, right?
And you create this script and you say, like you said, you reach out to the people who actually
created it and you say, hey, I've created this new one. The name really isn't good, but
it's a great movie. Would you take a look at it? That's copyright infringement. Now,
you could go to them beforehand and say, I'd like to create the next one in the series,
in which case they're going to go, who in the world are you? Right? Like, why should I hire
you? So you may decide to take the chance and say, well, what's the worst that can happen to me?
They say, I'm infringing on their copyright law. Like, what are they going to sue me for? I didn't
make any money on it. I'm not giving the rights to some other person. But they can sue you for
intentional copyright infringement and make a lot of money. So it's up to them. They may argue,
well, you're drafting that, you stole our storyline. And you go, what? No, I didn't.
And then you find out there's somebody within their department that came up with something
similar. And now they claim that you stole the idea from them. There's all sorts of stuff I've
seen in courts. So sometimes you got to take a risk. Sometimes you just take a risk. But what
happens if they hire you is that there would be typically there's some kind of legal agreement
that says that you're a work for hire. You assign all rights, title and interest to any of the work
over to the company. And that you cannot make derivatives, can't make copies, can't make
Jack or Jill, nothing. It totally and 100% belongs to the company, period. And you'll get paid,
blah, blah, blah. But one thing I'm going to tell you is that people often undersell themselves,
undervalue themselves. So they give all these legal rights over to this big entity in their
thing because they're in awe of how big the entity is. Then the thing starts taking off,
and they're making millions and millions. And you made $20,000 off the entire storyline.
That's why I typically tell people to throw in some royalties there, like percentages off of
what the thing is making, as opposed to just give me $10,000, and I'll give you my storyline just
so that I can throw in a percentage. It works out, all right? I'm going to take two more questions.
Thank you so much.
You're so welcome. All right. You got to raise your virtual hand.
And let me go to Kay first.
Hey Peter, you mentioned earlier
about like suing someone in Taiwan.
I don't know if I've heard you correctly,
but like, does that mean we have to also
do international searches
or does our U.S. trademark kind of go abroad as well
or is it just strictly in the U.S.?
Good question, good question.
So that case was a patent case,
but it's similar for trademarks.
In that specific case, we had rights in Taiwan
and we also had rights in the United States.
The Taiwanese company was selling product
in the United States
that infringed our patents in the United States.
So we received a cease and desist letter
from the Taiwanese corporation, from their attorney.
Their attorney was located
in the Eastern District of Texas.
The Eastern District of Texas
and the Western District of Texas
are the most well-known places
to file patent infringement cases.
So when I received a cease and desist letter
from a Taiwanese corporation
from the Eastern District of Texas,
I knew that at some point this Taiwanese corporation
was going to sue my client.
I knew it because I litigate in Texas.
So the second I saw that, I said to my client,
hey, we got an interesting situation here.
These guys who sent you the cease and desist letter,
you said they're your number one competitor, right?
He said, absolutely.
I said, so do you feel like sooner or later
you're gonna have to sue these guys?
He says, absolutely.
So I got an idea.
I had written three patents for him, right?
So I said, how do you feel
about making someone from Taiwan
fly into New Hampshire in February,
which would be full of snow and misery, right?
Like I'm not into the snow that much,
but anyways, full of snow and like cold weather from Taiwan.
So how do you feel about that?
He said, that would be incredible.
Said, this is what we're gonna do.
They sent you a cease and desist letter.
You have no doubt, based on that letter,
it says, if you don't stop doing this, we will sue you.
So there is the imminent threat of litigation.
That's one of the ingredients to be able to file
what's called a declaratory judgment action
against another party.
So I filed a DJ action
against a Taiwanese corporation in New Hampshire.
So now we got threatened for patent infringement
for one patent.
We countersued with three patents
and they became the defendant
because I filed a DJ action against them in New Hampshire.
Totally changed the entire rhythm of the litigation.
We ended up, the case ended up settling.
We do well, you know,
everything ended up working out well for my client.
But the fact of the matter is,
if a foreign corporation either sells product
or uses your trademark in the United States
and your legal rights are in the United States,
you can enforce your rights in the United States.
If you want to stop them in Taiwan,
you need to get rights in Taiwan, right?
You can't stop another entity from doing something
in a country where you don't have legal rights.
You have to own the legal rights in that country.
So if you want to stop them in India,
you got to file trademarks in India,
which by the way is very inexpensive.
Canada, remarkably inexpensive.
Very expensive, Europe, extremely expensive.
Japan, very expensive.
China, very expensive.
Why?
Translations.
Translations are very costly.
So if you file a patent application in the United States
and then you say, well, I want a foreign file in Taiwan,
your translations are going to nail you.
It costs a lot of money, right?
If there's no translations, if it's a logo,
foreign file, it's cheap.
But you do it within how many months?
I'm really going to be impressed
if any of you remember this.
Come on, Catherine.
Well done, within six months, come on.
Jeez, you guys are good.
Within six months, you did a foreign filing.
And by doing that, you maintain the original filing date.
So if you filed in the United States
and then some guys in Taiwan copy that.
Actually, I don't, Taiwan,
Taiwan's not a member of the Madrid Protocol
or the Paris Convention.
So Taiwan might not work, but I have to double check.
most countries of the world are members of what's called the Paris Convention.
There's certain countries that are not. So if you're looking for that
reciprocity thing and you're gonna file, I don't want to confuse you guys, but you
you asked the question so I'm going here, alright? So in foreign filing, if you do
it within six months, you file what's called a CTM application that covers
multiple legions, okay? CTM, alright? That's all you got to know. Ask your
attorney about a CTM app. They'll know the rest, okay? Alright, let me
go to Catherine. Did I answer a question for you today, Catherine? I didn't think
so. Yeah, go ahead. Unmute.
Okay, so I have, this has to do, I believe, with copyright because it
involves video. I do a group once a week. We've been, we are part of a larger
group from a coach and I had this idea, like, let's implement some of the stuff,
try it out on one and give one another testimonial about what we see if we
feel moved to do so or have views. When you say try the stuff, what do you mean try the stuff?
We have, we're implementing what he's telling us to do. Okay. And so putting
together a presentation, so what would we do in front of potential customers, but
then let's say that you're just starting off in business and you don't have a lot
of people that are using your products yet and, or you haven't worked with a lot
of people, haven't done a lot of consultations, but in your presentation,
for your workshop, something that you want to do online, you want reviews or
testimonials or something. So if some of the people, some people have done, like,
sleepy stuff, like, I will help you, Peter, to, I don't know, I'll do your graphics
for you and I'll give you a really cheap. Did you hear that? She just said it. I got it
recorded. Do you hear that? She's gonna do our graphics. She just said she was gonna
do it. We got to record it. Thank you. I'm taking a nap. Awesome. All right, please
continue. So let's pretend, Peter, that I'm telling you that I will do your graphics
for you for really, really cheap. Okay. And I'll do, like, seven slides for $25.
Yeah. Yeah, not really an offer. And in exchange, you get the seven slides, we work together,
and then you give me a review, a testimonial, something like that.
Yeah, people do that all the time. Yeah.
Right. It's something of that nature.
A swap, yeah.
Yeah, some sort of a swap. And so what I did was, I put it out there, like,
hey, guys, once a week, let's gather one person, go ahead, present. We'll get reviews on how,
on what appealed to us about the presentation, yada, yada, yada. Okay. We'll give testimonials.
If we've used that person, we know about that person, or we have experience about what it is
that they are doing, and speak to the helpfulness of that system, something like that. So if we can
give legitimate testimonial, nothing made up. Made up is not okay.
Testimonial for service. Basically, testimonial for service.
Right. Yeah, something like that. Okay, right. So here's the question, is today I got a request.
Somebody saying, hey, here's what I want to do. I'm a member of this group, the one that I put
together. And there's no cost in this group. I'm a member of this group. And so how about you give
me all the videos, and I'll put it in my group. And I've got Clubhouse, and I've got YouTube,
and I've got this, that, and the other. And I was like, well, part of it was we're within
like this one coach. We're talking about that coach's IP. We're talking about that coach's
process and system. So I was thinking.
thinking, no, that's not going to work.
And she says, no, it's just going to go in my own library.
So.
The videos themselves of the people.
That's like that's like their copyrightable kinds of stuff, isn't it?
Are they their videos that they created or the video of the video
that I made of their presentation?
That's their copyrightable kind of thing.
You need to talk to a lawyer.
I'll tell you why. OK.
This is not a cop out.
I'm telling you, this is a very dangerous area.
All right.
Now, let me just explain how this works.
OK, like let's let's just talk theoretically here.
The one who you're not advising, I understand that.
Yeah, no, no, no.
But I'm just going to say in general, right, because because we have conferences
all the time and somebody does a presentation, right?
Technically, the one who actually does
the recording actually owns the owns the copyright to the work.
Right.
But.
What often happens is the person who's
putting on the conference has an agreement that they give to the person who's doing
the presentation, saying that I have the legal rights
to any recordings that are done in my establishment.
That's typically how it plays out.
But there are certain people that say, no, anytime I no matter where I go.
Anything that's a recording of me, I own my own copyright.
Those are people that are very high up, like Tony Robbins, like, you know.
High up, these guys have legal agreements before they go anywhere
because somebody will make millions of dollars off a single video with Tony Robbins.
Right.
So.
You got to be really careful in this area.
There's a lot of litigation in this area.
Generally, if I film something, I own the copyright.
But the question is, is there an expectation of privacy?
That's one of the things.
Are there other contractual relationships or agreements that are in place?
That result in that other party owning rights to what's being recorded.
Right. There's a number of things that you got
to look at to determine who truly owns the copyright.
All right.
Location was right.
Carrie, that was exactly right.
That's the first thing I mentioned was, you know, if it's your conference,
then you can end up in a situation where whoever is running the conference owns
everything that is being filmed, as a matter of fact.
I've been to conferences that specifically say
when you register for the conference, you are not allowed to record anything here.
You can't record by video.
You can't even push the recording button on your iPhone or your Samsung.
Right. You can't do that.
Nothing is allowed to be recorded here.
Why do they do that?
Because they're going to sell the videos later.
And if you're recording it, they lose.
Potential royalties off of the copyright that they have in their own recordings.
So.
If I were in a situation where.
I'm recording, I'm at a conference, I'm
recording it now, I'm saying, well, I'm going to go and.
Put that into my I'm not saying there's your situation, I'm going to put this
into like my course, I'm going to train people through my course on that recording.
You need to talk to a lawyer and find out your specific scenario,
whether what you're doing is acceptable, because that area that you're talking
about is highly litigious, I'm not saying like every once in a while people get sued.
I mean, all the time.
People find out, oh, somebody created a course based on my
training and whether or not they have a case, they sue the people.
You know, it's a very dangerous area, so you just want to make sure you do it right.
Get a lawyer to look at everything around your scenario.
And as an example, if I were your lawyer in that scenario, I'd say, who's the party?
What's the location? Like Kerry said,
what are the agreements associated with the location if there are any?
Are there any agreements associated with the speaker?
What are the conditions associated with the with the group that's created?
I mean, I would lay out every single element of this thing and then do a full
assessment to see whether or not you're safe.
Because, you know, that's just that's just the way the law works.
It's a dangerous area of the law.
Well, sounds like I've been skating on thin ice because we've been
doing this now for close to a.
couple of years, every week. Yeah, every week. And at the end,
the agreement is, I give everybody everybody that was
present the link so that they can if they want, download the
recording.
Where are you recording? Like, where are you recording?
My computer is all remote. So we're we're different parts of
the world. Austria, Germany, let me ask you this. So it's like
a zoom, like I'm doing right now. I'm recording. All right,
I'll give you an example. I'm recording this zoom. I own all
rights associated with this because I'm recording it. And
I'm an IP attorney. So I can use any single part of anything
that's going on with my recordings any way I want.
Obviously, I'm respectful about things. But the fact of the
matter is, somebody makes an incredibly good intelligent
comment. That comment may end up in a video. Right? Why? Because
I'm trying to help other people, right? But it's my video. It's
in my zoom. Right now, you may have you're running your own
zoom, where people come in, and you're recording. It's the same
thing. It's your zoom, it's your recording. So it's one of the
things that you want to kind of consider. Now another thing you
can do is you got you could actually have a terms and
conditions associated with your own lives. That says, if you're
registering for this event, you understand that all recordings I
own all right title and interest to our recordings. And anybody
and anybody who tries to use that material would potentially
be committing IP infringement. And I reserve the right to
enforce my rights any way I so choose. You know, and any lack
of enforcement is not a waiver of my rights. I mean, I'm, I'm
literally seeing the whole agreement right now. It's just
how I think so. You know, there's certain things I
actually gave you four clauses right there that are very
valuable. So there's a recording, you guys are gonna
want to watch this another time. So the whole point of this
conversation being, if it's on my platform, the best way to do
it is to make sure when people register, there's an agreement
that says, you understand that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
right. The second best way is to understand that it's my video
recording. It's my recording. If anybody here, there is no
expectation of privacy in a room with 70 people. There's no
expectation of privacy. So there's plenty of case law on
that. So you just you want to kind of, you want to make sure
that now it's different if it's a one on one. If you're having
like a one on one with a person, and you're doing a zoom, I might
actually argue that there may be an expectation of privacy,
because it's a personal conversation with one person,
there's not a ton of other people there. You know, they may
have an expectation of privacy. And now all of a sudden, you
take the video recording where they're talking about a bad
relationship with their husband, and you use that in
your next challenge that talks about how to fix marriages, and
there they are in the front of your video, is your marriage
like this, I can't stand what he does. Every time I come home, he
doesn't appreciate me. Well, change your marriage by blah,
blah, like that would be horrible. Right. But I can tell
you as an attorney, people do it. So you know, there's a
higher expectation of privacy there. And here, there's no
expectation of privacy. If there was an expectation of
privacy, there wouldn't be so many people here. So all right,
with that, it's 925. I'm going to close here. Addison, are you
going to be on tomorrow?
Yes, sir, I will be on tomorrow.
Is it something that you need to implement today?
I just you answered my questions. The only thing I
wanted to ask you when can we get started, I want to go ahead
and get these done as soon as possible. So we're gonna talk
about that tomorrow. Okay, we'll be talking. Yeah, tomorrow,
you're gonna want to show up. All right. It is such an honor.
I mean, I can't tell you guys just how much of an honor it is
to serve you guys like this. It's you guys are like brilliant
in all different ways. And I love it. I definitely
appreciate you. It's been a blessing for for myself. Mutual
I'm really I'm ready to get I'm ready to get it on the road.
Okay. So we'll be covering that tomorrow. And yeah, it's an
honor to serve you guys, you know, and watch people grow
together. And I mean, my prayer is that you're all successful.
You all do well, people don't take your stuff. Because many of
you have worked very hard to get to where you are. Now I want to
make sure that those ideas that you have come to fruition and
you
receive the benefit of that, right? That's important. That is
so important to me. So that's my hope and prayer for all you
guys. All right. And with that, you incredible people, Addison,
thank you so much for those kind words that that's
thank you, my brother. I like I said, I really do appreciate
you. And I'm very thankful that destiny 508, you know, kind of
channel channeled me towards your direction, because
definitely, I need your service.
So it'd be my pleasure to serve you. And I love Todd and Tamara
those talk about service. They they're incredible servants of
God. So love those people. So all right, well, my friends, I'm
going to jump off. I got to start working at the law firm
now. And so I'll leave you guys and I'll catch up tomorrow. Make
sure you're there tomorrow. You're going to want to be there
tomorrow. And make sure you go live in the group. Remind people
you know, what that one issue is in copyright law, that you have
learned that and you see how you're going to implement it.
Talk about that implementation part. I know it's a stretch, but
you're going to see that when you talk about it, you're making
your mind think of it more than just kind of regurgitating
something that you heard, you're actually going to step further
and saying, this is how I'm going to use that it will bring
you way further along. And then God permitting, see you tomorrow
and we'll take it from there. All right, Larissa, I'm going to
leave you with these lovely people and I'll catch all of you
tomorrow.
Yeah, God bless.
Drop it in the chat VIP folks. How great was tonight? I know
it might be late for a lot of us. But let's put some good
love in the chat for Peter. And you know how giving he is this
good stuff. Not legal advice, but boy, he really hits the pin
on the head.