I didn't realize that there was, you know, the state registration. I've done that.
And then you got the state trademark registration, and then the federal registration,
and that there were all these different levels, and how important it is to make sure that you are
protecting your idea at all of the different levels.
And just not to mess around with staying small.
It's like, just go right for the federal level.
Everything is online. It's not like you're not going to be doing business across the whole country.
And, of course, we have a lot of Canadians here, and a lot of that goes across the country lines as well.
So that was super helpful.
I think, for me, it's the strategic planning. How long is it really going to take for you?
You can put your application in, but how long will it take you to actually get it approved?
And if you make a mess up, you know, the setback in time and lost opportunity and money,
that really could cost you.
I have learned so much about how to protect myself, and I am just, you know, just on cloud nine.
So thank you.
It's psyching, knowing pretty much nothing.
I don't even know what's the difference between a trademark and a copyright.
And then last night, I was able to actually walk somebody through the USPTO website and go,
here's what you would need if you wanted to trademark what you're trying to trademark,
and here's how you would do your recitation of goods and services.
Like, I was able to walk her through the thing. It was cool.
We were, like, looking up the classes and, like, the international classes for her stuff, and it was really cool.
I was like, I actually learned something this week.
One of the things I appreciated the most I took, like, pages of notes on
is just the wisdom that he gave, the advice that he gave, that you can just tell he knows, and he's a pro.
But it goes beyond just his knowledge of the type of job that he does,
but just insight in so many different areas was incredibly helpful.
And we're just really grateful that we now have a plan to move forward, like you said.
But we are grateful for his time.
It was truly a blessing to be able to sit with him and share our story
and find out some things we're doing wrong and how to fix them.
So if you need some help, boy, Peter is the man to go to,
and hopefully you guys can take advantage of what he's offering.
Guys, it'll be good. It'll help you end quickly as well.
Yes, and we're so grateful, Peter. Thank you.
We appreciated this challenge because the guys I work with are course creators,
and they can build websites, so always people are wondering about protecting their content.
And just going through it with Peter has just meant that even today when I was talking to a client,
I was able to just share things that I'd learned just yesterday.
It was, like, so exciting.
It's so exciting because it's like, oh, I can help you with that, just a little bit more than before.
So, yes, the way everything has been structured has helped me personally navigate this whole realm with so much more clarity.
All of the creative things that I've done has always been around trademark copyright,
and I've had this, like, very tangible fear and anxiety around trademarks, copyrights,
and it's because of all the legal jargon, and spending so much money doing it wrong has been the fear.
And I have an inordinate amount of attorneys in my life.
So just getting friendly advice, literal friendly advice, right, from my friends have encouraged me throughout the years,
but it didn't put me into action until now, right?
This side-by-side, step-by-step, click-by-click trademark application in the VIP, life-changing.
Like, it slayed a giant for me that has been looming over my head, intimidating me for a long time.
And that giant is dead and slayed.
Hey, I'm Bruce. I just want to give a quick shout-out to my friend Peter.
Peter jumped on a call with me last night and in 30 minutes totally fixed our entire landing page from a legal perspective.
We had used some trademark logos, we had used some trademark phrases, promoting a particular challenge we had coming up next week.
And just got off a call, Peter jumped on, we basically went top to bottom through the page,
and I just fixed it in real time as he gave suggestions, and it was super helpful.
So I'm glad we dodged that bullet that we're not going to get back to.
trouble for using any trademark language or logos in our page but highly recommend it if
you get a chance to work with peter definitely recommend coach mary go for it
oh my god i'm actually an attorney but don't hold that against me that's awesome i love it
i didn't know zippo about this topic and that's why i'm here so i was actually thrilled when you
said this uh distinction about intent to use trademark application because i'm one of those
people that comes up with these awesome names and i'm like darn it what do i have to spell all
this stuff out and i don't have it spelled out yet and if i can protect that that would
be really exciting so that was my little big takeaway
hey everybody how is everyone i see a lot of familiar faces oh my gosh this is like
this is all my family like i know everybody here this is crazy uh it's good to see all of you a
despina look at all these people that i know this is wonderful hey so um i wanted to give you that
preview for a specific reason one it was a gift that was actually provided to me by an individual
who i care about which was really kind of them um it was kind of like a tribute which i did not
expect so i wanted to share that and this is this is very important to me what we're going to be
going through the next few days for the next five days we're going to be digging in deep into
intellectual property okay we're going to be covering everything associated with ideas
from all angles from names slogans to inventions to you name it we're going to hit it at every
angle your books your websites uh your funnels um if you make music if you make videos literally
every angle we're going to hit at now you're probably wondering how in the world are we
going to do that in five days okay i'm going to take my time with you i'm a professor at
what used to be called frankenberg's law center now it's called unh school of law
so i i teach advanced patent practice and procedure and intellectual property i'm also a
patent litigator a patent prosecutor trademark copyright and trade secret attorney i'm an
electrical engineer i mean i just say all that to let you know that this is important to me
that i guide you and i make sure you get this okay um i want to give you a little bit of
background about myself and the main reason for that is because i want you to understand why i'm
passionate about this if you can understand that then you understand that when i tell you not to
file something i'm not telling you that for no reason because most attorneys as i'm sure many
of you would agree would say well file everything like file patent on everything i see a lot of
heads going up and down like trademark and everything you're like oh if you can protect
it hire me i'll do it i'm not going to tell you that okay number one i'm not here looking for you
to be my clients that's not the intent of this number two there is no legal advice uh that's
like the number one i see april laughing right now that's like the number one thing i say every
single time i go live there is no legal advice that's going to be provided here okay i see john
laughing too by the way if anybody has not ordered cookies from john you need to like you have to
order cookies from john they're insanely amazing um and by the way john yeah gluten-free or not
didn't even matter didn't even bother me it was exactly like you said the quality is off the charts
so amazing so um the reason why i want you to understand my background is because protection
is very important to me when it comes to technology when it comes to your businesses
um i'll give you one example of something that happened very recently was really kind of
heart-wrenching and we're going to start jumping into trademarks right after okay um i received a
call from steven ds uh well i actually received a communication from steven ds he said he wanted
to send someone to me person came to me and uh she revealed her situation she'd been running a company
she started her own company i mean how awesome is that right started her own company with within
two years she was doing pretty well she was providing uh service to others kind of like in
the coaching arena which many of you here are coaches and so she was coaching others and taking
off things were starting to accelerate and you can imagine if she's dealing with steven ds you know
she's taking off because steven knows what he's doing right uh for those of you that know him here
and so she's doing really well all of a sudden boom cease and desist letter now she's already
like making the hundreds of thousands starting to take off
cease and desist letter comes in she reaches out to me like
in a panic mode. And when she's on the phone, and I've got more
than one person that he sent over, but for this particular
individual, she's on the phone, and she's like, What am I
supposed to do? I don't know what to do. I said, Well, do you
have an LLC? She said, Yes. Okay, then your assets are
protected. But what's going on here? And she says, Well, they
want me to stop using the name of my company. And that same
name is on my services. And it's also on some of the products
that I sell. And I said, Well, what's the name? And within a
second, I'm going to show you all how to do this. I went
online, and I saw Yes, they have a federal registration. There
is no argument you can make, like, clearly, they had a
federal registration for 18 years, you came in two years
ago, started using it. Did you ever do a trademark search? She
said no. She had to stop she had to change the name of the
company, pull all product from the shelf. She had to change the
name of her coaching program. And she we got her out of the
situation where she didn't have to cut a check, they wanted her
to cut a check for past damages, we got her out of the situation.
So she didn't have to do that. All of that could have been
avoided with a simple trademark search, all of that. And all of
you here will know how to do a trademark search before we're
done. Okay, actually, you'll know by tomorrow, how to do a
trademark search. Okay. So let me give a little bit of
background about myself. I'm just going to take two minutes
on this just to kind of put this in perspective. We're going
to go through some of the logistics today, I'm going to
show you something in a Facebook group, make sure
everybody's everybody's on the same page, you understand the
difference between the the challenge in the VIP. So people
understand there's a separate dial in for VIP, we're going to
go through all of this now. So we don't have to do it again
later. So first of all, a little bit about me, I was born in the
projects of Brooklyn and Williamsburg back when it wasn't
penthouses, where there wasn't, you know, people weren't walking
around at two, three in the morning, unless they wanted
trouble. It was very different when I grew up there. And so my
mom was a single mom. And then my father won custody of me with
my stepmom, right. So I went to live with my father, my stepmom,
all such issues, like physically, emotionally, and
otherwise abused as a child, all sorts of issues, right, lots
of healing that I needed. But as time went on, one thing after
another was taken away from me, not not only like my biological
mother, but then as I grew up, as I went to school, there were a
lot of obstacles, even when I came into New Hampshire and
started running a law firm, the law firm exploded, meaning that
I started making so much money so fast, that the prior owner
was upset with me, because I started making more money than
him within a year and a half, purely by the grace of God, can
I just be clear, like, this is purely by the grace of God. He
couldn't understand how I ended up with MIT, Harvard, like all
these big name clients, he could not understand it. And he was
so upset about it. In any case, I had to leave the law firm
because it was getting pretty bad. And then he tried to
destroy me before the New Hampshire State Bar. I mean,
this is what happened. And then fortunately, before I left, the
Lord told me keep copies of everything. So I could prove
that everything he said was wrong. And then you know, the
state bar got very upset with him, blah, blah, blah. But why
am I mentioning all this? Throughout my life, people have
tried to take things away from the situation with my mom, to
some housing issues, to schooling, to like, even my
legal profession. So it's when you come before me, as
individuals who have invested your own time, your own money,
your own blood, sweat and tears into building an entity,
building an enterprise, building something for yourself
and your family for your bloodline. That's important to
me. Alright, so the things that I'm going to be teaching you
understand they're coming from a perspective of protection.
Like I'm very much about making sure that people don't waste
money on things that are not necessary, but at the same time
have the information to be able to take care of themselves if
they need to. Alright, so I just want you to understand that
now a little bit about my background. Like I mentioned,
I'm in patent litigation. I'm a litigator. I've litigated in
Texas, Southern District of California, New Hampshire,
Massachusetts, Florida, DC, like different places. On top of
that, like I mentioned, I'm an adjunct professor. I'm also a
trademark trade secret and copyright attorney. Now, I
mentioned that just to understand that some of the
stuff that I'm going to mention to you, I'm going to keep it
low on the technological area and if something doesn't click,
just type it in the chat. I have a few snipers here that you
don't know about, okay? People amongst you who are actually
giving me feedback.
back live all right so gonna let me know in the chat if somebody says i completely don't get that
what is he talking about i'm gonna see it all right so i'm gonna focus on you but they're gonna
ping me if that happens now vip let's just make sure people understand how vip works in the
challenge we're gonna be doing a lot of this one-on-one communication you can type in your
questions in the chat i'll be able to get to a few of them but vip is really where you want to
do the one-on-ones direct say look my company's got this issue i've got this specific question
now i'm not going to give you legal advice but i am going to go through your questions
like john and a number of others have emailed me multiple questions i mean like some of them
have sent me like a thesis okay i see a few of you laughing because you know who you are
which is awesome like i just i'm thankful for that because that's what i want to see now i can
go through your questions and i can answer them one by one there's going to be lives there meaning
i'm going to pull you on for a hot seat if you want and you can go back and forth you can say
you know you say this but what about this and i'm going to hit it live like i'm going to go through
just like if you were my client i'm going to analyze the whole situation live walk you through
every single scenario okay now again i'm not going to give you legal advice but i'm going to tell you
what the law says separate from that in the vip we are going to do a trademark application step by
step why am i mentioning this if you have a trademark application that you want to file
okay tomorrow in the vip we are going to file a trademark application from scratch that means
selecting your international classification determining your recitation of goods and
services figuring out going online to the usbto website clicking the buttons together
and step by step filing a trademark application if you have an application you are thinking of
something you want to file then you will be able to do a trademark search and an application by
tomorrow okay now if you if you think to yourself well i'm not sure if i'm doing this right then
then that's okay you'll know enough to be able to speak to an attorney so you're not spending
a tremendous amount of money on the attorney what do i mean by that let's say you have 10 names
that you're thinking of using for your company 10 names do you realize if you go to an attorney
and say i have 10 different names i want you to do trademark searches for 10 names you're
going to spend five to six thousand dollars do you realize that when you could actually go to
the usbto website look up those 10 names and probably knock out six or seven of them so you
only go to them with three your costness just just went down to like 1800 bucks or 1500 bucks
by what you're going to learn here okay now for vip individuals you have a different login
okay so 12 to 1 o'clock we're going to be doing the challenge from 1 15 to 2 15
that's when we're going into vip okay for this challenge here we start at 1205 i go live at 1205
so i leave a little gap for everybody to get in get established larissa is going to do the
amazing stuff by the way can we just type in a chat how awesome larissa is she is so awesome
she she's just incredible i'm so grateful for her thank you for all that you do larissa you're
amazing um and so i just want you to understand that as we go forward at 1205 we're starting on
the dot okay today i want to spend a lot of time with logistics to make sure everybody's up to par
and then we're jumping into trademarks in probably two minutes we're going to start
okay i want to show you one more thing and then we're going to get going let me share my screen
real fast with you share there we go this is the website this is the facebook group
everybody should be aware of this can everybody see the screen right now
okay wonderful thank you so much okay now in here i've set up a few things for you
one is if you go under events here are each of the days okay those are the five days
and these are the if you want to see the dial and just click on the link here and there's the dial
in all you have to do is push that button boom you're done you don't have to go looking for the
email you don't have to go trying to figure out where the link is um some of you may in fact
already be getting uh text messages we actually set that up recently as well we just tried this
we're going to start using text messages going forward so i wanted to try do a trial run with
it this time and see how it works so by tomorrow some of you will start seeing that loop in i just
want to see how that works
for you guys um so that's where the link is to get into the event separate from that under guides
thank you april i know april's here there you are thanks to april she's actually um giving us some
some extra feedback on something with the guides so you're going to see the the videos that are
important are going to be under guide one and under guide two you're going to see the documents
that are important to have okay so when you come in you just click guides or events boom you're
ready to go what i'd like you to do if you haven't done so you don't have to but it's just going to
help you is go live go into facebook group go live say this is who i am this is where i'm from
this is what i want why the reason why i'm asking you to do this is because i'm customizing this for
you guys i bill at 580 an hour okay you're getting this for 95 bucks like you've got
five hours with me at let's say 600 bucks that's like almost three thousand dollars worth of value
at least for 95 bucks and then separate from that you have the equivalent of three attorneys
there are no patent litigators who do trade secret law like that doesn't it's so rare to
have that so you have the equivalent of three attorneys in one person and you're only paying
95 bucks so go live and say this is what i really want like i'm trying to figure this out i'm trying
to figure that out because i'm going in and i'm watching the videos and i'm customizing each
section for you so take advantage of it like take advantage of me there you go you have my permission
in the legal area all right um larissa go ahead
just want to invite if you have a spouse a partner a an assistant who also you think that
this is going to be fantastic for them to join in um the rules for that or the so to speak
are either get them in the room with you or decide if you want to sign them up separately
you can dm me on that am i right on with that peter that's exactly right yeah so last time i
ran this i had a few individuals i think three individuals who really cared about their companies
and and they had assistants like either legal assistants or paralegals or secretaries and they
said look um it's great that i know this but the person who's actually going to do this is my
assistant not me and so i'm glad i know this but i need them to understand it so i said you know
what have them come on with you i don't care why don't i care because it's more important to me
that you really truly get this than i make 95 bucks can i just be clear like i really want you
to get this i don't want you getting into legal trouble because the majority of the people that
call me are people that are in trouble how nice would it be if you started out with a solid
foundation so if it's if it's your assistant who is the one who truly is going to be implementing
trademark searches get your assistant on the line with you let them listen in with you let them
watch with you now if it's you know honestly if you have like business partners then have them
sign up for 95 bucks because then they can actually do their own thing but if it's your assistant
you know if it's somebody who's working underneath you by all means go ahead and do that and there
are some exceptions that i've given for partners as well so um again i'm trying to provide this
service for you so that you get this right up front and you don't run into legal problems later
okay with that everybody should have received what i call the security sheet
what a corny name all right so it's really a cheat sheet okay but i call it the security
sheet because i didn't want everyone to uh start talking negatively about the things
i call them cheat sheet yeah so i see a lot of people holding up
if you have not seen it yet uh larissa can you drop that the link for that
okay so she's dropping that and so everybody's going to be able to download it they're separate
from there like i just told you if you go into the guides and click on documents boom it's right
there now that cheat sheet is incredibly valuable it's going to make your life a lot easier let me
share it with you real quickly my list of links or was that separate because i'm
hold on a second
what did you say is it in the document i've got with the list of the links because i'm not seeing
it near the top yep it's right there otherwise you can just just grab it from the guides it's
in there as well okay yeah okay you can just grab it from the guides it's in there as well
okay yeah okay
You all set?
Okay, great.
So let me share my screen with you.
And here is what it looks like.
Okay, you see that?
All right, what did I do here?
Basically every category that falls associated
with your idea will be here.
So let's say you come up with a new car engine, right?
And you have a name for the engine.
The name for the engine is a word, it will fall in here.
If it's a new car, there's a logo.
If it's technology associated, it's a product.
Since it's an engine, it's a product.
There's patents.
The name associated falls under trademarks.
The logo falls under trademarks.
Whatever is associated with your idea
should fall somewhere in the bottom here.
Are there exceptions?
Yeah, I can find exceptions for anything in life,
quite frankly, but this will get you through
like 95% of the situations.
If you have a situation that falls outside this realm,
just email me at nieves.elite-challenges.com
or you can mention a VIP
and I can walk you through that, okay?
But basically you should be able to find your situation
in here somewhere and look straight up.
And that tells you what category of intellectual property
is associated with your idea.
Okay?
Simple enough?
So that should make it a lot easier to deal with.
So now let's start jumping into, like I mentioned,
I wanna jump into trademarks right off the bat.
I'm gonna teach you,
I'm gonna show you three different scenarios.
The reason why I'm gonna walk you through
these three different scenarios
before I walk into trademarks is
I want you to understand the significance
of what we're talking about.
We just talked about one of the situations.
Let me talk about two different ones
and then we're gonna do a deep dive
into trademarks and the law.
So here's the second situation.
Corporation hire.
Corporation hires a third party
to create a software app, all right?
Now, a lot of you here have actually hired companies
to do software apps.
I know this because I've talked to you.
So they hire the company to do a software app
and they say, I want you to do X, Y, Z in this app.
I wanna use it for either my ministry
or I wanna use it for my coaching
or I wanna use it for my company, right?
So they hire them.
They spend $80,000, $80,000 on the software.
Software app works beautifully.
I mean, incredibly well.
They start using it.
Now, they wanna do some modifications to the software.
And when they wanna do some modifications to the software,
they try to hire another party
to do the modifications to the software.
The original developer of the software
reaches out to them and says,
you're committing copyright infringement.
And they said, that doesn't make any sense.
What are you talking about?
I spent $80,000 with you and I purchased the software.
You can't, that doesn't make sense.
I own the software.
They said, no, that's not true.
We own the software.
You have a non-exclusive license to use the software
that we developed for you.
And they say, and I see people like their eyes
are bogging out of their heads right now.
They said, well, that doesn't make sense.
I paid you $80,000.
The software company says, well, under copyright law,
the developer of the software owns the copyright.
Okay?
The only way, when you actually have a software app
created for you, or you have software development
done for you, the only way you actually own the software,
meaning all right title and interest,
is if the developer assigns all right title and interest
of the copyright to you.
If you don't know that, you spent $80,000 for a copy
and a non-exclusive license, which you can use.
Now, you cannot modify the software
because that falls under what's called derivative works,
which we're going to talk about on day three.
Okay?
So that means they spent $80,000 for something
they can use internally, but they can never modify.
They had to spend another $15,000.
To be able to own it.
These are things we're going to be talking about
so you understand this before you work with these people.
Okay?
One more scenario.
For those of you that know the pharmaceutical industry,
okay, this is a really important example.
I know about the situation.
You know about the corporation.
I'm not going to say the name of the corporation
because I don't want to embarrass them
because it was a horrible situation.
But typically it takes about, it could take 10 to 17 years
to get FDA approval for a drug.
All right?
It could take a long time.
Pharmaceutical company goes after five different drugs,
spends millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars
trying to develop them.
Three of them hit.
Okay, they decide to go forward with those three.
They file a patent application on three of them.
The one that becomes the biggest drug,
the biggest one in the industry,
that one, they go to a trade show and they talk about it
and they get the public aware of it.
They offer it for sale.
And it seems like things are going great.
Well, lo and behold,
the competitor actually creates the same drug as a generic.
And so the company, the pharmaceutical company sues them,
says, I have patent rights.
I own that.
You cannot do that.
Okay, so this is what happens.
The company that gets sued, let's call it company X,
in court, invalidates their patent.
And the way they invalidated it
is that the head of marketing for the pharmaceutical company
went to a trade show and talked about the drug
and offered it for sale more than one year
prior to the filing of the patent application.
There are three statutory bars
that you're going to learn on day four in the patent arena.
If you offer something for sale, if there's public use,
or if there's a publication with regard to your technology
and you don't file a patent within one year,
it's considered donated to the public.
They spend tens of millions of dollars
in testing and development and research,
and then finally going into the market on this drug,
and immediately it was invalidated, the patent,
because the head of marketing went to a trade show
and offered it for sale
and violated the patent law statute.
The result was not only was the head of marketing fired,
but the pharmaceutical company
lost the tens of millions of dollars,
and a generic was on the market within a day.
We're going to be going through these things.
So I've talked to you about trademark issues,
copyright issues, patent issues.
Now we're going to do a deep dive.
We're starting out with trademarks.
I wanted to give you those examples.
Yes.
Let that sink in for a moment,
because even hearing that again,
what you just said was so monumental.
Anybody haven't, like, I, so excuse me,
but like that was just so huge.
Anyone else having mind blown experiences
like need a minute on what you just said?
Maybe just me.
Thank you, Peter.
Okay. Hold on one second.
All right.
So I'm going to start doing a deep dive
into trademarks right now.
So let's start out with this.
We're going to keep this.
I'm going to try to keep this simple.
We're going to go slow.
I'm going to go step-by-step
so you understand what trademarks are,
copyrights are, patents, and trade secrets.
So let's start out with trademarks.
So a trademark is an identification
as to a source of goods, okay?
Regardless as to whether or not you know
who the source of goods is, okay?
It's an identification of the source of goods.
What does that mean?
Does anybody here know the product DayQuil?
Have you ever heard of that product?
Yes. Do you know who makes it?
I see a lot of people looking up, exactly.
Quite frankly, it doesn't matter, right?
But I mean, everybody's like looking up going,
yes, that's correct.
That's right.
There we go.
That's correct.
It is Vicks.
That's right.
Tispina.
Tispina, you're so smart.
So that's right.
But most people, when they hear DayQuil,
what they think of is they think,
all right, you've got a cold.
It helps you to fight those symptoms.
I know it works pretty well.
It's kind of like NyQuil,
but it doesn't make you fall asleep, right?
I mean, that's what you kind of think of, right?
So the quality comes to mind.
You know, it's not some knockoff thing off the shelf
that somebody around the corner created.
You can trust it.
It's been around for a long time.
So the second you see DayQuil,
you know you can buy that product,
even though most of you didn't even know
the source of the product, right?
That's what a trademark is.
A trademark is an investment into the goodwill
of a product or a service
so that when the public sees that name or that logo,
they're expecting a certain quality.
They're expecting something in particular
when they buy that thing or when they invest in that thing.
So that trademark becomes extremely important to you.
Now, trademarks can fall into a lot of different categories.
There's literally a lot of different categories.
On that sheet that I gave you,
I go through a few of them for you, all right?
So if you look under the trademark category on that sheet,
and I'll share it on the screen again so you can see it.
So share this one more time for you.
See, under trademarks, you have things
that you're already familiar with, like words.
Nike, like Adidas.
Why am I talking about sneakers so much?
Nike, sneakers, sneakers, Apple.
These are all words.
They're just kind of a name.
That's a trademark.
It's that identification as to a source of goods.
Then there are slogans like, just do it.
Life is good.
Those are slogans, right?
And so that's multiple words put together
that's protectable as a trademark.
Then there are logos like the Nike swoosh, right?
Everybody's familiar with that.
Or a really good example is, you know,
the TikTok social media app.
See a lot of people nodding their head.
They have a thing that's a clef.
I'm not gonna put it up here,
but everybody kind of knows they have this kind
of clef thing that they utilize, right?
Same thing for a lot of different apps.
They'll have a logo associated with it.
Okay, that is protectable.
You can actually own a specific color.
I'm one of the few attorneys in the world
who actually obtain a trademark for the color blue.
My client owns the color blue
when it comes specifically to audio receivers.
So I represent Denon and Marantz.
Okay, Denon has audio receivers
and inside the audio receiver in the panel
where all the digital displays are
and all the needles and everything,
that thing is always a certain color blue.
If anybody else tries to make a product
with a panel that has blue in it,
they infringe my client's trademark.
So you can actually own certain colors.
Like UPS, somebody type in the chat,
what color does UPS own?
Brown, exactly, right.
And there's a fiberglass company out there
and they own a specific color.
Somebody type in the chat,
what's the color that the fiberglass company owns?
Exactly, pink.
You see that?
If anybody else tried to create fiberglass that was pink,
they would infringe the trademark that is owned by,
and I think that's actually corny.
I believe that's corny.
And so they've invested in their own colors.
So there's different categories of trademarks
that are available.
So it's not just necessarily like a name or a logo.
It could also be, like I said,
slogans, designs, pictures, sound, smell.
Did you know that perfumes,
you could actually have trademarks associated with perfumes?
Like specific, like Red Door,
you know, and all these other things.
There's a trademark for that.
So trademarks are not just used for names and for logos.
There's a lot more that can be covered by them.
Now, I wanna share something with you
because this area, people get wrong like all the time.
So I'm gonna share something with you now.
How many people here actually have corporations?
Okay.
All right, I'm gonna show you something.
Let's see, Larissa, can you open up,
drop in the chat link number five.
Okay.
I want everybody to understand how this works.
Yeah, LLC, S Corp, okay.
All right, I'm gonna give you a scenario
and then I'm gonna explain to you what actually happened.
This is the New Hampshire Secretary of State's site, okay?
Somebody in New Hampshire, a large corporation actually,
went to their attorney and said,
I wanna own the name X.
So let's say the name is Feshier.
Let's say they wanna own that name.
They went to the attorney.
The attorney goes, files some documents, come back,
says, you own the name Feshier for your corporation.
They say, great, awesome.
They start making products.
They start selling.
They're selling hundreds of thousands,
started making millions of dollars, right?
All of a sudden they get sued.
And they say, I don't understand.
How could I get sued?
I own the name.
They call up their attorney
because they have the complaint, right?
That's filed in federal district court in New Hampshire.
And the attorney says,
well, I don't really understand it either,
but it says here that they own
the federal registration for Feshier.
So the client says, what are you talking about?
I hired you to own the name.
Like, that's why I paid you so I could own the name.
And so the attorney takes them to the link
that I just showed you, okay?
That's the secretary of state's site
for filing for a corporate name.
That's two.
And every single state that you're in,
unless you're in Canada, in Canada tomorrow,
we're gonna have a-
special guest, Paula Clancy is going to be with us.
She's going to explain to you how it works in Canada
for those of you that are doing business in Canada
or reside in Canada.
So she's going to join us.
She's a partner with Galling.
She's amazing.
I've known her for a long time.
And so what the attorney did was the attorney filed
for the name registration as a corporate name.
The attorney did not file for trademark application
with the state and did not file
for a trademark application with the federal government
meeting the United States patent trademark office.
So technically it's correct.
They owned the corporate name in the registry
with the secretary of state,
but they were violating a federal registration
of a trademark of another party.
And they were sued and had to stop using the name
immediately and pull all the product
off the shelves immediately.
Now, somebody must be thinking, well, we'll hold it.
That's why they hired the lawyer.
You have to understand.
And this goes to,
it's one of the questions that many of you emailed me.
How do you know which lawyer to hire?
All right.
I'm just going to take a second to gloss over this
for a moment.
Okay.
If you are doing something in intellectual property law,
hire an IP attorney.
Do not hire a corporate law attorney.
Do not hire a tax law attorney.
If you have questions on tax law,
do not call Peter Nieves.
I do not do tax law.
I have other people that know this stuff.
They are way better than me in that area.
Peter Beach in California, incredibly gifted in that area.
You have to make sure that the attorneys that you're hiring
do exactly what you're hiring them to do.
Otherwise, if you get these people that dabble,
you get a lot of trouble very fast.
As for experience, like Sarah,
you say you have experience in patents.
How many patents have you filed?
If they say, well, I haven't filed any.
Okay. Thank you.
Bye. Click.
All right.
I mean, just don't play games.
This is your corporation.
This is your baby.
All right.
So this is very important to you.
So another thing,
don't hire lawyers based on what you see on the internet.
Another dangerous thing.
I know people who have done this.
They need to file patent applications
or they need to file trademark in Mexico.
So they go online and they say,
oh, such and such law firm must be legit.
They hire them.
And then what happens is they start receiving these invoices,
these bills, and they don't know if they're legit or not.
They don't know how much it's supposed to cost
because they're not familiar with that field.
Right?
A trademark application in the United States,
I'm going to teach you how to do it for $275.
Do you realize most people pay 1200 bucks?
Like you need to understand what you're purchasing.
So what I would do is if you have attorney friends,
and obviously I'm one of your friends.
So if you have attorney friends
and you need a lawyer in a specific field,
ask them for multiple reasons.
Number one,
they're not going to refer you to somebody they don't trust.
All right.
Number two, that person they refer you to
now becomes accountable to that lawyer.
All right.
And lawyers have what they call a referral network,
where if I send one lawyer 10 cases,
I expect them to send me 10 cases back.
I don't just keep sending cases and cases and cases
and get nothing back.
All right.
So there's accountability between lawyers.
So take advantage of the relationships of the lawyers
that you do know,
and let the lawyers refer you to lawyers.
Don't try to figure it out on your own,
because there's no way for you to look at a bill
and know if that bill is supposed to be $600 or $6,000.
You don't know.
Okay.
So that's how I would look at hiring attorneys.
So in this specific situation,
she had to change the name of the corporation,
remove the product from the shelves.
And when you remove product,
you have to change the packaging.
If the name is on the packaging,
that costs a lot of money to change packaging.
I'm sure John here can tell everybody,
I don't know if anybody's ever ordered his cookies,
but he does a nice job on the packaging.
All right.
I mean, it comes in a really nice insulated.
Everything is really nicely done, you know?
And so imagine if he had to pull all of that off the shelf,
that would take a tremendous amount of time and effort.
You don't want to do that.
Okay.
So that's number one.
Number one is just understand
when you're filing for trademark,
there's filing of the corporate name
with the secretary of state.
There's filing of a trademark application with the state.
And there's filing of a trademark application
with the federal government.
When do you do which?
That's what I want to cover now.
Okay.
Secretary of state, if you're running a company,
you have to file with the corporate names directory.
That's easy.
You could do that on your own.
You don't need help.
It's very simple.
Go to the secretary of state site.
It's so easy to do.
Filing trademark applications with the state.
If you are selling your product across state lines,
Please, please, please, please, if you only, all right,
if you hear two things, this should be one of them, all right?
Don't follow a state trademark application.
If you're following, if you're offering things for sale
across state lines, don't bother with a state registration.
Follow federal registration.
When you follow federal registration,
you own all the states in the United States.
So, why would you spend the hundred and something bucks following in New Hampshire,
Massachusetts, you know, wherever you are, when you can spend a hundred bucks more
and own all of the United States?
As long as you are using that trademark in what's called interstate commerce,
that means across state lines, so if, like John, John, I'm sorry I'm picking on you so much,
you know, I'm sure you'll get back at me in VIP.
So, I saw your list of questions.
I know you're going to get back at me in VIP.
So.
Hey, Peter, maybe we should just tell, not everybody knows who John is,
just so they know what you're referring to with John.
Yeah, I'll touch base on that in a moment.
All right, so, so this is what I want you to understand, is that John sells cookies, right,
do you go internationally, unmute John's mic for a second, actually I'll ask him to unmute, there you go.
Yeah, we do, it's really expensive, so like Canada is probably my closest,
I've shipped to Australia, it gets really, really, really expensive, so we can, it's just, it's cost prohibitive.
Okay, so now John, John actually sells product across state lines, obviously, and then also international, right?
So, since he does that, it would make no sense, John, what state are you in?
Kansas.
All right, so it would make no sense for John to just own rights in Kansas,
because now somebody who's using the exact same corporate name, and the same logos, or the same,
you know, trademarks, could go and file it in Florida, and California, and all these other areas,
and now John will end up fighting another party in that state, and that makes no sense.
So, he could file one federal registration, I'm going to mute you again, brother,
he could file one federal registration, and own all of the United States, done, that fast.
Okay, so now, if that's not your case, if instead what you're doing is you're only working in your state,
meaning it never crosses state lines, you're not going to be able to file federal registration,
because you don't have use in interstate commerce, like it's more intrastate commerce, right?
So, for that reason, that's when you would file a state registration.
If that is not your case, do not file, please do not file a state registration,
because what's going to happen is you're going to start growing, then all of a sudden,
you're going to realize, oh my gosh, I can't use this name outside of my state,
because somebody else owns it federally.
You don't want that to happen, okay, and I'm going to show you how that breaks down in an analysis
in a second.
All right, let me show you, I'm going to show you what the site looks like for,
there we go, Larissa, can you, actually, I'll drop it real quick,
I have access to this as well, copy, paste.
All right, this link right here, this is an example of filing link number six that I have here,
this is a state trademark application, if you went through every single one of your states,
you'll be able to file a trademark application, okay, in every one of your states,
if you wanted to file just a state application, this is an example of what it looks like.
Now, if you want to file a trademark application federally, which, as I mentioned,
which, as I mentioned, we're going to go into more description shortly,
this is what you would look at, this is the United States Patent and Trademark Office website,
that's where you file a federal trademark application, so again, corporate name,
Secretary of State, state registration of a trademark, you use your state trademark application
site only, federal, meaning you want all of the United States, you use the United States
Patent and Trademark Office, okay, three different things, if you're going across state lines,
do not file state registration, you're wasting your money, many attorneys will probably tell you,
yeah, file it, I'm telling you don't, it's a waste of your money, you don't need to do it,
okay, all right, moving on, I'm going to teach you something that is
very unusual and most of you will not know,
of this.
OK.
There's a difference between what's
called common law trademark rights
and what's called federal trademark rights, OK?
Common law, somebody in the chat type in common law
so you understand what I'm saying, common law trademark.
I want this to really sink in because this
is an exception to the rule.
Common law, common law, common law, good, common law.
All right, good, good, good.
All right, now everybody kind of knows what they look like.
All right, now, if you've been using a trademark or a logo
and you never file a trademark application,
let's say you never got to filing it,
you actually have what's called common law rights, OK?
I see Coach Karen's head nodding up and down, and she gets this.
I know she does.
This is so important.
You need to understand how this works, OK?
If, let's say, Libby starts using
the name Batman associated with vacuum cleaners, all right?
And so all of a sudden, I am a corporation.
And I say, you know, I like the name Batman associated
with vacuum cleaners because we're
going to clean up our town, right?
So I like that name, vacuum.
Yeah, let's go with this.
We're cleaning up the house.
Yeah, so I'm going with Batman.
So I file a federal registration.
Because when I do a search, I don't
see any other federal registration, OK?
That would be a basic United States patent trademark office
search if I did that.
So now that I've done that search, I say, well,
let me file.
I'm going to file for Batman.
And I do.
Now, poor Libby, who we all love,
has been running a company with the name Batman
for vacuum in her state.
Now, I get this federal registration.
She's been doing it for 20 years.
Like, this is something that's important to her,
important to her family.
They're making good money on this.
Now, all of a sudden, I see Libby.
Like, I'm like, one of my representatives
is out in her state and says, hey,
there's this Batman vacuum cleaner group over here.
And I go, whoa, whoa, that can't happen.
I send her a cease and desist.
Literally, Libby calls up Peter, says, Peter, this is crazy.
Like, I've been doing this for 20 years.
I go and I do a search, and I find out
that they just filed the federal trademark application.
Libby has been doing it for 20 years.
That's called common law trademark rights.
If you actually have been using a trademark
in your specific geographical region
and another party gets a federal registration afterwards,
they cannot stop you from using that trademark
in that specific geographical region.
That's called common law rights.
Why am I telling you this?
Because some of you may not have
filed a trademark application.
Then you may decide to file a trademark application,
and somebody finds out and says,
you can't use that name, that's mine.
You can actually respond to them and say,
well, actually, I've been doing this for like 15 years.
So yeah, you really can't stop me.
And by the way, you're infringing my trademark.
Do you realize you can switch the tables
with a common law rights?
And don't do this on your own.
Make sure you speak to an attorney.
I don't want you to get into trouble.
But the way it actually works is that
under common law rights, you own the trademark
in the specific geographical region
that you've been using it.
Now, what does that mean?
That does not mean that you own all of California.
It doesn't mean that you own all of New Hampshire.
It means that let's say I've been selling
in Nashua, New Hampshire.
I may own Nashua, New Hampshire.
I don't own Belmont.
I don't own Concord.
I don't own any of Manchester.
I own Nashua.
It's very specific to the region where you've been selling
and using that trademark only, okay?
This is, again, why I'm trying to encourage you
to file for trademarks federally,
because then you own all of the United States.
There's none of this analysis of
where did you specifically use it?
You don't have to worry about any of that, all right?
Libby, we're gonna go into the online thing in one second.
That's a great question.
How does that work online?
So at 12.59, all of you are gonna ping me in the chat
and say online.
You're gonna type online, and I'm gonna remember that,
and then I'm gonna talk about that, okay?
All right, thank you, Libby.
That's a really important question.
So here's the thing.
In the common law realm,
when we're not talking about federal registrations,
in the common law realm, it's first person to use.
It's a battle of who used it first.
So if Karen, Coach Karen, used it first in, let's say,
say Queens, New York, and then Peter uses it first in Brooklyn, we're both fine.
But if Peter tries to step into Karen's turf, so to speak, which is kind of ironic and brings me
back to the gangs in New York when I grew up, so I digress. But if I tried to go into Queens,
Karen's going to go, uh-uh, you can't come in here. I own this specific geographical region
because I used it before you, right? But she can't stop me from using it in Brooklyn. She can't stop
me from using it in the Bronx. She can't do anything about that. Now, what happens if Karen
says, well, forget this. I'm tired of competing with Peter. I'm going to file a federal registration.
So if she files a federal registration and I'm in, let's say, the Bronx and she's in Queens,
now she owns all of the United States. So that means I can't, I'm stuck in Queens now. That's it.
I can continue using it in Queens, but I cannot go into Brooklyn. I can't go into California.
I can't go anywhere because now Karen owns the trademark everywhere in the United States,
except in the specific geographical region where I used it before she got the federal registration.
Does that make sense? I see a lot of heads going up and down. This is so incredibly important,
people, because when people come after you and send you a cease and desist, determine when their
federal registration was filed and when their date of first use is. I'm going to show you how to do
that tomorrow. When you do that, you'll be able to determine whether or not they can stop you in
the first place. The majority of the people, when they receive a cease and desist, freak out and
they run away with their tail between their legs. You don't need to do that. If you've been using it
before them, you have certain common law rights and they can't stop you. Now that just gave you
some power right there. Some of you should feel some like element of relief. So when you get that
cease and desist letter, don't freak out. There's certain homework you need to do before you need
to change anything. All right, now let's talk about the federal registrations. The first to
file for a federal registration wins, period. Okay, so if I want to file, let's say I come up with
a name like Protection Portal. I have a trademark application for Protection Portal. You'll all
learn about that later. It's not important right now. You'll learn about it later. Okay, so this is
my trademark application, right? But let's say that Despina filed on it one day before me.
Despina wins. This is why it's so important to under, look, she's celebrating. Stop celebrating
at my demise. That's not fair. So this is why it's so important to understand that when you come out
with a trademark name, immediately file a trademark application. Now most people here will go, well,
hold it. Don't I have to use the trademark to file a trademark application? No, and that's the second
most important thing I'm teaching you today. Okay, you do not have to be using a trademark
application, a trademark to file a trademark application. You can file what's called a 1B,
a section 1B trademark application. It's called an intent-to-use trademark application.
Got that? That's all you have to write. Remember, type in the chat intent-to-use
so you don't forget this because there's something about seeing it and writing it
that will make you remember it. Intent-to-use, intent-to-use, intent-to-use, all right? So for all
you creatives here, a lot of the people here, as I mentioned when I went live in the Facebook group,
a lot of you are pioneers. I mean, literally in the spirit, I heard pioneers. And what I see in
that is really a lot of you are responsible for other people. You're breaking ground in an area
that nobody else has gone into and you're responsible for others. Those are pioneers.
You're doing something brand new and you're essentially being ordained in the protection
area. So now you can help others in this area so they don't get in trouble. Like Rowena, who was
in my first challenge, she's amazing. She's taught so many people and they're so much better off
because of that. So with that being the case, I should start seeing something typed in the chat
right now. So with that being the case, when you understand that there's a thing called
intent-to-use applications for all you creatives out there who come out with this new name and
you think to yourself, hold it, I know this name could be used for coaching,
for life coaching and for making people's lives better, but I'm not using it yet.
You can file a trademark application now. It's called an intent-to-use application. File an
intent-to-use application. Why am I saying that? Probably one of the most difficult things
for people to be able to do is to come out with a brand new name that nobody else has ever used.
I will tell you that it's easier, and this is probably going to be contrary to what you believe,
it's actually easier to come out with an invention that is patentable than to come
out with a brand new name that has never been used before. And that should blow your mind.
Like people spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on engineers to come out with a brand
new technology so their company can own the technology and then stop others from making,
using, selling, or importing that technology so that company can take off and make money.
But their marketing team can't come up with a name for the invention.
I mean, this happens all the time. I've represented Boston Acoustics, MIT, like big
names, Stonyfield. I represent Constant Contact. Like I represent all these big name companies.
You know their biggest issue? I've got this brand new software app. I don't know what to
call it. I've got this great new invention. I don't know what to call it. That's their biggest
issue. So with that being the case, if you creative minds here, and I know there's a lot
of them in this specific group, you come up with a new name and you think it's important,
as long as you can figure out either the goods or the services associated with it,
file a section 1B trademark application. Tomorrow I'm going to show you how to do that
so you understand it. We're probably going to go three minutes over since
today was a lot of intro. So I want to respect your time. If you have to jump off,
and if you're in the VIP, you can do your bio breaks, whatever other things you need to do.
Give me one second, Larissa. Then I know what you're going to say. So just give me one second.
I'm going to close on this one issue with regard to intent to use, and then we'll go
into the logistics. So for the intent to use application, the only thing you have to remember
is after you file an intent to use application, when it gets approved, you have to show proof of
use within three years. That's all you have to remember. So intent to use application,
three years. As long as you know you're going to use it within three years, you're fine. File
your application now. It costs you $275. Later, you can actually turn it into an actual use.
Okay. All right. With that, let me stop there, and in a second, I'm going to go into the online
issue. Some of you here are going to want to be in VIP. I'm not trying to sell VIP. We have lots
of people in VIP. I'm just telling you, some of you are going to want to be in there. Why?
We're going into specific situations now. We're going to go into like, there's about, I think
there's about 15 people that are in it or more right now. The link, thank you, Larissa. Larissa
just dropped the link. Okay. So you cannot go back into the funnel and then try to apply for
VIP. You need a separate link for that because it was an OTO. It was to make it easier for you.
So you need a separate link if you're trying to go into VIP now. So if you go in there,
you're going to get, when you sign up, you're going to get an email. It has the separate login
right in there. Okay. And so you'll get that immediately and you can log into there. And the
VIP will go into the specific scenarios. You can ask your questions. It's going to be live. It's
not going to be one way. You're going to be interacting. Okay. And that's where we're going
to go into the trademark application part. All right. Larissa, do you want to add something
before I finalize on the online portion or you're all set? Point of clarification. Carol just asked
a question. Would you call that a clarifying or VIP type question? You see it near the bottom
of the chat. Carol Urie. Carol? Because we're covering items like that in the VIP, aren't we?
Yeah. That's what we're covering the VIP. Yeah. But what I'll do,
there's more than one person who's probably going to run into this issue, Carol.
Yeah. This is a VIP thing. This is very specific to what you're doing in particular.
So, Carol, unmute Carol for a second, because there's other people who are in 100x as well and
who are coaches. I don't do that anymore. I was just wondering because it was just clarifying
what you were talking about, because it was something a long time ago. And I did use this
business for a little while, but I've switched away from it now. I went back to it just because
I had it in my hand, but it's not what I'm doing anymore.
So, basically, is your general question that if you were using a trademark before,
can you file an application now? Is that what you're trying to get at?
Well, no. What happened was I was using that name and I bought the URL, Carol's Photo Solutions,
and I used it for a long time. And then Creative Memories started using it as a
kind of phrase they use.
and they told me I couldn't use that as my business name
or email or anything.
But you had been using it prior.
A long time ago.
I had been using it for like five years at least, probably.
Yeah, so yeah, as long as you have continuous use,
the way the law works is it looks like continuous use.
If you have a break,
let's say if you have a three-year break between use,
then you cannot claim that you continue using it.
But as long as it's continuous use, you own the rights.
So yeah, nobody could stop you from,
but remember it breaks down to,
and this is what we're going into tomorrow,
the recitation of goods and services.
So what specifically is it being used for, right?
So as an example,
you can't own the name Apple associated with produce,
but you certainly can use the name Apple
associated with computers
because it's not descriptive in anything.
Now somebody can use the name Apple
associated with a law firm as well
because that's a different service.
So while Apple owns the name Apple for computers,
I could use the app name Apple for law firms,
because it's completely a different area.
So that's something that we'll look into some tomorrow,
which is called recitation of goods and services, okay?
All right, let me close on this online thing real quick.
It's going to take two minutes
and then we're going to actually start out VIP
talking about it in more detail,
because this is a really, really important issue.
It's a big deal.
There's a lot of litigation in this area.
I want to make sure you understand this.
Okay, online sales.
And when we start tomorrow,
I'm going to start in this area again, all right?
I want to get you thinking about this, okay?
So we'll start out tomorrow talking about online sales
and where do you actually need to own the trademarks?
Okay, we'll start out there.
So I'm located in New Hampshire and Massachusetts
and I'm providing this service.
And there are people literally all over the world.
I have people in Africa here, Australia here.
Praise God, all over the world.
So very blessed by this.
I mean, it's humbling, but separate from that,
where do I want to own the trademark, right?
Where do I actually want to own it?
Well, by all means,
I'm definitely going to own it in the location where I am,
because I want to make sure that other people in my region
do not utilize that.
But the other thing I want to look at
is where the service is being purchased from.
So if the majority of my clients are, let's say, in Canada,
because I know I have like eight or nine people here
that are from Canada.
Where are my Canadians?
Raise your hand.
Let me see, let me see, let me see, let me see.
Oh, a lot of people are muted.
Okay, well, I can see some of them.
All right, cool.
So there, which is one of the reasons
why we have a Canadian associate coming tomorrow.
So now if a lot of my services are being provided in Canada,
it makes sense for me to get rights in Canada
so that I don't have competition
when it comes to the name that I'm utilizing in Canada.
Okay, I represent what's called US First,
US First Robotics.
I don't know if some of you know First Robotics.
So Dean Kamen runs that,
and it's run by Logo, actually sponsors it.
Lego actually sponsors it as well.
They're international.
They do a lot of business in foreign countries.
And so we own rights, not just in the United States,
but we have rights in Australia, in Europe in general,
in specific countries of Europe.
I mean, we have rights all over the world.
Why?
Because one of the other things
that we're gonna talk about tomorrow,
which is domain names,
people will knock off the name of your company
through domain names.
If you have a federal registration,
you can use ICANN to stop them.
You can actually file a domain name dispute,
which we'll talk about tomorrow.
So basically what I would look at is where are you located
and where are your top areas of sales?
Where are they?
Where are your top sales going to?
Those are the two regions that I would actually seek rights.
Personally, that's what I would do.
All right, you could spend a ton of money
filing for rights all over the world,
but I would find the most important ones and do that there.
All right, we're gonna stop there.
We've covered a number of things already.
What I would love for you to do
is go live in the Facebook group.
Your big takeaways, go there and just say it
because it's gonna reiterate things for others.
It's gonna reinforce them.
It's also gonna allow me to see whether or not
there's certain things that need more highlighting
that we did go over.
If you're a VIP, like I mentioned,
we're gonna be going over some of these things again
in more detail and going through your questions.
But I just wanna make sure that you're getting this.
The major things that we talked about today
were common law rights, right?
Tomorrow we'll talk about how to use the Circle R and the TM,
how to make sure you don't get sued
for improperly using a Circle R.
Did you actually know that?
and you don't have a federal registration, you can get sued.
If you use a Circle R-
It's called tortious interference with business practice.
We know a lot of big words.
It's amazing.
So I think we just come up with big words.
So we seem important.
I think that's really it.
So with that, I'm gonna let you go
and we'll see each other tomorrow.
Okay.
Bless all of you.
CIP starts at.