Okay, all right, so we're in the June protection portal.
What's going on, Idea Protectors?
It's good to see everybody.
I am outdoors because in New Hampshire, it has been too darn cold for too darn long.
We actually have a warm day, and there was no way I was going to be indoors.
I was like, finally, we have sun.
I'm going outside.
I'm having my meetings with MIT and everybody outdoors.
I don't care who it is that I'm meeting with.
I'm outdoors because I need sunlight.
There's something about being Puerto Rican.
If you don't get enough sunlight, you become like, I don't know, it's just weird, it doesn't
work.
I need sunlight.
There's a number of things that are going on.
I want to touch base on a few different things first, and then I'll take any of your questions.
I wanted to see if Emily was around.
Ray, can you see if you can call Emily, the one we did the audit with yesterday?
Sure.
I thought she said she wasn't going to be able to make it today.
She's available for like five minutes, just to stop by.
Okay.
I just wanted to talk about something real quick that she went through.
A few things.
One is, there's some administrative stuff we got to talk about, and then there's, we're
going to be talking about IP portfolio management here partially because one of the things that
people are running into is, okay, before I didn't know there was an issue at all.
Now I know there's an issue, but I can't afford to protect everything.
I'm not going to protect literally everything.
What in the world do I do?
How do I handle a situation where I'm running three courses, I've got an ebook, I've got
personal, oh, there's a gorgeous butterfly.
This is why I like being outside.
I have these other things that are taking place.
What am I supposed to do?
Where do I invest the funds?
How do I invest the funds?
How do I obtain the funds?
Do I need to protect it at all?
Is it even a requirement for me to protect this specific thing?
First of all, what I want to mention is some of the administrative stuff, then we'll go
into that.
Then I'll go into some of the major issues I'm seeing people not know about in using
a number of different software platforms and using a number of different entities and it's
resulting in them losing what they have without even knowing it.
It's almost like having a parasite on you that's slowly sucking the life out of you
and you don't even know.
I'm going to reveal something that is happening and what the plan is behind that by some of
these companies so as to make you captive so that you know about this beforehand and
your companies don't run into problems and you don't run into problems.
Administrative side, a few of you are either your annual membership has expired or you're
coming up on your annual membership renewal.
If when you registered, whatever you registered at, the cost for the renewal is either that
or less.
I'm not increasing it.
The reason why is because some of you guys are OGs.
You've been around for a while.
It's a lot of fun, honestly, interacting with you, watching your businesses grow, watching
you explode and then seeing because I've been, I don't know that you guys know this, I get
hired by corporations for $10,000 to sit down with them for a few minutes to evaluate their
entire company and to give them guidance.
I'm providing an IP audit for people where I'm doing that for two to three hours, which
for me is unheard of.
And then on top of that, I'm doing trademark search, trademark application and entry into
the protection portal for a full year.
That's unheard of.
I've literally got my clients reaching out to me saying, how do I get in your protection
portal?
Because you're giving a better deal through your protection portal and through your audit
package than we're getting and we've been your clients for seven, 10, 20 years.
And I was like, yeah, but you're not a startup like you're worth millions of dollars.
It's not fair for you.
Like, you know, these guys need it because they're starting out.
So, um, so one thing in particular, uh, if you're asking yourself, I don't
know, which things I need to protect.
I don't know, um, which things I should do first or second.
I I'm not really sure.
Like, um, like, is this even worth worth protecting?
Or I don't know if there's an ownership issue here, or I don't know if
there's a contract issue here, or like, you're just not sure about a number
of things and you're coming up for renewal or you're at the period of
renewal or ready, I would strongly suggest you do an audit.
All right.
The reason why I would suggest you do an audit is because then we
can look at your specific scenarios.
We can go through literally everything that you're going through in your
company, evaluate what you should protect, should not protect, what
matters, what doesn't matter, what things are going to be obsolete
within X number of years.
So even obtaining protection doesn't even matter.
Um, where you should have agreements in place, like non-disclosures,
non-competes, where you should have like employee agreements in place, where
you should have like third party, third party, uh, contracts in place.
Like we can go through all of that within a two to three hour powwow.
Like Eileen's done like a number of you, like Tim's done, like
a number of others have done.
And we can figure out what's going on with your company.
And we could figure out what your strategy should be going forward.
Okay.
Um, so if you're coming up on that renewal or you're at the point of that
renewal and you as a company, you're thinking, man, there's not, I'm
not really sure about this.
What should I be doing?
What's the strategy I should be using going forward?
Uh, and I can tell you that there's a lot of spiritual stuff
that happens in those audits.
Um, I would suggest you actually look at the audit.
Okay.
Um, just to kind of clean everything up.
Uh, and it's, I'm not telling you guys to do that for me because I actually
lose money in doing audits with everybody because at my billing rate,
you know, I can sit down with a company and make 10 grand just for doing
something really quick with them.
Um, so, but the package of the application, the search, the renewal
for the entire year for the protection portal, plus the sit down and the
evaluation and the guidance is going to be worth it for like 59 95 for you guys.
All right.
As a company.
Uh, and there's many people that can give you testimonies on that.
Uh, we just did one yesterday.
I don't know.
We did not plan for what happened yesterday.
Um, but if, uh, I don't know if, um, if she's available, was
she around or she, she wasn't.
Um, she actually needs everyone to pray for her.
She had a medical emergency.
She's at the hospital right now.
Last night, her husband got struck by lightning and she had to arrange to get
her kids taken and then drive all night to the hospital to get to him.
So I told her that we would all pray for the family.
And she said, you know, she feels, yeah.
She says she feels like the enemy does not like the things that
are moving for their families.
So,
well, remember what was revealed?
The thing that was revealed for her was like, like Lily transformative
of like the entire world.
Yeah.
Major, major, major.
And when that thing got revealed, like that's why we prayed over
her family and everything.
We're like, that thing is huge.
And then he gets struck by lightning.
He got struck by lightning.
And I told her, I said, you know, you gotta look at, you know, what you do
have instead of what you don't, it's the only way to combat that opposition
because, uh, your husband got struck by lightning, but he still survived.
And he's, he's okay.
You know, he's better.
He's in better shape than he should be, which is a miracle.
So under the circumstance of praying over everything yesterday,
because I'm glad like he didn't.
Oh my God.
Like that.
That's all right.
Yeah.
Let's pray over her.
Can we pray you guys?
Okay.
We'll pray now.
Um, I just want to pray over her now because, um, that's ridiculous.
So yeah.
So father God, we just thank you.
Uh, for your presence, your love, your power, your protection,
the protection of the blood of Jesus.
Father, we just, even before we start this, we pray over every single person
here, your plans that you've placed in their hearts, uh, in their lives.
Lord, we thank you for protection of that.
Father God, we come into agreement with what you are doing in our lives and in
the lives of those around us that your will would manifest here on earth.
So it will be on earth as it is in heaven.
The father God, we just speak over Emily and her husband.
Father, I just speak forth complete restoration of every single cell nerve
tissue of his entire body.
That all trauma would be removed now in Jesus name, complete restoration
back to your original design.
Zero.
of effects from the lightning strike. Father, I thank you that this becomes a testimony for them
and that there's an acceleration in their lives and in the vision and the plan that
you placed in Emily's life. Father, I thank you for the power of what you're doing in all of our lives.
I ask you to just keep a hedge of protection around her, her family, each one of us, our families.
Father God, the vision that you place in us,
the resources that you provide, all that you've provided to us, Lord,
the relationships and everything that you're doing in our lives, Lord.
I thank you for protection over all of that and I decree and declare life in our flesh, in our soul,
in the vision that you've placed over us, Lord. I thank you that we come into alignment
with what you are doing instead of trying to create things that you have not called us to
and struggling. Let us hear what you're calling us to and to come into alignment
with that so it'll happen with grace and ease. In Jesus name, Amen.
Let me see something here. This is really interesting. Hold on one second.
Where is it?
While Peter's looking for what he's looking for, if everyone can take a second after the meeting
and jump over into Facebook, I put a poll in there because we are contemplating moving the
meetings to 7 p.m. Eastern at night so that it's easier for people to schedule. It's not
middle of the day where you guys have lots going on. So if you guys could weigh in on what you
prefer, either same time or moving it to 7, that would help us a ton. And as well, everybody's
been emailed. If you haven't had the ability to log into the members portal or you just haven't
signed up an account, I created accounts for all of our members and sent you guys each your access
to see the replay videos in the members portal. So check your email. Your access is in there.
And that way you guys can have the replays when they're ready.
All right. Well, let's jump in in some detail now. So it's interesting because I was literally
just reading a scripture this morning on where we're investing our time, what we're focusing on,
what's important to us. So we're going to cover a lot of IP stuff today, but it's interesting that
some of us what's going on is like we're focusing on things that we're not called to focus on.
And it's draining our time. It's draining our resources. It's draining our energy.
And we don't understand why that thing is not prospering. And so there's a level of importance
of acknowledging which thing you're actually being called to. And so I'm going to start
covering some IP stuff, but then I'm going to cross over into that because one of the things
that I've found to be very effective in my own practice is when I know that something is being
breathed on, that's what I pursue. I don't just pursue like what my personal goals and desires
are. I like to figure out out of my personal goals and desires, which ones are being breathed on,
like which one is inspired by God? What's the thing that I'm called to do?
When I pursue that, it's a lot easier. There's a grace on it. It's not like there's no
struggle whatsoever. It's just to drive it home. I brought in $2.8 million in my
origination in the year that I was the most sick. All right. That was the year that I actually
wasn't doing client development. I wasn't going out. I wasn't going to the stupid chicken dinners
that lawyers do. You know, the shark fest where they're all like going in the water looking for
blood to try and grab a client. I didn't go to almost any of those. And in the entire year,
I was working from home most of the time because I wasn't feeling well. That year,
I had higher origination than I ever had in my entire life. And the managing partner and the
management committee said, how did you do this? You blew the roof off of every record that we had.
How did you do that? My answer is Jesus. I was like, that was it. Because honestly,
I could not do that myself. I don't know where everybody is in their relationship with God or
if they have a relationship with God, but there's certain things that you'll feel the breath on it.
You'll know. There's three options in front of you. And I'm seeing this for multiple of you.
You have multiple options in front of you right now.
And you have to figure out do I continue doing and what the strategy is summary user using is you're going well
Let me let me work on all three of them and the one that takes off
That's the one that I'll commit to that is not a strategy
That that is not a strategy. That's the way to burn out
Okay, what you want to do is figure out which of the three is the one that I'm being called to
Maybe one of those other ones I'm supposed to get a partner on or sign to somebody else
and I have certain legal rights in there so I can make money on their licensing or
franchising or in something like that or
You know, maybe this is something that I signed to like a kid or a family member or whatever
But your assignment is not to be in all three things
Full speed full energy until one of them takes off and then at that point that's the thing you're gonna focus on
That is not a strategy
That's a way to end up having to take
Out of an in like garbage to try to make it through today
Like I know because I was there okay, so I'm telling you guys
I
Don't know where that came from
But some of you guys needed to hear that because that was not planned for me to discuss today
So I hope that helps you guys
Let me jump in now
Into Sean's like what the heck just happened, bro. All right, so
Let me jump in on some of the IP things. One of the questions that people are asking is
All right. There's a lot of different things to do. What do I do? Like, what do I protect first?
What do I protect second? What do I look at like?
Wait, so I'm gonna talk about that now
Okay. All right
If
You're thinking of technology
Let's start with technology and then we'll break into things that are like copyright issues
And then we'll break into things that are like trademark issues. Okay, so if you're talking technology like like
methods systems
If that system or method is going to be obsolete within three to four years
Or even up to five years do not waste money on a patent
It's a waste of money it's gonna take you two and a half to three years to get out of a patent office
That means you're gonna have a year and a half to two years of life on
It complete waste of time
Complete waste of money
Most lawyers are not gonna tell you that
Right. I'm telling you that
Don't waste your time. Don't waste your money trying to protect something on the patent side
Don't waste your time and money drafting a patent application that's gonna be obsolete within three four or five years
It's just it's not gonna be beneficial to you
Okay, so that's that's the patent side. Now. What about trademarks on?
The trademark side. This is where a lot of you are running into
Situations you've got how many people here have a book or an e-book or like another type of book some kind of publication
Just by show of hands
All right, so there's a few of you. All right
And how many of you are trying to figure out?
Or let's say you have a book
You're trying to figure out. Do you keep that in the name of yourself?
Or do you keep that in the name of an entity? How many of you trying to figure that out?
Anybody looking at that issue now?
All right, cool. So it looks like you guys have figured that out. I know that Eileen we actually did an IP audit
We talked about a number of things in there. I know Tim we did that as well
But here's the thing
If you have let's say five or six different things and in those five or six different things
You've got different names for the five or six different things. You may not want to spend six seven thousand dollars
For protecting all of them. So this is what I would do. Okay, this is not this is not legal advice
So here's here's the first time there's not no legal advice
Here's what I would do
Your core business is the most important one
All right your core business. This is a one way everything else stems from
Okay. So now what's the core business?
Let's say that you have a book you have a course you have a workshop you have a mastermind
You may decide to have the course under some kind of separate entity name
Because you might think to yourself. Well, I want to make sure that I waive any potential liability in that that's fine
That's fine. I've seen people do that
But you have to have like a house name like, you know a major
Corporation that there's housing
That's a big part of your business
You have to have like a house name like, you know, a major corporation that there's housing
The majority of what you're doing
Whatever name it is that you come up with for that
that's the one that you need to protect.
That's the first one.
Like there's zero doubt on that one.
Whatever that LLC is, that S-corp, that C-corp,
whatever that is, that major entity you wanna protect.
Okay, because mostly your assets
are gonna fall under that entity
and you want people to be able to identify
the source of goods or services by that name, right?
Whatever that name is, okay?
Now, what if I have a name for my course?
I have a name for my mastermind.
I've got a name for, let's say like t-shirts,
things that I'm putting on t-shirts.
I've got a name for, let's say,
some kind of gift that I'm giving to people.
Do I need to protect all of those names, right?
If the thing that you're giving away is a giveaway, a gift,
meaning that you're not making money on it,
there's no interstate commerce taking place,
then you don't file a trademark application
for those things, all right?
So some of you are doing giveaways.
Like you have a free mug.
Here's a mug, or like here's a, you know,
like I'm actually creating these water thermoses
that are gonna say on it, not legal advice, right?
So those are going out to you guys, right?
So those things are being put together.
So people are gonna be like, what is this?
So I think that's just kind of hilarious.
So the question is,
am I gonna be selling those things also?
Yes, I'll sell them also.
So since I'm selling them, well, for that reason,
I would have the trademark.
I go have the trademark as well,
because I'm selling them.
And then since I'm selling them
and I'm using them on a thermos or cups or mugs
or glasses, then I would protect that area,
those areas of goods.
That's where I would protect the name, right?
So the name, not legal advice,
I would protect associated with water pitchers
or, you know, or thermos or water thermos
or whatever it is, right?
Those vessels, I would file for that
because I'm actually making money.
There's a stream of income associated with it.
But if all I'm doing is giving them away,
I'm not selling them,
then the majority of time,
I do not seek trademark protection
because they're not really being used
in interstate commerce.
They're just a giveaway.
And there's actually case law that talks about this.
You know, do you actually file for trademark rights
associated with something that is not being sold?
And most of the times the answer is no.
Now, you may ask yourself, well, hold it.
What about like Life is Good?
That's a t-shirt company.
Yeah, but they sell their t-shirts.
So for that reason, they actually protect the name,
Life is Good associated with t-shirts.
They were actually a client of my law firm, right?
So not my present firm, my former firm.
So the whole point being,
there's not everything
that you're gonna obtain protection for.
Now, if it's something that's just gonna be around
for a year or two,
this is what I would do as a trademark owner.
I would ask myself,
is the trademark that I'm going to use
something that I can use for something else in the future?
All right, so let's say that you're providing an e-course,
right, some kind of e-course, electronic course.
So you have a name,
you protect associated with that name,
but you know that that course
is gonna be obsolete within two years.
Can you then use that name for another e-course
or like something else that's related to an e-course
so you didn't just waste all of your money
on filing a trademark application
for something that's gonna be obsolete within two years?
See what I mean?
So on the trademark side,
remember, trademarks have the ability to last forever.
You just have to renew them.
So you're looking at five-year periods
and then 10-year periods.
And so you're renewing and renewing and renewing, right?
But the way that it works in the trademark world
is if you're not consistently using a trademark
within three years,
then you can't continue to own it.
So let's say you used it for two years
and then you stopped for three years.
And then in your fourth year,
four years later, you decide to start using it again.
Technically your trademark went abandoned
because you didn't use it for three years.
Okay, so there has to be continuous use of this thing.
Now, if you stop using it for a year, even a year or two,
it's okay, the law says three years.
So if you've got this trademark, this really good name,
and you're thinking,
Thinking to yourself, all right, cool,
I'm gonna use this name,
but this program is gonna be over within two years.
Just think beforehand,
before you go filing a trademark application
on the name of the course,
ask yourself, is this gonna be obsolete?
Because if it's gonna be obsolete within two, three years,
you already have legal rights under common law.
Remember, under common law, you have trademark rights.
You didn't have to file anything
to obtain those legal rights.
So if you already had legal rights under common law,
then, and it's gonna be obsolete within two years,
save your money, don't file.
Okay, now some of you might be thinking,
well, how do I know that this thing's
not gonna be obsolete within two, three years?
How do I know?
Like, I really don't.
I'm not aware of whether or not it is or not.
If you're being led towards growing something,
chances are it's not gonna be obsolete in two years,
but if you're not sure,
I would like put some communications
either in a Facebook group about like scenario.
Don't go specific into the trademark,
but kind of talk about the scenario
and we can answer some questions in there.
And then obviously separately, if you do the audit,
we can dig into your scenario
and like specifically what you should do, okay?
Does that make sense?
That's gonna save you.
There's some people that have been doing this,
the, that have been doing the,
the filing of trademarks for things
that actually don't matter to the company long-term.
So it's almost like,
it's almost like you just learned about vitamins.
So now you're taking 50 vitamins a day
and your body's overloading and you're like,
what's going on?
I don't understand.
I'm not feeling well.
It's cause you're doing things that you don't need to do.
So having the knowledge is phenomenal.
Now the question is, do you need to do it?
Right?
So now we have to figure out within your business,
what do you specifically need to do?
All right, so let me talk a little bit
about some of the programs
that some of you guys are using.
How many people here are using like ChatGPT
or MidJourney or Jasper or Otter AI or?
All right, only two of you guys?
All right, three of you.
So only three of you guys are using AI, okay.
How many of you actually have marketing teams
that are working for you?
Like you're hiring an agency
or you have somebody who does marketing within your company?
So not a lot of people.
All right, so that's good.
That's good.
So this is a warning to you, right?
This is a warning for now.
There are a number of these companies
that have terms and conditions that say the following, okay?
And this is problematic.
And so I wanna make sure you guys are aware of this
so you don't run into problems.
Okay, so what it says is that
as long as you're paying their monthly fee,
you can use whatever's created
using their platform commercially, okay?
So you can use ChatGPT, you can use MidJourney,
you can use a number of the other products that are created
using these platforms.
You can use them commercially
if you're paying a monthly fee, okay?
But what happens if you stop paying the fee?
So think of it this way.
You come up with a brand new logo using MidJourney.
You come up with a brand new ad campaign using ChatGPT
or you come up with some brand new copy
that...
Peter, if you can hear us, you're frozen up.
Rick Tarrant, thank you for showing me your humorous.
What was that?
Okay, you're back.
You were gone for about a minute there.
Can you rewind?
Yes, I can.
Everybody shake your head if you can.
That was weird.
Okay.
How far did you hear?
Okay, a little bit past what you said.
As long as we're paying for their services,
we can still use their stuff.
Okay, all right, cool.
All right, so the policy that they have
says that as long as you continue paying them,
as long as you continue paying them per month,
you can continue using what you create commercially.
Now you might be thinking,
well, I created it using the software, so I own it.
No, you don't.
You've obtained a license to use what was created
using the platform.
And as long as you continue paying them,
you can continue using it.
Using it the second you stop paying them. You cannot use it in
Why is this a problem that logo that you created second you stop paying them per month you're now violating their policy
So you actually will you you can be liable for for infringement of their contract for violation of their contract?
with you
So this is why I'm saying to you guys be really careful
When you're using things like mid journey Chad GPT and others to come up with new created works
Because according to their policies and some of them are changing their policies to include this provision now, so they'll make more money
you can continue using them and
As long as you use them you can use the results of their platform, but the second you stop you can't use it anymore
It's gone
So that means all of your creative works are gone Deb good
You got on you
What if you what if you
Modify, what if you modify something that they did or wait what you're saying? Let me go back. Sorry
what you're saying is that if we
Use like in a marketing campaign a phrase that chat be
GBPT created
Then I need to keep paying the monthly fee for ever if I'm ever gonna if it whenever I'm using that
For as long as I want to use that phrase that they were creative or whatever. It depends upon what level so
Some of these programs have in their terms condition terms and conditions that if you're paying them you obtain
full full rights
Then others of them say that as long as you are paying them you have a non-exclusive license to use
These things right different different programs like chat GPT mid journey Otter AI
Jasper
There's a bunch of IO stuff that just came out a lot of them just came out within the last month
A lot of them have conditions that are saying that as long as you pay them you can use it, right but
some of them have terms that say
If you pay them and it's created then you can continue using what's created because you now own it outright
It's your job to look at the terms and agree and terms and conditions and figure that out
Okay, and if we if we rewrite something that they create
If you try to write something that they create yeah, I can't
Pardon
So let's say as an example use chat GPT to create
Let's say a chapter of your book, right?
So you you input three chapters of your book and you say
You say, you know for chat GPT you say take the position of being an author of a sci-fi
Novel the following is the first three, you know first three chapters of
The of the novel create the fourth chapter where the main character Rob
encounters a
vortex that allows him to
go
into the future
1,000 years and
Live on another planet and then boom it's typed like literally within five seconds. You've got an entire chapter, right?
Right created you cannot own that
Because it's created with AI and the law says
Like under copyright law, it says anything that is created
by a machine
Namely as an example artificial intelligence, you cannot own a copyright for because you're not the author
the
Yeah, I'm just using it, you know to maybe come up with some some marketing phrases or or something like that
And and I've asked it about yeah, that's okay
right, right something about the radiation environment on the moon in moon habitation as as written by
Radiation expert Jeff Newberry and so it gives me something and it gets some of the science wrong
It gets some of the science wrong. But anyway, that's independent
So, so I take if I took something like that and and
Modified it. I'm just using them that as an idea or almost as a library or something, you know
So anyway that okay, I'll be careful
Yeah, so
Well, you just alluded to is actually well
Will you just can you guys hear me? Okay?
I just saw a flicker on my screen. I was weird. Um, were you guys able to hear me?
alluded to, or what you just alluded to, Deb, is actually the next thing that I was going
to talk about is what do you actually use these things for? Like, what is permissible?
Like, where should you take advantage of these programs? And then we're going to jump into
other stuff that's, I think, really important, like in your nondisclosure agreements, your
non-competes, and some of your licenses. And then I'll take any questions that anybody
has on anything. But if you use ChatGPT to create, as an example, an ad, right? And you
use that ad, the question is, do you technically own it, right? Or any of these AI platforms,
you technically own it. You got to look at the terms and conditions. And what a number
of them are saying is that you can use what's produced, but not for commercial purposes.
Commercial purposes means to make money, right? To sell products, to do marketing. And so
you've got, you want to kind of think, well, okay, if I'm using this in interstate commerce,
I'm getting money coming in through my ads. There's a difference between getting an idea
for something and actually using it word for word, okay? So what I would do, and what
we do in our company, is we use these platforms to get ideas for different things. And then
there's certain platforms that are available that tell you, you can use whatever's produced.
You don't have to worry about getting sued for copyright infringement or breaking, violating
a contract or anything like that. And so if I'm saying, like, if I use Chad GPT, I
might say something like, take the position of a, well, let's look at my own situation.
Take the position of a 25 year veteran in intellectual property law who handles litigation
and prosecution throughout the world for patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets.
Create an ad that is going to be enticing, exciting, inviting individuals to join a workshop
for two hours in a single day covering the following topic. And then boom, it spits out
an ad, right? So now what do we do? Like, I'll look at that. I'll get some ideas. I
might modify it some, I might use it. So at the end of the day, am I in violation of
their agreement? Am I using it for commercial purposes? Yes. Is it, am I allowed to do that
for some of the platforms? No. Am I going to get sued for that? All right, look, this
is where we start talking about business things and legal things, kind of, they cross over,
but you got to make a business decision on some things, right? So this is a drink here.
Not legal advice, but I will tell you that if I create an ad and I'm using one of these
platforms, I'm using it. Am I concerned about being sued? I'm not telling anybody to violate
any agreements in any way, shape or form. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying
is that in my evaluation of these free platforms, I've chosen to use some of the content myself,
right? Could that be a violation of their agreement? Yeah, possibly. Could be. It's
possible. I guess what I need to do is read the terms and conditions and all these policies as
well to see which one I can actually use and minimize potential liability for. But
if you're getting an idea, to go towards Deb's question, if you're getting an idea on something
and how much do you need to modify it to then be able to say that it's yours? The way that
you use these platforms is to get ideas, but not to use the exact words that are created.
Now, if you don't care about ownership rights, you don't care about who owns the copyright,
then use them all you want. Just double check the policy and find out whether or not you can use
what's created commercially. But if you're not too concerned about owning the copyright,
and what does that actually mean? So what I mean by owning the copyright is if your competition
tomorrow use the exact same ad with the exact same language that you use, are you going to get upset?
If you don't care, then it doesn't matter.
If you do care, then you're going to want to own your own copyright.
You're going to want to own your own materials, and the only ways you can own your own copyright
is if you're the creator.
So that means you've got to use these programs, these platforms for ideas, not for the word-for-word
copying and going forward.
So what I would do instead is I would ask questions like, take the position of a such
and such.
You have a challenge coming up in a week.
Create 10 marketing campaign sentences that are highly enthusiastic, encourages other
people to join, and covers the following.
And then you get those things, and then you modify them to make it the way that you want.
So what you do is, now you take the first draft, and then you take that first draft
of one of the lines that you like, and then you type in that one line, and you say, change
it into this kind of voice, or change it to appeal to this kind of audience, and it changes
it again.
And then you tweak and you tweak and you tweak until you come out with something that you
actually want to use going forward.
If you're using these platforms to create that, you can't own it.
But quite frankly, I don't care.
I don't care if I can own it.
I don't care if I can own my ad.
I'm looking to draw people in.
My goal, my long-term goal, is to train one million entrepreneurs on understanding how
to protect what they've created, what they've been inspired to receive by God, and not to
get sued.
That's my long-term goal, right?
And so, if I create an ad that somebody else can use, well, great, I don't care.
It doesn't bother me.
So, by all means, use those platforms all you want.
The only thing I would say, Deb, and others, to double-check on is, if you use those things,
the languages commercially, if you use them for commercial use, open AI, hereby signs
of...
Yes.
Yes, Rick.
Yes.
Yes, Rick.
That's exactly right.
That's the language you want to see.
So, if you...
Yeah, unmute, Rick.
Rick, can you talk for a second?
So, Rick just typed something in the chat.
So, this is what you're looking for.
So, what you're looking for is legal language in these agreements that say that they assign,
I'll write title and interest over to you, or you have permission to use these things
for commercial purposes.
Okay?
So, that language that you typed in, Rick, where'd you get that?
Or is that something you just typed up?
No, I just...
Can you hear me?
Yep.
Go ahead.
I just pasted the link.
It's openai.com, policies, terms of use, and it does use that language.
They assign, I'll write title and interest to the output.
Yes.
And it says you can use it commercially.
That's it.
I haven't indicated if that's for the free and or paid, but I'm still reading the terms
and conditions.
But that's .3.
And I believe there are multiple...
What you're going to find is multiple of these programs have two tiers.
They have the free version, and then they have the paid version.
The paid version gives you the stuff that you're talking about.
We hereby assign, I'll write title and interest over to you by OpenAI or whomever else.
You have the right to use this commercially.
And then the other version that is not the paid version typically will say that you have
the right to use this for quote unquote personal use, but not for commercial use.
So look for that exact language that Rick highlighted.
That's the language that you want to find.
And in fact, you can probably search for the word commercial on any of these policies,
and it'll probably bring you right to where the language is on them.
Yeah, that's what I did.
I said, find commercial, and it took me straight to that paragraph.
Oh, there you go.
Yeah, that's exactly it.
Yep.
That's the way you do it.
I wasn't reading all of it.
Believe me.
That's good.
That's really good, Rick.
That's exactly what you want to do.
So think about it this way, is that like, who cares about any of this stuff?
Well, your marketing teams, the people that you're hiring to run ads, the people that
you're hiring to do any marketing campaigns, they're using these tools.
I mean, I know because I know a lot of people in the field, right?
And so I've asked them, and they're all saying, yeah, we're using them.
Like, do you realize that a lot of the video editing that's being done right now is automated?
No.
A lot of times you're paying somebody like, I don't know, like, let's say like 100 bucks
a video.
And what they're doing is they're taking your larger video. They're running it into a program and that program spitting out like
3040-second segments with all the text already done, and then they're just tweaking it
Like this is happening right now guys like there are programs. I mean the one ray the one that you forwarded me
Not the one you forwarded me yesterday, but the one that there was one that you mentioned before
I actually had already been using that because I actually saw that in a commercial and
It was on tick-tock, and I was flicking through tick-tock, and I saw that thing and I tried it out
I took one of our own
Protect your idea challenge days. I uploaded in that and came up with like 20 different
20 different
segments
That were created with the text already there
With the images already there, but he was done, and then it gives you a rating it says this has a
What
Well here's the problem with that is that the majority of them were garbage
The majority of them you know it's it's trying to anticipate where subject matter starts and ends the majority of them were garbage
There were like maybe two or three that were salvageable, and they would have to be worked on so it's a good starting point
and honestly
Just so you guys know if you're trying to build social media presence
These algorithms were the way a lot of these are working is they're looking to see if you're posting something once a day
Like every day
It doesn't care about the quality of the garbage that you're putting up there
Like I've seen such garbage being pushed out by people who are well known in social media
like
Illegally wrong things things that are just bad observations a waste of time
Yet they they have like hundreds of thousands of followers
Because they're posting literally every single day so the algorithm is putting them in front of other people faster exactly
It's a machine
So what you can actually do is you can automate your postings
You can actually if all you care about doing is creating a big social media presence and getting hundreds of thousands of followers
You're at least tens of thousands of followers to get the hundreds of thousands you got to have something to offer
But if you want tens of thousands of followers very fast
You can just like use these systems create videos
create an automated program to upload these things for you is the Instagram and onto a YouTube channel and
Boom you're cracking the algorithm and all of a sudden you're getting boosted and
You but you're not providing anything great. It's just so why do you care about increasing the presence?
Well, that's gonna increase the number of people that actually go into your challenge at least the people that know about you. So
It's there is a science to it. But to bring this back home to IP
The whole point of why I'm mentioning all this is that what you're creating?
You have to ask yourself
A few questions one is do I own it number two is do I care about if I own it number three is do?
I need to spend the money protecting this thing or not
Right. I would argue that your ads I wouldn't spend a lot of time and money on protecting your ads unless it's something that is
like huge
Like as an example, I did a slap video with my daughter
That thing went viral like we had hundreds of thousands of people watching that commenting they thought it was hilarious
My daughter thinks it's hilarious. She wants to do another video on it. I'm like, that's old. That's that's Will Smith thing is over
She's like, yeah, but we could do a punch video now. It's like yeah. No, nothing. So the whole point being that
Something like that. I should get a copyright for but other things
Not really that big of a deal. All right, so
Not really that big of a deal. All right before I start jumping into like agreements like non-disclosures non-competes
Legal language. Let me just check first. Do you guys have any specific questions on anything that you're going through?
What was the third statement? He said third statement
You said do I own
Do I care if I own then you said one more thing?
Is it worth investing that's it
Yeah, because the second question that you're asking which is do I care about if I own that that's gonna dictate whether or not
You're gonna spend money on protecting anything
If you don't care
Don't waste the money. I mean look there are a lot the lawyers that will take your money and say yeah, let's file this
Yeah, let's do that
Like they're making a living they're just and they're providing you a good service the question is did you need it
So Sam go right ahead
It's good to see you, by the way, Sam.
I haven't seen you in a while, buddy.
Yeah, thanks.
I've been underground working on stuff,
but I've come above ground now.
I'm actually trying to get a challenge done,
my first challenge done in a few weeks.
So I created-
Nice.
Yeah, I created this entity for this new program
that I'm starting, and I want to,
I don't want the,
and I'm creating a whole bunch of intellectual property,
and I don't want it to be in my name.
I want it to be in an entity's name,
but I don't necessarily want it to be
in the entity that I'm creating.
So I wanted to create a separate entity for operations,
right, and a separate entity for,
to hold the intellectual property,
of which I'll put in a trust that I control.
Right.
So I'm wondering what order I go in,
how would I do that?
I've created the entity, can I,
and think it's about timing.
Can I use, for example,
the existing entity to assign the rights to temporarily,
and then transfer those rights to a different entity?
Is that appropriate?
Is that, can that be done?
Is there anything wrong with that?
Technically you can do that,
just understand that
the entity that is procuring the rights
is going to incur the costs.
So it becomes a tax write-off
for the entity that incurs the cost, right?
Now, if they're all owned by you as LLCs,
none of the,
you're the one that's going to incur the taxes anyway.
So it,
Peter, you're cutting out.
That's,
Hello?
Peter, you're cut, you're cutting out pretty bad.
And freezing.
Okay.
He's still going.
Oh, this is good.
This means that this is an important response.
Right.
Sam, I do have a resource I can send you.
I'll message you on Facebook.
I'll send you something.
Okay.
Yeah.
Excellent.
Thank you.
There you go.
Hey, Peter.
Yeah, we're all good.
Yeah.
All right.
Yeah.
Yeah, you're in an unstable again.
Oh, nope.
You're frozen again.
All right, I'm going to,
let me go in here.
So there's no reason for this to be happening.
Literally, there's no reason for this to be happening
because my computer inside
is equidistant to where I am outside.
So there's no,
Something's interfering or a battery isn't,
charged up enough or something.
Breaking up, except this must be an important issue
of some sorts.
Everything's connected.
So I'm not sure what that is, but let me,
let me log in.
Hold on.
I'm going to jump.
Larissa, are you here?
Yeah, you are.
All right.
I'm going to log out and log back in.
All right.
Gotcha.
Bye-bye.
Rick, did you see what I responded to
just by reading the terms and conditions
that you posted about your membership?
And folks, if you saw Rick's question,
this is where it becomes really important
to read the terms and conditions
of these programs you're using,
how you're using it.
Because I seem to find,
you know, Rick had asked,
what about what I'm uploading?
And we have done two AI workshops now
and a challenge where Peter's highly touched on this,
where you want to know what you're using.
You want to know the terms and conditions
when you are uploading,
like chapters of books or a serious,
it's already copyrighted.
It's copyrighted.
But you could be opening yourself up to,
you know, the algorithms
and releasing some protections,
depending on the terms and conditions
of your subscription to any of these AI you're using.
It's not like Microsoft Office
where you buy your subscription
or your licensing
and anything you create in Microsoft Word
is your document
or Sheets or Excel or whatever.
But if you put it out there to the world,
you know, it could be open to scrubbing.
If I have this wrong,
Ray's going to comment on that.
Well, yeah, it's data scraping,
but basically you are also opening yourself up
to infringing on some of the things
that it's collectively pulled
and contributed into your new works as well,
could be somebody else's copyrights.
Just to,
Eileen, are you here?
Oh, there you go.
So I'm not sure if everybody saw this,
but yesterday was,
Eileen birthday. We're gonna say happy birthday. While we wait,
sorry to change subjects, but just want to make sure we wished
you a happy birthday in there.
And Rick put on the money hat for you. I don't know what that
means.
We hope you had a really, really great birthday.
I did. All day, but super good. Yeah, thank you.
You're welcome. Well, I'm glad you had a good birthday. And
Peter's getting back on here. And Peter, we just wished Eileen
a happy birthday. Her birthday was yesterday.
Oh, you are muted.
Well, he's unmuted. But I don't think he's connected properly.
Yeah.
This is kind of crazy. This is this is a little foreboding.
I don't usually have issues at all. So this must be an
important issue.
So happy birthday, Eileen.
Thank you.
Still look 29. That's so good.
Are you going to Portugal?
Yes, you are. Cool. Yeah, we'll be hanging out together. Yes.
I'm looking forward to it. Um, yeah, so let me jump into your
situation. So what's what's kind of funny is like, literally, the
routers there. So I don't know what in the world going on. But
it is what it is. So um, this is an issue that a few people
actually had, which is, what do you put? What asset do you put
within which entity? And which entity should be filing for
what? Right? So I mean, number one, I'm not a corporate lawyer.
But I can tell you that I've been doing this a very long time.
So I know how this stuff works. And this is not legal advice. But
my Oh, I do have water. I have water literally everywhere in the
house, apparently. So I was like, I don't have water. Yes, I do.
There we go. All right. All right. So
the entity that actually incurs the fees is the one that's going
to get the tax write off. So that's the first part to
remember, okay. So if there's some kind of desire to have a
write off within ABC company, let's say ABC company is making a
lot of money that year. So you want to actually have the
expenses for the IP be incurred by ABC company, because then you
can write off that amount of money, which will offset the
profits of ABC company. So there's a strategy to which
entity you actually have doing the IP filing, because that is,
it's considered an expense of the company, you can write it
off. But separate from that,
you can technically put it in the name of ABC company first
before before, you know, the other entities created, and you
can just transfer all right title and interest through an
assignment of all right title and interest. You can do that.
Just keep in mind that
when you transfer assets between entities, if there's some kind
of evaluation that's done, like some kind of valuation of the
new company, the IP is an intangible asset and has actual
value.
Which means when you transfer all right title and interest to
that new entity, the new entity now has a higher valuation
because that IP is part of that new entity. So what people
typically look at in assigning IP is they're looking at the
liability part, but they don't look at the tax issues. So just
consider the tax issues too. So yes, by all means, you can
start it out in your name, you can start it out in another
entity's name. If they're all LLCs at the end of the day, you
know, it's all going to be equated to you anyway. You know,
because as an example, I have AD challenges, plus I have
nearest IP law group. So when people take an IP audit, the
funds are going into AD challenges. But then I'm
transferring certain funds over to give us IP law group to
handle the legal work, right. But at the end of the day, when
I do my taxes, it's all going to come down to me anyway. Because
because if AD challenges made, you know, was break even, but
you have this IP law group made, you know, $600,000. And I
personally made $150,000 that all those numbers are going to
be, they're going to put it all within one big equation, and
they're going to come at me and they're going to say you're
responsible for this, this and this. So, you know, at the end
of the day for you, the answer
question is yes, you can have it done in one entity's name and then transfer it to another.
That's easy. It's an assignment document. You can type on Google USPTO assignment
recordation and it'll pop up for the USPTO site. I can actually show you guys how to record an
assignment on the USPTO website. It's pretty cool. You're just going to need a legal assignment
document. Do you have one of those? You have to unmute.
I think I do have one. So does it matter if I just put it in my name?
Part of it, if I just start off, just incorporate and say a copyright with my name or do I just put
it in the, does it make a difference if I just use that entity and then transfer it to another
entity? Does it make a difference? I would put it in an entity's name,
not your name for liability purposes. If you do it in your own name first and then somebody else
sees a recordation in your name and something happens IP wise and you get sued personally,
it was in your name first. So there's a potential for liability. But if you put it in the entity's
name, that's why you created the entity in the first place to shelter you and your personal
finances. So I would not legal advice, but I would put it in your own. I'll put it in your
own company's name, not in your name because that's the reason why you created the entity
in the first place. Got it. Rick. Thank you. Oh, you're welcome, Sam.
Thank you, sir. Well, you just brought up a second question then. So would it behoove me to
have a entity that covers, I just call everything Rick Tarrant productions right now, and it's not
an LLC, it's just me doing business as would it behoove me then not legal advice, but in your
opinion, as a friend to have an entity, an umbrella say, I like the name on the radio
productions because my background is radio. Could that cover Rick Tarrant voiceover God's affirming
words? As far as ownership for liability, or if I accidentally, you know, infringe somebody's
copyright or whatnot, would that be this? Would you advise I just do everything under owned by
on the radio productions? You know what I think I'm going to do for the next protection portal?
I got a friend of mine who's a corporate lawyer. I'm going to see if she can join us.
Okay, that'd be cool. A bunch of questions. That will wait. Yeah. But I can answer your question
now. But okay, but since I'm noticing a number of people have some corporate questions, too.
I think I'm going to do is reach out to her. Because she's a very good corporate lawyer.
And she works a lot with entrepreneurs, startups. And then she can just answer a bunch of questions.
I think that would be wonderful. So alright, so to answer your question, let me look at my
own scenario, right? So this is not legal advice. This is like me, she's me. Oh, man. I'm gonna get
drunk today. I've said, Am I infringing your trademark? I put not legal advice on my water
bottle. Am I in trouble? I love it. I love it. It's good. So the intent of having these entities
is to shelter what we have, right? What's been given to us. And so that's why a form like an LLC,
S Corp, C Corp, whatever it is that's created, right? So if I just have myself doing business as
such and such, I don't believe that provides the same amount of protection as having
an actual corporation. Yeah, so if somebody sues me, they can wipe out my savings,
right? Because everything is me. Right. But if you instead do like what Sam was talking about,
so you put it in the name of an entity, you can be a sole proprietorship, like I'm a sole
proprietorship for my law firm and for AD challenges. Right? And so I'm the manager, I'm the owner,
you know, and I run all these entities, but all the training, all the teaching is done under AD
challenges. You know, the audits are done by the law firm, right? So it's separated by the specific
task. One of the reasons why you create entities actually is also for the public, for the public to
be able to know what you do just by the name, right? So not just that the name is descriptive,
because you don't want a descriptive name. Descriptive names aren't even...
registrable as trademarks.
But you want to make sure that they identify
a name with a service.
If you have like 50 different services that
are provided under a single name,
it can get kind of confusing.
This is why, why doesn't Microsoft just say,
this is Microsoft program number one,
this is Microsoft program number two,
this is Microsoft program number three.
They don't do that because they want you to hit
a name Microsoft Word, and now, oh, that's word processing.
I need that thing.
Microsoft Excel, oh, those are spreadsheets.
I need that thing.
Just by the name alone, you immediately
identify certain services or quality
of products that's provided.
So same thing with your businesses.
When you're creating entities, there
should be some logic to what's created.
And a number of you who have actually done IP audits with me,
this has been one of the biggest issues that's come up,
is people have multiple things that they're pursuing,
but they don't know what belongs where.
So there's a cleaning service, there's a mentoring program,
there's a book, and there's a software program.
And they're like, ABC company, like they put it all together
and like, this is ABC company.
And you're like, hold it, ABC company is cleaning?
They have e-books, they have training, and they have like,
what?
It doesn't make sense logically.
So you want to figure out which of your services
actually belong together, then create an entity
to have that service.
But then separate from that, you also
want to think liability purposes.
So where do you have the most potential for exposure,
legally?
Like if you come up with new software,
and there's like, I have a brand new software,
and I want to create that software program,
and I want to bring that out to the public,
there's a higher level of potential liability
for creating a software program.
Because there may be a patent that
covers the same method, or the system that's utilized,
or an apparatus that uses the software.
So there's a higher level of potential exposure
for some kind of invention, some kind of system,
some kind of method that's being implemented
in a software program.
So for that reason, it's very common
that legal rights associated with patents
are going to be in a separate entity.
That's just most people that have a company
want the IP in a separate entity for specific reasons.
One is tax write-off, but the other one
is potential liability.
So in your case, Rick, you've got like the voice work
that you do, well, that's essentially who you are.
I mean, that's not really separate from you, right?
And so, but let's say that you were also
doing some kind of training, or let's say like you have a,
yeah, you're doing some kind of training on marketing.
Let's say you're doing training on marketing, right?
And you call it how to find your voice.
Even though you do voice work, you also
have a separate training on marketing
called how to find your voice.
Yeah, the name voice is kind of similar,
but the marketing thing has nothing to do with the training.
I mean, it has nothing to do with the voice work that you do.
So you might want to keep them separate,
depending on potential liability.
But I can tell you, I've seen many times people
have a single entity that does five different things,
and they do just fine.
But where I see, where I find big problems
is where they do so many things in the public,
just the message is lost.
They don't know who the heck is, like this guy is doing like,
you know, building rockets, cleaning houses.
He's a chef on the weekend, and like he has a, what do you
call it, he has a nursery as well for taking care of kids.
That can't have a single name.
It just makes no sense, unless you want to call it mixed up.
Like that might be a good name, but besides that,
it just doesn't make a lot of sense.
What was your other question?
So on the IP realm, I hire a songwriter and composer
to create the atmosphere tracks underneath my narrations,
you know, the scripture meditation stuff.
So on the last invoice, and I'll put the verbiage in the chat
here, I had him include this in his invoice,
that this composition is considered work for hire,
all right, title and interest to this is transferred
to Rick Tarrant Productions upon receipt of payment in full.
that legal and binding as an invoice, I pay him my covered,
or do we have to have a contract
and all the party of the first part agrees
with the party of the second part and all that stuff?
It's a good question.
What I would always do in a contract
and a contractual agreement is get them to sign on it.
I wouldn't just throw it as terms
that are in there for payment, right?
That's a lot of people throw these terms in something
like the work's being done and then it says,
by receiving payment, you agree to the following.
The other party didn't really technically agree to it.
They actually already started doing the work
and now there's a legal agreement that's being sent to them
that they haven't technically agreed to, right?
So the way a contract works
is that there is some kind of consideration, right?
Some kind of, the consideration could be financial,
the consideration can be a number of different things,
but there's something that's being swapped, right?
But there needs to be an agreement between the parties.
If I, let's say that, and I would never do this,
but let's say you did an IP audit, right?
You come in and then as we're starting this IP audit,
I send you the invoice for the thing and on it,
there's legal language that says everything
that you disclose during this time that we're together,
I own all rights, title and interest to, right?
Now you're already in the process of doing the audit.
You've already separated time.
You're starting to take the services
and I just threw a condition on.
Now the question is, well, what about earlier?
What about early in the arrangement?
What if I send out the invoice in the beginning
before any work has actually been done at all?
And it says that you hereby agree to the following.
I would just put a signature line on that
and make them sign it.
The mere fact that they receive payment for something
does not mean that they agree to your legal terms.
That unfortunately in a court of law,
you're gonna have spent a lot of time trying to prove
that they agreed to your terms and conditions
without a signature.
So what I do-
Can I reach out to you through Ray
and get the right verbiage in place?
Yeah, yeah.
That is legal advice so that I can-
Yeah, yeah, we can do that.
That's fine.
Actually, it's really interesting
because I never really pulled this up.
And then last night, maybe this is why it happened.
Last night, I pulled up an agreement called...
I have a website user agreement,
a whole harmless disclaimer.
I've got terms and conditions,
but one of the ones that I pulled up
was like a 20-something page agreement
they had created before that I totally forgot about.
And it covers the kind of stuff
that we're talking about here,
which is when you hire somebody to do something,
what are the legal rights that go back and forth?
It's kind of ironic because again, I haven't-
I guess what I've always want to avoid
because we're friends is this feeling like,
no, you're entering into an agreement
with NBC, Comcast, Incorporated.
Yeah, you need a simplified version.
I just need a friendly agreement.
Not a legally binding contract.
Those are usually like two, three pages max.
Those are the kind of agreements that you're looking at.
A paragraph won't work.
Paragraphs unfortunately can leave a lot of obscure issues,
but we can touch base on it.
I'll tell you this one story.
I mean, I had a meeting with this one gentleman
and he had two partners, two business partners.
He comes in and he says,
and they're all at the table.
This is in Boston.
We're all sitting down at the same table
and they're all buddies, college buddies.
And they've known each other for a long time,
like 20 years.
And they were creating this business together.
And one of them was the engineer, really brilliant guy.
One of them was the CEO, really smart at doing business.
And the other one was the CFO
and really good with finances,
obtaining funds and all sorts of stuff.
Seemed like a really nice equation, right?
Well, they sit down and I say,
guys, you need to do something for me.
You need to tell me what's the entity that I'm representing.
I can't represent all three of you
because your positions,
even though right now you're aligned,
I guarantee you they are not gonna be aligned
in the future.
And they're like, no, no, we've known each other 20 years.
We're buddies, this is not an issue.
We have done, I was like, guys, I've done this a long time.
I'm telling you, let's create an entity.
And then the entity will be my client.
And you tell me.
who within the company speaks on behalf of the entity.
So I'm always acting on the better half of the entity
to help the entity and not a specific individual.
No, no, no, it's not a problem, it's not a problem.
Okay, all right, look, fine.
Sign this waiver saying that I explained this to you
and you have chosen to keep this
as three individuals working together
with under like a DBA essentially,
but not form an entity under that.
And they said, okay, you're no problem.
So I've got the waiver.
Then I said, one other thing,
this guy over here, Matt, is the brains of this operation.
Matt can decide to leave tomorrow
and take all the IP of the company
and you guys can't do jack about it.
That would never happen.
We've been friends 20 years,
we went to college together, blah, blah, blah.
I'm like, guys, trust me, this is an important issue.
I've learned it, I know what you're talking about.
Yeah, and they're like, okay, no, no, it's not an issue.
Pete, look, you represent all of us.
Whenever you call, get us all on the phone.
We'll make a decision together.
We've known each other a long time,
done business a long time ago.
I said, that doesn't matter when it comes to IP.
He owns all the IP, he's the brains.
Doesn't matter, we've known Matt forever.
Fine, sign this waiver saying that I disclosed to you
that Matt is the 100% owner of all the IP
and you can't stop Matt from doing literally anything
and you agree to that.
They signed the agreement.
I'm like, this is just a bomb waiting to go off.
About a year and a half later,
I think it was about a year and three quarters maybe,
I get a phone call.
It's one of the three guys.
Matt's leaving, Matt's taking all the technology,
what can we do to stop him?
You signed a waiver.
Nothing, you can't do jack, Matt's the brains.
He knew he was the brains
and spent all the time and money of the other guys
to build something up, knew the guys for like 20 years
and then jump ship, went to a larger corporation
that wanted to hire him because of his IP,
took it with him, made a killing, left these guys behind.
And it's just, this is why those agreements are really-
I get why one paragraph won't work, I get it now.
Yeah, this is why you don't just want that one,
you wanna just be careful,
especially with you, you guys have such brilliant ideas.
We don't want you guys ending up in problems
and we can provide simple language that's not scary.
Scary, thank you.
But it'll actually work.
Ray, what's up?
Maybe we should host a little session
in one of our portal meetings that goes over
having the confidence to step forward
in a way that you can be proud of
without being intimidated or timid
about your legal assertion of rights
so that you can take care of and protect
the way you need to, but understand,
just go over the mindset of being okay
with doing what you need to do
and it's not an offensive move to protect yourself.
There is a way to deliver a message
that is going to be received well, okay?
And what you do is you take the position
of the one who's trying to protect what's being created
as opposed to the one who's being possessive
of what is there.
When you take the position of I'm possessed,
this is mine, I got to protect me,
it's very standoffish.
Nobody really likes that.
It's very yucky, right?
It becomes personal.
But if you take the position of,
look, this is the technology of the company.
I'm trying to make sure that the company is successful.
This is an asset of the company.
We need to get this agreement signed
so that that asset becomes an asset of this entity, right?
It's like you're representing the entity.
Now, at the end of the day, obviously you own these things,
but the fact of the matter is that for tax purposes,
for ownership purposes, if you're taking the position
of representing an entity as opposed
to representing yourself, it's an easier conversation.
It's much, much easier.
Because when you take, like, if I go to Sam
and I was like, Sam, hey, you know,
we're going to work together on this new app.
But, you know, I came up with this idea, Sam.
Like, look, I've been thinking about this for a long time
and I've really gotten to the point
where I'm ready to implement this thing.
And like, you're good at implementing things,
but the idea is mine.
Like, I'm the one who actually conceived it,
put it together.
You know, I've received this from the Lord
and this is something that I want created.
Now, I want to hire you to provide the services,
but this really is my idea.
Like, I'm just kind of working with you
to have it, have to create the.
Yeah, that's it.
Now that's one way to talk to them, right?
And here's another way.
Hey, Sam, you have this,
you have incredible skillset on doing programming.
This company that we created,
we have a new technology that's very important
to this company.
And so this is gonna be an important asset of the company.
And our vision of the company is XYZ.
Now your skillset fits perfectly
in implementing this new technology
that's being created on behalf of the company.
These are the different parts of the software.
We'd like you to work with us
to actually implement that into an app.
And as we're doing that,
I need to make sure everything's tight for the company
so there's no confusion as to ownership, inventorship,
for tax purposes, to make sure the entity's secure.
And for that reason, I'm gonna forward you an agreement.
If you could take a look at that,
if you have any questions, just let me know.
But the role that you'll be taking in this
is the actual implementation of the functionality
that we've already created.
And then if you have other thoughts on it,
obviously feel free to do that.
But anything that you're adding to this
becomes part of the entity and the vision of the entity
and what we're doing as a company to help the public.
That's a very different conversation.
Very different conversation.
When I take it as,
like Sam, did that feel different
when I had those two conversations?
Yeah, yeah.
When do we start?
Exactly.
So it's like that's,
well, you're gonna have the recording.
You guys have the recording, so you can see.
But that's the difference in delivery.
This is the beauty of having an entity.
You're representing an entity with a goal,
a vision, a mission.
You're helping other people with that.
When you take out the personal thing,
it becomes easier to have the conversation.
It becomes easier to get the result that you need.
One of the first things I do
when I mentor somebody in business,
one of the very first things I tell them
is take nothing personal.
The second you take something personal,
the negotiation's over, you're done.
But you can't get past yourself.
You can get past a lot of different obstacles.
You can't get past yourself
because you're always gonna wake up to yourself.
You're always gonna see yourself.
You're always gonna engage with yourself.
The second you make something personal,
you've put up a roadblock that can't be beaten
because you're not battling another person.
You're battling yourself.
So that's the way I would do it in your negotiations.
If you have a book and you're negotiating with a publisher
and you put something in the name of an entity,
like the entity is gonna be coming up with a series.
There's gonna be three different books.
We'd like to negotiate with you to be a publisher,
to be part of what we're doing.
These are the legal rights
that are associated with the company.
We need to make sure that we're not assigning our rights
to an outside or an interesting publisher in this process.
So as to maintain the legal rights for the entity
and the vision that we have for the entity.
Very different from, hey, look,
I'm hiring you as a publisher to work on my book,
but I'm kind of concerned that you might, you know,
grab ownership rights or like,
I've never dealt with you before.
Second you start doing that, it became personal.
These are like negotiating techniques.
The second that you mentioned like I this, you that,
it's over, it's over.
It just became personal.
This is why like, even when I'm in court,
when I'm in negotiation with opposing counsel,
I never talk about me.
It's always what the law says.
It's always what the entity needs.
It's always the negotiation on behalf of the client,
what the client sees.
And it's never ever, never ever do I actually say
that their client is doing X, Y, Z.
What I'll do is I'll say, this is what's happening.
This is what we need to change.
I don't say your client this, your client that.
I never do that.
Second you do that, it became personal.
Second it becomes personal, your negotiation,
your chances of winning and successful negotiations
go down exponentially the second
that you start making it personal.
I think I told you this one story once,
but I think this kind of drives it home.
And if I mentioned this before, I apologize,
but I think this kind of drives this home.
I got a phone call from a client.
This was a number, I think it was about three years ago.
They were in negotiations with Microsoft, right?
And they had, Microsoft had Chicago counsel
and my client had New York City counsel
and they were negotiating a license agreement.
Microsoft wanted a certain amount per download
of a certain software, right?
And they got into this, the lawyers got into this battle.
back and forth, back and forth, to the point
where they were cursing.
They were arguing.
They were mad at each other.
They were cursing.
And so finally, my client calls me,
because I wasn't part of that negotiation.
But the owner calls me.
Actually, it's not the owner.
Robin is one of the lead legal people.
Calls me up and says, hey, can you
take over this negotiation with Microsoft?
I said, well, what's the problem?
She says, the lawyers are fighting.
But what we're trying to accomplish is not getting done.
I said, yes, sure, just tell me what you want.
She tells me what she wants.
I said, what do you think Microsoft wants?
She tells me what she thinks Microsoft wants.
I said, OK, cool.
I jump on the call.
We set up a meeting, got Chicago legal counsel for Microsoft.
New York counsel for our client was not there intentionally,
because I didn't want that fight.
Meeting starts, opposing counsel is cursing already.
I can't effing believe we're doing this effing thing again.
We've been doing this so effing long.
This is a waste of my effing time.
I'm like, jeez, he's just going on and on and on,
probably about five minutes of bashing.
And then finally, I just said, are you done?
And people on the line start laughing.
I just let him vent.
So I was like, are you done?
And people started laughing.
I said, look, I don't mean to make fun of anything here,
but I've got one question for you.
If you can answer that one question,
I think we're basically done.
And he says, well, what is it?
I said, what does your client want?
And he's dead silent.
The lawyer was so engaged in the fight
that he forgot what his client wanted.
He had no clue.
Literally, Microsoft is on the line
with their head lead counsel from another law firm,
and their lead counsel doesn't know what Microsoft wants,
in the middle of a major negotiation on a huge deal.
And so there's like this long pause.
I said, and so I didn't want to make fun of him,
because I don't negotiate like that.
I said, you know what?
Why don't we take like a five minute break?
Why don't you talk to your client?
And then why don't we continue?
We'll just hold the line.
And then when you're ready, just let us know.
And so it's like, yeah, fine.
Go silent.
I'm like texting my client,
because we can't talk on the line,
because the line's hot.
So I'm texting my client.
He comes back on in about,
I think it was about two and a half minutes later.
And he says, my client wants 20 something cents per, no.
Yeah, yeah, 20 something cents per download.
It's like 20 something cents per download.
And I already knew what my client wants.
Robin just, she just wanted under a dollar per download.
I was like, Robin, do you have any problems with this?
Like, that sounds ridiculously good.
She says, no, that's exactly what we want.
I said, done.
Opposing counsel's like, what do you mean done?
I said, done.
You said you wanted 20 something cents per download.
My client agrees.
Done.
Is there anything else to talk about?
The other side is like,
we'll send over the agreement.
I'm like, cool, done, bye, click.
Like little, and this is what happens in real negotiation.
So now as you guys are building companies
and you're negotiating with third parties,
you have to keep in mind in your negotiations
not to make anything personal.
Don't ever say you did this.
You know, I want that.
Like, don't try to detach yourself from the scenario.
The only time that you should attach yourself
to a scenario is when you're talking about the passion
that you have to make something successful.
That's when you connect yourself.
You don't connect yourself in a negotiation.
Why?
I'll tell you why.
Because if you connect yourself directly
into a negotiation on a major deal
and the other side sees it as it being so personal to you
that anytime they say no to anything,
you're personally gonna take it as an attack.
It's gonna be very hard to negotiate.
This is why I love LLCs.
This is why I love companies.
Because now I'm negotiating on behalf of a company
and the better interest of the company.
And at the end of the day,
if they say, no, I can't assign all rights
out of an interest of the software over to your company.
Like, this is what I do for a living.
My response is, yeah,
I know this is what you did for a living.
That's why I'm hiring you.
You're one of the best in the world.
But at the same time,
this falls into the purview of what the company does.
And we have to make sure the legal rights
are assigned to the company
so the company will be successful into the future.
And so we wanna find a way to actually negotiate with you
for to actually accomplish that.
It's not like, yeah, but this is my idea.
I came up with this idea.
I reached out to you.
You now know about my idea
and now you're gonna compete with me?
No, that's not gonna happen.
You see the difference in the negotiation?
This is why startups.
crash. You get individuals that are so passionate about what they're creating that they don't know
how to talk about what they're doing and detach themselves from that. How do you have a child
and negotiate the promise and the future of the child without becoming so protective that nobody
ever wants to talk to your child? There's an art to doing that. And so we can talk about this as
time goes on. If you run into scenarios and negotiations and you want to figure... This is
actually one of the things that I get hired for by large corporations is just to close. They say,
hey, we're stuck. Will you come in and close? I'm like, yeah, sure. So I'm a closer. I go in,
I assess everything, close the deal. And then I leave. And I let all the other grunts finish the
paperwork. That's not my thing. So I do the closing. So in any case, was that helpful to you
guys? Yeah. So that's how you want to negotiate. So Ray, thanks for raising that, Ray. That's how
you want to negotiate. You are taking the position on representing an entity, the future of the
entity, the vision of the entity, and the better good of others, as opposed to this is mine. I did
this. I created this. I want you in, but everything belongs to me. That becomes...
It's just yucky. It's a harder negotiation. And then finally, the negotiation should be win-win.
My mentor was Carl Giorda. Carl Giorda was one of the best licensing people in the world
ever to exist. I mean, honestly, if you look up, Carl Giorda was ridiculous.
This guy was just remarkable. He was a professor at what was called Franklin Pierce Law Center.
He was my professor. I knew him personally. He was best friends with my wife because my wife
used to work at the law school. And quite frankly, I had a lot of perks because my wife actually
worked at the law school. So I got to all the alumni events. I got all the interviews. I got
I.O. Bonnie a lot. But the point being that what Carl always said was every license should be a
win-win. If you won on all the terms and everything is in your favor in a license agreement, this is
what likely is going to happen. The other party is going to try to find a way to get around your
license. That means you've entered into a license with a party who doesn't like the license, who's
going to try to do anything that they can to get around it. And you're going to make very little
money on this. Very little money. You always want to end up in a license agreement in a win-win
situation. Try to figure out how the other person can benefit as well. When I'm in a license
agreement with another party that has certain benefits. And this is actually the last thing we
were going to talk about, which is licensing. So it fits perfectly when I'm in a license agreement,
party that has certain benefits, then they want to be part of the license agreement.
They want to do the sales. They want to do the promotion. They want to see me grow because they
benefit. If they don't benefit in any way, shape or form from the license agreement,
that's not a license. What you've essentially done is locked something down that's not going to grow.
It's like having a garden and a quarter of the garden is allocated for growth, but nothing's
ever going to grow in that area. So it's basically wasted real estate. It's got the best soil
and there may be the best seeds in the world, but it's never going to be watered. They're never
going to work on it. It's just going to be something that's there in a portfolio that
never gets touched, like ever. So whenever you're negotiating these license agreements,
I know it can get very personal. I know that your entities, your creations are your babies. I get
that. I've had grown men and women crying to me when they get sued over stuff that they've created.
So I get it. I understand that it's very important to you. Believe me, I'm a creator as well, right?
We're all created. We're made in God's image. He's the creator. So surprise, you're a creator.
I mean, it's in your bloodline, okay? But the big thing to keep in mind is that
you want to make it so that the other side can look at this and go, you know what? This is a
good deal. It's a good deal. Maybe you make a little less money, but in the long term,
you're going to make way more money because they're actually going to be working for you.
I have seen licenses where a party locks down a technology and never does anything with it, ever.
And the other party who owns the technology can't get out of the agreement.
agreement because it's an exclusive license.
And there's been no violation of the license,
so they're locked in.
That's called a deadlock on a technology.
And it never grows, it's done.
That's actually how, for those of you that are creating,
how many people here are creating technologies
like something that's new, that never existed before?
Okay, so in SAM's situation,
or even if you're creating a method or a process
that's never been created before,
and you try to license that thing,
what some larger companies will do,
if you have a brilliant technology or brilliant method,
they will try to get a license from you,
where they get an exclusive license,
because you have these delusions of grandeur in your mind,
thinking you're going to make ridiculous amounts of money,
and then they freeze it.
They do nothing with it.
They don't violate the license agreement,
so you can't end the license agreement.
They're not sending you any money
because they're not selling it.
They're not doing anything with it.
And guess why they did that?
Somebody here, tell me.
Unmute yourself and tell me why they did that.
Eliminate competition.
Yep.
Anti-competition.
Exactly.
They literally, they saw a brilliant light.
They have a dim light,
but the dim light is all over the place.
So you see this brilliant laser light,
and they say, that's going to compete with our dim light.
When other people see that brilliant laser light,
they're going to want that.
Now, this is a startup.
These people are so enamored with the fact
that we're a big, big entity.
So we're going to come in and get an exclusive license,
and then we're going to put a lid on the laser light.
So everybody can only see the dimly lit light,
and that's all they can use forever.
It is Microsoft's model.
That's what they do.
They've done that.
And there's a number of other large entities.
So this is why I'm saying in your license agreements,
be careful.
Don't jump out there and do an exclusive license
unless you really and honestly believe
that you have an agreement with a party
that is going to help you grow.
And then you need to have terms and conditions
in your license agreement that says
that you can get out if certain things are not done.
All right?
You can't have an open-ended license agreement
with a large entity that says,
man, I love what Sonia's doing.
This is phenomenal, but it competes with my iPhone,
and iPhones are a big deal.
So, hey, Sonia, love you.
You're amazing.
Your technology is incredible.
Let me introduce you to the CTO,
the Chief Technology Officer of my company.
You can have a meeting with them.
We'll take you to dinner.
We'll show you how we can incorporate it into our company.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Let's have a non-exclusive license.
We're actually gonna give you a high royalty
on any sales that are done.
This is phenomenal.
Congratulations.
Here's a written agreement.
Frick it.
Now for the next like two, three years,
you're like, hey, yeah, remember the CTO?
Yeah, what's going on with the technology?
Oh, yeah, well, we've got a future model.
It's coming up.
We're gonna try to incorporate it in there.
We're testing the market to see if it's gonna take off.
Nothing, crickets.
Next year, you're like, hey, guys,
like it's been three years.
It's like, no, you're supposed to incorporate this in.
Yeah, yeah, you know,
we've got another model that's coming out right now.
You know, we're testing the market.
Some of the consumer feedback showing
that it doesn't really integrate well with this.
We're thinking we might have to modify it some.
We'll get right back to you, crickets.
This is what large companies do.
It's a reality.
And so you wanna make sure
that you're entering into a win-win situation
and in your license agreement have requirements
like X number of sales must happen
within X amount of time.
If that much sales is not done,
then you have to pay me X amount of money
to maintain the license agreement.
If you don't pay me X amount of money, the license is over.
That now opens you up
to giving the license to another party, right?
Or even better, enter into a non-exclusive license
in a specific field,
and then enter terms in the license agreement
that says you will do X amount.
If you don't, you can pay me Y.
And if you pay me Y, you can continue to license.
If you don't,
then you lose a non-exclusive license agreement.
You see the power of that?
Now, all of a sudden you can license to multiple parties.
Nobody can lock up your technology
and you'll find somebody who truly wants to work with you
and go forward.
But that license agreement should be a win-win agreement.
All right, any questions on that?
I just kind of touched base on licenses,
but some of you guys are negotiating.
trying to figure out who's going to be my partner?
Who am I going to work with?
Who am I going to hire?
Like some of you are starting to get busy
and you're trying to figure out,
well, what if I hire a third party on Fiverr
or hire some other entity?
What do I do?
What do I need in the agreement with that party
to make sure that I own everything?
These are the kinds of things
that we're kind of touching base on
because a lot of you are moving forward,
you know, in that in case you miss.
All right.
Oh, the non-disclosure agreement.
Yeah, so that thing's available until,
I'll probably leave it available
to like maybe Monday, Tuesday, next week.
And then we'll stop because like,
we usually sell those things for like 1500 bucks.
So if anybody does need a non-disclosure,
non-compete agreement,
we have one that we've used and tailored
and edited and edited and edited.
So it's really good.
So if you need something like that,
we're making that available to you guys
for like 500 bucks, if you guys want it.
Now you can go online and like get a generic NDA, right?
But it doesn't have a lot of the stuff
that we have in there.
So it's up to you guys.
How does it differ from the free ones on it?
Ah, that's hilarious.
I literally just said that.
And then you type that, that's hilarious.
So yeah, so a lot of the non-disclosures
that are out there are missing a lot of things.
Like they miss indemnification agreements,
they miss non-compete provisions.
So if you're disclosing something to another party,
it's missing a lot of the provisions on what happens
with the technology going forward.
Maybe tell us reasons why we need one.
We don't realize we do.
Okay, so who here knows what a non-disclosure agreement is?
Just by a show of hands.
Okay, some people don't.
Okay, all right.
So if you, and this will be the last thing we cover
because, well, we had interference with technology.
So I'm just throwing in some extra time.
All right, so if you're going to meet with a third party
over what you're doing and you don't want the public
to know about what you're doing,
you wanna control the disclosure
of what you're doing to the public,
you can enter into what's called a non-disclosure agreement.
Okay, so let's say you're creating a book on something
and you don't want the other person to take your idea
for the book and then go write the book themselves
or hire a third party to create the book and then sell it.
You would have a non-disclosure agreement.
So now they can't disclose it to another,
but the non-compete provision says that
whatever you disclose to them,
they now cannot do that same thing
unless they can prove that they were already doing it
before you had that meeting.
Okay, so there's extra provisions
in the non-disclosure, non-compete provision
that says agreement.
I think it's like, I don't know how many pages long,
it's pretty big.
But basically what it says is that
if you can actually prove that you've been doing this thing
with actual paperwork and proof,
like literal legal proof that you've been doing it
before I disclosed it to you, then fine.
And I can't stop you from doing what you're already doing.
But if that's not the case,
you can't disclose it to a third party and you can't do it
and you can't tell another party how to do it.
Like that's how you lock up
what's proprietary to you in your negotiations.
If you instead just start having meetings with people,
hey, publisher, yeah, I've got this great idea for a book.
It's blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Are you interested?
They might say, yeah, no, we're not really interested.
And then they go speak to one of their authors and say,
hey, look, I've got a great idea for a book.
Why don't you write a book on the following?
Now their author creates a book on that thing.
And since they gave the idea to the author,
they take percentages of that, right?
Because you didn't have a non-disclosure in place
and a non-compete in place.
So that's where a non-disclosure, non-compete comes in place
is that it allows you to have these meetings
with third parties to negotiate things,
to even hire people to work on your apps,
your software, whatever materials are that you're providing.
And you don't have to worry about them competing with you
because you've locked it down.
What about non-compete in a license agreement?
Or is that usually included in a license agreement?
Good question.
Do you usually have non-competes in a license agreement?
You can add non-compete provisions in,
like I have certain license agreements
that have those provisions.
Those are pretty thick.
Like usually in a license agreement,
you'll have things like what you're trying to accomplish,
what they're trying to accomplish,
the royalties that are being exchanged back and forth,
who has legal rights.
into the technology, but then if one party does modification
to the technology, who has the legal rights
to that technology?
The licensee is getting indemnification provisions,
basically saying, look, if I do the things,
if I use what you're providing, you're
going to waive any liability that I receive because I'm
using what you gave me.
So there's indemnification provisions.
Now, nondisclosure, non-compete, you
can have nondisclosure provisions in a license
agreement that talks about the know-how,
like the language is know-how.
If you're talking about the procedures that
are done internally, you can have a nondisclosure agreement
that says, look, I'm going to be disclosing to you our trade
secrets or how we do things internally.
You hereby agree that you will not
let any third party know about these things.
So you totally can do that in a license agreement.
Now, a license agreement, I've got patent license agreements,
software license agreements, trademark license agreements,
copyright license agreements.
These things are verbose.
They're big.
I mean, you're talking like 10, 15 pages, 20 pages.
They're detailed.
You don't want a two-page license agreement
because there's too many things that
can go wrong in a relationship with another party
to use what you're providing.
Too many things that can go wrong.
Your license agreement should be anticipating
any of those issues and resolving those issues
before they happen.
That's what a license agreement does.
It makes sure that I'm going to be entering
into an agreement with, let's say, Carol.
And I know Carol is ridiculously brilliant.
She's very connected.
She has great networks.
She's a great coach.
I want to license to her, make sure she does well financially.
I do well financially.
But at the same time, I don't want her taking what I did
and incorporate what I did into her own program
and not send me a royalty.
So my license agreement should address that situation.
It should make it very clear.
There's provisions in a license agreement
that talk about what's called confidential information.
And that can be everything from client lists to inventions
to methods to systems to apparatus.
It could be all sorts of things in a definition of what
confidential information is.
So all of that basically to say, in your license agreements,
make sure they're win-win.
You can't have non-disclosure, non-competes
in your license agreement.
License agreements cost way more
than a non-disclosure, non-compete,
which is $500.
License agreement will cost you $5,000, $8,000,
depending on the complexity of the license agreement
and the negotiation that takes place in that process.
But a license agreement, a good license agreement,
will lead to a long-term relationship
that should be very, very financially rewarding for you.
Any questions on that?
And then I think we'll close from there.
Is that good?
OK, cool, cool.
All right, I think we'll close there.
So again, on the membership stuff,
if you guys are coming up on expiration
or you've already expired, not you expired,
your membership expired, then we're
going to reach out to you.
And you can renew.
It's going to be either at that rate or lower.
It's my pleasure, Carol.
And so some of you have already renewed.
Some of you are coming up for renewal.
I think what I'm going to do for the next Protection Portal
session is I'm going to get a corporate lawyer to come in
and talk with you guys to answer some
of your corporate questions.
I figure since we have you guys here anyway,
this way you guys can ask general questions,
not get legal advice, obviously, but at the same time
drink water.
But at the same time, it applies to your business.
And I want to provide you any resource
that I can as a business to be very successful.
So if you're seeing that you're running into specific issues
and you don't know somebody in a specific field, let me know.
I'm very blessed with some pretty remarkable networks
and pretty remarkable contacts.
And so I can get people from anywhere
from the copyright office, the patent office.
I could probably even get the director of the United States
Patent and Trademark Office to show up,
were it not the fact that I think he put you to sleep.
But anyways, if there's certain things that you want to know,
things that you need, let let me know. And then what I'll do in
I'll be happy to talk to you guys.
the Facebook group is I'll go in there. And I'll say, and I'll
And I'll be happy to answer any questions you have.
say to, you know, to other people, hey, do you have
interest in this, and there's enough interest, and I'll get
somebody who specifically is in that area. Sonya, is this your
first protection portal meeting? This is your second, right? Your
third? Okay, cool. It's Pam's first, right? Pam, does your
camera work?
Yeah, it does. Oh, I have to hang on. I don't know why it's
not working. Oh, I see. I have to click. Sorry. You can see my
what? It's not working.
There you are. Pam, everybody want to introduce you to Pam.
She's a new member in the group. We had a few different people
that actually joined us in the last challenge. Pam's one of
them. Pam, do you want to take a minute and just say who you are
what you do? And we'll take it from there.
Yeah, I'm starting a publishing business. And I applied for an
LLC in Wyoming, and I was just going to go on to the trademark
USPTO, whatever, POT, whatever, to see if I can trademark the
name of the LLC. And I already got a domain name. But the one
name that I'm naming my LLC, unfortunately, is being hoarded
by one of those, you know, scalpers that a few thousand
dollars for it, which really pisses me off. But I suppose
eventually, if I ever make enough money with this
publishing business, I'll have to cave but so I so right now
it's known as the dot dot dot group. And that's my email.
Do you have you been using that name already? Or is that
something you're going to use?
Well, I, I haven't really used it, per se.
All right. The reason why I asked that is because under what
you're talking about takes me off a lot. Like it bothers me
when that happens. And so I actually, it's one of my sweet
spots. So what I actually train people on is, if you actually
own the trademark, and somebody takes the domain name under the
domain name dispute policy, you can make them surrender it. You
know, all you do is like a nasty gram from a lawyer and done,
you know, and they just they just cower. But if you don't
own the trademark, then it's, it's not the case. It doesn't
work that way.
That's today's mission is to get the trademark, if it's even
possible.
Yeah, so do that trademark search online, Ray, what's up?
I'm just to answer Pam's question here, too, in the chat,
you have been emailed your access to your members portal,
it'll have our last challenge that you participated in. The
replays are in there. And then we'll be going over stuff for
you with you and your audit as well.
Okay, very good. Thank you.
But you are allowed to sit in on the next challenge, which we
Yeah, July 24. But we're not ready to tell the public. So
just wait, wait a second on that. We're working on getting
it ready.
You guys actually find out about everything way before others.
And we just got hired by I mean, God permitting it all plays
through but we got hired by Ohio State to create a curriculum for
them to create like an online course for them. And so we're
going to provide a not as comprehensive as a protector idea
challenge, it's it's going to be more of, I'm going to do a
free challenge for people. That is basically, you know,
congratulations, you're an entrepreneur. Do you need to
know what IP is? That's it just at a top level. Right? Not not,
not like doing what we do in the protector idea challenge, but
just saying like, alright, what exactly is your focus as an
entrepreneur is IP and even an even important issue to you at
all. Like, so you know, if you're creating new inventions,
but they're obsolete within a year, who cares? Like, don't
file patents, waste of time, waste of money, trade secrets
don't even apply. Don't even bother, like just kind of
flagging things. So people as entrepreneurs can say, oh,
that's important. Oh, that's not important. So we're going to do
that. But any member of the protection portal gets to go
into any protector idea challenge for free for the
so just so I don't wander around and waste too much time. Once I
go for a clearing search, then is there any instructions on the
portal? What to do after that?
Yeah, so you're did you do the IP audit? Not yet. Okay, but but
you signed up for the foundations and IP package,
right? Correct. Yeah, so it's all covered. So you're will do
a search for you.
we'll also do an application for you at no cost.
It's all covered.
I feel the urgency of it now after listening to today.
Yeah, so the beauty of the foundations and IP packages,
and it's funny because Pedro actually spoke into this thing
where we created this package and we had an IP audit,
but then he said, well, every time you do an audit,
people are asking questions about, you know,
names of their company.
Why don't you throw in a trademark?
I was like, what do you mean just throw it in, man?
It costs money to do these things.
You don't just throw them in.
He's like, no, just throw that in.
So we threw in the trademark certs,
we threw in the application and he's like,
well, everybody, like now that they've learned
what their issues are through the audit, you know,
they're gonna wanna be in your portal.
Like they always wanna be in the portal
because now during the year they can ask their questions
and not be charged 600 bucks an hour.
So why don't you throw in the portal?
I was like, I gotta go, bye, click.
I'm like, I gotta stop talking to this guy.
And he's just like, throw this in, throw that in.
I'm like, geez.
So in any case, for you, the way you have,
you can email support at elite-challenges.com
if you have any questions,
but the scheduling of the IP audit,
Ray will help you, you know, schedule that.
When you're ready to do a trademark application,
just let us know and we'll go down the route
of doing the quick search for you
and then, you know, getting the application.
We'll send you a form for filling out for the application
and we'll walk you through that as well.
Okay.
And Pam, in your email inbox,
I sent you an engagement letter
that I need signed and returned
and then we can work towards getting you scheduled.
That's weird.
That's for all the legal work, yeah.
Yeah.
I signed a listing agreement yesterday
and it didn't get sent.
And I think I signed yours too, Ray, but I'll check.
Okay.
Maybe something's going on with my computer or something.
I don't know.
And just a heads up, because our meeting is long,
everyone be patient.
I will get the replay in the members portal
as soon as possible.
Oh, I know.
Yeah.
It's going to take a long time to process.
This is the longest we've done ever, actually.
Eileen, what's up?
Yeah, but it's good stuff.
Okay.
My quick question is,
so I've got the trademark in process, right, with you.
So I didn't realize that my logo was,
it's ready and I'm going to need it by like July 15th.
So what would be the timeframe?
Is there an urgency to protect that?
Is there, is it a you thing?
Is it a me thing?
And then the LLC.
So your logo,
I know there were two different ones you were looking at.
Did you decide which one you're going with?
Yeah.
So I got all the files.
So all of the recitation of services
are going to be exactly the same
because the logo is being used
for the same purpose as the word mark, right?
So all I need,
all I would need from you then for the filing,
we're going to file an intent to use application.
So what you would do is send in
the formal final version of the logo.
That's it.
I don't need anything else
because everything else is going to mimic the word mark.
So just take like a really high,
high end, you know, high quality image,
but the USPTO, let me check and see.
The USPTO actually has certain regulations
as to what the DPIs can be.
So just send me what you got,
make sure it's black and white.
Can't be anything but black and white.
And for everybody here, when you file logos,
file them in black and white, don't file them in color.
Black and white covers everything that's in color.
But if you file in color,
it doesn't cover everything that's in color.
Not only covers that color.
So if you file in black and white, you get everything.
That's kind of a secret to the industry.
So, but nobody will tell you that.
So that's why you always file black and white.
When do you, the intent to use and the use,
when does that transition?
Yeah, so when you actually start using the trademark
in interstate commerce, right?
You're doing sales.
What you would want to do is,
if the logo is being used on packaging
or the logo is being used on product
or the logo is being used associated with a service,
the way it works is that if it's a product,
the logo would have to be on the product
or the packaging of the product.
If it's a service, then the logo would have to be used
in a manner advertising the service
where a party can purchase the service.
Okay, so let's say as an example,
like I own a protection portal, right?
So for a specimen for protection portal,
I actually used the funnel that says protection portal on it
mentions what's included in the protection portal
and gives the option to buy it.
That was a good specimen and received by them
and accepted, right?
So if you're using the logo for, let's say wine, right?
So then that logo would have to be on the product.
And then if you're using the logo for, let's say wine,
go on the packaging, right, either on the box
or on the wine itself, right?
right?
So then that logo would have to be on the product.
And then you ship, you send me a, you don't ship,
And then if you're using the logo for, let's say wine,
then you ship me some wine.
No, then you actually send me the picture.
Don't, it's all over it, where is she?
Do you notice that subliminal message?
Then you ship me wine.
No, then you actually, after you do that,
you can, you just send me that image,
the picture of the label on the product,
and then we would file that.
Now, if you are going to start shipping product
like in two weeks, wait, you know,
till you ship your first product, you know,
and then, or you can take a picture of it now,
and the second that you actually have your first order,
then you're actually using it in interstate commerce,
and we could file from that day,
and we use that date as the date of first use
in interstate commerce, right?
So if it's gonna be very soon,
then you don't have to pay the money for the petition.
Like there's a petition that would have to be filed later
to change an intent to use application
to an actual use application.
You don't have to pay that
if you're gonna be using it very shortly.
You can just-
So just dump the whole intent to use, go right to-
If it's gonna be very soon,
like if it's gonna be very soon,
and you're not concerned about somebody stealing it,
you know, right away.
So let's say within two weeks,
you're gonna start selling wine using the logo, right?
Then what you do is you take a picture of the bottle
with the logo on it, right?
Well, the packaging with the logo on it,
and you send me that picture,
then separately, you send me just the logo itself,
not as a picture, but as a, you know, a PDF or JPEG,
and we use that as the logo image,
and then we use the specimen as the picture
of the wine with the logo on it.
Those are filed together in one application
with the date of first use in interstate commerce.
So you don't have to change it
from a section 1B application to a 1A.
It becomes an actual use application.
Okay.
Yeah.
All right.
You're welcome.
Samuel, last question, and we're done.
Yeah.
Awesome.
Related to what you were talking to Carol about,
can you, I think you call it a demand.
If you can, if you register a trademark,
do you now have rights to that domain
if somebody is holding it?
Like, do you make a demand?
Not until you get a federal registration.
But you can afterwards?
Yes, after you get, well, all right.
So that's a really good question.
So let's say somebody else is using the domain name,
and then you file a trademark application,
and then you get a federal registration.
Can you go backwards now and say,
well, now I own this and you can't use it?
I'm not 100%.
Let me double check on that.
Okay.
I'll double check and I'll post it in the Facebook group
because I'm not 100% on that.
I don't think that would be fair.
Like if somebody has been using a domain name,
and then all of a sudden I'm like,
oh man, I should file a federal registration
for that same name.
And then I go back and I say, hey, you can't use it
because I have a federal registration.
I don't think that'd be fair,
but I'll double check and I'll post it in the Facebook group.
Awesome.
Thank you.
Yeah, you're welcome.
Yes, Rae.
I have a question back to Eileen's,
is if you have an intent to use application,
when you file that petition,
do you have to do it, submit it before you get
that first sale or do you do it right after?
So it has, you have to actually already be using
it in interstate commerce.
Now that can be,
there's a number of different things
that they say could qualify, but sales always qualify.
Right?
So I would wait, you actually do an actual sale,
boom, that's your date, done.
Right?
Now there's two dates that you're actually providing
on a trademark application.
There's your date of use in interstate commerce,
and then there's your date of use anywhere.
That means even internally.
So let's say that you've been using a name
within your company for a year and a half,
and you ever filed a trademark application,
you list that date that you used it internally,
plus the date that you had to start sales,
you use that date as well.
Use both.
Okay.
I think that's enough for today.
That was like two hours in change of IP.
I'm impressed.
You guys are like a sponge.
That's awesome.
So, oh, thank you, Rae.
Yeah, I love you guys.
I want to see you guys.
I hope you be incredibly successful.
If you're in situations, again,
where you've got a lot going on,
you're trying to figure out what to do first, second, third,
is this, what is, do I need protection here? Do I not? Do I spend money here? Do I not? Do I partner
with this party? Do I hire this service? Whatever it is. And you want to have like, like an opportunity
to go through all this thing at once. That's what the IP audit is. That's what the foundations and
IP packages. I know for some of you that did not exist back in the day when you first became a
member of the protection portal. So if you're coming up for renewal, you may want to take
advantage of that because the protection portal is provided for free to members who take the
foundations and IP package because the foundation... For a year. For one year. Yeah. For one year.
Now, I mean, we have members of the protection portal that are lifetime members.
Like that actually came up in the chat today. Yeah. So there, there are a number of people
that were like very smart in the beginning and they're like, hold it. I'm, I'm running my business,
you know, and, and I know I'm not going to stop and I'm going to keep having questions and I don't
want to pay a lawyer. So, so I want to be in here forever. So if that's something you're interested
in, we could talk about that. We haven't really, we did that once and I haven't really readdressed
that, but so separate from that, that's what the foundations and IP packages, it allows you to get
that one-on-one time. Like Sonia is going to have this week where we literally just go through
everything. But separate from that, we also try to hear from the Lord in the process. And
I can't promise anything in that area. I'm just amazed at what happens. I mean,
anybody who's done it can speak towards what actually happens. And it's it's not us. Honestly,
it's not us. I think it's just like, it's just amazing that there's like something's happening.
So it's pretty cool. So I'll leave it there because it doesn't feel right to be talking
about that stuff. So, all right, so bless you guys. Have a great week. If you have questions
again, support at Alita-challenges.com or type it in the Facebook group and we'll get back to
them. So I'll catch you guys later. Bless you guys. Take care.