Okay, so if you come up with your own technology and you want to do some searching yourself,
you can.
This is a USPTO website.
You go to the main screen, here's the main screen, you go to patents, search for patents
right here, you click on that, it takes you to this screen, just scroll down to where
it says patent public search, click on that, you do a basic search, and you're on this
screen here.
Now if you know the patent or the patent publication, you can put it there, but otherwise you just
kind of put in some subject matter here.
So let's say you're doing like voice recognition software, I wonder if that'll pop up.
I won't recognize it, let me see, I have to do it in a more simplistic way.
So if you search, let's say like bicycle, you click search, underneath it you'll see
all the results of when you search just for the word bicycle.
You can select different words, so bicycle and let's say tires, and search, and then
these are all the patents that are coming up for bicycle and tires.
So you can, similar to the trademark database, you can select what you're looking for.
I would select everything here, and then just leave it at everything, and then just put
in the words that you want.
Now the old database, in my opinion, used to be way better.
I don't really like the way they set up the new database, personally, I think it's way
more complex than it used to be.
Let me see, artificial intelligence, yeah, like if you search artificial intelligence,
these are a bunch of patents that pop up.
You can sort by inventor name or any way you want.
There's different ways to do your own patent searching on this site.
Again it's a free site, but my concern with this is that if you don't use the right words,
the results are not going to come up.
So what I mean by that is, if you're trying to figure out, like you're searching for a
bicycle, but instead of them calling it a bicycle, they call it a two-wheeled mechanism,
and you use the word bicycle, it won't come up.
That's the problem.
So the reason why I don't like the USPTO website a tremendous amount is because you've got
to use the right words.
So you have to come up with like, look up synonyms, continue looking up other words
one by one to see if you can come up with the results that you need.
But I mean, as you can see here, they're showing 1 to 50 of 218,000 records.
Pretty sure nobody here is going to be reviewing 218,000 records.
So you've got to use words that are very narrow to find what you're looking for.
So if I'm looking for microchip fabrication, I might want to look up VLSI design and microchip.
And still, I've got 3,000 records.
So now all the patents that come up should show up, they're associated with VLSI design
and microchip fabrication.
And that's what I come up with.
So if you've got something more simple like brush and hair, so these are all patents that
are associated with brush and hair.
So it's really broad, but I'm just going to open up a patent so you can see what it looks
like.
Click the PDF.
Pow.
Can you see the patent right now?
Yeah?
Okay.
So this is a sample of what a patent looks like.
Looks like now this is a patent publication.
That's why it has the publication number here,
right over here.
It's not letting me grab it,
but right over here in this circle here is the publication.
That's the date that the patent was published
right underneath it.
And that's the publication patent number.
You've got the title of it,
attachment, bust, device.
You got the applicant is the company.
So if you're trying to figure out
whether or not a certain company owns certain patents,
you can search for that company's name, right?
So if I'm trying to figure out
whether or not Alicia has a bunch of patents,
I can search under her name as an inventor
and see all the thousands of patents that she has.
You know, I can look at any of those.
The assignee is the party who the patent was assigned to.
So it might be filed in the name of a certain individual,
but they might assign it to another individual.
So the assignee would be the one that receives it.
And then you've got the different parts of the patent
that I told you about before.
Like that's the abstract.
So it's basically a brief description of everything.
That's a drawing there.
Obviously it's a drawing.
These are the drawings of the patent.
That basically is showing the invention and its use.
These are all drawings.
There's a lot of drawings in this patent.
A lot, a lot of drawings.
All right.
And then you get to the detail.
Then you get to the patent itself.
And so there's a section that talks about the prior art,
which is your background on the invention.
Advantages of the invention is really the summary.
That's what it's supposed to be called,
summary of the invention.
And then you get into, oh goodness.
They didn't do a good job on this patent.
The big mess.
Here we go.
Then you have all the drawings of the patent here.
It describes what each patent does.
I mean, what each drawing is.
So like this is a schematic 3D view
of a plug on brush device.
You know, every single,
it's basically a very brief description
of what every drawing has.
Then this is a detailed description.
It talks about the invention in a lot of detail.
And that goes on all the way to,
this is the most important part
I want you to remember now,
right here at the end, claims, all right?
Starting right here where the number is,
let me make it bigger so you can see it.
Right here where the number is one,
a blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
This is what you look at to determine
whether or not you infringe a patent.
So if you got a new technology
and you want to know, can I make it?
Then they'll do a patent search.
When they do a patent search,
they'll return patents to you.
And then you got to look at the claims.
You look at these claims at the end,
there's numbers on them and then you read it.
And you see, if you have everything
that's listed in that claim,
if there's even one thing in that claim
that you don't have,
then you don't infringe the patent, okay?
So I can't tell you how many times
I've seen somebody get a cease and desist letter
and they send money over to the other party
or they just stopped doing something
and they never did a patent infringement analysis,
which makes no sense.
Like you should not be stopping what you're doing
unless you know that you're infringing.
I mean, it just makes no sense, right?
Now, just for everybody's knowledge,
let me give you an inside scoop
on how the patent world works.
This is really important.
So in the patent world,
since litigation is so expensive,
it's really, really, really expensive,
what they do is they threaten you with litigation,
even if they don't have a case, okay?
They'll threaten you because they know
for you to defend yourself,
it's gonna cost you tens of thousands,
if not hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars.
So their intent is to scare the living daylights out of you
so that you'll back off and stop doing what you're doing
so that they can then proceed in, you know,
using that technology going forward
without you being a competitor.
So that's how patents work.
Patents are very powerful.
There's these people called trolls.
They're called, technically, I know David knows this stuff.
There's these people that are called
non-practicing entities, right?
But we call them, what do we call them, David?
Patent trolls.
Trolls, we call them patent trolls.
These are the scum of the earth.
No, I'm just kidding.
So, but I've, yes, exactly.
These guys are, these are bad guys.
They're just nasty.
So the way that they work,
I mean, technically, what they're doing is not wrong, all right?
Because patents are an intangible asset, meaning if I own a chair and David Kim wants to buy
the chair, I can sell him the chair, and now he can allow people to sit in the chair or
not sit in the chair.
It's up to him.
It's his chair, right?
Well, a patent is an inanimate object, meaning you can't grab it, but at the same time, there's
certain legal rights associated with it.
So if David, if I have a certain patent and David buys it, David can enforce it against
anybody he wants.
It's an asset, right?
So if Anna Marie has a house and I buy the house, I could kick anybody out that I want.
It's my house, right?
So Anna Marie had these really sweet neighbors that would come over for barbecues on Sundays,
and they have like a pitcher of tea and lemonade, and they have these really lovely barbecues.
And I come over and I own the house, and they come knocking on the door, we're ready for
the barbecue.
Get off my lawn.
This is my house.
Like literally, I could do that because it's my house.
Now, I wouldn't do that, but that's the whole point being, it's my house.
It's the same thing in the patent world, but it's way worse because these people are vicious.
So what happens is these trolls buy up the patents, and then they look for people that
potentially are infringing the patents.
So basically, people that are potentially doing what's in the claims of the patent.
And when they find them, they'll send them these nasty grams and say, look, I'm going
to file a lawsuit against you unless you fork over $250,000 or $50,000 or $100,000, whatever
it is.
And now you've got a choice.
You can defend yourself against them, which I am very expensive.
I mean, I'll tell you, I'm not a cheap date, I'll admit it.
So I mean, to hire me is at least $600 an hour.
And so I'm defending someone in litigation and hopefully getting them out of some kind
of major situation.
And so they know that.
They know you're going to spend a lot of money.
So they'll say to you, send me $50,000 and I'll leave you alone.
Now you as a company are thinking to yourself, that's not fair.
Yes, you are absolutely correct.
It is not fair, and they know it's not fair, and they don't care.
They don't care because they know that you're not going to be able to afford to be in litigation
from the beginning to the end.
So they tell you, pay me $50,000 now, I'll leave you alone.
Or take this license, and I'll leave you alone.
This is why it's important to understand how to do patent searches, how to get what I would
do is I would hire a third party like Kramer and Amato or another group like that, who
actually does patent searches, and find out whether or not what you're creating potentially
infringes upon somebody else's patent.
That's called a clearance search, clearance search, E-L-E-A-R-A-N-C-E search, okay?
Now if you want to determine whether or not your idea can be patented, that's called a
patentability search, okay?
So if you want to get a patent, it's a patentability search.
If you want to make sure you don't infringe somebody else's patents, that's called a clearance
search, all right?
Those are two of the major types of searches.
Now there's other searches out there, there's like invalidity searches, there's field of
use searches, there's all sorts of stuff.
You'll learn about all that stuff in the protection portal.
But for now, just understand clearance search if you want to be able to practice the invention,
patentability search if you want to be able to file a patent, okay?
Those are the two things you want to remember.
Now remember, the provisional patent, you do not need all this stuff that's here.
But, and please hear this, there is a requirement for the description in the provisional to
be what's called, and this is a little confusing but I'll take it very slow with you, it needs
to be enabling to one of ordinary skill in the art.
What that means is somebody in the field needs to be able to pick up that thing and practice
the invention.
So you can't write, you can't say my invention is a bicycle and it contains something that
you sit on and something rotates and you get from point A to point B.
That's not enough description.
Somebody has to be able to pick up that thing and practice the invention.
If they can't do that, it can be argued not to be enabling to one of ordinary skill in
the art.
And that means you can't get the patent, okay?
So it needs to be enabling.
I see a lot of confused faces.
Can you repeat that?
Repeat that again a little slower.
Yeah, I'm going to go through it.
I'm going to go through it.
So again, if you're filing a patent,
you need to know how that technology works.
So if it's a bicycle, you don't need to make a prototype.
You don't need to actually make the device.
You don't need to even sell the device.
But you need to know how it works,
meaning you got to have some pictures there,
some drawings that show it, show how point A connects
to point B, show how the whole thing works together,
so that somebody in the field can pick that thing up
and practice the invention.
If they can't pick that thing up and practice the invention,
someone's going to argue that it's not enabling.
There's this theoretical person called
the person of ordinary skill in the art.
I'm not going to confuse you guys in that.
Basically, what it's basically saying
is somebody in the field picks up the description.
They should be able to practice the invention.
If they can't, it may be argued not to be enabling.
If it's not enabling, you can't get a patent.
What does all this mean?
Like, what does all this legal garbage mean?
What it means is if you don't know how it works,
you're not going to be able to get a patent.
All right, so if you're thinking to yourself, man,
I got an idea, you sit down, you run
from a stationary position,
and somehow you get from point A to point B.
I want a patent on that.
No, you need more.
You need to know what devices are connecting to what,
what are the pieces of it.
Now, you may not have to know
that the pedal is exactly four inches.
You may not need to know things to that detail,
but you got to know that there's pedals.
You got to know that when the pedals move, it moves a chain.
You got to know that the chain is connected
to certain things on a tire, which makes the tire rotate.
Like, you got to describe that.
You can't just say there's pedals, there's wheels,
and you move the pedals and the wheels automatically turn.
You got to explain how it does that.
Without the description, David and I see things,
rejections day after day after day,
because not enabling, 112 rejection here,
whatever, over and over and over.
Not enabling, not enabling.
So don't file a patent prematurely.
Now, there is no requirement for you to make the product
or to actually have done the method yourself.
You don't have to do that.
I mean, NASA, the government has patents on satellites.
There's no room over in the Pentagon
with a bunch of satellites sitting in it.
Like, that doesn't happen.
They got patents on rockets.
There's no room in the Pentagon
with rockets just laying down,
where people go to lunch and they have to, like,
move over and underneath the rockets.
Like, that doesn't exist, right?
But they know how it works,
and they've created them on AutoCAD and other programs,
so they file a patent based on that.
So you may not need to create a prototype,
but you do need to describe it and have pictures
so somebody can create the invention and use it.
Does that make sense?
So some of you that have these, like, ideas in your head,
you may be close to being able to file a patent,
but you may not quite be there yet.
So you want to jot all these things down.
If anybody's dealt with a white paper,
white papers are great.
They're great.
If you know how to write a white paper,
you should be able to write a patent.
Like, there's enough detail there.
You just need to get rid of some of the theoretical stuff
and, you know, some of the language that says,
you know, we're thinking of doing this in the future.
Like, get all the theoretical garbage out of it
and just leave the concrete things.
A connects to B.
B does this.
C is connected to B.
The result is D.
Like, those kinds of things.
Very clear and concise descriptions.
If it's a device, get a picture of the device.
Right?
You want to create a drawing that shows,
a black and white drawing that shows the device.
And then put that device there
and nothing in the physical world gets moved.
If one has a process, nothing.
Hold on a second.
One has a process,
but nothing in the physical world gets moved.
It's all psychological.
We're interacting.
Can it be patented?
It's a good question.
So, there are things called method patents.
You might have a method of doing something.
thing.
The problem in the area of the non-physical world
is that you have to worry about an area called
unpatentable subject matter.
And what that is, is if a human being can perform
the action without a machine, without any intervention
in any way, shape, or form, the patent office
tends to fight you.
And you've got to overcome.
I'm not going to go into all the parts of a one-on-one rejection
because your heads will explode.
The stuff that we need to know is insane,
which is why we get paid so much, quite frankly.
But suffice to say, if Rhea can perform the entire action
by herself, it's going to be a little difficult to get
a patent if she can do it completely by herself.
Now, if you're starting to add some software into it,
some computer interaction, some functionality that's
performed by some electronics, you
get a higher chance of getting an issued patent.
If you're doing it entirely by yourself,
like a first arm grabbing something from point A,
moving it to point B, releasing it, second arm picks it up,
moves it over to point C, releases it.
Well, I just did that with my hands.
So instead, the claims of the patent
would have to say things like a memory for performing
the functions of blah, blah, blah,
or a processor for blah, blah, blah,
and then talking in detail about a mechanical arm, which
is controlled by a controller, the controller receiving
instructions by functionality provided by a memory,
the memory being programmed by.
I mean, there's a lot of details that have to be in there.
You can't just say arm picks up object, arm let go object,
object picked up, object let go.
No, you're never going to get a patent for that.
So you need a lot more details for that.
Patents tend to be one of the more complicated areas
of the law.
There are things called patent agents.
Patent agents are phenomenal.
They can work with the United States Patent Trademark
Office.
What they can't do is write legal opinions,
because legal opinions are legal documents.
Attorneys need to do those.
That doesn't mean they don't do a first draft
and give it to somebody, because I've seen that all the time.
But an attorney needs to review that thing.
So as an example, the IP audits that we do,
one of the reasons why I do them is because I'm an attorney.
I'm a litigator.
I'm a prosecutor.
I'm a trademark lawyer, copyright patent lawyer,
do all those things.
This way, it's easier for me to do an audit.
All right, let me step back, because that's
really deep, complex stuff that we just
finished talking about.
So I want to step back from that for a little bit.
And I'm going to go back into trademarks for a second,
because I had a number of people asking questions
in the trademark area.
And one of the questions they were asking a lot
was, I search for my company.
And one of the words that's in my company,
somebody owns a patent for.
Can I continue using my name?
OK, so this is not legal advice.
Peter owns a patent or owns a trademark?
Trademark.
We're talking about trademarks right now.
All right, so again, there's a name.
The name that I'm using has two words in it.
Somebody else has a federally registered trademark
that has one of the names.
Is that a problem?
I've had that question multiple times.
So actually, let's have some fun here.
Does anybody want to take a chance
at answering that question by a show of hands?
Anybody want to answer that?
Bueller?
Go Sonia.
Sonia does.
Jackie.
Jackie?
I think she raised her hand.
Either she did a hallelujah or she raised her hand.
One or two.
So all right, cool.
All right, let's unmute her.
OK, can you hear me?
Yes, yes.
So the scenario is you have a trademark
that has two names, two words.
And when you do a search, you see a federal registration
including one of those words.
Houston, we have a problem.
Boom.
That's exactly right.
Houston, we have a problem.
That's it.
Well done, my friend.
Well done.
So this is where it gets tricky.
Because let's say you've been using it 10 years.
and you finally did a search and you find out,
well, they've been using it for three years.
Well, again, you have common law rights, right?
So you can technically continue using it
in a specific geographical reasons
where you already have been using it
and nobody could stop you
because you have preemptive rights.
The tricky part about this is,
should you communicate with the party
who has the federal registration?
And like, kind of get more in their face about this.
Meaning, hey guys, this is the name I have.
You have one of these words in there.
I think it's a problem.
I want you out of my geographical regions, right?
Like, should you get, should you back,
should you be more proactive with your IP rights, okay?
This is a tricky area, guys.
This is a really tricky area.
See, the problem is you never know
how somebody is gonna respond when you reach out to them.
You do know that you've been practicing for 10 years
and nobody's bothered you.
Now, all of a sudden you find out about this other party
and you're thinking you might reach out to them and say,
hey, you've only been using it for three years.
That's not fair.
And so I want you to stop.
They may respond with, oh goodness, I'm sorry.
Or they may respond with, I've got a federal registration.
I want you to prove to me
that you've been using it for 10 years.
It's a really tricky question.
I would talk to a lawyer about that.
I'm responding to that here
because more than one person here has raised this issue.
I would talk to a lawyer about your exact scenario and see.
Because the concern that the people had
was specifically that other party
is gonna take more market share.
They're using my name.
I've been using it for 10 years.
They've been using it for three years.
I wanna stop them.
I didn't know I could file
a federal trademark application.
I was using a Circle R.
I changed it to a TM.
They've got the Circle R.
What should I do?
And I think it's honestly gonna depend upon the parties.
Like who are you dealing with?
Are you dealing with a McDonald's?
In which case, they're gonna sue you.
The second you reach out to them,
they don't care what your legal rights are.
They're gonna sue you.
Or is a situation where you're instead,
you may be able to stop them.
So I would talk to a lawyer, honestly.
I would just be careful.
Before you start sending out cease and desist letters
or suing people or doing any of that,
I would definitely speak to a lawyer.
All right, let me take,
I'm gonna take two questions.
And then I'm gonna finish up with something else over here.
See, is there anybody who has not asked a question yet?
I think everybody here has asked at least one question.
So yeah, okay, cool.
So since everybody has, let me go over to,
Sonya, go right ahead.
How are you?
Great.
Good, good.
That's why I'm drinking wine,
because the decision is made in wine.
It's Friday night and I just got paid.
Yep, that's you.
Go ahead.
No, I actually had to keep a clear mind the last day
so that I wouldn't make a decision I didn't wanna make.
So since I already made a decision this morning,
I'm having wine tonight, so.
Very good, very good.
So it's a super quick question
just to the situation that you just highlighted.
Because I'm in a situation where both words
of what I looked up is being used,
but in a different, like in the opposite.
Well, the first word that I'm using is the second word
and the second word is the first,
which makes it a different meaning.
All right, say that again.
Okay.
So what I looked up is also two words
and both words have a trademark,
but the words were the other way around,
the way it showed up, which makes-
Oh, okay.
So it's like backwards?
Yeah.
Okay.
Which makes the meaning of the whole phrase
completely different.
Okay.
And so somebody has a federal registration
for the two words, but in a different order?
Yeah.
Yeah, that is-
Go to the audit.
Not the best.
Yeah.
Do the audit.
Is it the same class or is it a different class?
That's the question I would ask.
Yeah, the situation she's talking about
is where there's similar services.
So yeah.
So yeah, I would definitely analyze this scenario.
You can do that in the audit and break it down.
But it's not the best scenario.
There's ways around it.
Because I mean, think about it.
Commercial impression is a big part, right?
So if it's running fast and fast running,
it's the same commercial impression, right?
But there's more things.
There's more factors to look at.
And we can do that.
We can break that down.
Awesome.
Yeah.
But it's a really good question.
I mean, the thing that I'm seeing
is people have like three names, like three words within a name.
And they find out one of the words is owned by somebody.
What do they do?
And it gets tricky.
Because if somebody owns Microsoft
and you have something like fiery glow Microsoft,
I guarantee you Microsoft's going to sue you.
They don't care that it's three words.
They don't care if it's 10 words.
You have their word.
Nuclear bomb.
So we'll dig into your stuff in more detail.
Don't worry about it.
Thank you.
All right.
Linda.
How are you, Linda?
You are muted, my dear.
I'm muted, my friend.
I was typing in the chat.
I asked a question yesterday.
And you said you were going to cover it today.
And it was regarding.
About copyright.
Right, yeah, the copyright.
And my concern was what things I could
excerpt from other people's books or such
and put it into my own book or in my teaching.
And does a citation just work?
And how much can you put in, like a chapter?
So it's very situation specific, quite frankly.
There's no universal rule on this.
It's more how much you.
It's not even how much you're using.
Because if you're taking the essence of somebody's copyright,
that's enough to be doing copyright infringement.
But if you're using it for newsworthy purposes,
like something that recently happened, that's one thing.
If it's like an article that's being provided in college,
then you could always cite to somebody else's work
in your article.
Those things are OK.
But once you start making money, once you
start adding this idea of I've got a book
and I'm quoting somebody else, and that quote
increases the value of my book, that's
when you really need an analysis of exactly what you're doing.
And how much of the quote are you grabbing?
Is it the essence of their work?
And now that you've grabbed the essence of the work,
that increases your value.
Fair use is a really nasty area.
It's very, very messy.
For news reporters, it's easy.
News reporters, something just happened.
They put it in the paper.
Somebody just said something.
It pertains to what just happened just now.
They get away with it all day long.
They have no issues.
The problem is most of us are not in news reporting.
Most of us have had time to digest things,
figure out if we add certain things in a certain sequence,
does that increase my value?
And will it make people buy my book more?
And so for that reason, you really
want to have somebody look at your specific scenario
and see, does it truly fall into a fair use thing?
And so what I'll do, Ray, I see you laughing nonstop
this entire session.
I don't know what you're doing behind me.
I have no idea, but I'm starting to get afraid.
Oh, I'm waking up.
So can you just DM me?
I'm going to list the factors tonight in the Facebook group.
I'll list the factors and what each factor is.
It's just, I mean, to be honest, Linda,
it's a tricky area of law where people get sued all the time.
And so what I tend to tell people
is get all of your stuff together
and then sit down with an attorney and say, OK, look,
this is what I got.
This is what I quoted.
This is what's in my side.
Is this OK?
And they'll tell you yes or no.
They should be able to look at it pretty fast
and say, is this OK, this is not.
See, in the audit, we can look at it really fast and we can say yes or no really fast.
Um, but the, but separate from that, it would, it would literally be legal advice. You'd be looking at legal advice.
And so I'll, I'll put tonight the factors and I'll put the criteria for the factors.
In the Facebook group, and then you guys can take a look at that and kind of.
At least know what the barriers are.
Because fair use is a very dangerous area.
I'm trying to use fair use.
You like, that means you're already committing copyright infringement. Now, if you're just.
Typically, if you're just taking a statement from somebody and it's not the essence of their copyrighted work.
I've seen people do that all the time and they don't get in trouble.
You know, um, but when you start grabbing a decent amount of material from somebody's copyrighted work.
That's when the other party gets upset because.
They're not getting royalties, you know, like, I can write a book today.
I can take a book by, I don't know who, like, let's say by Greg Cardone or somebody like that. And I can take that book and analyze the whole book and write my own book.
And keep quoting him, like, he says on page, blah, blah, blah, this is what happens is this.
This is what happens, like, literally, I can break down every single part of it 1 by 1 and.
I can get in trouble for that. So, um, hold on 1 second.
Okay, all right, so let me go to Sean, so I'll, I'll drop the factors so you can see it.
Okay, then you can, you can make an analysis based on that, but I would touch base with an attorney.
Okay, Sean, you are up.
Go ahead, she there.
Hello, hello, Greg, I'm going to make it earlier tonight. I mean, this week, but thank you for.
Answering me, I thought I was going to ask 1 question, but now after you talked about Linda's, I don't know, maybe I have a totally different 1.
As if I'm certified under someone else and my method includes partly a thing that I invented, but part of it is based on her work.
And I call it her work when I'm talking about my model, I've got my part of it and her part of it.
So, I don't know, I never really thought so much about how tricky that is, what you're talking about is very complex because there's licensing issues, there's ownership of new creative work issues, there's derivative issues.
There's you need to do the audit, I mean, I paid a lot to be certified under her and we have, we have the right to teach that work and a lot of people write about it in their own way.
So, I'm not sure if any of them ever got sued, it's worth looking into.
Okay, I don't know if I can tell you this, looking at looking at other people and saying, well, they didn't get sued, so I can do it.
Yeah, not a good, not a good business plan, that's not a business plan I would follow.
I mean, I have represented individuals and corporations, large and small, who thought to themselves, well, everybody else is doing it, and then I got to come in and save them, you know, and so, I mean, one of my clients, one of the ones in Massachusetts, the last major litigation I was in was in five years long, it was patent litigation.
Started out in California, they sued my client in California, under the TC Hartland case, I had the case transferred to Massachusetts Federal District Court, one of the first cases ever transferred under TC Hartland, one that really got opposing counsel mad, because what people will do to try to make your life difficult in patent litigation is they'll sue you, they'll try to see you in a place that's very inconvenient.
And so now you're spending a lot of money on lawyers, your own local counsel, plus another attorney who's who's in that courtroom, and I mean, it gets, you can double what you need to spend, and then the result is we had to transfer to Massachusetts, after four years, I end up winning the case.
But I mean, all that basically to say there were other people doing it too, they just chose to sue my client.
And we won. But in the long run, they spent one. No, they spent
$3.2 million getting out of lawsuit.
So,
It occurs to me that if I'm if I'm
writing about it, maybe what I need to do is just run the manuscript by them and get their
permission to use it. Because I know they like having it disseminated, but I also don't know
at what point do you cross the line. Being certified means I'm supposed to be able to go
out and make money using this method, but to write about it and then disseminate it in a little bit
of a different way with my own interpretation. The other question was really quick about copyright
and you had at one moment you said you could do it for your company but license it to yourself.
Because I'm trying to make decisions about whether to copyright it in the name of me or
the name of my company. The problem is the name of my company might change. We're not totally set
on it. So if you copyright or trademark something in the name of a company and then that company
name changes, is that just sort of what happens then?
Well, there's a thing called ownership of rights and again, Sean, I can't stress it enough.
You need an IP audit. You're in a lot of dangerous areas that you're dabbling
and you're asking generic questions to very specific situations that can be very dangerous.
Yeah, I hear that. I'm definitely gonna. But let me just kind of talk to you about what's
called assignments because I think everybody can learn from this. So there's this thing called
assignment of all right title and interest, right? I talked to you guys about you have something
in your name and you assign all right title interest to a company or you have a situation where
you go to let's say a software developer. They create the software and you have them assign
all right title and interest over to you, right? So that's how you get the rights to
whatever it is. Now, let's say that you assign all your right title and interest to company ABC.
Well, company ABC could be acquired by company 123. And if it's acquired by company 123,
there's usually some kind of merger or acquisition document that says they're assigning all right
title and interest of all the IP over the company 123, right? So you could have
IP rights go from individuals to companies, companies to companies, individuals,
the companies, the individuals, like companies, the individuals, like you do whatever you want.
It's just an asset that you're transferring from one party to another. You've just got to be very,
very careful, very, very careful in that some of the agreements of companies will specifically
talk about the IP rights and what happens to the IP rights if the company is acquired
or anything like that. So you need to know that beforehand. So you can't assign copyrights to
company ABC if the legal agreement with company 123 that you work for says that you can't assign
the rights. And there's also things called employee agreements, which we talk about in the portal,
where an individual has an obligation to assign all right title and interest to the company.
And now they're out there selling the IP rights to somebody else. They just violated an employee
agreement. So now they can be sued on their contracts. It's a violation of an employee
agreement, which is a contractual obligation. They can be sued on their employment law and contract
law. And I'm telling you, it is a minefield. So this is why you guys like don't dabble in this
area that none of this is legal advice. Like I'm telling you guys, I am just what I'm doing is I'm
flagging the issues for you. So you understand that these things are tricky. And so there are
areas that are simple, but you can go online and do a quick trademark search yourself. I taught you
guys how to do that. But at the end of the day, the reason why you're doing that trademark search
is so that you can decrease the number of trademarks that you present to your attorney.
So you had 10 ideas, you brought it down to two or one, you bring those two or one to the
attorneys, you're spending 10% to 20% of what you would have spent before. Right? That is tremendous
savings. And if you do that consistently, as a business owner, you're going to do very well
because you can use the money that you would have spent on certain things for legal services,
you can use it for getting clients.
marketing, you know, working for the company,
like merchandise, whatever you want.
But in your case, Sean, do an audit.
I'm telling you, you have too many things,
things that are jumping up from what you're talking about
from assignment issues to license issues,
to certification issues, contractual obligations,
employee issues.
I mean, there's so many things.
There's so many red flags going off when you speak.
And that's partially because you're smart, obviously.
So you have a lot of opportunities.
So I give you credit in that clearly you're intelligent
because you have all these opportunities,
but you need to do an audit.
So, all right, let me take one more question.
Anne Marie, I don't think we've taken a question from you.
Nope, you haven't.
So this is my-
Awesome.
Here it goes.
Oh.
Shauna is talking about stuff that I'm trying to prevent.
So I'm one of those lucky few, I guess,
that are starting from scratch.
Yes.
Done independent work for other people,
but I haven't really formalized anything.
And now I'm being offered,
you and I talked at the conference quickly
about who wants to do a spinoff
and then give it to me when he retires.
But to me, that just sounds wasteful and a big mess.
So I've been working for him.
Things are blowing up for him.
He's very happy.
He wanted me to do faith-based focus
because he sees that's where the favor is.
Wants to set up a business, make me the face of it.
Nice.
I don't want to be the face of anything.
So I'm not paid to a day out.
So I want a name, but I also want to do it right
so that if he retires or something happens to him,
I don't get caught in the IP issues
that you're talking about,
like disappearing or it being bought by somebody else
and my stuff as well.
Right.
And having some-
It's smart.
Yeah.
So, and I'm kind of already dealing
with some of the stuff Sean was talking about,
but in a much smaller way.
And I don't want to do this wrong,
especially if it's fake.
We already have-
It's, all right.
So I'm just going to speak-
Chico.
What was that?
Chico, what was that?
Okay.
This is when it starts to get interesting.
Friday night, 9.23 PM.
Other voices are speaking at this point.
Hmm, Chico.
All right.
So with that being the case,
let me walk through something.
I got a really good example.
I think it's going to help you.
All right.
There was this wonderful elderly gentleman, right?
This was a long time ago.
It was like 14 years ago.
I think his name was Roger.
Forgot his last name,
but he was a prolific inventor,
like always coming up with new ideas,
always just brilliant,
like scary brilliant, you know?
And he was in his eighties though, right?
Now he had a company
and all the IP was in his name.
Like everything was in his name
because he was remarkably possessive.
Like I would meet,
I tried to send one of my associates to him
and he wouldn't allow me to.
He would make me drive an hour and a half to two hours
to his house on the lake just to talk to him.
And he says, I don't care what you build.
I want to work with you.
I don't even want to work with you.
So I drive all the way out to him
and he would literally just take out paper
and he'd start sketching.
I want to own this.
And then he'd sketch something else.
I want to own this.
I mean, the guy, he's scary smart, you know?
Now here's the problem.
He had multiple sons.
The sons knew he was getting older
and they were concerned that if dad passed away
what's going to happen to all the IP, right?
That was the big issue.
What's going to happen to all this IP?
Because the kids were associated with the company
but dad did not in the will and the trust that he created
he didn't want to give the stuff to the kids.
He wanted the kids to create their own thing
create their own wealth, right?
So what he did instead was he gave the IP to the kids.
to the company and to, like, if he passed away,
it was gonna go to the company and to the employees.
So the employees would make a ton of money
because he was very faithful to his employees.
All right, so what does this have to do
with what we're talking about here?
The kids were going crazy and they tried calling me up
saying, hey, look, we'll pay you whatever.
Can you meet with us?
I said, I can't meet with you
because that's a conflict of interest.
I represent your dad and I represent the company
because the two are unified, right, in purpose,
but you clearly are not unified in purpose.
You wanna take over the IP rights.
I can't meet with you.
And they did all sorts of stuff
to try to get me to meet with them, and I wouldn't.
I kept refusing and refusing.
Dad died a number of years later.
I loved him, great guy, passes away.
IP rights go to the company.
Kids have no rights in any of it at all.
Now, since the company owns it,
the people who are at the board level of the company
control the IP and tell the kids, bye-bye.
Like, you now can't even, you can't use this stuff.
You can't even consider using this stuff.
If we ever see you using this stuff,
we will sue you as a corporation,
even though you're the sons, right?
So I tell you all this
because licensing is really important.
Obtaining some kind of detailed license agreement
with a party who owns IP is really important.
If I'm in a situation where,
and this is stuff that we go into in the protection portal.
Make sure you're there Monday, all right?
So you understand, I'll talk more about this then.
But if I'm in a situation where somebody owns the IP,
but they're allowing me to use it
in a certain market segment, I want a license agreement.
And I wanted to say that they're giving me a license
to do, a non-exclusive license to do X, Y, and Z, right?
And I want to make sure that that license agreement,
man, I'm going way deep for you guys.
This is way deep.
I want to make sure that license agreement
goes into like terms and conditions.
If the guy dies,
like I want all that stuff in a license agreement.
So the answer towards what you're referring to is
license agreement is going to be very important.
And it should have terms that talk about all of this,
like in detail, you know,
like if he passes away to talk about
what happens to the assets and, you know,
do you get a right of first refusal
or do you get a right to purchase the IP
if he passes away first?
And if he, you know,
and if he truly cares about this stuff,
he should be okay to talk with you about it.
If not, then he's really trying to control everything.
And, you know, then I got to think to myself,
if he's really trying to control these assets that strongly,
then maybe this is not a long-term play.
Maybe this is,
I've got favor right now to work with the guy,
but long-term, this may not be a business model.
See, whenever I'm building a business,
I need legal documents to support my business, right?
That's vital.
That's vital because, you know,
Tom may not be around tomorrow
or ABC Corporation may be bought out by another company.
So I want legal documents that are saying what I can do.
And if somebody else purchases that company,
when they purchase, it needs to be subject to my terms
so that I can continue doing what I'm doing,
even if another person purchases the company.
That's how I do business.
That's how I always do business
is that I'm looking long-term,
I'm looking to keep things running,
regardless of if that person that I licensed from
is alive or dead.
If they're dead,
I would love to have the right to buy the IP,
you know, potentially.
Like these are things that I'm thinking of.
And you'll learn more about this stuff
if you go in the portal,
we go into all this stuff in detail.
All right.
And with that,
there's the last question.
The last question.
Last but not least,
the great Jackie,
where we actually began.
I think we actually,
I think you were the first person to speak
in the very beginning.
So I think we are ending
with the same awesomeness that we began with,
which is good.
Oh, thank you.
Oh my gosh.
I'm pretty sure, but all right.
So anyways, you're up.
What's your question?
Weird, weird, weird.
I could not find my name in the trademark,
but if you have a trademark that sounds like words,
it's an acronym can you get into can you get into trouble with that like say
there's a trademark with actual words that are found in the dictionary and
then the acronym that I've created is not is not in the trademark does that in
would that be a problem because it's I will let you know this the way that the
USPTO looks at acronyms is they look at the words that are comprised of the
acronym so they they say okay well the acronym is you know whatever like trying
to think of a good yeah FYI FYI right so they so the examiner immediately sends a
communication out to the trademark applicant and says what does FYI stand
for that's what they do immediately and then they say oh it stands for for your
information then they do a search before your information and if they find out
that for your information potentially in front potentially it has a likelihood of
confusion with some other registration then they reject it okay that's how it
works okay because I have a lot of acronyms that mean something else so am
I supposed to spell that out in the trademark like what it would actually
follow the application everything that's stuff that we go through in the
protection world okay so yeah but as far as acronyms go just understand whenever
you file an application the examiner is going to they're immediately gonna
respond I mean I've seen this pretty much every single time they're gonna
come back and say what other words what does it stand for and then and this is
why one of the things I talk about in the portal is I talk about how do you
word your recitation of goods and services so that you don't get rejected
right because there's an art form to actually if you just file your
application and in your application it says
something like so FYI is the acronym and then you say it's it's used for books
that are teaching you information or it's used for books that are disclosing
things that are for your information right something like that it's gonna get
rejected as merely descriptive because the words for your information or in the
recitation of services and so therefore it's gonna get rejected because the
actual words of the application are actually in if they're actually in the
description of the services so therefore it's gonna get rejected so okay all
right I'm gonna close there I'm full hopefully you guys are full there's like
there's a ton of stuff that we went through guys I think we probably went
through more this time than probably ever and so I hope you will join us
either through the audit or in the portal you'll hear more about the portal
on Monday but as far as the offer for doing the for doing the audit this audit
the offer closes Saturday at midnight it's over okay so that means this offer
that we're providing for the $59.95 it includes the audit the trademark search
the trademark application it also includes the protection portal at no
cost because a protection portal typically is $29.95 that's the normal
cost of the portal you're getting it for free all right so with the audit you're
getting the portal for free after Saturday at midnight if you if you're
pursuing the the audit you do not get the portal for free okay and with that
if anybody has any questions on that I know there's a few people that were
asking about a payment plan meaning can they split it in two absolutely yeah
well let's talk and we can we can figure that out for you just DM me what
is this Rhea has a testimony of healing Rhea the testimony of healing why don't
you share it I do before you stay good night yes so you know I'm here and I've
had neck pain for years like years like years right and big on the PT for the
past four weeks not for my neck for my back
And the exercises that I've been doing, of course,
have been aggravating the neck.
I don't know.
I don't know where it came from.
But over the past few months, I've
been working on my laptop.
So it's like, oh.
When it came out of your mouth, I was like, what?
Oh, that's mine.
So God works.
If any of you here don't believe,
I'm telling you that God works miracles.
Thank you, Peter, for being obedient.
And thank you, God, for your Holy Spirit in this room.
Amen.
That is awesome.
I love it.
And he will do it.
Yes.
That's awesome.
I love it.
You never know what you're going to expect,
what you're going to get.
So God is good.
Amen.
For those who actually don't know,
Larissa will tell you this.
Ray will tell you this.
In our group, we pray over companies.
We pray for healing, things like that.
So it's not just a business.
When people have a need, we take care of it.
And obviously, it's all God anyway, right?
Jesus finished the works already.
We're not doing new works.
Oh, man, I'm starting to feel them now.
All right.
All right, we're not done yet.
If you guys got to go, just go.
If you people are like, what's going on now?
I don't understand.
If you got to go, go.
I bless you.
I hope your business are incredible.
But something's happening here.
So we're going to dig in a little bit.
So this happens every challenge.
Prophetic words start dropping.
Businesses start transforming.
So let me just move forward with this.
So yeah, I mean, the fact of the matter
is Jesus already finished the work.
I've seen people praying for healing of other people
where they're like, hmm.
I think they like watch too many cartoons,
like where the cartoons are like, are you OK?
They're like that.
They're literally calling forth energy.
And if you're calling forth energy,
that's called witchcraft.
That's not called healing, all right?
That's different.
So what I would do is, the works are already done.
Just call forth the finished works of Jesus Christ.
That's it.
If you're a believer, you're an ambassador of Christ,
you can just call it forth.
You don't need to conjure anything.
If you're conjuring, you're doing it of your own efforts.
You're not allowing God to flow through you.
You shouldn't be getting tired when you pray for others.
You shouldn't be getting sick when you pray for others.
You're working through God.
And so with that, yeah, it's just
when the Lord just puts it on your heart,
just pray for others and call forth this finished work
and let it be done.
So let me just see if there's anything in particular
we're supposed to talk about over people's businesses.
Yeah, I'm just going to pray over spouses.
I'm seeing situations where spouses are not aligned.
And so it's making it difficult.
It's hurting some of your hearts.
It's very painful.
And so I just want to pray over that.
So yeah, Lord, I just thank you for the beauty of marriage.
I thank you for the covenant that is created.
I thank you that, Holy Spirit, you, husband and wife,
when they come together, it's a perfect unison, Lord.
And Lord, if the ideas that you're providing to people
truly are from you, then it becomes remarkably powerful
when husband and wife are aligned, Lord.
So if there is any area of sensitivity,
discord, anger, fear, Lord, we ask in Jesus' name
that you would just step in and just vanquish those things,
provide peace between both,
that there would just be a grace and ease in business, Lord,
a unity, a respect for each other.
Cool.
Yeah, and Lord, any wounds, any wounds,
any heart wounds that people have incurred
in the process of trying to step forward
in what they're being called to, Lord,
I just ask that you would heal them now,
that a dunamis resurrection power of Jesus Christ
would flow through people, the fire of God,
and by the blood of Jesus, they would be healed.
Their heart wounds would be healed now, Lord,
that any offense would be released,
that any unforgiveness would be released
so as to remove any permission for any attack
in any way, shape, or form, in Jesus' name, amen.
Amen.
Did that resonate with you guys?
Just, cause that popped up for a number of people.
So yeah, so, and with that, I'm gonna close.
This has been a lot of fun.
I've enjoyed doing this with you guys on Monday.
day we're going to go over logos and searching logos and I think and that's it. It should only
take about a half hour though it's not going to be a full hour okay and with that I wish you an
incredible weekend. If you have any questions on the Protection Portal or the audit DM me.
If you're DMing Ray or Jill or Larissa DM me personally okay because they're going to just
bring it to me anyway. So at the end of the day you're going to go on the phone and you're going
to talk and you're saying this happened and then my dog did this and my homework was eaten and then
you know a vulture came above and then you're just gonna have to tell me the whole thing.
Anyway so this way I'm here for you guys. I've set up the time for the weekend to just kind of
be available for you guys. You guys are incredible so just bless all of you and your businesses. I've
had so much fun with you this week and have an incredible weekend. I am gonna sleep tonight so
take care everybody.