Welcome to day two of the Protect Your Idea Challenge.
We are a few minutes of the hour, so come on in.
Get your non-alcoholic beverage of choice ready for some not-legal advice as we learn
so much about intellectual property, which is IP, trademarks, patents, copyrights, what they are,
why we need them, a little bit about searching and finding and defining.
Information and knowledge is power is power. Good to see you, Evelyn. Good to see you,
Nick. Get your chats open and tell us how you're feeling today. What degrees?
How warm is it where you are at? And if you are in the cold places like I am,
tell us how warm it is on the inside. Welcome, Rebecca. Good to see you. Welcome, David. Welcome,
Strata. Someday you're going to tell me how to say that. I hope I'm doing it right. Welcome,
Natalie. Welcome, Sally. Welcome, Daryl. Welcome, Judy and Tom.
We're doing a challenge, so we love to have our chats open. If you're on a non-mobile device,
then you can actually have your video on in your chat, but take a second in the chat
and greet everybody in the room, into this virtual classroom and tell us where you're from,
where you're tuning in from. We love to get to know you and see what you're doing.
Is everybody having a great day? If you're not having a great day, you are now.
We're having a great day here today. We are blessed and highly favored.
Yep. We have Tom from the Aloha State. 67 seems, I don't know what part of California you're from,
Evelyn. Wonderful. Wonderful.
If at all possible, we'd love for you to have your camera on, especially when Peter comes on,
because he looks at everybody. He watches. He doesn't just look at the camera. He looks at you.
So it may look like, where is he looking? Well, he's looking at you if you've never been in a
Zoom class before. You're like, Larissa, it's 2022. Who hasn't been in a Zoom class? Well,
it took a while for my mom to get in a Zoom class, so I make no assumptions. We all know
what assuming does, right? So I'm in Calgary, Alberta, where it's single digits on the
Fahrenheit and it's negative in the Celsius, which I have to be. So for those of you who were here
yesterday, and for the sake of those who are just tuning in live today for the first time,
we would love to take some shares of what you learned. One thing you learned yesterday that
is going to change the way you think about intellectual property, change the way you do
business, change the way you create. So down at the bottom of your screen, there's a reactions
button and there's a little raise hand feature. We use that a lot. So get used to your Zoom and
reactions. Like right now, I'm putting a heart up in my corner of my screen. If you can see that,
that's on the reactions. Raising your virtual hand also lines you up. So if you have a takeaway
from yesterday, you didn't have to be live. Maybe you watched the replay. They did go out earlier
today, a few hours back. And if you didn't get a chance to watch your replay, but you are tuning
in today, you'll catch up. Just start gleaning, start gleaning. So who would like to share with
us? Don't make me voluntold anybody. I'm looking at someone. Welcome, Tim. Welcome, Jennifer.
Welcome, Poppy. Welcome, Rebecca, Mark. Welcome, Sally and Frank. Welcome, Gladia, Sue.
Welcome, Rebecca. Welcome, Sue. Another Mark. Maybe that's the same Mark. Now, don't be shy.
Even if you shared, went live and did your homework, not everybody heard those. Not everybody's
tuned in. We'd love to hear like who had a little shift yesterday and what was your positive shift?
All right. So I am going to spotlight Tim. Talk to us. Yeah.
A lot going on. I mean, the bandwidth is absorbing a lot. The things that caught me,
my question was regarding a trademark that was abandoned or dead.
And Peter was basically saying, you know, danger, Will Robinson,
watch out for that. And it's best to do a lot of research on
that company. And then see if you can find the people that
originally filed it. And then, yeah, get a letter saying, you
know, a signed document that they give you permission to use
that name, or get another name. So that was huge. I've been to
the trademark website several times, done some work on it. The
simple adding the quotations was huge. And then the other tabs he
showed. I wrote those down. I did some research and I found
the people that have original trademark that's now dead and I
located their residence and found a phone number and I left
him a message as well sent them an email last night. So yay,
Peter.
And yay, Tim. That's awesome. Look at you. Yeah.
Hallelujah. Absolutely. Awesome. Who else have we got? Who like
some of you were told to go, you know, do some homework, play
around with the USPTO website. Who did that? Who did that and
have some fun, like found something good besides Tim or
another good takeaway, mind shift, business changer,
creation changer, just Evelyn. All right, let me get your
spotlight and you can unmute yourself.
Yeah, I played around with it. And I have an LLC and it's
called Evelyn's SSL creation. And I just looked up the name
Evelyn, just to see, I was sort of curious, and nothing came up.
But yeah, so my takeaway was when he, you know, talked about
Facebook, and what Facebook can do, because a couple times my
music was unmuted, because they wanted to know who the original,
you know, author was. And so I told, you know, I put in the
message that I am the original author, and they said that they
they would investigate it. So I thought that was pretty
interesting what Peter said about Facebook.
Absolutely 100%. And if you've actually ever, like, sang or
danced to recorded music, like I have, I've been silly a lot on
Facebook. And I get these warnings, like I get a warning
for like, for three years ago, we have muted a temporarily
suspended play of your da da da da, because it used licensed
music, and we're investigating it. And I mean, three years ago,
I had no idea. I didn't. I didn't know, Peter, of course.
And I mean, it's not the worst thing in the world. But I mean,
I was being silly at the time. So I'm not
Yeah, I get my videos blocked, because they're just bad. Well,
he has nothing to do with trademarks or copyrights or
patents or anything. Just bad. So people just block them in
general. I don't think it has anything to do with TikTok
personally. So yeah, so we're gonna dig in a little bit on
what you guys were just talking about. Hey, everybody. Welcome
to day two. It's so good to see you guys so excited. I've been
watching some of your videos. Thank you so much for sharing.
By the way, I try to leave a little bit of time for people to
give any feedback, kind of ask additional things and also kind
of give those golden nuggets because like your opinion really
matters. Like each of you has your own personal experiences
that you've been through and you're applying what you've
learned to your circumstances. So when you kind of talk about
how you've learned something and how you're applying it to your
own business, chances are there's somebody else here, who
is in a similar circumstance and based on the way that you saw
your circumstance and how you're applying it, they're going to
gain from that. So that's why I try to allow people I get out of
the way and allow you to kind of take, take the stage and kind
of explain how you're applying your life, what's changing in
your life. Welcome to day two, we're going to jump in deeper on
trademarks today. Okay, so when we dump deeper into trademarks,
there's a number of things that we're going to walk through. I'm
going to take it a little slow in the beginning, then go a
little faster. Just a little bit of administrative stuff. There
are some people that are still trying to get in. After today, I
try not to let people start coming in on day four, because
it just gets very confusing. They have to catch up and it
just becomes very messy. And so I'll let I think up until
tomorrow, we'll let other people in. So if you have friends and
you want to invite them or you have colleagues, feel free,
you're more
You're welcome to do that.
Happy to let them in.
On day four and forward, I think we just shut it down.
Because it's just, it becomes so difficult for you.
I want to honor all of you.
And if I'm answering questions that you've already
heard the answers to, I'm wasting your time.
And so I don't want to do that.
And so I want to make sure that I honor you.
And by shutting it down by the end of Wednesday,
I think is appropriate.
So if you have other people you want to invite,
feel free to do so.
Happy to have them.
Happy to train them.
The videos are available.
Let me talk a little bit about replays real quick
before we jump in, OK?
So we finish at around 10 o'clock at night.
I'm on the East Coast.
And so after that, Zoom has to finish its processing.
Like there's these little hamsters inside the computer.
And they have to finish running to get it to my computer,
right?
When they're done, I finally have the videos.
Then I do video editing.
Because if you're talking about personal things,
sometimes you'll mention things that you should not mention.
We're going to talk about that here first
before I go into trademark law.
And so feel free to talk about concepts and everything here.
But if you have a specific trademark
that you're thinking, oh, this is
the name that is going to change my corporation,
don't say the name here.
I mean, there's a lot of good people here, I'm sure.
I recognize a lot of people.
But I can't control what other people do.
So it's probably a bad idea for you
to say the name of your most important product
or your future company here, right?
So I wouldn't do that, OK?
But with that being said, after the processing is done
and then I do my video editing, it's
usually around 2, 3 in the morning.
So at that point, I then start the uploading process
into YouTube or into Vimeo.
And then that, I go to bed and wait for that thing to be done.
So when that's finally done, by the morning,
if nothing crashes, then you're going to have everything up,
right?
And so a lot of you are going to see in the Facebook group,
you'll see the link.
If you click on, if you just go into the Facebook group,
you'll actually see the link for the day.
Now, what I'm going to end up doing is actually saving it
into the, let me actually open it
and I'll tell you exactly where I'm going to save it.
Let me go into the group.
There it is.
And I'll post this on the Facebook group.
I just want to go through this with you
so that everybody knows where everything is.
So I'm going to pin it to the top.
And then it'll also be available under media.
It'll also be available under featured.
So it'll be available in a number of places.
So you can't miss it.
And if you do miss it, just post a question
and we're all here to support each other.
You'll know exactly what our videos are.
VIP, VIP, you're getting an email
and all of you in VIP should have the email by now
because I personally sent it out about 40 minutes ago.
After I didn't like the first edit.
So I went back, redid it and then finally sent it all to you.
So you should have an email
that actually has the challenge video link
and the VIP video link.
If you're in VIP and you don't have that,
email support at elite-challenges.com.
Okay, and we'll get it to you.
Don't worry, the videos aren't going to disappear.
Like if you don't have it, like, you know
within a certain time limit, don't worry.
You're going to get it.
Okay, so you'll be fine there.
Let me talk a little bit about procedure
and then we're going to jump into some,
Larissa, what's up?
I saw the finger.
So did you just say you put the replay
for the first portion in the group?
The replay for the challenge, for the challenge itself.
So I'm looking and I'm not finding.
Let me look and see.
There's a handout.
I did see your post where you said-
No, no, no, it's being posted in the group.
It's being posted in the group.
Yeah.
Yeah, so it's going to be, after we're done here,
it'll be posted in the group.
Okay, not yet.
All right.
Right, right.
Yeah.
So let me just grab one more thing.
And I think, Poppy, did you have a question
on administrative stuff or is it legal stuff?
Peter, I have a legal question.
Okay, well, hold your question
and don't bring your hand down.
So you'll be the one I ask first, okay?
So you'll be-
And I don't-
Don't ask any legal questions.
Let me finish the administrative stuff first, okay?
I'm going to talk about administrators.
So I am not seeing the VIP email.
Did you get the normal challenge email?
Yeah, well, actually, let me make sure.
So-
I can't remember which email I used to set the-
challenge. All right. So just just so that we don't hold everybody up. Let me just DM me or email
us. Actually, I already know your name, Poppy. I'll take care of you personally. Don't worry
about it. Sweet. Thank you. All right. Yeah, absolutely. My friend. Yeah, we'll take care of
you. Don't worry about it. All right. There was one more administrative thing before I jump in.
Yeah, let me just. What was it? VIP. Yeah, I think I think it's OK. No VIP. I already mentioned
the emails. You can still sign up for VIP if you so choose. I don't want to just I want to make
sure nobody feels like they have to jump in the VIP. Don't feel that way. I know we mentioned it
a lot because there's a lot of direct interaction without legal advice. There's no legal advice
in VIP. But we do actually answer a lot of questions, but don't feel like you like we're
not saying you have to go. I'm just saying it's it's it's an incredible experience. I mean,
who here is in VIP? Just raise your hand. There's a lot of people in it. Do you are you guys enjoying
it? Yeah. I mean, it's it's a pretty awesome experience. So if you guys can afford it,
I would jump in if you actually have specific questions. All right. And with that, I'm going
to jump into some difficult stuff in trademark law first, meaning where I see a lot of lawsuits.
OK, the reason why I'm jumping directly into this is because this is where people get in a lot of
trouble and I don't want any of you getting in trouble. So, I mean, I can talk about countless
things in trademark law, but one of the things I find a lot is people say, well, there's a trademark
there. Somebody has a federal registration. Everybody understands what a federal registration
is, right? We talked about that yesterday. So it's filing your trademark application with either
the United States Patent Trademark Office or a foreign country, wherever you're filing it and
getting a registration. When you file an application, you file your application. Then
you get an examiner who reviews it. They're going to either give you an allowance or they're going
to give you a rejection. If they give you a rejection, you have to respond to the rejection.
The rejection for a trademark application can be based on a number of different things.
I'll just give you two simple ones. One is they may say that your trademark is
quote unquote merely descriptive. Type that in the chat. Merely descriptive. You're going to
want to know that term. It's a very important term. Merely descriptive. OK, type that in the chat
and you're going to see why I'm going to explain what that means to you. Or they're going to say
that there's a likelihood of confusion with another trademark. So that means your trademark,
when compared to another trademark out there, is so similar that it can likely confuse the public
and therefore they won't let you get a registration. OK, those are the two biggest,
those are the most common rejections in trademark law. OK, likelihood of confusion and merely
descriptive. All right. If you get the rejection, get your lawyers to review it. They can actually
give you legal arguments as to how to get your registration through. Here's a secret, guys.
All right, here's a secret. You can actually call the examiner.
OK, a lot of people don't actually know this. They think they actually have to do everything
in writing. You can actually call the examiner. Now, here's a hint. If the rejection that you
receive in an office action is that, let's say, as an example, your description of the goods that
are covered is rejected. Let's say that you have the name Life is Good. And you want to use the
name Life is Good for t-shirts, right? Everybody knows that brand, Life is Good, right? So you want
to use it for t-shirts. But what you said in your recitation of goods, for this description of the
goods that are using it, is you came out and said, for cloth material that may be on a bodily part.
And the examiner said, what the heck are you talking about? Cloth material that might be on a
bodily part, what does that even mean? Do you mean t-shirts? Do you mean jackets? Do you mean
sweaters? And so if you say to yourself, well, yeah, I do mean t-shirts. I do mean jackets. I do
mean sweaters. You don't need to now go do a formal written response to an office action all the time.
Sometimes you can just call the examiner and say, hey, your suggestion, I agree. The examiner says,
great. You go, is that it? And they said, yes. Done. Do you understand the difference in that
phone call in cost versus writing a two or three hour response to an office action explaining
what the law is and all legal garbage? And sometimes just pick up the phone.
They don't do that all the time. But sometimes
Sometimes you can just pick up the phone.
I would speak to your trademark attorney beforehand
before you do that,
because you don't want to say the wrong thing
and then end up in a really bad situation, okay?
So that's number one.
You can actually speak to the examiners.
Some of them are very nice.
Some of them are not very nice.
So hopefully you get a good examiner who's very nice, okay?
All right, number two.
I get this a lot.
People see a trademark that's actually already out there
and they say, well, what if I just add a word to it, okay?
And I see a lot of heads going up and down.
I get this question all the time.
Microsoft exists.
I want to have Microsoft Fireball.
Bad idea, okay?
Just a bad idea.
Like just not a good idea, okay?
Why?
Because you're using their trademark in your trademark.
You cannot use somebody else's trademark in your trademark
and think that you're making it different.
That just does not work, okay, in trademark law.
If you take a federally registered trademark
and you put it inside of your trademark,
you're going to have problems
if it's for the same goods or the same services, right?
It's just a fact.
You're going to run into problems.
And again, I don't want you running into problems.
Is that clear?
Do you understand what that means?
Because I can just tell you that probably 20%
of the people that reach out to me in trademark law,
they got in trouble
because they use somebody else's trademark
in their trademark.
And they said, well, I modified it.
It's like, it's just a bad idea, right?
It's very messy.
And so I would not go down that route just by experience.
I wouldn't do that.
All right, so that's two things right now.
Let me cover maybe two more
before we go into some deep stuff.
You cannot own a descriptive trademark.
Now there's a caveat.
There's an unless.
But for now, I want you to just believe that that's it.
Believe that that was the end of the sentence, period,
or exclamation point, okay?
Now there's really a comma,
but I'll get to the comma
after you understand what I just said.
Then I'll go to the comma.
Otherwise I'm going to confuse all of you, okay?
So if your trademark is merely descriptive,
what do I mean by that?
You've got a construction company.
The construction company makes doors, okay?
Like they make doors and the doors are brown,
or they use doors and the doors are brown.
So you decide to file a trademark application
for your construction company called Brown Door.
It ain't happening.
You're not going to get it, okay?
Why?
It's merely descriptive of the very goods
that you're using the trademark for, okay?
So it's a brown door,
and you're trying to get a federal registration
for the name Brown Door.
That means nobody could ever use those words
to describe the very product that you own.
So the government's never going to give you a right to that.
It just, it doesn't work.
Okay, does that make sense?
So if you have, now there are degrees of this.
So you may think, well, I have a fast computer,
so I want to own fast computer,
or I have great software,
so I want to own great software, or, you know.
Now, anything that is merely descriptive,
you can't get a federal registration for, right?
So, but let me give you the comma now.
Here's the comma.
Because everybody understands what I just said, right?
So now let me give you the comma,
now that you understand it.
The comma is, you may end up in a situation
where you're using something that is descriptive,
but since you're the exclusive user of that,
and you've been doing it for a long time,
you can become well-known for that term.
So if you file a trademark application
for something that is merely descriptive,
but you've really been the only person using that
for like the last five to 10 years,
it may be the case that you can argue
that it's no longer just a descriptive term.
What you want to do is talk to your attorney on this issue.
All right?
So I'm telling you an exception to the rules.
This is an exception to the rule.
The general rule says,
no trademarks for descriptive trademark.
I mean, no federal registration
for a descriptive trademark, period, done, nothing else.
The lawyers who are really crafty,
who understand the law will tell you that,
actually, there's an exception to the rule.
If you're like one of the only people
who've ever used that term,
and everybody's using that term, knowing that it's you,
you may argue that it.
now falls out of a merely descriptive category.
Okay, you can argue that.
And that, I don't wanna confuse you,
but you can write down this term.
If this is you, if what I'm talking about is you,
write down the term supplemental register, all right?
That's all you have to remember.
That's what you're gonna ask your lawyer about.
If you have a term that is really descriptive,
but you're like the only party who's been using it
for like five to 10 years,
and you say, well, yeah, it's descriptive,
but nobody else uses it and everybody knows it's me.
You can actually file the trademark application.
And when you get the rejection,
you can seek to put it on the supplemental register,
but you need to talk to your lawyer, right?
Exactly, very good, Jason.
That's how you write it, supplemental register, okay?
That's what you wanna do.
It might be an I, supplemental or supplemental.
It's either I or E, one of the two.
But in any case, just remember the word.
So just mention that term to your attorney, that's all.
And your attorney is gonna say, what in the world?
How did you know that term?
And then you can just say, I'm smart, and that's all,
and move on from that.
Okay, let me walk you through right now.
Those of you that were in VIP went through this yesterday.
I told you that today I was gonna do a top level search
with everybody, all right?
You got a preview.
Some of you had from homework to actually do a search.
I'm gonna do a search with everybody now, all right?
So those of you that were in VIP,
there should be somewhat of a review.
If it's not a review,
and you're still confused about some things, let me know,
and we'll mention that again in VIP, we'll go deeper.
But I wanna walk people
through a basic trademark search online, all right?
I think this is gonna be very helpful for everybody.
All right, so with that,
let me just grab one thing over here.
Okay, and I'll share my screen, uspto.gov.
All right, and here we go, share screen, pal.
Okay, this is the United States
Patent Trademark Office website, uspto.gov.
What is going on?
Close that.
Let's see, can everybody still see?
Let me do something here first, hold on.
I'm gonna share it one more time.
Wanna make sure it's big enough for all of you.
That should be big enough, good?
Okay, good.
All right, trademarks, searching.
You click on searching here.
Now you have two, but you can either use this button here,
or you can use the link here.
You click on that, you have three options,
a basic search, a more detailed search,
which is called structured, or a free form search.
I would use the second one, all right?
This is what I would do, I always use the second one.
The reason why is because the first one
only gives you certain options that you can do.
You can use the word, the serial number of the registration,
which you likely won't know, or the owner.
But if you use this one instead,
look at all the different fields there are.
You can search by the full mark,
which is the entire trademark.
I would never search an entire trademark.
What I would do instead is I would search using this here,
non-punctuated wordmark.
That's the field I would use, non-punctuated wordmark.
You click on that.
Now you can type in whatever word you want, like Nike, okay?
But non-punctuated wordmark is,
there's no hyphens, there's no commas, things like that.
If you wanna search for punctuations,
then you can say mark with punctuation.
But we're just gonna assume non-punctuated, right?
And then if you wanna specify what the goods are,
or the services are, this over here, this operator,
you have to change the operator to say and, okay?
So now it's gonna search for Nike and,
so let's assume that we're gonna look for footwear,
footwear, okay?
So now you're clicking on, you have footwear,
and the footwear is actually the goods.
So just come down here and select goods and services.
You see how simple that is?
Like that's not really that difficult thus far.
Now you just click submit query.
Now this is every trademark having the name Nike,
including as goods, footwear.
So here's Nike Motiva.
We click on that, see it's owned by the Nike Corporation
and it's for footwear.
where and guess what this was just filed so you guys actually know before most other people
that their nike is actually going after a new trademark called the nike motiva it's october
11th was the filing date okay so now you guys know something that most people probably don't
know now if you want to figure out well what about if there's logos out there how do i know if there's
any logos that are filed by nike just go right up here where it says image list click on that
and let me shrink this down a little bit somehow now it's just too big there you go now what you
have is a listing of trademarks with the logo showing as well here's nike with the swoosh
there's n ntc owned by nike there's nike wow that's an ugly mark i don't know what that one
was there so um there's nike tour that must be golf or something like that uh let's see
so there's a whole bunch of different trademarks that are owned by nike but that's how you can see
the images as you just click on the top where it says images all right now when you look at the
results here it's going to give you a little bit more info here if it says dead next to it next to
the trademark that means either they filed for it and then it went abandoned or it was registered
at some point and then they didn't renew it something like that but it doesn't necessarily
mean that they're not using it anymore it just means that their procedure with the united states
patent trademark office is over like that is completely over and for that reason you if you
see dead alone make sure you do some more research to find out whether or not you truly can use a
trademark that's similar to that like let's say you were going for zonal for sneakers and you went
here and you said oh look it's dead so you click on it and you see abandoned okay so they filed for
it but it went abandoned got it uh it was a 1b application uh let me stop sharing for one second
here what's somebody type in the chat what's a 1b application see if anybody gets this right
we talked about this yesterday intent to use there it is so april congratulations so you win
the electronic business card okay so congratulations on that um let me show you guys what
this is because this is really cool all right so this is my wallet right this actually this wallet
was actually created by one of my clients king's loot so this is a really cool feature there's a
little piece here if you pull it the business card pops up that's so cool i love that so this is
actually my logo right there that's my logo um now this is an electronic business card so all you do
with the electronic business card is you take your cell phone and you just tap it on top of it
and all of your contact information comes right up it's all there you don't have to type it in
you don't have to share pieces of paper nothing so congratulations april so um larissa can you dm
me on that just so i send it to her thanks so you're going to get an email from me and you'll
be able to have your own your own logo on it do whatever you want so you have your own electronic
business card you're welcome all right so let me just take a second now and just see if anybody has
any question on a trademark search we did that really fast but i want to see if i can answer
one or two questions on trademark searches before we go anywhere else so does anybody have a question
on trademark searching
all right poppy go ahead unmute okay so i walked with you through it and did a trademark search
on my own company and nothing came up nothing even close came up which i'm really surprised
about i've had my company for oh my gosh like 25 years and i've actually had to write cease and
desist letters to several people that tried to snag my name wow so because i've had this company
for so long do i still have to trademark it yeah so um the answer is yes uh so let me let me explain
this a little bit for you so if you've been using a name for a really long time and nobody else
let's say that you've been using for 20 years right even specific names yeah like you how many
years did you say you used it 1998 wow okay so it's been a long time yeah yeah it's like 23 years
24 years so uh well first of all congratulations
relations. But let's say you want to just you want to own it
throughout all the United States, right? It there's
there's certain things you can do. If you get a federal
registration, you own all the United States and nobody else
will be able to do anything about that, like it'd be
exclusively yours, right? So let's say that most of your
sales have been in California, New York and Florida, but you
haven't had sales in let's say, Alaska, or Georgia, you know, so
you're thinking, well, I'm going to open up those markets.
So I have a question. So let me finish this example. And then
you can then you can add to it. Okay. Okay, that is the case.
I'm sorry, I do consultations to and I do them internationally.
Yeah, that's okay. That's okay. Well, let's say that your sales
have only been in California and New York, and you want to go
into Georgia. Well, you're thinking of going to Georgia,
you're thinking of going into Alaska, let's say, right. So now
since you've had those sales in California, New York for 24
years, and let's assume for just discussion purposes that you
cover every geographical region of all of California and all of
New York, just just assume it, right? Everybody remember
yesterday, I talked about common law trademark rights, right? So
in the common law, Poppy could continue, right? Even if
somebody got a federal registration, she could
continue using the trademark. Obviously, speak to your
lawyers. This is not legal advice. I know when to say that
I just I know when to say that. This is not legal advice. But
speak to your lawyers to confirm about your specific situations.
But if you've already been doing and somebody gets a federal
registration, they can't stop you from continuing to do what
you're already doing in the specific geographical regions
where you're already doing it. That's called common law
trademark rights. It's very powerful. Most people don't
know anything about it. All right. But now if somebody else
filed a federal trademark application, and they and they
get it, Poppy is now shut down from every other geographical
region throughout the United States. Wow, you can't do
anything about it. That means she's stuck in the geographical
regions where she sold the product or services already.
Period. Does that make sense? That was common law versus
federal. Everybody remember that? Okay, good. All right. So
now, Poppy asked another question. She said, Well, what
if I also have different services like I do consulting?
So it's not I don't just do this one thing. I also do
consulting. Well, that's a second international class,
right? So it's not just one international class. It's now
two international classes. So you may have been you may have
been selling sneakers for 20 years, but you haven't sold
t shirts for 20 years. So just because you've been using the
name Nike on sneakers for 20 years, and you have certain
rights there doesn't mean that you can use the name Nike for
t shirts. Oh, wow. Because that's a different that's a
different international class. Okay, so it comes down to what
is the international class associated with my trademark?
That's what you have to look at. And each international class
may have a different starting date. So this is why you want to
take like a piece of paper and write down what are all the
goods and services that I'm using my trademark for in my
company. This is what all of you should do. This is part this is
a fraction a fraction of what's called an IP audit. This is a
fraction of it guys. Okay, like a real IP audit is very
comprehensive. Like we dig in really deep look and see your
trademarks, your copyrights, your patents, where you're using
them, what you do own already what you may own, we give a
strategic plan like that's very detailed. That's not what I'm
talking about. This is like the very beginning of it, which is
take a piece of paper, write down your trademark, and then
write down every good or service associated with that trademark.
If your company has three trademarks that it uses, maybe
you have one new product line and you have a service line, and
then you have a name for your company. Those are three
trademarks, right? So you should have three pieces of
paper. Paper number one has trademark number one, write
down every single good and service associated with it.
Paper number two has trademark number two, write down every
single good and service associated with trademark number
three, I know I'm doing this slowly, but I'm telling you
this, and I'm taking the time because a lot of people make
mistakes in this area. I just had a multi-million dollar
corporation come to me. They make probably around 50-60
million a year. They made this mistake. They have a specific
trade
trademark for one specific line of goods.
They never filed for the other goods.
You know what happened?
Company in China started making the same product,
knocking off their product and using their trademark.
Now, since they had rights in the United States,
that Chinese company couldn't come into the United States
for those goods, but that Chinese company
did one step further.
They went one step further.
They used that name, not just for the same goods.
They used it for other goods.
So instead of just sneakers,
they use that same name now for jackets.
They use that name for golf clubs.
Okay, so now what happens?
My client who just came in is completely distraught
because now they cannot own that name
for jackets or for golf clubs.
I'm giving you, that's not exactly what the goods were.
I'm just giving you an example, all right?
So you've gotta make sure every place
where you're going to use that trademark,
you have to list them all in your trademark application
and your list may include more
than one international class.
So I'm gonna take a moment to show you
what international classes are,
because some of you are probably going,
what in the world is an international class?
I don't understand, all right?
So let me just take a moment to explain to you
what international classes are.
Natalie, did you have a question about searches?
Yeah, all right, unmute yourself, my friend, go ahead.
Okay.
What about a phrase?
And if you use a phrase
and there's maybe quotes around a word,
the quotes would have to be in there.
Would that be a consistent thing?
How do we search for a phrase?
Let me show you.
That's a good question.
By the way, I don't know if you saw how many heads
went up and down when you said that.
So well done.
There were a lot of people went immediately.
So that's a great question.
So let me share my screen again.
Okay, everybody see the screen says Nike zone all again?
All right.
All right, so let me go back here.
So if I were doing this here,
let's just say I did a search for just do it, right?
Let me show you what happens.
If I do a search for just do it and footwear.
3096 records.
Now, why is that?
Why do you think that is?
What do you think happened?
Just guess.
Is it maybe just a part of their name?
Exactly.
So unless you put quotes at the beginning and the end,
you're not gonna get the trademarks with just do it in it.
So what you wanna do in your search
is make sure that you put,
if you're looking for a specific phrase,
then put quotes around it.
Now I'm gonna warn you here.
I wanna make sure everybody's listening here.
When I pause, just as a clue,
when I pause and you see me shift my position here
and I sit up straight and I'm going,
let me warn you.
The reason why I'm doing that is because I'm a litigator.
All right?
And I litigate in many states of the United States
and I see these issues.
So there's a flag going off in my head going,
I need to make sure they get this point.
So anytime you see me do that,
like John's doing right now, like write it down.
Like this is really important stuff, okay?
All right, so here's what I would do.
If you have a phrase,
don't just search for the phrase in quotes.
The reason why I'm saying that is if somebody else
has a federal registration for just do,
like let's say it's just just do,
like the word just do and it's not in there, okay?
So if somebody else has a federal registration for just do,
let me share my screen again.
And I search for just do it alone.
All I'm gonna get are these registrations here.
Just do it, just do it, just do it, just do it,
just do it, right?
But if I go back and I search for just do alone,
I'm gonna see other people's registrations.
Like just do it epic or just do epic or just do,
okay, let's move on from there.
Just do good, all right?
Did not see that one coming, all right.
You learn something new every day.
Same thing for, let's say,
let's say you did a search for Microsoft Excel.
So when you do your search for Microsoft Excel, really?
Well, I guess they just don't do it, right?
They don't do it.
own Excel. They probably, oh, I know why, because we have footwear here.
They don't do it.
I have to change that to software. Let's see if it comes up. No. Let me try and see if we can find
Microsoft's trademark. Let's see if they own Microsoft as the owner, owner name, and Excel
non-punctual. Let's see if they own that trademark. They do. Okay, so here's their registration,
Excel, right? So if I did a search for Microsoft Excel, let's say I did a search for Microsoft
Excel, and when I searched, I said, oh, it's clear. It's clear. There's definitely no chance
of infringement. I can now use Microsoft Excel. Do you see what just happened there
by doing that kind of search? Because I used the quotes, it's only looking for all those words.
It's looking for the entire thing. But if you don't search the words individually, you may end
up in a situation, and this is why I'm telling you, use a lawyer to do your trademark search.
What I'm teaching you is a top-level search, so you can go from multiple potential trademarks
down to a handful or maybe one or two that you're really interested in. Then you present those to
your lawyers to do a good job, right? Because that's what they do for a living. But if you
search Microsoft Excel right now, you would start using Microsoft Excel. You know what would happen
tomorrow? Ding dong. They're serving you for committing trademark infringement if you're using
it for software, right? So what I would do in your search is I would make sure that when you do a
search, you search for Microsoft alone, and when you search Microsoft alone, you go, whoa, 194
records for Microsoft? Wow. Now you can actually look at these and see whether or not they're a
problem. But then I would also look for Excel, Excel alone, and review the results. And now,
oh, there's four trademarks there. Now you can actually click on that and see, oh, there's the
actual trademark that's owned by Microsoft for Excel. It was filed April 12th, which is my
birthday, by the way. 2004. What are the chances of that? That's pretty cool. For computer software.
Okay, so some of you might be saying to yourselves, well, that's a lot of results I have to go through.
Like, oh, I don't want to review all this stuff. It's not fair. Like, I don't want, it takes time.
I don't want to do that, right? So here's what I would offer you. You're not paying for it.
It's free. So if you get a lot of results, take the time and look through them. Like, you know,
watch TV, hang out with the family, do whatever, and review your results. There may be a lot of
results, but you didn't pay 600 bucks an hour to review them, right? So you actually spent zero
dollars, and you're going to review everything and figure out what actually looks potentially good,
and then give that to your attorney. Does that help, Natalie? Yeah? Okay, great. Awesome, awesome.
Okay. All right. With that, let me cover two more things here. Let me talk a little bit about
domain names. Just by a show of hands, how many people here own a domain name? At least one.
Okay. Now, how many of you people that put up their hands for owning a domain name
also own a trademark with that domain name? Or own a domain name with that trademark?
Okay. Yesterday, we kind of touched base on how the relationship between domain names and
trademarks, right? We kind of touched base on that at a top level. Let me go a little more
detailed here. If you have a federal registration for a trademark, and somebody buys a domain name
that is exactly the same as your federal registration, you may be able to stop them
from using that domain name, okay? Using the domain name dispute policy,
all right? It's called the domain name dispute policy. I'm going to drop in the Facebook group
the link to be able to access that so you can see what you can do. Why am I telling you this?
Because people blackmail trademark owners all the time trying to sell a domain name for the exact
same trademark that they own. I see Poppy like, yep. It's like, yeah, this happens all the time,
guys. This is why I tell you the sequence that I would do is I would do my search. I would find a
trademark that looks really good. I would get ready to file my trademark. Then I would buy the
domain name if it's available. Then I would file the trademark application because
If you file the trademark application,
there's these people that are watching the registry
to see everybody who's filing in that day,
and they immediately buy the domain name
that has the exact same name as your trademark.
And now you're getting frustrated
because a domain name that could have cost you 8.95
on, what is it, Namecheap, now costs you 2,500 bucks.
You're welcome.
All right, that's the sequence you wanna use.
I'm telling you this because I know a lot of people
that are famous and not famous
who run into this problem a lot.
So I'd much rather you own the domain name for nine bucks
and you own your trademark.
But if you do have a trademark
and somebody buys the domain name
for your exact same trademark,
and they're using it for similar goods and services,
you can use the domain name dispute policy.
I'll drop the link.
You can speak to an attorney and ask them how to use it.
Okay?
So that's one way you can stop these people
from blackmailing you, which is, it's kind of annoying,
but they make a business out of it.
So that's one thing that they do a lot.
Now, let me go into just,
yeah, let me share something with you here.
I'm gonna share with you a link.
I'm gonna throw it in the chat.
Paste, how.
Then I'm gonna open that chat, that up for all of you to see.
Paste.
Okay.
All right, let's do this.
I'm gonna share my screen with all of you.
Okay.
What I just dropped for all of you
is the listing of international classes.
Every trademark application that you file
must be within an international class, at least one.
If it's software, it's gonna be class nine.
If it's gonna be online education,
it's gonna be class 41.
How do I know this?
I've been doing this 25 years.
Or I've been doing this a long time.
So when you come out with a trademark application,
which I'm gonna kind of talk to you a little bit about
right after this.
And if you're in VIP,
we're gonna do a live trademark application filing together.
And you'll get the video so you can watch
and see all the steps that are involved.
And again, it's not for you to file an application
on your own.
It's so you understand all the parts.
You can get all the parts together
and then give all the parts to your attorney
so that they can actually do a filing at way lower costs
than what it would normally cost.
Okay.
So let me share my screen.
This is what's called a listing of international classes.
All right.
Every trademark application must fall into at least one.
There must be at least one international class.
Okay.
So with that being the case,
every class here is listed.
All you have to do is go to that link
and then scroll down and you'll see what falls in a class.
Class one, chemicals.
Class two, paints.
Three, cosmetics.
You know, four, lubricants.
Like just, you go through them.
If you're in the drug industry, class five.
Metal goods fall into class six.
Just go through and read it.
Like you have the link, it costs you nothing.
Now you can look through and see where things fall.
Class seven is machinery.
The ones that people use a lot.
Class nine is a big one.
This is where a lot of the software falls.
A lot of the electronic devices fall.
A lot of the inventions that are electrical,
they fall into class nine.
Software falls into class nine.
10 is medical apparatus.
I'll show you another one that people use a lot.
Jewelry is a big one.
But if you come out with your own new jewelry line,
that's class 14.
For those of you that have musical instruments,
you come out with, let's say you have a name
that you're using for a musical instrument line,
that'll fall into class 15.
Tomorrow we're gonna be touching base on copyright law.
So for those of you that are musicians, who are singers,
who are artists in different ways,
tomorrow's gonna be a really important day for you.
Don't miss it.
Even if you're creating like,
I know some of you have like board games and other games.
There's a lot of creative people here, quite frankly.
I'm really impressed with this group.
So any of those games,
you'll have the names that are protectable by trademark,
the logos protectable by trademark.
But then when it comes to the text on the inside,
like the owner's manual, that's copyright law.
The painting or the image, that's copyright law.
There's different things that are protectable
within just a game.
And let me show, I'll show you one more that is used a lot.
Nope, nope, nope, nope.
Clothing is a big one, 25.
So if you're doing a t-shirt line, that's a big one.
A lot of that's gonna be class 25, okay?
Toys, some of you are doing games like we just talked about.
So whatever the name is of your game,
if you're getting a trademark application,
that'll fall into class 28 for toys, okay?
And there's a number of others.
Class 40, I'll just go right to 41
because I have a number of federal registrations in 41.
And that is education and entertainment, okay?
So if you're teaching online, if you're doing challenges,
if you're doing, if you have an evergreen course,
that's class 41.
So let me just stop for a second.
Does that help?
That link help?
Yeah?
So here's the thing, here's your homework.
For all of you that use a trademark
or all of you that have a unique domain name,
do your own trademark search
and then figure out what international class
is associated with the goods or services that you provide.
Okay, that's all it is.
And then when you go into the Facebook group,
don't write in your, don't write your trademark, okay?
I don't want you to do that, but I'm gonna start,
I'm gonna actually start a post
and under it, you can just kind of like write
international class nine, international class 11,
just to kind of confirm that you did this exercise,
just write down the international class
that's associated with whatever you have.
Don't write down what you have,
just write down the international class.
And what you'll find is that there's a lot of people here
that are doing very different things.
We should probably cover a good,
I'd say 10 to 15 different international classes
from this group alone,
judging by what I've heard from all of you thus far, okay?
Is this helping so far?
Are you guys still with me?
Yeah, is this too much or is it, no, you're okay.
All right, good.
All right, I don't wanna lose anybody.
Again, you have the videos, it's being recorded.
You'll be able to watch the videos as well, okay?
Now, what I'm gonna walk you through
in the last few minutes
is the United States Patent Trademark Office website.
I'm gonna show you one thing here real quick.
Now, again, if you're a VIP,
we're gonna walk you through
an actual trademark application,
but I wanna show you if you're not a VIP,
where you go at least,
so at least you know where you go, all right?
So let me share a screen real quick.
Okay, so here's the main screen.
Let me shrink it down, shrink, shrink, shrink.
Okay.
So when you're in here and you click on Trademarks,
there's a button that says Apply Online.
Now, let me just ask a question real quick.
How many people here have registered
with the United States Patent Trademark Office
to use the website, just by a show of hands?
Just a few, okay, all right.
All right, so as a surprise,
as a surprise, John's gonna be training
this section of the course.
John, you're ready, right?
We talked about this, you ready?
You're not ready?
John's like, what are you talking about, Pete?
That is not happening.
So the USPTO website to use it, as John knows,
as Judy knows, you actually have to have applied
to be able to use it, okay?
You can't just like jump in and just start using it.
So I'm gonna show you where you do that.
So let me just share the screen real quick.
When you click on Apply Online,
there's a screen that says Login to TEAS, to Access Forms.
There's all this other stuff here,
which to me is very confusing, quite frankly.
What I would do instead is I would just go
to the top right here.
There's a button that says My USPTO,
and you click on that, that's it.
It's just so much cleaner.
I think if you go this other way into their site,
it's so confusing, like trademarks, Apply Online,
then you're here and you're like, well, what do I do?
And now you've got to read through all this material
and initial application forms, and can you use it?
Yeah, you could click here.
Then you can click Start Your Application
and then TEAS, which essentially is gonna get you back
to the same screen, right?
So what I would do instead is just go right to the screen,
My USPTO, there it is.
So you're gonna click on, I need.
need an account, create a USPTO.gov account.
That's where you're going.
Now you fill in all the data, your email address, your name,
blah, blah, blah.
And then you're going to have to do
a number of different things, OK?
So I just wanted to show you that portion here,
because what I found is a number of people
wanted to try out the website, but they couldn't.
And the reason why is because they weren't registered
with the site yet.
You have to be registered with the site to use it.
You don't have to be registered with the site
to do a trademark search.
But if you're going to do a trademark application,
you have to be registered with the site.
Does that make sense?
So for those of you who have never
used the site, what you can do tonight,
because you've got me for three more days after today.
So I was going to say take advantage of me,
but I'm not going to say that.
So what you can do is take advantage of this time
and ask any questions that you have.
Get all these things together.
And when Larissa sees a lot of people
asking similar questions, she's just
going to say, everybody's asking the same question.
And then I'll be able to address one or two of those questions.
Obviously, if you're a VIP, we're
going to do a whole application together in 15 minutes, OK?
Like from the beginning to the end.
And you'll be able to ask questions as we're going along.
But so your step number one, if you're
going to file an application, you have to go and register.
So tonight or tomorrow or sometime this week,
go register with the site.
And even if you're not going to file an application,
you can register with the site.
And if you're having trouble registering with the site,
you can raise it here and we can talk about it.
We can see if we can figure it out for you
because we're all together.
And you're not going to be billed at $600 an hour
for a lawyer to actually tell you how to do that, OK?
All right, let me take Allison.
Allison, how are you?
You got to unmute.
I want to hear your lovely voice.
Sorry.
Hi, guys.
How's your hubby doing?
He's doing great.
I am struggling because California is much colder
than I thought.
So I have to wear warm clothes.
OK, this is where I hang up on Allison
because I'm in New Hampshire.
It was nice talking to you.
Talk to you.
I love you.
I'm sorry.
I was going to say, so for me, I looked it up
and I saw that there was someone that had the trademark,
but it was for a different good.
And I've had this idea for like five years now.
And but it was for a different good.
And there's also an alternative that I wanted to use.
I wanted to use two.
So I was wondering, since they actually just filed in this
year and just got it in May.
So I was wondering, should I try doing something else?
Or do you think it would just be safe because they're
so different?
So mine is a product.
Mine is a clothing.
And theirs is music.
So yours is what?
I want to do mine with clothing.
And theirs is with music.
Yeah, all right.
So this is where we kind of crossed the line.
So this is legal advice.
And that's why I can't tell you what
to do in your specific scenario.
You need to speak to a lawyer about that.
But let me, I'll just give you.
An example?
Yeah, I'll give you an example.
Which, because I can't tell you what
to do in your circumstances because I'm not your attorney.
And I could run into problems for that.
So I don't want to do that.
Hashtag not legal advice.
Yeah, so this is not legal advice.
And I'm not even going to try to tread in this area.
But this is what I would say is, if somebody's
got a federal registration for software
and I'm using it for plants, I don't really
have a problem because they're not even related.
Unless somebody is making the bionic fern,
like we've seen the million dollar, $10 million man,
or $5 million man, or whatever it is, right?
How many millions was he?
I don't remember.
I just remember a million dollar at that point.
I mean, it was a million dollar ADV.
Thank you, Sally.
The $5 million man, right?
How did they get all that stuff done for only $5 million?
You can't do a lot for $5 million these days.
But anyways, I digress.
But the point being, unless it's like some kind of bionic fern
that uses software, I can't see them even
being related in that case.
So what you want to do is, there's
a few things in a situation where,
let's say I've been using a trademark for five years.
years. Somebody else just gets the federal registration. I'm looking at common law.
Immediately, I go, whoa, hold it. When a common law writes, I can continue doing certain things.
So I want to talk to my attorney about my common law rights, where I can use a trademark, and when
I can't use a trademark, like where, where can I use it and can't use it, right? Because here's
the thing, everybody, I want all you to hear this, all right? The rights associated with a federal
trademark application begin from the date of filing, all right? Now, what do I mean by that?
Let me be clear. You don't get to stop others from using something that is similar until you
get the federal registration, but once you get the federal, once you file your application,
if somebody starts to use it after, you're considered to have rights as of the date of
filing. So if Allison files today, and two days later, I start using it, even though Allison
doesn't have a federal registration, when she gets the federal registration, she wins,
because she filed before me, right? It's always based on that filing date. That filing date is
really, really important in the trademark world. This is why I told you guys the other day,
if you got a trademark you really like, and you know you're going to use it,
file an intent to use application under Section 1B, because an intent to use application will
lock it down so nobody can use it. You know, it's now yours, you've got the filing date, okay?
But if it is the case where I've got a trademark that I honestly and authentically have been using
for five years, or 10 years, or 15 years, or whatever, and somebody else filed a federal
trademark application for goods that are not even vaguely similar, I'm not too concerned,
but what I will, you know what, I'm going to share something with you. I wasn't going to do this.
You know what, I'm going to share something with you, because Allison asked a very good question.
So I'm going to share something with you guys. I wasn't going to do this this time, but why not?
Is it the six million dollar man? It is? Thank you, John. John saves the day again. Well done,
John. All right. Are you guys okay with me going a little deeper with you for a minute? Yes? All
right. If you guys have to go, you can go. I'm going to dig into something here that,
this is thick, but this is going to save you guys a lot of hardship. So I'm going to,
and you'll have the video so you can watch it again, so I don't mind. Let me share, I'm going
to share my screen. I'm going to walk you through the likelihood of confusion factors. I can't even
believe I'm doing this, but I'm going to do it. All right. These are the factors that are
considered by a court of law to determine whether or not there's trademark infringement.
Okay. Why is this important? You know how you did that trademark search?
When you do that trademark search, you got certain results, and now you're asking yourself, well,
is that similar? Is there a trademark problem or not? The way you find out is by looking at these
nine things. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to show you the list. I'm going to post the list
in the Facebook group for you on top of that. And I'm going to touch base on them in blistering
speed. So you can play it in slow-mo when you watch the replay. Okay. And I'm doing this,
you can thank Allison, because I was not going to do this, but I'm going to do it because
Allison mentioned it. So here is paste. Okay. This is good stuff. I mean, this is stuff, honestly,
guys, this is stuff lawyers would pay for right now. So I'm going to share this with you. I'm
going to throw it in a chat, paste it here. You can download that form. Okay. And you don't have
to worry about copyrights on the form. You can do whatever you want with it. You can share it
with other people. If you want, I don't care. This is a form that doesn't have my copyright
notice on it. If you see my copyright notice on it, stay away. Like you can use it. Don't share
it. This is one you can share with anybody you want. I don't care. All right. So now let me
share my screen. Okay. These are the questions that are going to be asked to determine whether
or not there is trademark infringement. Okay. So you have a trademark. Another party has a
trademark or even better. Another party has a trademark and you're thinking of using a
trademark. That's better. You do a trademark search. The name comes up. So let's say you're
thinking of using N I K Y Nike and you do a search and you find N I K E and you were thinking of
using it for footwear and they have it for footwear. Interesting, right? So now how do you
determine whether or not there's trademark infringement? Again, I'm
I'm qualifying this, this is not legal advice. I'm just telling you the factors.
These are the factors that I use in a court of law in litigation.
First thing I look at is, does it look the same? Like the way that the letters that are used,
are they very similar? So N-I-K-Y, N-I-K-E, there's only one letter that's different. That's
pretty similar. Do they sound the same? N-I-K-E, N-I-K-E, they sound the same. That's a problem.
Do they have a similar commercial impression? There's certain words that will give you a
certain feeling, right? So like robust joy, that has a certain feeling. While another word,
condemned dirt, that is a very different feeling from robust joy. So that would be a different
commercial impression, right? That's kind of like the feeling that you get behind the name.
If there are similar feelings, that shows you that there's more of a chance of a trademark
infringement. When you look at the goods and services, are they similar? So footwear, footwear,
yep, similar. That's a problem. When you look at where they're traded, like where the product is
sold or where the services are sold. So let's say I'm going to bring my sneaker line into Target
and Nike sells sneakers in Target. Then that's a similar established trade channel. They're both
being sold at Target. So there's a higher chance of confusion because they're both being sold in
the same place, right? Is the product an impulse product? What does that mean? Impulse products are
products that don't cost a lot of money. So I'm going to spend 20 bucks on such and such. That's
not a lot of money. I'm going to spend $20,000 on something. That is not an impulse purchase.
So if the purchases are impulse purchases, there's a higher chance that there's a likelihood of
confusion because people don't think about it a lot when they make the purchase. They're not
thinking about it a long time. So because they're not thinking about it a long time, there's a higher
chance of confusion. So if it's sold right next to the checkout line at a shopping center,
you're not sitting there thinking, should I buy that gum? Should I not buy that gum? I don't
know. Should I? Maybe? I don't know. This candy bar costs $24. This other candy bar costs $2.
See, there's a difference between the two. And so since there's a high difference in the cost,
that leads to there not being a likelihood of confusion. But then a higher cost also makes
you think about it more, so there's less of a chance of confusion. If there's a lot of other
trademarks with similar names. Finally, if there's actually true proof of confusion,
like if somebody sends a letter saying, hey, your NIKY sneaker line, that sounds really like Nike.
That's proof of actual confusion. If somebody actually buys your sneakers and then sends you
a letter saying, these aren't Nike's, that's proof of confusion. Don't worry about the consent
agreement. You'll get confused about that. Don't worry about it. Strength of the mark. Nike is a
very well-known, famous trademark. If you use something that's even similar to theirs, there's
going to be a higher chance of confusion because everybody knows them, right? Everybody's going to,
like you hear the name Nike immediately, Nike, boom, let me grab those sneakers because there's
a certain quality associated with it. So those are the factors. So when you're doing your trademark
searches, I only dropped this for you. Oh, you're so welcome. Arancia? I love that name. Hey, can
you unmute yourself and just make sure that I say your name right? Because that's beautiful.
You are correct, sir. Thank you. Thank you so much for your kindness.
That's beautiful. I love that name. I have never heard that name before.
That's amazing. I got to behave myself at all times, right?
We know it's you. That's right. We know it's you. Thank you. Okay. So, oh, you're so welcome.
So I'm going to stop here. I gave you a lot today. Usually day two is like the busiest day I find.
Day one, people go into shock factors. They're like, oh, I've been using my trademark wrong.
And I don't know if I'm infringing or I need to do a search in this. Day two is usually like,
oh my gosh, like that's a lot of material. Okay. So that's okay. This was the hump. Today was like
the hump, right? It's not like hump day is usually Wednesday. No, today was hump day.
All right. I don't usually tell people that. I just let you experience it. You get the most
material usually today. So we've talked about a lot of things, but you have the videos so you
can watch it on your own time. Take your time with it. We are going to take a...
Let's go with an eight minute break.
We'll start at 8.20.
We'll start five minutes late for VIP.
If you're on VIP, jump in there.
Was this helpful today, guys?
Did this help you guys out?
Yes, good, good, I'm glad.
I'm really glad this is helping you.
I want, just so we're clear,
there are so many things for you to learn in IP.
What I'm trying to do is give you some of the basics,
but then separate from that,
what are the big areas where people are getting in trouble?
I'm trying to prevent you from getting into trouble.
I'm trying to make sure that people
don't steal your material
and you don't walk into infringement issues.
And so I'm really giving you the things
that I've seen in my 25 years of experience
that are the most common issues.
And then on top of that, I'm also watching your videos.
So I know a lot of you are doing games.
I know a lot, there's a lot of people that are doing music.
I know what you guys are doing.
So I'm kind of, I'm kind of customizing things for you.
So you'll see more stuff coming up.
So it's just beneficial for you to go live
in the Facebook group and tell me what you're thinking,
because then I can continue to give you things
that you need, all right?
Like this is, just think of it as
you're not paying 600 bucks an hour.
You paid 95 bucks.
You got me five days.
Well, you got me three days, three days left.
That's it, all right?
So with that, your homework assignment,
you guys already know, if you haven't registered
for the USPTO site and you want to, go in
so we can see where you're getting hung up
and we can try to help you before we're done on Friday, okay?
And then separate from that, go live in the Facebook group.
One point that you learned today,
just kind of how you feel about learning that thing.
Just share, just share with us all, okay?