Okay. Hey. Hey, everybody. How's everybody doing? Good. Good. Awesome. Awesome. Is that
Emily? Oh, my gosh, it's Emily. How are you, Emily? This is great. I see all these. Oh,
John Umstead's here. John, what are you in? It's my cookie van. Very cool. Very cool.
So everybody, let me introduce you to John Umstead in case you have never met him. Amazing
individual. John makes some of the, oh, my gosh, best cookies ever. So I eat gluten free.
And then I received two gift boxes from John of cookies that were not gluten free and I'm
eating them. And I call up John and I said, John, these are the best gluten free cookies
I've ever had in my life. And he says, Pete, they're not gluten free. And I said, what?
I had no negative reaction in any way, shape or form. And it really just speaks towards
the quality of his his products, which are outstanding. Like the ingredients are just
ridiculously pure and to the point where I could pig out and not feel bad. So I just love you,
John. You allow me to pig out and not have any problems. You and Rami, right? Rami to Rami,
the big one. So, John, hey, can you just for a moment? Yesterday we were talking about trademarks.
We did day two of trademarks. You had a very unique situation, in which case you had a certain
trademark situation when you started out. Would you mind sharing that with everybody before I
close out trademarks today? I'm going to be going into deep into copyrights, but I'm going to cover
one more issue in trademarks before we go there. But would you kind of tell your story maybe in
like a few minutes real quick? Yeah, no, I'd love to appreciate it. Yeah. So back before we were
yummyliciouscookies, we had no name. And as we were thinking about names and we came up with
Smart Cookie Company, right, it was so I was like, oh, that was so good. Well, I did my I did my
homework best I could went through a legal Zoom search and I got pouring through all these
documents and I think I know what I'm looking at. I'm like, I think I'm good. No classes here. This
is my class I'm in. And all right, I'll file it myself. And I sent it to the USPTO and I started
to get like cease and desist notices from companies that were not they weren't even
related at all in any way, shape or form. And this is a decade before I ever heard of Peter.
And so I am I have nowhere to go. And I looked around in Kansas City to an intellectual property
attorney, went to him, told him my situation. And he said, well, you know, it might cost you five,
it might cost you 20 to defend this. And I'm like, you can't tell me. He said, well, it's really
unknown at this point. And so we just bailed on Smart Cookie Company. Well, you know, Romans 828,
everything for the good, which we ended up with the name that we have now. And as I searched for
it, looking through the trademarks and the websites, there was nothing out there. And so
what I ended up doing is I just put a little TM after all of my stuff. So for the last 13 years,
I've been doing that. So when I have Peter file my paperwork, it's already I've already got the
documentation. We're all good. And so that's one way I ended up learning the hard way is spending
that time, that money and really having the unknowns and having to shift my company. We
weren't that big. We weren't well known. So I avoided some pain and suffering. It cost me a
couple thousand dollars, but there are worse things to happen. So those of you who are in
this challenge, you know, the few of you were looking up names, you're well ahead of the curve.
I mean, you are at least looking around the bend before you see that train coming.
That's barreling right towards you and you can stop and get off that track before it comes and
gets you. Yeah, so that's that's that's something that's really important. I want to encourage all
of you here. I heard some of the stories where people are saying, I'm trying to figure out the
name. I don't know if it's too early, if it's not. The fact that you're in the Protector Idea
Challenge, this if you're starting to build your company is phenomenal. Like the timing,
it could not be more perfect because so many people come into this challenge after they've
been doing something for two, three, four, five, 10 years. And then they realize, oh, my gosh,
I've got a legal issue. And then they have to change and rebrand and change their website and
change their logos and pull products off the shelves and read. I mean, just redo everything,
cost them tens of thousands of dollars, not to mention all the time and money that they lost
because now they got to start over in building a new reputation. So.
You're in the right place at the right time. Just be thankful and just receive as much as you can.
We're trying to give you just as much as we can without overwhelming you. Just to give you an
idea, I'm teaching you a fraction of the IP issues that are out there. I mean, there's a lot out
there. It's a massive world. I'm teaching you some of the things that I've seen so many, many,
many entrepreneurs go through. So I just want to make sure you guys understand that you're in the
right place. Give yourself some grace. Just give yourself some grace. Don't freak out on yourself.
All right. And with that, I want to jump into one thing in particular. Let me see.
Let's see what we got here. I'm going to show you
the international classes. I'm going to start there. The reason why I'm going to start with
the international classes is because a number of you are trying to figure out, well, where does my
trademark fall? Is it class 41? Is it nine? Where exactly does it fall? So I'm going to show you
where you can find this. And I'm going to walk you through it very fast.
And then we're going to go ahead and we're going to jump into things in more detail. But at least
I wanted you to be able to find this. I'll drop the link for you too. For those of you that were
in VIP yesterday, that trademark application that we did live, did that help you out?
Yeah? OK, good. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to drop for you in the chat a link.
This is the listing of international classifications that exist. It lists every
single one. So I'm going to share my screen real fast and show you. Here we go.
OK, can everybody see that? It says class one on top. Do you see that?
I don't see any heads moving. I just want to make sure. Do you see this? You do? OK, good.
All right. Every single good or service falls into a class. All of the services start later,
like around 30. All of the goods start at one and go forward, OK? So you can literally
look up whatever it is that you do, whatever kind of product it is, and just kind of go through
these different international classes and see where you fit. Class nine tends to be all the
electronics. See, everything electrical falls in here in class nine. If you're doing challenges,
you're doing training. A lot of you here are in education. How many people here are in education?
Educational institutions, or you're teaching people, you're doing stuff like that, right?
That's class 41. I'll show you. If you go down to international class 41,
right there. You see that? Education and entertainment, OK? So that's the class that
you would choose for doing online training, live training, any educational work or entertainment
work. So use that link to figure out what international class is associated with either
your goods or your services, all right? So now, if you do that and you use the form that I dropped
for you yesterday, you can literally have all of the ingredients of a trademark application
ready to go to your attorney. That should decrease your costs immediately. It should make it much
less expensive, which is just phenomenal. It's going to help you as a business because obviously
all of you are, well, not all of you, but a good number of you are starting out. So you don't want
to be spending tens of thousands of dollars on certain things when you could be spending
way less, OK? All right. With that being said, we're going to jump in right now into copyrights.
Copyrights. Now, this is a different, a very different area. Copyrights allow you,
it gives you a right to any kind of original work of authorship that's fixed in a tangible medium,
all right? What does that mean? You have an idea for a drawing. You can't protect the idea for the
drawing. You create the drawing. Now the drawing is protectable under copyright law. You have an
idea for a painting. You can't protect the idea for the painting. You actually will create the
paint. Once you create the painting, it's now fixed. When it's fixed, like it's in a
tangible medium, now you can protect the painting.
So you can't actually, I actually named this intentionally,
the protect your idea challenge.
The reason why is because technically you cannot own,
you can't protect an idea.
You can actually only protect the embodiment of the idea.
You can't protect anything that's theoretical.
You have to actually make it into something,
either a physical device or a drawing or a painting,
or if it's a song, you have to record it.
Like it has to be tangible in one way or another.
That's when you can protect it.
So in the copyright world, it needs to be tangible.
Now there's a lot of different things,
a lot of different things that are protectable
under copyright law, okay?
And so I'm gonna share with you a slide
that's just gonna list them all out for you, okay?
And then what I try to do for all of you,
I try to make things a lot easier for you.
So I'll make this available on the actual Facebook group.
All right, I'll drop it on the Facebook group.
These are examples of things,
categories of protectable works.
Now you remember on day one, I gave you that cheat sheet.
You're gonna find a lot of this stuff in there, okay?
You're gonna see things like software.
You'll see things like pictures, paintings, poems.
You'll see them in there and you'll see they all line up.
The arrow goes right up to copyright, okay?
So literary works, which are books, right?
Books, blogs, websites.
If you have, if you've got a website,
it's protectable under copyright law.
I'm gonna give you one example before I go deep into this.
Let me give you one specific example.
I got a call by an individual,
potential client was incredibly mad,
like really, really upset.
His name was Bill.
I won't say his last name just to protect the innocent.
So Bill calls me up and he says,
what Bill does for a living
is he creates websites for dentists.
That's his job.
He creates websites for dentists.
So his money, his bread and butter
is in the website that's finally created, right?
Like that's his big bread and butter.
Well, he creates some websites for different people,
like 12 people, 14 people, 20 people.
Then all of a sudden,
he starts seeing these websites pop up all over the place
with all of his content.
Like the stuff that he created.
I mean, how many of you actually create content
for your own websites?
Just by a show of hands.
There's a lot of you, okay?
Now, do you know how much time it takes
to come up with the right words to say
or the right images to use?
Like it takes a lot of time.
Well, somebody came along
and just grabbed the stuff from his website,
copied it, pasted it on their site,
just changed a few of the pictures and ran with it
and became a competitor of some of his clients.
Now this started happening more and more and more.
So Bill reaches out to me and he says,
hey, I've got a problem.
People, I make a living out of making websites
for other people.
People are just copying these things
and I'm losing market.
Like I'm losing market share.
I charged people at the time,
I think it was like 7,500 bucks.
He charged them for a website.
He's losing it.
Like people were just copying his stuff.
He says, what can I do?
He said, can I go after him for trademark infringement?
He said, no, nothing under trademark law.
So what about patent infringement?
Is it an invention?
No, nothing under patent law.
So I left copyright law.
On the copyright law,
your website actually is a published work.
Very interesting.
So that means I said to Bill,
I said, Bill, you know what we're gonna do?
I'm going to print every page of your website,
every single page, one, two, three,
every single page that you got.
Now that I get all the printings of all your pages,
I'm gonna file a copyright application
on every page of your website.
And that's what we did.
We filed a federal copyright application.
Somebody type in the chat how much you think it costs.
How much does a copyright office charge you for filing?
Yeah, man, Ron.
Ron, can't you guess wrong for once?
Ron is so good at this.
That's exactly right, Ron.
You nailed it.
So it's only $65.
I mean, think about this.
You get federal protection for $65.
Guys, that is cheap.
That is dirt cheap, okay?
So he goes out there, I filed a copyright application for him for 65 bucks.
We then send cease and desist letters to other parties.
Everybody stops.
Like everybody.
Okay.
Now, but then what happened was I'll just give you a side of why I stopped having him as a client.
He realized that he could actually ask for money in the process.
So he said, look, I want $2,500 for the infringement because I have a federal
registration and I want you to stop.
So I said, all right, well, it's a negotiation point.
So if they stop, then you don't charge them the money.
He said, yeah, yeah, I'll use it as a threat.
And so if they stop, then they don't have to pay the money.
I said, okay, sure.
But then as time went on, he said, no, I can actually get the money and make them
stop.
And he started to turn it into a business.
And that's when I fired him.
I said, yeah, I'm sorry.
I, I, I'm not in the business of extorting people.
That's just not what I do.
I said, there's, there's plenty of people who would work with you.
Just call one of the other guys.
And, uh, but anyways, that's how I ended our relationship, but the whole point
being for $65, you can have certain legal rights.
Copyrights are one of the least expensive legal rights you can have.
The reason why you're filing a federal copyright application is because you
automatically will get statutory damages.
If there is infringement.
In other words, if you can prove that they're copying, you automatically get
at least statutory damages.
That's way better than having to prove all sorts of details about every single
infringement and how much damages you should get.
You automatically get statutory damages.
That means you're going to stop people a lot faster.
And if you're stopping people a lot faster, that means you're
spending less money on lawyers.
Amen to that.
I like that, Keith.
That's good.
Amen to that.
All right.
Some other things that are protectable on the copyright musical works are
protectable on the copyright.
Okay.
So if you're, if you go on to.
TikTok is probably one of the worst violators of copyright law in the world.
It is so bad.
Under copyright law, you can stop other people from copying what you have
protected, right.
Or modifying what you have protected.
Well, on, on TikTok itself, you can push the dual button and take somebody
else's content, put it right next to yours and comment on it, modify it.
You can grab their, their music and have their music background in your video.
That's copyright infringement.
So there's all sorts of issues with TikTok, but you kind of give away all
your rights when you, when you sign up for them.
So, um, so musical works, any songs that you're singing, um, if any videos
that you're creating, those are also protectable under copyright law.
Um, dramatic works.
So if you're doing plays, those are protectable under copyright law.
Pantomimes.
If you're like, you can do this thing, right?
Like you do all that stuff.
If you do that, congratulations.
You can have a copyright.
Um, pictures.
If you're a photographer, those are protectable on the copyright law.
Uh, sculptures are protectable on a copyright law.
Uh, like I said, all videos, movies, protectable on the copyright
law, sound recordings, all protectable.
And then architecture works.
My daughter's going to school for architecture, all the stuff she creates.
All protectable under copyright law.
Guys, there's a lot of stuff that falls under the category of
protectable on the copyright law.
Chances are the majority of the stuff you're dealing with probably has
something to do with copyright law.
So I would try to figure out, especially since it's so inexpensive, I would try
to figure out what exactly is protectable on the copyright law.
Now I'm going to show you the copyright website.
Okay.
The reason why I'm showing you this is because I want all of you
to play around with this website.
It's easy to use.
It's not a difficult site at all.
Uh, it's, it's just, it's self-explanatory.
And here's the best part.
You guys, you guys listening?
It's free.
It's yet another tool that you can use that costs you literally nothing.
Um, so that's one of the things I'm trying to do in this challenge is give you a
lot of resources that cost you nothing.
Okay.
This is the copyright office website.
Okay.
So when you come to the site, if you click on registration, then you can come right
under here on their types of work.
And these are all the different types of works that we were talking about.
Literary works, performing.
arts, visual arts, photographs.
If you're a photographer, just come down here
and click on Photographs.
And there is a button that says Register a Photograph.
You see that?
This stuff is not that difficult, guys, OK?
And if you're not sure, well, what exactly is this?
What exactly does this mean?
Like, what exactly is a photograph?
Let's say you didn't know what a photograph was.
You can come over here and watch these tutorials.
Video tutorials explaining what is a photograph,
how do you register a photograph.
You've got video tutorials.
You've got forms that you can easily fill out.
So I would get familiar with this stuff
before you talk to your attorneys
because then you can get everything
that you need together.
And again, give completed packages
or at least partially completed packages to your attorneys.
And again, none of this is legal advice.
I'm just giving you all guidance
so that you guys can become as efficient as possible, OK?
So as homework for all of you, check out this site,
copyright.gov, all right?
Just somebody type in the chat copyright.gov.
That's where you want to go, OK?
Now, there are a lot, just to be clear,
there are a lot of new technologies
that exist today that are associated with copyrights, OK?
But here's another page on the copyright site.
It tells you different types of works, literary, performing
arts, visual arts.
It gives you them all, breaks them down.
You can just click on the button to see what falls under there.
Now there's more description.
Here are video tutorials, other resources.
It's so user-friendly.
It's not that difficult to use.
So get familiar with this on your own.
And as homework, just go and check out this site.
Just get familiar with it.
Because you've got me.
I mean, congratulations, guys.
You made it to hump day, all right?
This is day three, OK?
So you've got two more days with me, OK?
So within the next two days, I'm going
to be covering a number of things
like ChatGPT, other AI content producing platforms.
We're going to go into a number of different things
over the next two days.
Tomorrow, do not miss tomorrow.
You do not want to miss tomorrow.
I've got a special guest that's showing up.
I'm going to be hitting ChatGPT and AI content producing
platforms in detail.
And I'm going to be covering a number of other things,
just kind of bringing trademarks, copyrights
together and starting to touch on patents a little bit.
It's an important day to be there.
And on top of that, I've got something in particular
that I'll be making available to you.
All right.
With that being said, let me go back
into copyrights for a little bit and give you
an idea of why do you actually want to have a copyright?
Like, who cares?
Here's the thing.
These are the things that you get,
the legal rights that you get if you have a copyright, OK?
Nobody else can reproduce it.
So if you have a copyright on a book, where are my authors at?
Like, just by a show of hands, let me just see.
Where are my authors at?
OK.
So if you've got your own books, or you're
creating your own websites and content,
or you're an educator, like a professor,
and you're creating your own curriculum,
if you're a life coach, this is another big one.
If you're a life coach or a business coach,
where are my life coaches and business coaches?
Just raise your hand.
Wow.
All right, so we've got life coaches and business coaches,
too.
You guys don't typically have inventions.
And on top of that, the trademark
will be valuable for your logo and your business name.
And maybe even under your business name,
you'll have something like your course.
Your course will have a name, right?
So you say, oh, I'm going to protect my course.
It has a different name as well.
OK, that's fantastic.
If it's in education, somebody type in the chat,
what class is education?
International class.
Let's see if you guys are keeping up.
What class is education?
That's right, 41, 41, 41.
Good, you nailed it.
I don't think you guys understand how smart you are,
honestly, because I've taught law students that are not
catching on as fast as you guys.
You guys are definitely catching this fast.
So now you know the international class.
And so you can protect in that international class
your name, your slogan, your logo.
So, but the content, the content is what's important.
Like you don't want somebody grabbing your pamphlet or your handouts or like I gave all
of you on day one a really good cheat sheet, right?
Nobody here should be handing that to anybody else.
Why? That's copyright infringement.
You do not want to do that.
Okay. So, with that being the case, one of the major rights that you get
as a copyright owner is you get to stop others from copying.
They cannot make copies.
They can't distribute copies.
Now, just so we're clear, the word copy is very broad, very broad, all right?
I've got a painting right over here that's from Lynn Lesneski.
It's Jesus Christ with a bald eagle, right?
Like and that's the original.
That's the original one done at the 100x conference, right?
I can't tell you how many people took pictures of that during the conference and then blew it
up and made it into a painting and then they literally have it in their living rooms
and dining rooms and other stuff.
That's copyright infringement.
That in and of itself is copyright infringement, okay?
Like Lynn literally walked into a doctor's office and saw one of her own paintings on the wall.
In a doctor's office and she said, oh, wow, how did you get a copy of that?
And the woman said, oh, I saw it online on Facebook.
I grabbed the image.
I went to the local corner store where they, you know,
they have the camera, the photography development.
I turned it into a 2x3 or 3x5 or whatever it is, big canvas.
And so, I put it on my wall.
And Lynn's going, I would typically make 600 bucks on that.
But somebody just grabbed it off the internet and then printed it and put it on their wall.
So, she essentially lost $600.
You see, this is how copyright works.
So, for all of you that are photographers,
all of you that are doing computer generated images, okay?
Whenever you're putting anything on the internet, please understand
that people are going to grab it.
The second it hits the internet, people are going to grab it.
Now, I understand you've got a business.
And I understand you need to run your business.
I get it.
I totally understand it.
So, this is what I want you to do.
Use low resolution images, very low resolution images.
The ones that you cannot make into larger images, right?
So, they're basically thumbnails that are very low pixels, all right?
So, like I'm talking very low.
It's enough for you to get an idea of what the image looks like.
But if you tried to turn that into a painting, it would look like an abstract picture
because you could not grab it and make it larger
because there's not enough pixels.
So, use low pixelation, low resolution, and then on top of that,
throw a watermark on it using computer software, all right?
You can do this in different computer programs.
So, you throw a water, you do low resolution first,
then you add a watermark on the low resolution.
If you add the watermark before you do the low resolution, I find it's not as good
because the watermark tends to be a higher resolution than the rest of the image, which is good.
So, if somebody tried to make it bigger, it would really destroy the picture.
So, I tend to tell people, go to low res first, then add your watermark on top of the low res
because your watermark is going to be a higher res typically than the rest of the image.
And for those of you that don't know what res means, it's just resolution.
It's the number of pixels in a certain square inch, right?
That's all it really is, okay?
So, again, if you're a photographer, go low res and add to it your own.
Hey, my light turned off.
That was interesting.
You just became low resolution.
Did you know that?
But, all right, Rae.
Rae apparently just made her own, what is it, your own blog.
I just became low resolution.
You guys don't know this, but behind the scenes, we do dad jokes and mom jokes all day long.
That's so good.
So, yeah, so that should help you guys out so you don't run into problems.
So, you can't make copies unless you're the original owner.
Here's another one.
You can't publicly display it.
If somebody else has the sculpture, you can't take their sculpture and then put it in your museum.
Or if somebody has a, you know, an original painting, you can't take their painting,
put it in your museum.
your museum and then set charge admission into it,
unless you get permission from the original copyright owner.
Okay, now I have her original painting right there.
I can't, even though I own the original painting,
I don't own all right title and interest to the copyright.
So that means that I can't take pictures of that thing,
throw it on t-shirts or sell like a thousand copies of it,
because I don't own the copyright.
I've got to get an assignment of all right title
and interest to me before I can make copies of anything.
Does that make sense?
So even though I own the original work,
I don't own the copyright.
The copyright is its own legal entity.
So if you buy a painting and you wanna be able to do
whatever you want to the painting,
make sure you buy the copyright to the painting.
If you buy a logo and you wanna do whatever you want
with the logo, make sure you buy the copyright to the logo.
Just like I told you earlier, you hire GoDaddy,
hey GoDaddy, go give me the copyright.
Like you need that copyright before you can actually
do whatever you want.
Otherwise they'll continue charging you every year, okay?
In the case of sound recordings, like music,
if you own the music, if you're the creator
and you own the copyright, somebody else,
Ria can't come over and say, man, that song was awesome.
Ria's like, you know what?
That song was awesome.
We're gonna have a party.
I'm gonna have it at my club
and I'm gonna play that song all night long.
You're gonna get sued by BMI.
You're gonna get sued by one of the big radio
or record industry companies out there
that has the licenses to all of these musical works.
How do I know?
I used to represent BMI, all right?
So I know how these guys work.
When you go to a bar or you go to a restaurant,
you know that music that's playing in the background?
They need a license to play that music.
You can't play somebody else's music
in a public forum without a license, all right?
Especially if you have financial gain from it,
you're not gonna be able to do that, okay?
Some of you might be thinking, well, hold on, man.
I'm having a barbecue this weekend.
You're saying I can't play music?
What's that about?
That's not right.
Well, this is not fair use.
So for some of you that are thinking fair use,
it's not fair use.
I'll talk about fair use tomorrow.
It's a very complicated area of copyright law.
So I wanna take a moment and introduce it slowly
so nobody gets confused.
And we'll talk about that tomorrow,
in the beginning of tomorrow.
But if you're playing it for your own entertainment,
it's not like, you're not charging admission.
People aren't there for the music.
It's just kind of playing in the background.
It's playing on your own boom box
or something like that, right?
Then I don't think you have much of an issue.
But if you've got a restaurant,
which is a formal place of business,
and it's being used to build ambiance,
which is increasing the chances
of you getting clients and things like that,
you're gonna run into problems.
Technically, you're not supposed to perform
any copyrighted work anywhere, right?
But if you're playing it for yourself
and a bunch of friends,
I wouldn't worry too much about that.
All right, now, one other area,
and I'm gonna take this one slow.
Derivative works.
The only one who has the right to create a derivative work
is the original copyright owner.
Now, some people might be going,
what in the world is a derivative work?
Okay, how many people here know the Mona Lisa?
They remember what the picture looks like.
Man, that's like everybody, all right.
Now, of all of you that raised your hand
about the Mona Lisa,
how many of you know what's in the background
on the Mona Lisa?
Yeah, you see that?
So a copyright,
the rights associated with a copyright
come down to what is considered
the quote-unquote essence of the copyright.
What is the essence?
That's the big word, E-S-S-E-N-C-E,
essence of the copyright, okay?
The essence of the copyright
is really the most important part of the copyright.
When you look at the Mona Lisa,
most people don't realize
that there's green in the background,
that there's like a body of water in the background.
Nobody realizes that.
And quite frankly, nobody cares.
Like people just focused on her face.
They're like, ah, I see the face.
The face is amazing.
Yes, that is the essence of.
the copyright, the face.
Now, if you put a mustache on Mona Lisa,
that would be considered a derivative work.
The reason why is because it's so similar to the original work
that it's considered to be a derivative work.
I'm going to give you current examples.
But let's take another one.
Let's say in one of Mona Lisa's hands,
you notice that you see two hands in the Mona Lisa.
There's two hands that are there.
What if you put Michael Jackson's glove
on one of her hands, right?
Like, you'd be like, hee, hee, hee.
So, you know, if Mona Lisa has got a Michael Jackson glove on,
Gia's like, I don't know how many more bad jokes
I can take, Peter.
I don't know.
So one of her hands has Michael Jackson's glove on.
That is considered, yeah, I know this
is going to be blooper reel, that
is considered a derivative work.
She just caught me writing down the timestamp.
I got 43 minutes.
I'm starting to be afraid of this gag reel.
You know that, right?
I know it's going to pop up one day.
So since it's so similar to the original work
it's considered derivative, why do you care?
The reason why you care is because the original copyright
owner owns all rights to anything that's
considered the derivative.
So you put a mustache on Mona Lisa.
You give her big lips.
You give her earrings.
You make her bald, right?
You could do all sorts of fun stuff with Mona Lisa.
Every single one of the things I just mentioned to you
is called a derivative work.
That means the original copyright owner
has the legal rights to all of those.
Anyone who created those derivative works
is committing copyright infringement.
Very important to understand, guys.
Let's bring it forward to today's world.
You have a logo, right?
Now, a logo can be multiple things.
It could be an identification as to a source of goods, right?
So like the Nike swoosh.
That can be identification.
Somebody sees that, they think immediately.
Sneakers, price point around $90, belongs to Nike.
I know where I can buy those sneakers.
I know the quality.
All these things come to you.
It's an identification as to a source of goods, right?
But on top of that, that swoosh is an artistic design
that at some point did not exist before.
And since it didn't exist before,
the person who created that swoosh
is the artist of the swoosh.
So that means that that artist has certain legal rights
under copyright law.
So you can actually have a logo that
has legal rights under copyright law and under trademark law.
Does that make sense?
This is where people get confused.
That's why I want to take this portion very slowly.
We'll talk about software in a second.
But I want you to understand this.
I want to take this very slowly.
You can have a situation where you
have one creation that is both protectable under copyright law
and protectable under trademark law.
If it's an identification as to a source of goods,
meaning that it's on a product or a service,
and it makes you think of a certain price point,
where you can buy it, quality of goods,
all those kind of things, that's a trademark.
But the artist that created that thing
has certain rights under copyright law.
Really important to understand.
Now let's talk for a second about software.
I was wondering if somebody was going to ask about this.
The code in software is protectable
under copyright law.
The code, all right?
The functionality of the software,
meaning what's actually performed,
that is protectable under patent law.
We'll talk about patent law on Friday, OK?
So that means you've got one thing, software,
that can be protected under copyright law
and under patent law.
Now what if the software has a really cool name?
It's now protectable under what?
Trademark law.
Now what if the software also has a really cool logo?
What's it protectable under?
Trademark law.
Do you see how this all works?
So you could have one scenario when
you have a single product that is
protectable under multiple different areas.
So it may be that you can't afford
to file a patent for $10,000.
But you can, in fact, get a patent for it.
at a copyright for $65, you see what I'm saying?
You've got to be thinking about all these things.
This is why an IP audit is so vital.
If you're running a company, how many people
are starting a company, have a company that's
between one and three years?
That's a lot of people, guys.
Every one of you should be thinking about an audit.
The reason why I'm mentioning this
is because you want to know what is protectable,
what's not protectable.
You want to know, where do I find my trademarks,
where do I not?
Where do I spend money, where do I not?
That's what an audit is.
So just become familiar with that terminology, all right?
It's called an IP audit.
All right, so software, protectable under patent law,
under trademark law, under copyright law.
Lots of different things that can potentially
protect what you're doing, OK?
All right, let me talk a little bit about the copyright notice
because everybody, not everybody,
a lot of people get this wrong.
So I'm going to show you what the copyright notice is
supposed to look like.
And then let me take a sip of water.
OK.
All right, this is what it is supposed to look like.
Let me share my screen.
This is a sample of a copyright notice.
See right here up top?
Right here.
That's a copyright notice.
Copyright symbol, the year, and then who owns it.
I'll break each one of these down in a second, all right?
What you don't do is you don't put circle C and then
write the word copyright because that
means copyright, copyright, OK?
As I say, my name is Peter Peter Nieves.
You don't do that unless you stutter, OK?
It just doesn't work well.
So you don't do copyright, copyright.
It's just copyright.
Or you can get rid of the circle C and you can just
do the word copyright.
If you don't want to do the circle C,
you can just write the word copyright.
Either way, the year, that is the latest year
in which there has been a modification
to the copyrighted work.
So if you threw the mustache on the Mona Lisa
and you just did that yesterday, put it in 2023, right?
Now, what a lot of people will do
is they'll put down the first year they created it,
and then they'll put down the last year
that they did a modification.
And if they did modifications every year,
what you'll see on websites a lot
is you'll see 1996-2023.
What that means is that every single year,
they did a modification to the copyright.
So there was something new that was done every single year.
That's typically what that means.
A lot of other people don't bother saying the first year
that they did it.
They just show the last year they did it.
I like to show the first year as well,
because if somebody is doing something similar,
I want them to know that I predated them.
Now, why would you want to let people
know that you predated them?
Somebody tell me.
Just raise your virtual hand or your real hand,
and I'll unmute you.
Ron.
All right, unmute, bro.
You might have rights under natural, what's it called?
You got it.
You have rights, yeah.
Yep, you may have certain legal rights,
certain federal legal rights.
Exactly, Ron.
You might have certain federal legal rights,
even though you didn't file a copyright application.
That's what I want to tell all of you right now.
You actually do not need to file a copyright application
to have rights under copyright law.
Do you hear what I just said?
Any of you that are publishing a work right now
where you haven't filed a copyright application,
some of you are probably going, oh, man,
I didn't file anything.
Oh, man, I don't know what I'm going to do.
You actually had certain legal rights already.
The second you published that work,
you had certain rights under copyright law.
The reason why you want to file a federal registration
is because you want to have certain legal rights
because it now opens you up to get things
like statutory damages.
You can go after things like attorney's fees.
Like, it just makes it so that you can do so much more
because now you've got a federal registration.
On top of that,
it scares the living daylights out of people.
I can't tell you how many times,
all I do.
because I take a picture of that federal registration
and I show it to somebody and they're gone
because it's an official federal document, right?
So when people see that, they tend to back off.
They don't wanna be in a legal battle with you.
But if you instead say, I've got certain legal rights
and I predate you, that's not as intimidating.
That's not as intimidating.
It's the difference.
It's like going after,
I'm not gonna tell about calibers of weapons.
Let's just say one is using a bow and arrow,
the other one's using a bazooka, all right?
Go after them with the bazooka,
especially if the bazooka only costs 65 bucks.
Now I'm good with a bow and arrow,
but that's a whole other story.
So the whole point being,
you have certain legal rights automatically.
So don't be afraid, don't be too concerned
that you didn't file for anything yet.
Get your copyright notice on your documents now.
If you have publications, books, get it on your books.
If you have a website, put it on your website.
If you've got a blog, put it on your blog.
If you're selling your music,
put it on whatever source is that has your music,
put it on there.
Like make sure there's a notice there.
The reason why you're placing a notice
on your copyrightable work
is because what you're doing is you're warning the public.
And by warning the public,
I can now go after damages
saying that you willfully infringed because you knew.
Because I told you I had a copyright.
I didn't hide it from you.
It's on my website.
Did you not see the big circle
with the date with my name after it?
I didn't put it there because it's cute.
I put it there because I have certain legal rights.
So you can use that as a mechanism to get certain damages.
So you're placing the public on notice with that notice.
Circle C or the word copyright, not both, one or two,
then the date and then the name of the entity that owns it.
Let me talk about the name of the entity that owns it now.
All right, Anna Maria is like,
that's what I was gonna ask.
I was just gonna raise my virtual hand and he saved me.
Thank you, Lord.
All right, so here you go.
This is the answer for this.
When do you want the copyright in your name?
And when do you want it in the name of an entity?
It's really the same for trademarks,
for patents and copyrights.
It's really the same.
If you've got an entity like an LLC, an S-corp, C-corp,
whatever it is, and you're doing IP work,
you get a write-off for that.
That's a business expense, right?
Talk to your accountant.
Say, look, I'm following a trademark.
I follow these trademarks, these copyrights,
and these patents.
This is how much money I spent on the lawyers.
This is how much money I spent on the USPTO,
on the copyright office.
Here it is.
They should be writing that off.
It's a business expense, right?
That's an asset of the company.
Copyrights are called intangible assets.
Patents are called intangible assets.
Trademarks are called intangible assets.
Just get to know that word.
Type in the chat.
Yeah, people type in the chat, intangible asset, all right?
The reason why is because by typing it,
you're gonna remember it.
And so if you spend any money on trademarks,
copyrights, patents, say that word to your accountant.
I have intangible assets.
They should know what that means.
There are tangible assets like my chair,
and then there's intangible assets like my trademark.
I can't really grab it.
It's kind of in the Ethereum or whatever it is, right?
It just kind of exists, but I have certain rights under it.
And I can actually stop you from using my name
under trademark law, but it's an intangible asset,
but you do get a write-off.
All right, second thing to remember
about who should be listed as the owner.
Who could potentially be sued?
If the company is using the name,
chances are if there's trademark infringement,
another company will go after the company.
If the name is in your name,
there may be a chance that the company
goes after you personally,
because it's not in the name of a company.
This is why LLCs are so beautiful and so valuable
and other ways of building kind of like a shelter
around you and your assets,
your retirement, your kids, 401ks and the 501ks,
I mean, the 529s, all that other stuff,
you can protect it by having.
a separate entity with your IP. So look into that. Talk to a corporate lawyer and ask them,
hey, should I create an LLC? Should I create an S-corp or C-corp or whatever it is?
Ask them those questions. They're not expensive. Guys, I filed an LLC myself for 100 bucks online.
I mean, granted, I'm a lawyer, but geez, it's cheap. And then everything that I do, I write it
off. Everything that I can, I try to write it off. So that should help all of you out.
The other thing is if you want to be able to make money off of your IP, meaning you want to license
it to other people, then you may want to keep it in your name and then license it to the company,
in which case the company's paying you for use of your own name.
Okay, so you have to balance all these things. What are you going to do with that name?
If that name is something that you're going to have multiple entities use,
you might want to have it in your name and then get a licensing fee from all the different
entities. Or you might want to create an LLC and then have the LLC license it to different entities.
And then you just draw money out of the LLC as you see fit. There's different ways to do this.
The whole point is being Circle C, the last year that you did the modification at least,
and then who actually owns the IP. Okay, you got that? Is this helping you guys?
Yeah? Okay, good. All right. Is any of this really, really confusing what I've gone over today?
All right, I see. So Robert, do you want to ask me a question? Is there anything in particular
that jumped out? Hey, Peter, how you doing? I'm doing great. Good to see you, brother.
Good to see you, sir. For me, I'm just so visual and this stuff is so not visual.
And so for me, I'm just trying to hold on to the seat here and follow along in a visual way,
because if I don't see it in my creative imagination, then it's kind of like Japanese
or something. But another thing that I'm somewhat paranoid of is doing the wrong thing
and being liable for something that I just thought I did right and actually did wrong.
Absolutely. I take notes and everything else. And even this being the second time around,
it's just one of those deals where it's like, I mean, I think overall, I got the gist of it,
you know, but someone like you, I would prefer to do and check. And like you said,
an IP audit, things like that, which should be something I would have insurance on to where I
know I did the right thing. Now, that it makes a lot of sense. And that's why I advise all of
you guys to be here tomorrow, because we're going to take some time to talk about that exactly.
It really is. It can be a minefield. The IP world can be a minefield. There are nuances to it
that are very tricky. And it's really important to make sure you've got the right guide in that.
And the other thing is, as you're implementing things, as you're starting to do things,
you want to kind of double check like, all right, I selected this international class. Is that right?
Or I'm listing all these goods here. And I found my trademark application. I just got an office
action. What now? Like, what do I do now? Like, I just got a rejection. Yeah, exactly. It's like,
Peter, what do I do now? Like, you know, I just got rejected. What do I do? It's like,
it's nice to be in an environment where you can continue to get guidance. And so we'll talk about
that tomorrow. But I totally appreciate what you just said. And that's one of the reasons why I'm
going to show this one more time for you guys. I appreciate you.
Oh, thank you, sir. I appreciate that, Robert. This sheet here, I spent a lot of time on this
sheet, guys, to make it as user friendly as possible. I would be referring to this as much
as you can. You know, I mean, you should be able to go and say, all right, look, there are,
I'm in a situation where I've got a painting, there's a painting, copyright, got it. You know,
I've got a situation where there is a some kind of image that's created. And the image,
it's some kind of illustration, right? That's protectable under copyrights. But then I want
to use that image in a logo. Boom, it's protectable under trademarks, right? So use this
as much as you can. Like it is so valuable. There's a reason why I also color coded it
so that you'll easily be able to figure out where things belong. Okay.
Separate from that, let me take one minute now to talk about NFTs.
All right. This is a hot area. All right. Now, tomorrow, we're going to be talking about
about ChatGPT, and I know there's going to be a lot of people
who are going to be really excited about tomorrow,
because I'm going to break down what's actually created
by ChatGPT, and these AI content producing bots,
and is it a derivative work?
Who actually owns it?
What can you do with it?
What can't you do with it?
What should you upload in it?
What should you not upload in it?
Where's the content coming from?
How do you make sure that your material isn't grabbed by them?
Like, I'm going to go over a number of those things
at a very top level.
And as a heads up, because all of you are here tonight,
I'll give you a heads up on this.
Next month, at the end of the month,
Ray is like, look, she's cracking a switch.
Look at her already.
At the end of next month, I'm going
to be doing a workshop on all AI content producing bots,
meaning image creators and content creators.
It's going to be a three-hour workshop.
The first hour is going to be free.
And then for those who want to, it's
basically the whole thing is $95 for the three hours of training
where I'm giving the first hour free.
If you have any ability to be in it,
you need to be in it because you type it anywhere on Google,
you'll see it everywhere.
People are using ChatGPT and all these other AI content
producing bots everywhere.
They're using it for your ads.
They're using it for your content.
Kids are using it to write their essays to the point
where universities are actually using technology
to determine whether or not somebody actually
wrote the thing or was it a high percentage chance
that it was created by a bot.
It has become one of the most prevalent, well-known topics
in today's world.
So you need to know about this stuff
because if you're hiring certain ad agencies,
they may be using it and you don't even know.
Well, what if they're using it and they're grabbing something
that's considered derivative work?
Oops, you might be sued for copyright infringement.
So you've got to understand how all this works.
So make sure you hit tomorrow.
We're going to hit that right off the bat, OK?
All right.
I think that's everything I wanted to cover today.
I don't want to confuse anybody.
Maybe I'll just kind of close on.
Larissa, go ahead.
Sean, you're in VIP, right?
Yeah, we'll cover your question in VIP, OK?
We'll cover it there.
I talked to questioners here that I
thought were pretty simple for clarification points.
Do you want to hit on them in your chat?
Can you see them?
In the chat.
Chat, chat, chat, chat, chat.
Dooby, dooby, dooby, dooby.
Did you just forward it to me or?
I can drop it again.
Yeah, drop it for me.
Drop it like it's hot.
There's two right there.
One from Josiah, one from Eileen.
All right, let's see.
Oh, thank you.
All right.
Oh, that is a great question, Josiah.
That is a great question.
All right, Josiah.
Josiah asks a really good question, man.
That's OK.
Do you need to refile it?
So if there's a modification, do you
have to refile it, resubmit it?
Or are you good with the original filing?
That is like the golden question.
OK.
This is where a good lawyer is important.
Honestly, just to be clear, this
is where a good lawyer is important.
The reason why is it depends on how much of a modification
it is, right?
If you're modifying such small percentages,
then it could be argued that it's still a derivative work
because you're not really adding a lot of content.
You're just kind of like rewording this.
Instead of saying, and the man walked up the hill,
you say, and the man strolled up the hill, right?
It's like, I'm not spending another $65
because I made that modification, right?
But if instead you change it to, and the man,
as he was walking up the hill, found a portal,
stepped through the portal, and ended up being in 1887,
well, that's different.
So for that reason, the storyline's now changed.
And so I might actually file a new copyright
because there's a big enough change.
So it really becomes a test of, should I make modifications?
Should I not?
I tend to tell people that the modification, to me,
needs to add something, right?
I need to see something new.
If it's just minor, minor, minor changes,
I tend to feel like that's kind of going to be all right.
None of this is legal advice, by the way.
I should have started with that.
None of this is legal advice.
I'm just telling you what I do, OK?
You do what you like.
OK, so I tend to look at it and say,
was something truly added?
Or is it just kind of an elaboration of something
that's already there?
If it's an elaboration on something that's already there,
I don't tend to file a new copyright
unless I really want that elaboration to be covered.
Because I tend to feel like, well, it kind of falls
into the category of a derivative.
But that's really the territory of a lawyer.
The lawyer should look at it.
You should be able to call.
At least you should be able to call and say,
ring-a-ding-ding, hey, yeah, I know the clock's running.
Quick question.
Here's a document.
You take a look at the document.
You see paragraph number two?
Hurry up, hurry up.
You see it there?
Yeah, on paragraph number two, you see that?
I added this paragraph.
I added this after that.
Do you think that's?
No, no, no, I don't want to talk about your kids.
You're billing me.
Yeah, OK.
So now tell me real quick, is that considered new matter?
It is?
All right, cool.
I'll find a new cover.
I'll talk to you later.
Click.
20 seconds, yes.
I'm kidding.
Obviously, I'm kidding.
But you should kind of be more direct.
You're not kidding.
Alicia's like, I'm not kidding.
But you want to kind of streamline your questions.
And so I would kind of take, towards Josiah's point,
I would take the highlight of what's being modified.
What I would do personally is I would
send the document with the highlights of what
the differences are.
I would send that to the attorney
and say, look, these are the changes that were done.
Do you think this is enough of a modification
to file a brand new copyright?
And they should be able to tell you pretty fast.
All right, but that is a great question.
All right, next question.
Is the fee charged per page of the website content
or the whole site?
That's another good question.
All right, so Eileen, the situation
is that if you file the application as one,
you could have it as 10 pages.
You could have it as 200 pages.
It's one filing.
You get one fee.
All right, they don't charge you more money
for every extra page.
You could file a 500-page app, or you could file a 10-page app.
It's still one app.
It's still one app, OK?
Now, what you do want to think about,
though, is if your website has, let's say,
when you click on this one dropdown on the web page,
it goes to this one section.
And that one section is really, really, really, really
important.
I might file a separate copyright
just for that one section.
If I want to make sure that if anybody grabs anything
from that section, I want to stop them.
As opposed to taking 400 pages of text
for all of my website, which I can do.
I can file for all of that.
But if somebody copies one page, the chances
of it being copyright infringement is pretty low.
Because the question is, is it the essence of the copyright?
It's a 400-page copyright.
You copied one page.
Is that the essence of the copyright?
It becomes a legal battle to argue whether or not
that is the essence of the copyright
and therefore protected under a 400-page filing.
But if you know that these five pages are
the most important part of my website,
I personally would file for those five pages alone
and then file for the site separate.
That's how I would do it.
And that's actually what I did for that gentleman.
I filed for certain things alone.
And then I filed separately for the entire thing.
And it worked like a charm.
One other thing.
I got to stop this one other thing thing.
It's like I'm a preacher, right?
I just got one more thing to say.
Hey, this is the last thing I'm going to talk about, OK?
Hey, this is the last thing.
And what happens?
Two more times.
Yeah, I can't do that.
Ray, I know that's on the blooper reel.
You're losing it over there.
You're like falling off of your chair.
All right, so the images on your website
are protectable under copyright as well.
Think about that, guys.
Really important to understand.
If you file one copyright application
for your entire work and in it are images,
the question is, is that one image on page 472
considered the essence of your copyright?
Probably not.
I would file for that one really important image separately.
It's $65.
If that image is so important to you,
I would file for it separately.
In the case of this.
gentleman who created dentist websites,
one of the images on the website,
don't ask me why he did this, I don't understand it.
I would never do this personally,
but it was actually a picture of his wife's teeth, okay?
So when somebody stole the content of his website,
he was upset that somebody stole a picture
of his wife's teeth,
and they had his wife's teeth all over the internet.
Rhea can not hold it together.
It gets better, but I'm gonna stop here.
But the whole point is two things.
If you need money so badly that you put in pictures
of your spouse's teeth, there's a problem.
That's the first part.
Part two, if you wanna protect those images,
you can protect them under copyright law.
So what we did was we actually filed, this is so silly,
we filed a copyright application for his wife's teeth.
Then anybody who actually had a picture
of his wife's teeth, we sent them the notice,
and said, hey, you can't have my boy's wife's teeth
on your site, that's not allowable, that's improper.
I'm gonna stop there.
Anyways, we're just going downhill at this point.
So, all right.
VIP is going to be such an adventure today, folks.
Yeah, we're just gonna go crazy in VIP.
So, yeah, it's gonna be unhinged today.
So I'll tell you the rest of the story there.
All right, so homework, go to the copyright site,
please, check it out, look at it.
Why?
Because tomorrow when I come back,
if you guys have like a question or two,
you can type it in the chat,
and hopefully I can answer it for you, all right?
Separate from that, go live and say one thing
in the copyright area that appealed to you,
something that jumped out, something that you didn't know,
or something, if you're thinking to yourself,
man, I can apply this this way, please go live,
let people know, because I can't tell you
how many comments I'm getting from other people
who are saying that somebody went live,
and they're talking about their scenario,
and they're saying that was really helpful.
So you're helping each other.
One of the reasons why I created this
is not just for me to be in this direction,
it's for you guys to be helping each other.
You guys are remarkably talented, incredibly gifted,
and you have remarkable ideas.
I'm like in awe of many of you, okay?
Some of you have business ideas that just blow my mind.
And I know as somebody who's been for 25 years hired
as somebody to just come in and assess corporations,
I've been hired by MIT,
by all these different organizations
to do things like this for them.
And I can tell you that,
as I look at what some of you guys are doing,
I know you're gonna do really well.
I just wanna make sure you're positioned well,
so you don't kind of hit a hurdle
or hit a pothole in the process of taking off.
And that's what we're trying to do here.
All right, with that, I'm gonna end 8.25.
8.25, we'll start VIP.
I'll give 10 minutes.
So Larissa, I'll let you finish doing
the incredible stuff you do.
Woo-hoo!
And then I will see you guys over in VIP.