We want to hear from you, so just go to the Michelle, let me get you highlighted.
Yes. Hi everyone. So, I just thought it was so great throughout this entire challenge but, um, you know, with the patents it's really interesting because of the fact that it's really just, I was just, I've been learning a lot about patents
and like that it's really just to prevent other people from making your thing. And so I just thought it was really interesting in the way that you can just like license them and everything like that, instead of like having to make anything yourself.
So it was, it's been good I've just been soaking it all in and learning a lot. So, that's, that's my share.
Awesome. Yeah, so good. By the way, you look fabulous. I don't know if you have a hot date tonight or what, but I just can't help but say that you look fabulous tonight, versus I'm doing like you know casual Saturday.
But there's a ring. What is that about? Oh, you have to tell me later. Okay, that's not, that's off topic. Okay.
All right. Another share please.
I knew it. I knew I could depend on you. Let me get your spotlight and go ahead and unmute yourself.
Hey, how are you guys.
Wow, yesterday was pretty different to what Peter normally does in some cases but I think for me, even I've been learning all about all the trademarks and stuff from the patents and that.
I went to bed last night and my head was exploding because I have so many, God gives me so many downloads that I have a book next to my bed where I write this stuff down.
So, big mistake. I looked at my book that I'd already had stuff written down before I went to bed.
Man, I could barely sleep. I was up at 2am, I woke up at 4.29, I woke up at 4.54 and I had another pen just writing stuff.
I think what he was saying yesterday about hearing what God's saying and then just basically just sitting again and listening.
And pretty much that's kind of what I did. I just lay in bed and listened, and then I couldn't sleep because there was just so many downloads.
So I actually, I have got a whole mock changing idea that he just downloaded to me.
And I was like, wow, okay. So now, yeah, anyway, I guess later I don't have to speak to Peter about it, but obviously if you put it out in public, you can't do the trademark and the patents.
So anyway, so yeah, that was a radical. So anyway, I think yesterday was for me, pretty much.
Anyway, I'll take it.
Wow, that is the best. I'm surprised that Peter hasn't unmuted already, except for like sometimes he's still like praying and preparing for you because he, I'm sure he's listening in the background because that is amazing.
Like that is the best thing that could happen to be, you know, connected to our creator.
We're little creators. We are the part of his creation and we get to create as well.
That is truly partnering with God because he said, you know, take dominion over the land.
And, you know, that's what we're supposed to do by connecting with him and getting our God downloads. So happy for you, Anthony.
Like that's a good reason to be up in the middle of the night is hearing from God and getting new ideas for yourself, for your family, for the legacy you leave, you know, to impact this world.
So kudos.
Thank you for sharing. And Jane, give me a second. Can't wait to hear from you. Let me get you spotlighted. So go ahead and unmute and share. What did you learn this week?
Well, I would suggest that this is really an eye opener for those who are serious about starting the business or thinking about seriously starting the business is because we need to know all the ins and outs before we really step out and waste money or time.
So find out now what is needed that would start to legally set yourself up so that you know whether your business is ready to move forward or wait and so forth and so on.
So this is like a prep to really think about starting a business or before just before you start your business. Definitely. Awesome. And material information, even just the feedback and everything that is so needed, you know, for those who are seriously starting a business, especially in the kingdom of God.
Yeah, good point. Good point. I heard I did hear what Anthony mentioned, too. Yeah, really good feedback, everybody.
We've covered a lot of material and we've gone through a lot of things and I've heard
from some of you that are actually changing your businesses already.
Just out of curiosity, if you feel like you can share this, it's up to you, obviously.
If you feel you can share this, if there's something that you have changed in your own
business based on what you have learned this week alone, I would love to hear that.
I would love for you to share that because that would not only help us to understand
which things are really helping you, but that might give insight to other people here that
are coming up with ideas or running businesses and something that they may want to consider.
Has anybody fallen to that category?
Something that you changed, you actually have been here this week and something that you
learned you're actually applying to your own business already.
It's funny that Todd enters the second that I say that.
Ray, go ahead, Ray.
I can even personally say just being in your company and working together over the last
year, mine's not just the last week, but the last year, I let even myself go off of procrastination
guilt because you showed me that there was a reason I wasn't urged to move forward and
I had a hesitation that I didn't trust, so I was blaming myself and being guilty for
my own works.
Working with you helped me absolve that because it was more of trusting the plan, just in
life and the works that we do, so it was awesome and I just want to say thank you.
I say thank you every day for you, so I'm grateful we're working together and Larissa
as well.
Me too.
Yeah.
Anthony, go ahead.
Yeah, I think going through the logos online was helpful for me because I was able to see
some of the things that I could potentially put myself at risk with and it's kind of funny
how God works.
I already redesigned a whole new one with my daughter like months ago, so I need to
check that one out, and I still have the old one on my website, so I need to take that
down and make some changes to some of the software that I'm putting out there.
So yeah, it was huge for me.
Yeah, it's funny you mention that because we actually had, I received feedback from
one individual, I won't expose who she is because clearly she doesn't want to say who
she is, but I'll mention the situation at least at a top level, and she actually reached
out to me and told me that she had to restart her whole brand.
She had a company I was running for a number of years, did the trademark search after I
trained you guys on how to do trademark searches, and when she did, she found out that that
trademark actually belonged to someone else in the same class.
And she went, oh my gosh, I'm glad I saw this.
And so she's actually modifying her business right now.
And so that's why I'm glad, I'm glad that we get this opportunity to engage like this
so that you guys learn this.
The first thing I want to actually do with you guys is to prove to you guys that you've
learned something.
All right?
Because a lot of times in these challenges, people go through and they're like, oh, this
is nice.
Yay.
Ha ha.
You know, hugs and kisses, fluffy kittens, chocolate, and like didn't learn a thing.
Right?
So it's kind of conversation.
People just have conversations.
But one of the things that's really important to me in running this challenge for all of
you is that you come out being able to identify situations and know what exactly is the legal
issue in that situation.
That's one of the most important things for me, because if you're going to be a successful
business owner or a business partner, and you see something happen, you want to go,
you want to see, all right, your partner just hired somebody to create a new logo.
You want to think in the back of your mind, hey, partner, did you ask them to assign our
right title and interest to the original copyright over to us?
Or for the logo itself, for the artwork itself, did you have them assign our right title and
interest over to us?
And they go, what are you talking about?
You say, well, under intellectual property law, they actually own that logo unless they
transfer all the right title and interest to us.
Did you get that in writing?
Or you paid them $4,500 for this new logo?
And they said, well, we were just going to sign the agreement.
And I was like, yeah, no, you're not going to sign the agreement unless you get that
in writing.
Those are the kind of things that I want you to be able to do, because it's just going
to make you so successful.
And I've seen this.
So what I've did is you remember, I believe it was on day two, I showed you a scenario.
scenario, right? I'm going to show you the scenario again.
I didn't...
I sent it to you in the chat.
Thank you. I didn't actually restart my computer, so I'm kind of concerned if I share. Hopefully
it doesn't freeze. We'll see. If it freezes, I'll just restart on my side.
I have it up as well if you need a backup.
All right, let's see. Can everybody see the scenario there? Yes, good. I usually
restart my computer before we start the challenge so there will be no computer issues, but that
in prayer really helps.
This is the original scenario that I sent to all of you. Maybe I'll make it a little
bit bigger. Let's make it 200. That's a little bigger. Can everybody see that really clearly?
All right, so this is what we're going to do. We're going to have a little fun. I'm
going to read lines one by one, and you are going to... We're going to do this two different
ways. You can either type in the chat what area of intellectual property law pertains
to this, or you can speak it out loud. You can unmute yourself because we only... I think
we have like 20 people total. It shouldn't be that bad. We can unmute and let people
communicate. Just so you guys know, day five is usually just... We just summarize things,
have fun, answer a few questions, and we close. We usually end the VIP very early. In this session,
we usually go close to the end, but we close a little early as well. All right, so scenario.
Sentence number one, you own a small company called Burger Town. Tell me what area of intellectual
property law pertains to that one line. Trademark. I see trademark there. Anybody else?
One person. Trademark. Trademark. Michelle says trademark. Maria says trademark. Okay.
Yep, that's right. Trademark. Correct. Anders, trademark. Good. All right, next line.
Your number one selling burger is called the Belt Buster. Okay. It's actually not a bad name,
but I just came up with this. So what falls there? Yeah, you can be... We can actually unmute
everybody just for this. Well, they have permission. I can't unmute everybody, but I
could mute everybody and even you would be muted. Oh, so they all have permission though. Okay,
good. All right. Yeah. So you can even speak out loud or you can type it either way. So the second
one is trademark. Correct. All right. Third one. Now it gets interesting.
You have a website advertising the company, providing a menu and describing ingredients,
preparation techniques, and health information regarding each item on the menu. Copyright.
Copyright. Yeah, copyright. Anything else? Property as well. What was it?
Intellectual property as well. Well, yeah, patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade
secrets are all intellectual property. So which area in copyright, where do you see copyright in
here? What do you think is protectable by copyright in here? The process, probably.
The proprietary process. The process itself would not be protectable under copyright law.
All right. What else do you see in there? Like advertising.
The advertising could be protectable under copyright. What else?
What about describing the ingredients? Describing the ingredients. If it's written down,
that can be protected by copyright. The menu itself could be protectable by copyright.
Oh, the techniques. All right. So let's talk about the techniques. This is tricky. I put this
in here intentionally because it's a little tricky. So the preparation technique technically
could be a method. If it's a method and it's protectable, that most likely would fall under
patent law because patents allow you to protect systems.
apparatus and methods, okay? Now, if in fact, the preparation
techniques are written, let's say like it's just described in
something like a cookbook, right? Or like in this case,
like the website, if the description itself of the
preparation technique could be protectable under copyright law,
but the technique itself, meaning the functionality, the
steps that are taken, those could potentially be
protectable under patent law. That's a pretty, that's a
pretty, a pretty fine line there. If they didn't post it
online, they could have had a safe ticket. Yes, that's exactly
right, Michelle. Michelle, I'm just gonna love having you in
the Protection Portal. We were talking about you. We're like,
yes, Michelle's in. We're gonna have a lot of fun. So I'm glad
for everybody who's joined. We're gonna have a blast. So
and you'll see when you get in there, the people are just, it
gets off the hook. We have a lot of fun. So um, yeah, so
Protection Portal, you can maintain it, the preparation
technique, you can maintain it as your own trade secret if you
like. That's right. Okay, now it gets more complex. So we're
gonna take this line by line. You have a new process for
keeping inventory of burgers prepared, and for determining
loss of profits by using a novel pressure sensitive device
located within a grill used for preparing burgers. All right.
As a mouthful. What do you think, Jane? I think it's an IP.
Yeah, definitely. IP trademarks, copyrights or patents? Which one
jumps out at you? Patent? Yes. Very good. Very good. Alright,
so now as a bonus for anybody who wants to share, which parts
of this do you believe are protectable by patents?
Determining the loss of profits.
Alright, Jane, what'd you say? Determining loss of profits.
Determining loss. Alright, so the process, the process that's
used for keeping inventory of the burgers prepared and
determining loss of profits, that most certainly might be
protectable under patents, correct? Anything else jump out
in here that might be protectable under patents?
Pressure sensitive device. Pressure sensitive device. Who
was that? Shelley. Shelley. Well done. That's, that's very good.
Most people don't see that. That's exactly right. So you've
actually got both the pressure sensitive device. And you've got
the, the process itself. Both of those are potentially
protectable. But there's, there's another thing here.
There's another thing here. And I'm going to give you some
insight that my clients enjoy, because, you know, this is what
I do for a living, is that in the patent world, if you
protect, somebody wrote software, yeah, software could
potentially be protected. If there was, if there was software
that actually performs this functionality, absolutely,
Tanya, you could have a copyright for the software.
Absolutely. Now, the pressure sensitive device, right? So
let's, let's look at, let me see if I could find the location.
What was that? The location?
Location,
because it says, it's located,
it kind of alludes to that. So I'll show you what I mean. I had
to sniff my thermos and make sure there was only water in
there. If I would have passed out, you would have known it
wasn't just water. It's so we're safe. Okay, so all right. Right
here, I have in front of you a cap, and I have a thermos,
right? So if somebody came out with a new cap, you could
protect the cap alone. But here's a secret to making tons
of money with patents, okay? Remember, with patents, you make
money based on the damages for whatever's protected. If you
own only the cap, the cap might be worth like $4, $3, right?
But you put this cap on the thermos. Now you've got a
thermos with a new cap, which has a higher value of let's say
like $25. Okay. So what you want to do is protect not just the
cap.
But you want to separately protect both the cap and the thermos.
This is really detailed kind of strategy.
I had a client, do you guys remember the company Charbroil, anybody remember that company?
That was one of my clients, it actually wasn't my direct client, it was a client of I believe
Jim Caden, and I did some patent work for them when I was in Atlanta, Georgia at a law
firm called Thomas Caden, Horst & Meyer & Risley.
Now they had a clip, they had a clip that was used to connect the glass to the hood
of the barbecue, so they had a brand new clip.
What we did was we filed patents not just on the clip, but we filed patents on a hood
having the clip holding the glass.
Then we filed claims on a barbecue having a hood with glass being held on the hood using
these new clips.
The reason why we did that is now if there was a single infringement, it was for a $2,000
barbecue versus a $0.25 clip.
You see the difference?
When you write patents, think damages, always think damages, if somebody infringes this,
what essentially would they owe?
If what you create is actually part of something else, then make sure you protect your thing
alone, but also it in the environment that it's used if possible.
That's going to make your patent exponentially more powerful.
It's going to make you way more in licensing, and it's going to bring the bigger companies
to the table with you.
That is just looking at that first sentence.
The next sentence says, the burger is placed on an indented surface of the grill during
cooking.
The indented surface has a pressure sensitive switch that is thrown when the weight of a
burger is detected.
Tell me what's protectable there in those two sentences.
The indented surface of the grill and then the pressure sensitive switch.
Absolutely.
Those two components should be part of the patent, should be in there.
Next part is-
What happens if somebody else already has the patent on the indented surface?
Great question.
We're going to address that.
The second we're done with this, we're going to address that.
That's a great question.
The next line says, software within a computer is capable of comparing the number of detected
burgers to actual sale of burgers to determine how many cooked burgers were never sold.
As an example, they were burned, dropped, free replacements were provided, or they were
claimed as a working benefit by a disgruntled employee.
Any guys that fall into that category like me when we worked in restaurants, we're like,
yeah.
Probably wasn't a good thing.
Technically it was stealing, but we took it as a fringe benefit of working there, right?
The leftover food.
So software, what do we have?
The software, right.
What-
Computer.
So the software itself is within the computer.
Absolutely.
We could protect the computer having the software, yep, absolutely.
That functionality associated with the comparing of the number of burgers to the number that
were sold, that process may be protectable.
So think of it this way, indented surface, you drop the patty on it.
The weight of the patty makes this little thing in there flip.
So now there's this internal switch.
Computer software detects, oh, burger just went on the grill.
Now it looks and it says, okay, what it is, we're going to start this process at one o'clock.
It's going to go till 12 o'clock midnight.
So now it knows just how many times a burger was dropped on the things, it knows, right?
So now it takes that and it compares it to on your cash register, how many times you
selected hamburger and rung up the cost.
And it sees 200 burgers, 100 burgers.
393 burgers were charged for.
That means seven burgers something happened to.
That might be valuable to a large business, right?
That's sending out thousands of burgers
like McDonald's, like Burger King.
It may be beneficial for them to know
just how many burgers are either being eaten by employees,
thrown out because somebody is really clumsy
or burned and thrown out, whatever the case may be.
You know, if you've got a 20% inventory loss
because somebody is doing something wrong,
you wanna know that.
And so this system here could potentially help
a company save tens to hundreds of thousands
of dollars a year, right?
So they would protect the software.
They could protect the grill.
You know, a grill that actually has indented surfaces
with this kind of switch inside of it.
They could protect the name.
They could protect the menus.
But separately, they also sell a new drink
called Hungry that everyone loves
and nobody knows how to replicate.
What area of IP does that pertain to?
So this one would be a trade secret then
if no one knows how to-
Exactly.
That's right, trade secret.
Plus on top of that, you have the trademark itself
which is the name.
Nobody knows how to make it,
but at the same time, it has a name.
So the trademark covers the name
and the trade secret covers the formula
that's used to make this thing.
So you guys should give yourselves a hand
because you guys just covered every area of IP
through this one scenario.
Well done.
You guys have learned how to identify
intellectual property law issues
just by looking at real life scenarios,
real life situations, okay?
Now, Anthony asked a good question.
And his question was,
well, what if the indented surface grill
actually belongs to somebody else?
What do you do, right?
What if there's a patent on that?
Well, this is why you do patent searches
when you have a new technology.
So you get a new technology,
you go and do a patent search and you go,
oh my gosh, Todd Engwall actually owns
grill surfaces with indented surfaces.
Oh man, what do I do?
Now, I don't know what to do.
Maybe I should throw it out.
Like nothing I can do, it's over.
No, you don't do that.
What you do is you research the guy
and you're like, oh, this guy is pretty cool.
He's a pretty nice guy.
He's a family guy.
He helps out.
He does ministry.
He helps businesses for a living.
He travels to Africa, right?
He like, he saved the last white rhino
that was going through extinction
by lifting it up with his hands
and bringing it to water and bathing it himself.
Like this man's incredible, right?
So you call him up and you say,
hey, I'm potentially going to be doing a business venture.
I really could use a grill surface
that is very similar to the one
that you have in your patent.
Would you be willing to license it?
Or would you be willing to do a joint deal with me?
You know, you provide the indented surfaces for grills
and you take 10% of the profits
or something like that, right?
Whatever the case may be, you may tell him,
look, I've got a new software program
that is going to make your surface worth tons more.
And he might be curious.
But what you want to do
before you actually have that meeting
is what do you want to have in place?
Somebody type in the chat,
what do you want to have in place
before you have that meeting?
Is a little tricky, but I think you guys will know.
Copyright on the rest of it?
The rest of the idea?
The patent, the patent, yes.
Somebody wrote patents.
Another person wrote NDA.
Yes, on both of those.
Copyright, it's possible, yeah.
Copyright as well.
Remember, for copyrights,
you automatically have legal rights.
It would be beneficial to have the copyright in place
because then you could tell him,
I got a federal registration for my menus
and stuff like that.
But like in this meeting,
what you're really going to be talking about is
how does his surface fit into your software program
and your process?
So you're going to want your process
to either have like a provisional patent on it or something
because you're going to be disclosing this to another person.
It'd be best if you don't.
You don't disclose it without some kind of protection.
But then separate from that,
absolutely non-disclosure agreement, absolutely.
right? And I would go a step further. I would have a non-compete, if you can get it. Because
once I go and I meet with Todd, even though Todd's not like this, I know Todd personally,
and I know his wife, Tamara, and amazing people. But if Todd wasn't the way that Todd truly is,
then Todd might hear this thing and go, man, you know what? I'm not going to disclose it to
anybody, but I'm going to use it. I'm not going to tell other people about it, but
this is a great idea. I'll use it, right? But if you have a non-compete in place, he can't use it
because he can't compete against you. So this is why you want a non-disclosure and a non-compete
in place. Really helpful. And I'm going to, man, should I do this? Should I do this?
What are you up to?
Who here doesn't know what a non-compete provision is?
Okay. All right. So I think what we're going to do is in the next protection portal, Ray,
can you just shoot me a note? I'm going to drop a non-compete provision to the whole group.
Sure. All right. So I'm going to give
them the legal language to use in there. Yeah. So non-competes can be really complex.
Usually they're connected to what's called confidential information. So you have
a provision in the non-disclosure agreement and the non-compete agreement that says what
confidential information is, but then you actually have a clause that talks about,
that says another party is not able to use that confidential information in certain ways. And
that's where the non-compete provision comes in. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to,
and this is not going to be legal advice, not legal advice, but I'm going to put
in the protection portal, the next session that takes place
on the 14th, I'm going to drop what a non-compete provision looks like. So people will actually be
able to identify it. Michelle. Yes, my friend. Hey, where's your husband?
He's watching my son. He is? I want to meet him. I totally want to meet Christian. That'd be
awesome. He's cool. He's really cool. I will, um,
but no, I have a question that with regards to non-compete is, this is the first time I'm really
like exploring this. So I'm just wondering, is it just like a fine if they break it or is it like,
are you talking like jail time? Like what would be the, um, like, is it kind of like a, so what?
Like, so yeah. Okay. It's nice that you, that we signed off on that, but like, how much can you
really prevent someone from not competing with you? It's violation of a code of conduct.
From not competing with you. It's violation of a contractual agreement. So it's actually,
it's, it's a legal doc. It's a legal contract that you have with another party. And if they violate
that legal contract, then what you're doing is an assessment of the damages that you have incurred
because they violated that agreement. So let's say, let's say you have a non-disclosure agreement
and the person, so I have a non-disclosure agreement. I meet with Larissa. Larissa says,
man, that's a great idea. She posted to her family group, right? She's like, Hey, family
group, check this out. And even though she signed a non-disclosure agreement, right? Members of the
family group go and talk to other people and they put it on Facebook. It's gone. Now it's everywhere.
Like that thing has gone everywhere. So if I had a certain way of doing something,
nobody knew about it. Now the public knows about it. And let's say there's competition. That's
phasing me out. Now those damages I'm going to argue are going to be because of Larissa
and her actions. And so in the actual, in the actual legal, in the actual legal proceedings,
I'm going to say, this is a violation of a contract, namely in a non-disclosure agreement,
but the damages are all the clients that I lost and all the money that these other guys are making.
And I'm going to, and I'm going to argue that, you know, I should be getting paid
some kind of comparable amount. Now you can't, one thing you can't do is you can't double up
in damages. Like you can't say, well, I lost this much and that.
person made that much. If the amount that they made is the amount that you lost, you can't double
it. If I lost half a million dollars and they gain half a million dollars, I can't say,
well, I want to combine how much they made with how much I lost. That would be a million dollars.
That's not making you whole, that's making you super whole. That's not going to work. For that
reason, you really just get one of those, either the amount that you lost or the amount that the
other person gains. Let's see. Double dipping. Yeah, exactly. That's double dipping. Does that
make sense? That's how these things are enforced, is that they're enforced under contract law.
All right. With this, I alluded, I'm going to mention one more thing in IP. I want to mention
something for you guys, because as you know, the foundations and IP package closed last night at
midnight. There are a few people that wanted to talk about some things and I touched base with
them, but that's something separate. Some of you actually wanted to go into the protection portal
alone, meaning you're not doing an audit, you don't have a business, but you want to keep this
going. You want to keep asking questions. You want to be in a group environment. You want to continue
to grow. You want to actually make money off of people you refer to this challenge, make the
percentages off of that. Also be able to work with other attorneys that are within my network.
That's the protection portal package. What we decided to do was to provide, since the audit
is over, that's done. It's not available anymore, because that's already ridiculously discounted,
as you saw in the value. Those of you that took advantage of it, congratulations. That's awesome.
We're going to have a blast together. It's going to be a lot of fun, but there are others that just
want to stay in this environment and want to grow. We have the protection portal package.
That is $24.95. That's going to be open until, what is it, Wednesday?
Wednesday. We're going to leave the door open for that package.
Now, you can do that one of two ways. You can either pay $24.95 upfront, or you can do three
payments of $9.95. It costs more if you do more payments, because we get charged more by Stripe.
That's the outfitter that we use. With that being the case, if you have any questions on that,
just let us know. Just drop the link for that, Ray. Just so people know, we can only take,
I think it's 12 more people, because we're not going to be over 100 people in that group. I
can take up to 12 people total. Then we have to start a separate group. We can take up to 12
total. That's open until Wednesday. Obviously, everybody who actually took the foundations and
IP package, you're already in. We threw it in for free, because that would have been an extra
expense on top of that. We just gave you that. Todd's actually in there. There's other people
who have been here, who are in there as well. It's a blast. We have a great time. Companies
are growing. Everybody's doing really well without obtaining legal advice, but getting
legal guidance. If you have any questions on that, just let me know. Happy to help you out.
That's very reasonable, because it's just $1,000 a month. You'll be fine.
One last thing on the IP side. Then I'll see if anybody has any questions,
and then we're going to close. Here's the thing.
If you're trying to license your trademark, or license your copyright, or license your patent,
if you don't have any substantial legal rights yet,
then what you can do is something called, man, this is a little complex, but I'll mention it
to you guys anyway. Just remember this language. It's called a stepped license. S-T-E-P-P-E-D
license. Stepped license. That's all you need to remember. If you have a pending patent application,
you don't have an issue patent yet, but you want to license it now, ask your attorney about a step
license. The way that they work is that there's a royalty rate now, but when you obtain the legal
rights, the rate will change. That's why it's called a step license. Step licenses also work
if you say, if I sell 2,000 units, the royalty
T's are this, but if I sell 10,000 units,
the royalties are that.
So that again, it's a step license.
And then in license agreements,
remember if you're getting a license from somebody else
or somebody is taking a license to what you have,
you can make money multiple ways.
You can get an upfront amount,
you can get a royalty stream, or you can get both.
Guys, there's nothing stopping you from doing both.
You're gonna say, look, I want $10,000 upfront,
plus I want 4% of your profits,
4% of your profits a month.
Well, you can do all sorts of really cool things
with a license.
There is no limit to what you can do
in a license agreement.
It's just up to you.
So just keep that in mind because a lot of people
don't understand how to work with licenses.
And so they get really lost
and they end up losing a lot of money,
which is kind of unfortunate.
And I just rather you guys don't run into that problem.
So that should actually alleviate that.
And then finally, I think we'll close here.
Let me see if I should go over this.
Yeah, I'll go over this.
Okay, let me cover this real fast.
Of the people here, how many people here have customers,
clients that are in foreign countries?
Let's probably show our hands.
All right, we have a number of you.
Okay, all right.
Remember that there's no such thing as a global patent.
It doesn't exist, okay?
So what that means is that if you obtain IP rights
in the United States, you can then later obtain legal rights
in a foreign country, okay?
Just remember that your legal rights in the United States
will only give you the legal rights here,
here, like nowhere else.
I've seen people, why am I mentioning this?
So why is this so important?
I've seen people get legal rights in the United States,
see somebody manufacturing in China
and then try to stop them,
but they have no rights in country of China,
so they can't do anything.
But here's the strategy that you use, okay?
Let's assume that you're selling product
in seven different countries,
and you can't afford to file patents in seven countries.
All right, most people can't afford that
until they get bigger, okay?
This is what you do, all right?
And this is probably the last one.
This is not legal advice, okay?
This is really important.
This is what you do.
This is the strategy that's used.
You look to see where is the product
most likely gonna be manufactured.
So you look at manufacturing,
you look at where is the product
most likely going to be sold, okay?
So manufacturing and sales, those are your big things, okay?
If you cannot afford to obtain legal rights
in all these different countries,
then what you might wanna do is just get the legal rights
in the country where it's always sold.
The reason why it's important is then
who cares where it's manufactured?
They'll never make any money.
So why in the world are they going to manufacture something
that they can't sell?
So you may not be able to get the legal rights
in every country where it's manufactured
and every country where it's sold,
but if you at least obtain the legal rights where it's sold,
then who cares where it's manufactured?
Because they'll never be able to sell it.
So let's say the United States and Germany
are the two biggest markets,
but you know that manufacturing is done in Indonesia,
in China, and let's say even in the United States,
in California, then what you do is you have legal rights
in the United States.
If the number one place of sales
is the United States and Germany,
you get rights in the United States and Germany,
I don't care if they're manufacturing in Indonesia
and China, they're gonna make no money.
You basically just saved
about $14,000
by making that one decision.
Because in China, when you file an application,
you have to get translations,
so the document has to be translated.
And in fact, if you try to get rights in Japan,
You've got to have to translate it into hiragana and kanakana on top of that, like, it costs
a lot of money.
So if you know that the biggest markets are Germany and United States, get your legal
rights in Germany and the United States and then be done.
That's it.
Call it quits.
Save your money.
Now, you might get upset, oh my gosh, they're manufacturing China and manufacturing China.
Yeah, but you're not losing anything.
You're not you're not losing any money.
OK, so I just wanted to give you that one piece of advice, because.
That wasn't legal advice.
There's one piece of general advice, general random advice that was generally random rant.
I was just speaking out loud advice.
That's it.
That wasn't legal.
All right.
That one piece that was out there will actually save your company tons of money and a lot
of legal problems.
So how do you check if something has a patent in another country?
Good question.
So you can actually determine.
If there's a patent on something by doing what's called a patent search.
Now, in VIP, we did one of these together.
But what I'll do is I'll show you guys real quick.
Real fast here, just so you could see something.
Hold on a second.
All right, here we go.
And I can tell you that this is not highly effective.
I would not strongly suggest in any way, shape or form that you do this in the protection
portal.
You actually drop the information for patent searchers, like people who actually do this
for a living.
Like as an example, one company is Kramer and Amato.
Terry Kramer is the founder.
He graduated two years before me in law school, and he still reminds me of that anyways.
But to this day, it reminds me of that.
But he's really good friends of mine and my wife, and his outfit is really big and they're
really good in Washington, D.C.
And they do really good patent searches.
And they only charge like between $1,500 and $2,000 for a search, which is good.
So once the search is done, then the attorney reviews the results, which can cost like another
three grand.
So you might spend around five grand or six grand maybe on a good, strong patent search
to see if your invention is protectable.
All right, so I'm going to share my screen.
If I have permitting, it works.
Can you guys see the screen?
Okay, great.
All right, so you click on patents, and you click on search for patents.
You scroll down to patent public search, patent public search, basic search.
And once you're here, you can search all sorts of things.
You can search by inventor name, publication date, patent application, publication number,
attorney name, a bunch of...
So let's say it's a company.
Let's say you want to see patents that are issued by Sony.
You can click ASCII name, and then type in Sony, the one and only, and then click search.
And look at all these patents that come up, right?
These are Sony patents, and there's a lot more.
So that could be one thing, and then use and as the operator, and you could select another
thing.
If you say everything, and you type in for Sony earbuds, I wonder if anything will come
up for that.
Let's see.
Nope.
I'm going to have to do headset.
There we go.
So if you search for Sony and headset, these are patents that pop up for Sony and headset.
So if I go into one of these patents here, let's see.
Sound output device, PDF.
Can you guys see the patent now?
Okay.
So what you're seeing here is the patent itself.
And it says that this is a sound output device according to an embodiment includes acoustic
path, microphone.
It gives you all the parts.
parts of this device, right?
There's images, there's an eyeball in the middle.
I don't know, it's kind of creepy.
Not sure what that's about, but in any case,
what you would do now is if you want to determine
if you potentially infringe it,
you go all the way to the bottom of the pad
and go to the claims.
And remember, it'll start with like, I claim or we claim,
or here's another one, the invention claimed is,
you start reading there, a sound output device comprising
a housing, including an acoustic pack
connecting a first space, blah, blah, blah.
You have to have everything in here to infringe
their patent, okay?
That's the way a patent search works.
The reason why I don't like the USPTO website
as something to use for searching is that
you have to choose the right words.
Okay, so as an example, let's say that Patricia
has a brand new bicycle.
And so she says, hey, I wanna file a patent for a bicycle.
So she goes online and she searches for the word bicycle
and nothing pops up.
But somebody filed a patent, Rhonda filed a patent
on a two-wheeled driving mechanism, right?
It doesn't use the word bicycle,
but it's a two-wheeled driving mechanism.
And that is a bicycle, it just didn't use the word bicycle.
So you didn't even see it.
And you might be committing patent infringement.
So it's good to use it to just kind of look at things,
but separate from that, it's just not the best thing.
I mean, it's good to do some research.
I would hire a professional, honestly,
I would hire somebody like Terry Kramer or some others,
or if you have questions, let me know,
I'll let you know who to use, what people are good.
And I don't make any money for referring you to people.
I just know who's good in the industry
because I've been doing it for 25 years, okay?
All right, I will take one more question
and then we are done.
Our five days in the protected area
We are done.
Our five days in the Protector Idea Challenge
is coming to a close.
Michelle, you're a VIP with me.
Let me see if anybody else has a question for a second.
Hold on one sec.
If nobody does, then I'll do patents expire.
Yes, patents last for 20 years from filing
for a utility patent, system patents.
Design patents only last for 14 years.
They last for 20 years from filing.
That's how long they last, all right?
I don't see anybody else who has a question.
So, oh, Pat, go right ahead.
So I'm wondering if there's a way to check
on trademarks for artwork
and especially artwork that's been produced
in another country.
That's a good question.
Well, you can certainly search for artwork.
You just have to figure out what is like,
are you thinking like paintings or sculptures or?
Yeah, I mentioned this in the chat in the first,
when I introduced myself, wine labels in France.
Because some of them-
Yeah, I read that, yeah.
Yeah, some of them are really beautiful,
but they're old.
I mean, we're talking they've been out of use
for 50 years, 75 years.
Sure, yeah.
So that would be like artwork.
That would be like drawings, paintings,
those kinds of things.
And so what you would do is look up
the international class associated with artwork.
And then what you would do,
I would actually look for artwork
and I would look in wine.
And then I would search the trademark in those areas.
I would search for those.
And that will actually result in me seeing
what's out there is by searching it like that.
It occurred to me to maybe contact the company
because there's like a billion.
All right, let me talk to you guys
about contacting companies.
This is really a VIP question.
All right, I'll answer it here
just because I've got three more minutes.
So I'll throw it in here.
All right, this is a really big deal.
Do not reach out to other companies
unless you're prepared for them
to potentially sue you
for something you're already doing.
Okay, so if you're not doing something yet,
no problem, reach out to them,
tell them whatever you want, right?
Because you got nothing to lose.
But if you've been doing something
for two or three years, four years,
and somebody has something
that you're a little concerned about,
talk to an attorney first
to find out whether or not you truly are in trouble.
And I...
I would actually, I would actually ask the lawyer
to come up with a strategy for you speaking to them, right?
Because if somebody calls up an individual and says,
hey, love your house, and by the way,
I've been living in your basement for the last two weeks,
just want you to know.
I wonder, do you really have a problem
with me being in your basement?
Like, is that okay?
Maybe I can give you some money
for staying in your basement?
I don't, is that all right?
Just asking.
Like, they may come out and call the cops,
have you arrested.
They may like sue you for all sorts of things.
So don't just rant,
even though I know everybody here has a good heart,
and I know a lot of people here, you know,
just wonderful people.
Unfortunately, not everybody's like that.
And so you may reach out in an honest, caring manner
and get sued.
So talk to a lawyer and find out
what your case is really like
before you reach out to a party
that potentially has something that you may be infringing.
Now, if you're not infringing yet,
then I don't really see that big of a deal
because if they come out and they get bad,
then you know, and you know, then you move on.
But just be prepared if they get mad
or even if they don't get mad, just be prepared.
You're now on the radar.
You're a potential target, you know?
And so I had, this was the worst situation ever.
This associate actually was fired.
I was in a law firm.
I had a summer associate
and I had the summer associate do a research project.
And I said to the summer associate,
hey, for this research project,
I need to determine whether this company here
really, truly cares about their trademark
because this client that I have
is doing something that clearly infringes.
This summer associate, I don't know what possessed him,
calls up the other company, literally called them up.
Can I speak to the legal department?
I don't, you can't make this stuff up.
Can I speak to the legal department?
Guess one of the lawyers from the company, right?
We've got a client that's like doing exactly
what's in your trademark.
And so we're kind of curious,
do you really care about your trademark?
And I was like, so I get, I mean,
fortunately the lawyer like heard of me.
And so it reached out to me.
He found out I was at this firm.
He knew I was the head of the IP department.
Incredibly nice, kind, courteous lawyer calls me up, right?
He goes, hey, I just want you to know
that one of your associates called me and said this.
I was like, what?
It's yeah, yeah, he called me, told me this.
And it's not that big a deal,
but the client's not gonna be happy.
So I would suggest you back off.
And I said, number one, thank you.
You didn't need to do that.
You could have made my life a living hell if you wanted to.
So thank you.
I'm very grateful.
I owe you one, all right?
I even tell, I say, I owe you one.
I said, second, yeah, I'm gonna have his head on a platter
within seconds.
And so anyways, I went and I told
the summer associates mentor, right?
Summer associate mentor finds out,
goes to talk to the summer associate.
The mentor goes, oh my gosh, Peter, I had no idea.
I'm so sorry.
I don't know what to do.
And tells the summer associate that he can't do that.
And I said, are we thinking of hiring this guy?
And they said, well, he does okay work.
I don't think we're truly gonna hire him.
I said, look, everybody makes a mistake.
This is what I wanna see.
If he's up for it, I want him to come into my office
knowing that it was my client and one of my biggest clients.
I want him to come into my office,
tell me what happened and apologize to me.
That's what I want.
If he does that, I'll give him a clean bill of health.
I won't hold it against him at all, not at all.
I said, I just want him to do that.
So the guy literally, this happened.
I'm not making this up.
The guy literally, he hears this.
The mentor says, I don't think this is a good idea.
I said, look, it's common sense you don't do that.
This is not legal knowledge.
It's common sense not to do that.
So if he wants to make it up,
he needs to come into my office and tell me
and talk to me about it.
And I gotta give the.
guy credit like late afternoon.
I get a knock on my door and there he is.
And he says, Mr.
Nieves, can I talk to you?
And I said, absolutely.
And, um, he said, yeah, right, Shelly.
And so he says, I'm so sorry.
This is what I did.
I thought that's what you wanted me to do.
And I asked him, I said, well, what part, how, when did you think it was a good
idea of telling the opponent, you know, the opposing party who we are, what we're
doing and basically exposing ourselves.
Like when, when did that come in?
He says, I don't know.
That was the dumbest thing I've ever done in my life.
I said, look, I've done some dumb stuff myself.
Uh, and he said, I'm so sorry.
Would you forgive me?
I said, done, it's done.
So this is what ends up happening at the end of the summer.
All the senior partners, right.
We get together and we do an evaluation of all the summer associates to determine who
we're going to give the offer to.
Right.
And so he comes up and everybody hated him.
Like every, like everybody was like bad, this bad, that bad, that I gave him an
incredible review because I said, do you know how difficult it is to admit that
you're wrong and to be able to present yourself in a professional manner without
breaking down and present your case, admit that you're wrong, ask for forgiveness
and ask to learn how to do things properly going forward.
Like that to me spoke more volumes than one of the guys who was with a really good
lawyer.
And so I voted for him.
Everybody else said no.
So he didn't get a job.
But anyways, all that to basically say, um, don't randomly call people and say,
Hey, I'm infringing your stuff.
Just don't do that.
All right.
With that going, Jane just said, what is this?
What is the next group I can say?
Oh, okay.
All right.
So some people were asking about the protection portal.
So for the protection portal, the door opens.
Now it closes Wednesday.
It's 24 95.
Do I know when we're going to do this again?
I do not because we are doing a, um, we're kind of doing a revamping.
I'm sitting down with somebody who's very good at, at doing this for a living.
And we're looking at how can we be as effective as possible for entrepreneurs?
Because what you know right now, you probably fall into the maybe 8% of the
entrepreneurs in the world that know this.
Nobody else knows this stuff.
Like it's just so rare that people know this.
Okay.
What you guys know right now should make you way advanced over others.
But as we've been running the challenges, we're typically running between 50 and 70
registrants, and we're trying to break through that a hundred number to help more
people, uh, because we're just seeing the damages and people closing their
businesses all the time.
And so we're kind of doing an evaluation of, should we make like a patent one in
a trademark one in a copyright one?
Or should we do the big protector idea challenge one, like we've been doing,
which seems to be growing in recognition.
So we're going to be reaching out to all of you to ask you this stuff.
I mean, you're actually very important to us as well.
Not only, you know, is it, is it valuable for me to be able to train you, but you
guys are very valuable to me because you help other people know about this so that
they can receive assistance and you also give us feedback.
So that is a wonderful, do you see how I did that?
Right.
Was that cool?
I was just like, and you gave me that really was a good circuit.
Was that good?
You like that?
That was good.
Right.
That's how I do it in a court.
That's how I do it in the court.
Um, I dropped the video ask link right now then just, yeah, please do.
Yeah.
Yeah, please do.
So if you guys would all bless me, um, we are, we are giving you two things.
One is a, um, a video ask request with the video ask request is all you do is
you click the link and then you just follow the instructions and you can
actually do a live review of the protector idea challenge right there.
So as if you were going to explain what you liked about it or why other
people should join the protector idea challenge, you can actually go right
in there and just do a live review.
And the software that we we've licensed to use this from, uh, it automatically
takes the video and sends it back to us.
Okay.
So we can actually see this.
The second thing is the, do you have the evaluation forms done?
Yeah.
Thank you so much.
Right.
The feedback form, okay?
This is really important to me personally.
I'd like to get your feedback.
What helped you?
What didn't help you?
Did you like everything that you learned?
Was it too fast?
Was it too slow?
Like, oh, I'd like to get your evaluation.
So please, for my own benefit,
click on that feedback form and fill it out
and please get it back to me.
And just so you guys know,
this past week, the last five days,
I've not been working at the law firm.
I've been working here with you guys.
So if you guys would just dedicate the time
to fill that out and get it back to me,
like I've dedicated this week to you guys,
it would be greatly appreciated, okay?
And with that, we're close.
Jane, did you have a question or was that your one point?
I have one quick question
because I think it would apply to everybody
that we didn't ask before.
We're really quick.
It's about Canva.
The images that they use, are we allowed to use that?
Is that copyright, like if we use their image
and then use it for our purpose?
Yeah, so what we'll do is we'll drop the license.
So this is why, guys,
this is why the protection portal
is so important for you guys.
We actually drop the license agreements in there, okay?
Canva has an agreement in there
that tells you what you can and can't do with it.
So what we'll do for you guys,
we'll drop the link so you can look it up,
but Canva has specific rules
as to what you can do with their content.
And that's stuff that we go through
in the protection portal, guys,
because we break down the agreement in detail.
Remember, whenever you sign up with YouTube, Vimeo,
Facebook, Canva,
ChatGPT, MidJourney, Otter.ai, Jasper,
you're signing an agreement.
You have agreed to something, all right?
You need to know what you agreed to.
And in Canva's specific situation,
it has some provisions that talk about
how you can use their artwork.
What you can't do is you can't take their artwork
and make it part of your own trademark
and try to file a trademark
because you're not the owner.
So you can't do that.
But there's other things,
other provisions that are in there.
So I would suggest you guys get into the protection portal
because we talk about that stuff a lot.
A lot of people that are running businesses
bring their situations in and we digest things there too.
So, all right, with that, we're closed.
Congratulations, you have completed
the Protect Your Idea Challenge.
Let other people know, go on Facebook,
say, hey, I just did this five day challenge.
This is what we learned.
Just kind of let people know that you've completed it.
And the other thing is,
don't forget you are extremely valuable.
You now learn this, which brings up your value.
So you should like, if you're a coach,
you should be increasing your costs.
If there are certain ways you're going to be using IP
in your practice, that might increase your value.
Like Todd, Todd actually has certain services
that he provides.
He also includes a trademark thing now.
Increase the cost of the package.
There's things that you can do now
that you couldn't do before.
All right, so figure that out and just enjoy it.