All right. Fantastic. So welcome to day five of VIP. We are going to dig in a little bit
into patent searching. And also I want to kind of touch base a little more on trademark
searching because I had a number of questions on trademarks and trademark searching. And
then I'll take a few questions on that and then we'll close. And I think the search will
probably take about 10 minutes. I want to show all of you what it looks like. Just out
of curiosity, how many people here are dealing with like technology or something that might
be protectable under patent law? Just so I know, because there's not a lot of people
dealing with that, then I don't need to spend a lot of time on this. So it doesn't look
like...
Is your question about are we dealing with patent law or is your question are we dealing
with technology?
If you're dealing with technology, quite often you're dealing with something novel in technology,
which patents would be involved in that.
Right, right. What I mean is I have a non-technology novel creation that I have almost finished
making. So a patent would be...
Are you interested in patent stuff?
Yeah, that would be... I think that would be around the patent stuff, but it's not technology.
That's what my question was.
All right, let me go to USPTO.gov. I'll show all of you how to do a patent search. It's
kind of tricky. They changed the format of everything. So it's not as simple as it used
to be on the USPTO website. So what you do is you go to My USPTO again, log in. You don't
have to do this to use it. I do it because I want to access certain things that I think
are helpful. But under patents, you can do search with patent public search.
Then you can do a basic search. And from here, you can type in what you want in different
fields. So if you know the applicant's name, like let's say as an example, you want to
see all the new patents that are filed by Sony. You can do a search for Sony. And these
are patents that are filed by Sony. So you can actually see if that company has filed
any patents. So let's say you have a competitor and you're concerned that they might be protecting
their technology. So you want to see whether or not you can do something that competes
with that company, either a system or a method that competes with that company. You might
want to search that company's name and see, OK, do they in fact own the process that they're
using? If they do, then you want to be careful about that. You don't want to step into an
area where you are. Ray, I just made you co-host. You don't want to step into an area where
you are utilizing a technology of another company and they have patents on it. It's
better for you to know this way in advance. So you can actually go in here, look up, and
for the company name, it would be the Assignee because the applicant name would be, you can
file in the name of a company as the applicant, but typically what happens is different inventors
assign a right title and interest to a company. So then the Assignee would be the company.
So you search on the Assignee and you'll notice that there's similar results. Like the first
result is semiconductor device, blah, blah, blah. If you look under applicant name,
search, oops, applicant name, Sony, search,
you'll see there it is, semiconductor device and method. So the same patents will show up
for applicant name and for Assignee because in Sony's case, they assign all right title and
interest for the patent over to the company, which begs the question of in general for IP,
should you be assigning all right title and interest for the IP over to your company,
yes or no? So it goes back to that thing that we talked about in the beginning, which is,
do you want the tax write-off? Do you want to make sure that the company has the right
to perform certain actions on behalf of the technology, or do you want to maintain all
rights yourself? These are the questions you want to ask before you go assigning things.
One of the examples I gave earlier was a really, really, really good friend of mine who spent over
10 years building a company that was worth millions upon millions of dollars and the
board of the company voted her out and there was nothing she could do. You never want to be in a
situation.
like that ever. I mean you're putting your heart and soul into your business. You want to make
sure it's successful and other people can't kick you out. And one of the ways you do that is make
sure that your corporate formation documents don't give all rights to the board. Like you don't want
to be in a situation where your board can fire you as the president of the company, which happened
to her. But then separate from that, you want to make sure you maintain certain rights over your
own IP. So for that reason what you could do is create a first entity, assign all right title and
interest to the IP to the first entity, and then have that entity that you wholly own assign rights
or license rights to the company. So you don't actually have to have everything directly assigned
to the company. You can put it into a holding company and then license the rights over to the
company. And then maintain control over the holding company so nobody can kick you out.
If they kick you out of the big company, well good luck using the technology because you need the
rights to use the technology from me or you need the rights to the trademarks or the copyrights
from me because I'm the owner of the holding company. The holding company owns the IP, which
means you can kick me out, but that means you just lost all rights to do anything as a company.
That's how you maintain ownership of things and that's how you get by tax write-offs. Give me one
second, Ray. That's how you get by tax write-offs and that's how you make sure you're not personally
liable for things. Yeah, go ahead, Ray. I actually just met a woman two days ago who was telling me
how she was on a board on a company and one of the board members held their IP. He charged them
millions for it. I was like, it was all in his name, wasn't it? She was like, yep. I was like,
that's exactly what we teach. That's what you do. When you're creating something that's really
important to you and you're building a company based on that and you're the one that received
the revelation on the technology, you're the one that hired the right individuals,
built up the technology, how silly of it is to just give it away. Yeah, he tried to charge them
$50 million for the IP rights back. Yeah, and just to be clear, this is not uncommon. IP
is what gives the company the right to do certain things because whoever owns the IP
gets to stop others from making, using, selling, or importing. If that company doesn't have the
legal rights, they can't make you sell or import that thing in the patent. They can't use that
trademark. They can't use the text in that book or they can't sell that e-course because you're
the creator. There's a lot of brilliant people that are here right now, so don't give away your
stuff. Now, what if you're an employee? This is one thing I wanted to cover.
What if you're an employee at a certain place? There are certain laws that speak towards
if you're creating something in your work environment, you're getting paid to work
on that thing, you're using the work's equipment. There's law that's speaking towards anything
that's created that belongs to the employer. In fact, if you look at your employee agreements,
a lot of employee agreements speak towards this very issue, so be very careful. If you're a think
tank, there are people that are think tanks, people that just get hired because these people
are always creating. They're just brilliant. They're always creating.
If you're one of those kind of people, the last thing you want to be doing is being hired by a
company that says every single thing that you ever create or you ever think about is owned by the
company unless they're paying you a million plus a year. If that's the case, hey, no problem.
You know what? I will be your think tank. I'll come in. I will think about all sorts of stuff.
I'll spit out these great ideas, and I'll go home, and I'll get paid $1.5 million a year.
There are people that do that, but what you don't want to do is you end up being the person who's
the inventor on certain technology. You go over to a second company because that second company sees
just how brilliant you are, and then you disclose something. They take it, and now that they've got
it, they don't know that they really need you. Just be careful. I've had many, many, many calls
over my career where people were in really unfortunate situations where they got hired
by a company. They brought their own technology to the company. The company
The company tapped into it, said it was theirs.
The company filed the patent on the technology,
and then the person is going, hold it, that's mine.
Like, that was my idea.
And then the company says, yeah, that's why we hired you.
And you defer the development on it in our place.
Therefore, we own the IP,
like figured this stuff out beforehand.
And the same thing if you have employees.
If you're an employer,
you wanna make sure that your employees
have to assign it to the company.
You're on the other side of the spectrum, right?
But you might wanna be fair about it.
You might wanna kind of incorporate
some kind of agreement with people that says,
if we file a patent application
for anything that you create,
you get $2,000 upfront for the filing.
And if the patent issues,
we'll give you a $3,000 bonus or whatever it is.
You come up with some kind of compensation plan
so people feel inspired
and led to not only create,
but to disclose to you as they're creating.
Otherwise, what you end up with is a bunch of engineers
who come up with great ideas
and they don't wanna do anything with it
because they're like, well, I'm not getting anything out of
this, I'm getting paid $25 an hour
and I'm sitting behind a desk.
And anytime I come up with something that's worth millions,
I still get $25 an hour.
So no, I'm not gonna disclose these things.
So come up with incentive plans
that make people want to help.
All right, so going back to this form here,
what you've got is you can select your applicant name
or your assignee name.
You're not really gonna use the attorney firm.
I mean, if you wanna look at patents that I filed,
you can look them up here.
Your inventor name is another one you can look up.
So there's a lot of different fields you can look under.
But one of the things I tell people to do
is to look under the technology.
So I would just use everything.
Let's say like bicycle, no, bicycle, right?
Bicycle, bicycle.
All right, and then I do a quick search.
Now I'm getting all these patents
that have to do with bicycles.
Like bicycle drive train, reputation score assignment
for vehicle-based communications,
all these things have the word bicycle in there somewhere.
And you can go in and you can be more specific.
Like you could say,
say like a moped, moped, that's moped.
Now you're looking up.
Did you notice how when I typed in moped,
bicycle came up, see that?
That happens.
That's why searching on the United States
Patent and Trademark Office is not the best.
It's a good way if you're sitting back
and you're thinking I can do some searching on my own
to keep costs down.
It's a great first cut at it.
But once you get to the point where you're looking
at a really important technology of your company
and you wanna pursue it, I would hire a professional.
Just to be clear, I've written patents for 25 years.
I've written over a thousand patents.
I have prosecuted patents for MIT, Harvard,
solo entrepreneurs to like multi-billion dollar
corporations.
And when I came up with my own invention, I hired a lawyer.
I had somebody draft it.
And then I reviewed it and edited it myself afterwards.
Why?
Because I wanted somebody else's view.
I knew how important it was.
And I said, let me get another perspective
on what I'm doing because I'm seeing it this way,
but they'll see it that way.
So I said, let me see them do the draft.
And then I reworked it all and came out with something
that was very powerful.
So for that, that's what I would do is make sure
you hire the right people.
Like if my tooth hurts, I'm not gonna go and do,
you know, give myself some kind of filling.
Like I go to a dentist.
So get somebody who's good at what they do.
It's probably a bad idea to do otherwise.
So this is the site.
This is where you can do it.
If somebody gives you a patent number,
you can type in the patent number there, look for it,
or you can search by subject matter in there,
or you can search for an applicant or an assignee,
all in the same place.
Really simple site.
And I will, let me do this.
I'll just drop in the chat the link for this piece.
That's the link to actually go in there
and do searching yourself, okay?
All right.
Let me stop sharing that.
Okay.
So that was the first thing I wanted to cover.
We just talked about how to do a patent search, all right?
That's on the USPTO website.
It's free.
Free is good.
We like free.
Just keep that in mind.
You can use it yourself.
Now on the.
Trademark searching side, I had a few questions
that I received.
So I wanna see if anybody has any other questions
on the trademark searching side.
One of them was, if you've got two words,
if your trademark is two words
and somebody else uses the words together,
can they get away from trademark infringement?
The answer is no.
If the words are in their trademark, it's a problem.
Now, if what they have, it's five words
and you use one of the five words,
there's a way lower chance of trademark infringement,
like exponentially low.
So if the trademark is like Microsoft Excel
software platform, and you decide to use
like the word Microsoft,
the problem is the word Microsoft is so well known,
you're gonna run into problems.
But if there's a bunch of generic words in there,
like software platform that they're disclaiming,
you can use those, you're not gonna run into problems.
Okay, they're not gonna be issues.
Does anybody have any questions on trademark searches
or patent searches before we go on?
I just wanna make sure of this
because this is an easy tool, it's a simple tool,
you can use it yourself
and you don't wanna walk into infringement issues.
Nobody?
Okay.
All right, so we'll close on that.
Adelaine, you had a question last time when we closed,
do you remember it?
All right, so why don't we start out with you?
Yeah, I actually have three questions,
so I don't know whether I can ask all of them
and if so, do you want them all at once
or do you wanna do them one by one?
Well, start out with one, go ahead.
Okay, all right.
This is kind of like, I'm in Australia, right?
So everything that you've shared with USPTO,
I don't know what's relevant for me,
like, we have our own IP office,
so I'm just wondering if I'm doubling
and it's strange because my whole thing is online.
So what do I do with everything that you've taught
about USPTO, trademark, patents and all of that
because I know that applies to the US
and then from the US international,
but I'm from Australia and then Australia international,
so if you can comment, that'd be great.
Copy, paste.
Well, you are very fortunate
because I deal with prosecution around the world.
I don't think there's a country that I haven't,
well, no, there are some countries that I haven't dealt with
but most countries of the world,
including Australia, I have worked with.
So what I'm gonna share with you are a few things.
Let me see if I can, why can't I see it on my screen yet?
Share screen, there it is.
There you are.
Hello, Australia.
There we go.
All right, this is the Australia.
I know it was bad, I know it was bad.
It was so bad.
It's so stereotypical.
It's not even Australian.
So bad, I know.
Xavier is on the Australian beach.
I like their accent, I'm sorry.
It's like one of my favorite accents.
Xavier has a horrible one too.
British accents and Australian accents
are like two of my absolute favorites.
So I'm a little biased, so I just like them.
All right, so here,
this is the Trademark Office website for Australia.
The Australian Trademark Office works very similar to US.
There's not a lot of differences.
Matter of fact, most countries of the world
work essentially in a very similar manner.
There's this thing called the Paris Convention.
Most countries of the world
are members of the Paris Convention.
And there's this thing called the Madrid Protocol.
A lot of the big countries that we're aware of
are members of the Madrid Protocol.
So you can file a trademark application in the United States
and within six months,
you can file that same trademark in a foreign country
under the Madrid Protocol.
It's actually called a CTM application.
So what I'll do is I'll actually get you
more information on this,
but personally, I can get you more information on this.
But what you're doing is you wanna file within six months.
That's the way it works.
So if you file in the US,
if you wanna maintain that original filing date,
file within six months.
It has to be within six months.
If you file after six months,
you lose your priority date, okay?
So Australia has an awesome trademark system.
There are no problems with it.
I have agents in Australia that I work with personally.
So if you get in a bind,
we can put you with the right lawyer.
We can tell you exactly what to do.
But in general, the rules are the same.
Like it's not like they're completely different rules.
still identifications of a source of goods, you still can file a logo, you still can file a word
mark, you know, there as well. The thing with Canada is different in that Canada spends more
time. Like if you file in the United States trademark application, it takes you about 10
months to get a first office action or allowance. In Canada, it takes about three years.
That's a long time. So if you're going to seek rights in Canada, I usually tell people, okay,
start using your TM immediately. Let the public know about them immediately.
Now, certain countries have certain unique things that they do. Like in the United States,
we use like SM for a service mark. Certain countries like use certain different things.
So the best thing that you can do is I would say in general, most of the rules are similar,
except for in the patent world. In the patent world, foreign countries have an absolute
non-disclosure, non-publication requirement to file a patent, right? Australia is one of them.
So before you go disclosing your invention, be careful because you can lose the right to file
anything in Australia, just by the fact that you have a publication. Now, one thing that is cool
about Australia, which is different from the United States is that in Australia, if you add,
oh, I need to preface this. So this is not legal advice. Seek out your local Aussie and ask them
to help you out like with what to file and what not to file. Okay. Because they will know better
than I will. But the situation is that you can actually use a non-disclosure agreement
and have a meeting with somebody disclosing the invention for countries outside the U.S.
and it's not considered a disclosure because it's under an NDA. That's only in foreign countries.
In the United States, that doesn't work. In the United States, whether you have an NDA in place
or you don't have an NDA in place, it's considered a public disclosure because they give you a full
year to file something. So foreign countries don't have a full year. They have an absolute
non-disclosure, non-public disclosure requirement. The United States says, no, you can disclose it,
but within a year, you need to file something. The United States is a first to file system.
And most countries in the world, including Australia, are first to file system. Okay. So
that means I come up with an idea. If my next door neighbor comes up with the same idea and
they file before me, even though I came up with the idea before them or I create the thing before
them, it doesn't matter. They filed first. That's how almost the entire world is. First to file
system. So for Australia, you just go into the site over here and you go into trademarks and you
go search existing trademarks and you can go and do a search. That's it. Okay. So that means in my
situation, I would just file with the Australian office and then do the U.S. as well, just to get
everything covered. Yeah. I mean, you can do it multiple ways. You can file the U.S. and then
file foreign countries off of it. Can you file in Australia and then do a foreign? Well, you can
file in Australia and then file in foreign countries within six months to maintain your
priority date. The question is, can you file a CTM application after filing in Australia first?
I'd have to look that up to let you know. Okay. So what a CTM application is, is basically
designating a lot of different foreign countries at once. Okay. When that application is allowed,
you go into the individual countries, right? So it's like one application gets examined.
They say, oh yeah, it's allowable. And then you get your trademark in individual countries
after that. Like in the patent world, the way it works is you file a U.S. application within
one year. You have to file any foreign patent applications. You can file what's
called a PCT application, which is called the Patent Cooperation Treaty. All members of the
Paris Convention, countries that are members of the Paris Convention are included in that.
You file one PCT application and within 30 months of the earliest priority date, meaning let's
say you filed in the U.S. on January 1st, 2020, within 30 months of that date, or two and a half
years, you then go into each individual country one by one. But you have to file your PCT application
within one year.
So there's so many nuances to this Adelaide,
make sure you work with somebody
who knows what they're doing, honestly,
because there's so many aspects of IP.
Like what I cover for everybody is,
it is deep, it is in depth,
but it's like a thousandth of what could happen.
And so it's really important to like be in an,
either in an environment or know people
that know what they're doing in this area.
Cause you mess up, like I said before,
with that example, it's gone.
Like you can't recover it.
So in your case, if you need to talk
to an Australian attorney,
I can just get you in touch with an Australian attorney.
That's what we do within the network.
We just, we share our attorneys and everything.
Okay, should I ask you the second question
or wait for, is there,
I don't know if anyone else has their hand up or?
I'll take one more before we go over, sure.
Okay, so that was all very good to know.
At the same time, I'm thinking,
I just want to like stay out of as many potential
legal minefields as possible,
or yeah, even areas where I could.
So I'm already thinking like, maybe I won't do a logo.
And we both follow Pedro.
Pedro started out, you know, with the ClickFunnels logo.
So just, you know, go in an area where you're not,
I guess, just starting out and you're just doing,
I get everything that you've taught,
the importance of protecting what you do
and then you can change things,
but then, you know, there's the branding question as well.
So what is your advice, you know,
for people who are solo and starting
and then you just want to run without having to like,
and you're not too precious about your name,
the name of the company.
You can, you're okay with changing that
because you're not that size yet.
Like, do you have any advice on that?
Yeah, I mean, I can tell you,
as somebody who's done this for a long time,
and I'm not biased because I'm in it to help people out.
I don't believe that your name is not important.
I don't believe that in any way, shape or form.
I know that there's people that will come out and say,
oh, just start making your product and start selling it.
Find out which one actually hits
and then you can actually worry about your name.
Well, the problem with that is that you have a business,
right, and so you're investing time and energy,
a lot of money, a lot of money and time
into building a business.
If you have several products
and you're not sure what to call the products,
you can call them by a series number,
like this is the X5 or this is the X7 or this is the X9.
But you can come up with random names for that, right?
And I've represented companies who have done that,
that have just, instead of coming out with a brand new name
for every single product,
they've just used like a series number,
like this is our X1 series, this is our X2, our X3,
our X4, our X5, they made it very simple, right?
And knowing that they can't protect that name.
And that's fine, if somebody wants to do something like that,
but your business, you better protect your business
because you're investing in building something.
How do you build, like I said today on Pedro's event, right?
I was one of the guest speakers on his event
in Movement Makers.
One of the things I said is,
how do you invite somebody to your house
and not give them your address?
Like, how do you do that?
Like, hey, I'm having a party,
everybody here is invited to my house this weekend,
I'm gonna have a party,
we're gonna have lobster, filet mignon,
we're gonna have boat rides, we have wave runners,
we have everything, I'll see all you guys there, okay?
Bye.
Like, you don't know the address, you don't know,
like you have to, if you believe in what you're doing,
you should at least have a name for your company.
And you can't use a descriptive name,
never use a descriptive name because,
let's say I make my company,
let's say what I do as a company is I'm a florist, right?
It's a florist.
And so I call it like the Bright Rose,
something like that, the Bright Rose, okay?
Bad name, but let's say it's the Bright Rose,
that's the name of it, okay?
I quite like it.
Oh, do you?
All right, because I'm thinking like smart people and rose,
okay, good, there you go.
So the Bright Rose, you know?
I was thinking color, bright, yeah.
Bright, yeah, so the Radiant Rose, Radiant Rose,
that might be even better, Radiant Rose.
All right, so if that's considered to be descriptive,
that means anybody can use that name, like anybody.
So what happens?
So now somebody comes up and we're building a client base,
people wanna work with.
Adelaide because she's reputable,
she cares about her people, and when
she says she's going to do something, she does it.
Even to her own detriment, she'll make sure it's done.
Those are important qualities.
And she works at the Radiant Rose or the Bright Rose.
So along comes Stephen.
Stephen says, I'm going to use the Bright Rose.
So now Stephen opens up his place one town over.
Now somebody hears, man, the Bright Rose
is a great place to get a bouquet to send to somebody.
And they'll do it the same day, and their costs are reasonable,
and the quality is really good.
So now they do a quick search, and they see,
oh, there's the Bright Rose.
And they call up Stephen's company.
And Stephen gets all these sales.
Why?
Because he's using your name.
But then separate from that, it's not just about us.
When we're called to build something,
it's not just about us.
It's about the people and their experience.
So all these people that had this great impression of,
oh, there's going to be this amazing bouquet.
It's going to be on time.
It's going to look great.
I'm going to use them for my wedding anniversary
because I totally forgot about it.
And it's like 11 o'clock in the morning.
I need somebody to deliver now.
And it needs to look good.
And I know that the Bright Rose is the place to go.
So they look up, and they see Stephen.
They call up Stephen.
Stephen couldn't care less.
When you call Stephen, it actually goes to 1-800-Flowers.
1-800-Flowers takes the order and ships them out
in a cardboard box.
It's usually late.
Some of their roses are decrepit and just look horrible.
And so this person, this guy who totally forgot,
it's probably his own fault, but this guy
who forgot about his anniversary,
who hired the Radiant Rose or the Bright Rose,
went to Stephen because the name that you chose
is a descriptive name that anybody can use.
So you can't protect a descriptive name.
Is that what you're saying?
You cannot protect a descriptive name.
It has to be, you either want a name that is,
there's a few different things you can look at.
Either something that is suggestive,
like suggestive of an experience
that somebody will have through using your service,
or you could have something that just, quite frankly,
it's just not descriptive.
So if Bright Rose is, when you look at the roses,
they're all bright in color,
and you call it the Bright Rose,
somebody else could use that name.
So now Stephen is getting all these calls,
and all these people, their marriages are crashing,
and it's horrible, and they're ending up divorced
because you didn't file a trademark.
Do you feel bad now yet?
I'm just kidding.
A little.
Can you trademark your name?
Like, should you do that?
Like, if you're using that as a business
and that's a name that they trust, I don't know.
You mean like your personal name?
Personal name, yeah.
Yeah, so the way it works is
if you want to own your own personal name,
you need to be famous, but I've seen people file
for like, as an example, Nieves Law Group, right?
Nieves IP.
My name's Peter Nieves.
Now, arguably, and I say this humbly,
I'm pretty well-known, right?
Like, if you type in my name, it's all over the place.
If you just type in Peter Nieves and patent,
it's all over, right?
So I likely qualify
for filing a trademark application for my name,
but most people don't fall into that category
because they're not quote-unquote famous.
Now, you could use that name with something else though.
So let's say you decide to create like, you know, Adelaine.
Let's say you're doing a florist shop
and you're like, Adelaine's Brilliant Rose
or whatever it is, right?
So you have your first name and then other stuff.
That might be trademarkable
because it's part of something else.
It's not a loan.
So there's a possibility, there's a possibility.
The examiner might come back and say,
hold it, is that your name?
And then, oh yeah,
we're not gonna let you register your name.
So you might run into a rejection there,
but as a general rule,
if you're trying to own your own personal name,
you've gotta be at the caliber of being famous
to own your name, right?
Otherwise, and I think part of the reason for that
is what I think.
I mean, I don't have proof of this,
but I believe the reason for that
is because people's names,
they're not typically the only person that has your name.
So if you end up owning your name,
nobody else can own their own name.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
So now all of a sudden.
and I own Peter.
Any Peter that tries to do anything with the name Peter
in my area of goods and services
would infringe my trademark when their name is Peter.
That doesn't seem fair.
So I believe that's likely the reason why
they won't let us trademark our own names
unless we're famous like Grant Cardone, like Trump.
You know, Trump, he owns his name in business.
Like I have Trump ties, his ties are amazing.
Like they look, they're high quality,
like the colors are amazing.
You know, I think he wears his tie way too long personally,
but that's a whole other story.
I'm just saying, it looks like he could strangle somebody
across the street with how long his ties are,
but that's his own style.
I can't say anything about that.
He's doing way better than I am financially.
So, but all of that, basically to say,
you know, on the Australian side,
if you need somebody to refer you,
if you're trying to protect your name,
if you try to do that with something else in it,
you might be able to get the registration.
Don't go after something that's descriptive.
It's not gonna get registered.
It's gonna get rejected.
And it'd be a waste of money, quite frankly.
This is why, like when we do this,
when we do this audit thing,
one of the things that I find a lot of people doing
is they ask to do a trademark search live.
That's one of the things that people do a lot.
In fact, Ray and I did one where somebody did something
like 12 different trademark searches.
And I even told him, I said,
you know, we can do other things while we're here.
He's like, no, I want every single search done right.
So, and I was like, all right.
And so we did like literally 12 straight trademark searches.
And we're like, nope, that doesn't work.
Do this one.
Nope, this is definitely, this one.
Nope.
And then there was one that was good.
And we went into the Wayback Machine
and we went into Google and all this other stuff.
And we're like, nope, there's this company there.
So, you know, you can use it any way you want.
You know, these things, it's yours.
You can do whatever you want.
But I would stay away from descriptive.
I would try not to use your own name
because you won't be able to own it
unless there's something unique after it.
And if you can do something suggestive
of what the person's experience is in using your service,
those are usually the absolute best trademarks
because they're called suggestive trademarks.
So when somebody sees your trademark,
they have an expectation of an experience, right?
So let's say the road, the floor shop,
you know, instead you call it something like,
oh gosh, I don't know.
Captivated smile or something just to be suggestive
of what you experience in ordering from their place.
You know, that's suggestive.
Those are the most powerful trademarks in the world.
The ones that suggest like Nike.
Why do you think they came up with the name for Nike
for sneakers?
Easy to remember.
I don't know.
Nike is actually a, it's either a Greek or a Roman God.
It's a messenger.
He's extremely fast, extremely fast.
And so it's not a coincidence
that they use the name Nike as a sneaker line
to be suggestive of this Greek God or Roman God
who's a messenger,
who is able to get to a first,
from a first location to a second location
so fast that no human can actually
be able to keep up with him.
It's a suggestive mark.
So you, when you create your trademarks,
it's nice to come up with something suggestive
of the experience that they're going to have
or something for them to reference.
Make sense?
Yeah, no, fantastic ideas.
Thank you.
Yeah, you're welcome.
I'll raise my hand and get in the back of the queue.
Yeah.
Yeah, sure.
Let me go to Nadine.
How are you?
I'm good, thank you.
Sure, good, good.
What's your question?
My question, one is, you know,
a feedback off of Adeline's question.
And then the first one was,
can you speak a little bit more about things
shared on the website and around implications
regarding going back to create like a copyright
or trademark, going back to copyright or trademark items.
And also along the lines of what Adeline was asking,
what about the name of a company?
that the tagline is the meaning of the name.
All right, so let's start out with your first question
because I didn't quite understand it.
Rephrase your first question.
Okay.
I was asking you if you could speak a little bit more
about, earlier in the session,
you were speaking about being careful
what you share on websites
and things that you write and so forth
that's on your websites or on Facebook
or other social media platforms.
Yes.
So being careful about what you put on your website.
You want me to speak more towards that?
Right, and so, yes, speak more towards that.
And what I want to know is what's the ramifications?
If you know there are things that you've placed
on your website in regards to what you're doing,
like you've spelled out certain things,
what's the ramifications in terms of going back
to protect that stuff using copyrights or trademarks?
Okay, all right, well, let's start at the beginning.
So for patent purposes,
you don't want to disclose your invention on your website
because that's a public disclosure.
So you don't want to do that.
That's very clear.
Just if you have a new invention,
do not disclose it on your website
unless you file something.
If you want to obtain legal rights under patent law.
Otherwise, it's considered a publication.
It's readily available to the public.
It's described in it.
So somebody of ordinary skill in the art can practice it.
Somebody looks at the picture, they can create it.
Whatever it is, you don't want to do that.
That's a big no-no.
Now, what about trademarks?
Can you disclose your trademark on your website?
Yeah, if you put your trademark up
and you put a TM next to it,
you're telling the public
that you believe you have certain legal rights
to your trademark.
Should you file a trademark application
before you actually show the world your trademark?
Yes, it's not always the practical way to do things.
Like sometimes people will do things
before they actually file a trademark application.
But if you have the ability to file
at least an intent to use trademark application,
then I would at least file an intent to use
if you know you're going to use that name.
If you don't know you're going to use the name long-term,
then I would not file a trademark application on it.
I think it's a waste of money.
Like if you've got three potential names
and you're like,
I don't know that I care about any of these names.
If somebody steals them, I don't care.
Then don't file a trademark
because that's a waste of time and money.
Like why would you file to own something
that you don't care about owning, right?
You don't buy a car that you're not going to use.
Unless you're a father and you're trying to get them cars
and they're your daughters and they're crying
because they're about to go to college.
Sorry, I just had an emotional moment.
I'm okay now.
All right.
So with that being the case,
that was a therapy session for me.
I'm better now.
I'm better.
I will be better.
So what you want to be able to do
is make sure that if you have a trademark
that you're interested in,
by all means file at least an intent
to use trademark application.
Now you can put it on your website.
You could do whatever.
Why do you not want to put it on your website
if you haven't filed anything?
Because somebody might see it,
see that nobody's filed for it
and then file for it themselves.
And you can't stop them
because the United States Patent and Trademark Office
is a first to what system?
First to file system.
Exactly.
So that's why you don't want to just disclose
your trademark to the world
because somebody else see it, grab it,
nothing you can do about it.
Now on the copyright side,
your website's created.
Just put your copyright notice on the bottom.
The beauty about copyright
is that you have certain legal rights automatically.
If you want to enforce your legal rights,
then you have to file a copyright application for it.
Like you can't enforce your copyrights
against the third party
without having a federal registration.
Like you can't do that.
It's a requirement.
You have to file something.
You have to spend that 65 bucks.
So if somebody starts,
you have a website,
you have your copyright notice on it.
Somebody starts infringing it.
Then you file for your registration.
You get your registration.
You send your cease and desist letter
over to the other party
or you send your notice over to the other party
using an attorney, please.
I'll explain to you in a minute
why you want to use an attorney
with a cease and desist letter,
but just talk to an attorney before you.
All right, so let me do this now.
If somebody is ever doing something
where they're using your IP,
your patents, your trademarks, your copyrights,
please, please, please, please, please
do not send them a letter saying,
I am going to sue you
unless you remove this material from your site.
The reason why is because they.
can now file what's called a declaratory judgment against you and force you to go to court
because they believe that there is an imminent threat of their being pulled into court.
So now you are you as opposed to being the plaintiff in the case you just became the
defendant in the case. So do not do not because I can't tell you how many times I've seen over
my career people come to me because they got pulled into litigation because they were like
overly eager. And a really good example of this is one of my clients who actually was in New
Hampshire received a cease and desist letter from a Taiwanese corporation saying hey you're infringing
three you're infringing one of our patents we want you to stop immediately there's a cease and
desist you know make sure you stop immediately and we want damages. I called up my client and
said hey isn't this the party that you were really upset with and that you really just wanted to find
some way to go to court with and he said yeah I hate those guys they're knocking off all of my
products. I said really I said let's look at our patent portfolio they were infringing three of
our patents and they claim that we are infringing one of theirs. So I said to my client hey how do
you feel about getting the the owner of a Taiwanese corporation to come to New Hampshire in the middle
of February during a snowstorm. He says that's amazing I love that idea. I said let's file a
lawsuit we'll file a declaratory judgment action against the Taiwanese corporation and against the
president of the corporation who's been knocking off your products every single year and we did.
And we succeeded in pulling them into New Hampshire because they sent a vicious cease and
desist letter and the argument I used was that there is the imminent threat of litigation and
it's unwarranted and so we want to be in litigation in our jurisdiction not their choice we want our
own jurisdiction and we won we ended up being the plaintiffs they were the defendants and we ended
up winning. So don't send nasty cease and desist letters to other people and threaten to sue them.
Talk to a lawyer. It can be a very emotional process but in any case talk to a lawyer. So
for putting things on your website copyrights you can put your materials there just put your
copyright notice on it your trademarks if it's truly important to the company
file something for it. File at least an intent to use application because you might lose it.
And if you don't at least do that at least use the TM next to the trademark so people know that
you believe it's yours under common law. On the patent side don't put anything associated with
your inventions on a website until such time as you've filed at least a provisional patent application
or you could run into a situation where it's considered a publication in which case foreign
countries you couldn't get any rights and in the United States you have one year from that date to
file patent application. That's what websites can do for you. That's why I'm actually contemplating
doing a master class just on what I call the legally sound funnel. So if you create a funnel
there are things you can do and things you can't do and I'll kind of break it all down so
Ray's laughing. Did you see me brace myself? Surprise! We got another one. Peter does this thing
where like on the spotlight he'll just magically create a new innovation and it's like
what am I making next? We've already covered this one. Just a little bit
in regards to the website. What if or what is that called?
Cloud. So what if someone within who was a part of your team and is not is going in
you know they're going in and taking materials that you didn't sign like an
NDA or NCA with them and they're going in and copying stuff.
Nadine, we need to talk. You got some bad stuff going on.
That's not good. She joined us. That's not good. Don't worry. We'll talk
about all that stuff. That's not good. Not good at all. Let me go over to Vicky.
I'm going to take two more and then we're going to close. Vicky Bay. How are you? I'm good.
I put this in the web in the... What's your question? Facebook.
but here it is anyway.
So I've been using my trademark
since late nineties, early 2000s, right?
And I've been doing, I've been working under it.
I've got invoices under it.
I've got, I've got copies of dated invoice.
It's always been on my, every website I've ever made
but I never filed anything.
So I know that because it's time thing,
I could still file it and say, I used it, I used it first.
But it's, it's a logo too.
I don't know what it would,
but since the logo is only $65,
I should probably go ahead and copyright the logo.
But the logo isn't on a time first, first use thing.
Am I, am I correct?
Let me, let me, I'm gonna rephrase just so everybody knows.
I know Vicky personally, I love her, great person.
So I can do this.
So let me rephrase Vicky's question.
If you own a car and you're driving to McDonald's
but while you're in the submarine,
an astronaut lands on your car
and you're changing your tire while fishing,
is it true that you have to pay the taxes?
That's essentially what you just asked.
Okay, I just want to make sure, just so everybody understands
I love Vicky.
So Vicky, actually Vicky's question is very deep.
So I'm gonna break it into a lot of different pieces.
So, cause there's multiple pieces of what she's saying.
All right, so first of all,
I'm gonna ask you a few questions.
So there was, you said a trademark,
is the trademark a logo only
or is there a word associated with it as well?
Is it only design or are there words in design?
I'm going, originally, originally it was the same design
and I had the name as part of it.
Okay, got it.
But it had morphed into design only.
With the words in the design or without words?
Without words.
So for like letterheads, I wouldn't use the,
I wouldn't use the words.
I would only use the-
So do you only, and this is not legal advice,
but do you only want to use the logo
or are you concerned about the words
and the logo at this point?
I'm mostly concerned with the logo.
Okay, so let's talk about logos in general.
So let's say I've been using a logo for like five, 10 years
and I'm thinking around, I'm using my TM,
I don't have a federal registration.
So now I'm gonna ask a few questions.
Number one, can I file later?
Yes.
Number two, if somebody files before me,
can I get in trouble?
If somebody files before I file,
then they get all the United States
except the geographical regions
in which I've already been using that logo
in interstate commerce.
But I can't expand anywhere further.
Like I'm stuck where I was, I can't go any further.
Okay, that's what happens.
Nobody has, as far as I could find.
Yeah, yeah, which is good, which is good.
So you can always file like in the patent world,
you have one year.
In the trademark world, there's no statutory bar.
You can file 20 years later, 30 years, 50 years later,
if you so choose.
You can file whenever you want.
There is no statutory bar to filing,
but it is a first to file system.
So if at some point somebody else does file before I do,
then they will own all the United States
except the geographical regions
in which I have used that trademark
in interstate commerce, okay?
And geographical regions does not mean the state.
It means like a city or a town.
Okay, it's a small region, right?
So that's the first part.
So for all intents and purposes,
you can file now if you want, it's up to you.
Or you can not file now if you want, it's up to you, okay?
But just understand if somebody files before you,
then you would have restriction.
All right, so that's the first part.
So now what's the second part of your question?
I can't remember.
That's okay.
I was having trouble figuring it out myself.
The other part of it was the price,
the $65 of copyrights versus 250 to 350 for trademarks,
because you were talking logos.
And he said, yes, you can do copyrights on logos too.
Okay, so let's say that whoever created the design for you
would have to assign all rights, title and interests.
Oh, you created it yourself?
All right, so if you created it yourself,
you could file the copyright anytime you want.
Okay.
There's no stat story bar to filing.
The only place where there are stat...
Statutory bars is a patent world. There is no statutory bar for
trademarks, no statutory bar for copyrights. Okay, just realize
that if you're going after damages on their copyrights,
you're not going to get damages for things that happened prior
to your federal registration. So if you if somebody has been
infringing for three years, and you're waiting and you're
waiting and you're waiting and you're like, more ha ha ha, like
I'm gonna let them infringe so I can make more damages. It
doesn't work like that. Okay, at some point, look at Ray
Kraken. At some point, just realize if you don't file,
you're not going to have legal rights. So you've got to file
something. Okay, there's also this other thing I will I'll let
you guys know about and then I'll take one more question from
Adelaine and then I'm going to close. There's also one more
thing to keep in mind. If you sit on your legal sword,
uh, I, the right term is legal rights, but I was gonna say
something else. But anyways, if you sit on your legal rights,
right, for like five to seven years, that's called latches.
What latches is, I was gonna say illegal laurels. Yes, thank you,
Jennifer. That's exactly what I was gonna say. Um, yeah, so you
want to get if you sit on your legal laurels, for a for five
to seven years, you will not be able to enforce your rights
because it's called latches. And the government says if you've
known that there's infringement, if you know nothing about it for
that long of a period of time, they're not going to allow you
to do anything. Okay. All right. And with that, I'm going to go
to Adelaine Woodfast. You're welcome. And Adelaine, there's
got to be a quick one because we've done we've done a lot of
questions with you. So you really need to get into the
into the package. But
final question, you've talked a lot about guarding your ideas,
not sharing it. So if you do have an idea and want to see
what other people think, is there a safe way to share it
with individuals whose opinions you respect, and perhaps
potential customers to see if you have a market for it?
Gosh, that's a big question. That's very big. The reason why
it's big is different customers, you're going to do
it in different forums. Are you going to do it in writing? Are
you going to do in person? If you're going to do it in person?
Can you use an NDA NCA? If you use an NDA NCA, that should be
okay. But in foreign in foreign countries, it'll cover foreign
countries. In the United States, it doesn't cover the United
States. But does it equate to being a public disclosure? It
doesn't because it's not readily available to the public. It's
not a public use. It's not an offer for sale. So it doesn't
violate any statutory bars. But it might fall into the category
of public disclosure, if it's considered public disclosure,
according to the new rules that came out by the United States
Patent and Trademark Office a number of years ago, then you
have, then you've, you've got one year from that date to do
something. So it's, it's a complex question, we'd have to
analyze that in a lot more detail. So, all right, with
that, we're close. We've just answered like, I think we've
probably been like 80 questions. I mean, there's a lot of
questions we went through. So hopefully all of you have
enjoyed this. I would encourage you to shift your energy and
this this ingenuity and this brilliance that you have into
what we're offering you guys and bring it in there. And then ask
all your questions in there. There's no limit to questions in
there. There's no limit to much of anything in there. Because
it's kind of like what you've been doing here on extreme
caffeine, without any of the bad effects. So I encourage you all
Yes, Jennifer, you are and I'm looking forward to seeing you
there. Definitely looking forward to seeing you there. So
and I encourage you all to be there. Nadine, you actually we
sent out the email to you already, you should have that
already. Okay, so that should be in your inbox.
Yes, I did. Okay, wonderful. All right. And then Tanja, stay on.
I know you had a question. I'm going to talk to you. Adelaine,
if you have any questions on it, let me know. Happy to talk with
you as well. You're remarkably brilliant. So I'm no surprise
that you have these questions. So I'm very happy to help you
out any way I can. But we've got to shift this into there
because we've gone we've gone really far on this. So Tanja,
stay on if anybody Oh, Teresa is actually in as well. Teresa is
already in. So I will see this tends to be the case. Usually
the people that go into VIP like 90% of them are in there. Oh,
Nadine needs an NDA as soon as okay. Yeah, we can get her an
NDA immediately. No problem.
See, I get these hidden messages from Ray while we're talking, Ray's like pinging me.
She's like a sniper.
She finds all the-
I am.
You should see me with an op in virtual reality.
You should see all the messages that I get during the trainings.
It's like, hey this, hey that, do this, do that.
People, I gotta be the bridge.
She's like the coordinator in a football game.
She's like, okay, this is the play, hut, hut.
All right, well, bless all of you guys.
It has been a true honor spending extra time with you because you were in VIP.
I hope you see the advantage of being in VIP.
So when you do send people over to the Protect Your Idea Challenge, I would encourage them
to be in here because they get a lot deeper of an experience.
And with that-
Thank you so much, Peter.
Oh, it's my pleasure.
It is my true pleasure.
Bless all of you guys.
And I am going to stay on with Tanja.
If anybody else has any question with regard to the offer, the foundations in IP, just
let me know.
And I will be happy to answer that now.
And then afterwards, I'm going to go probably play some games and relax because my family's
in bed already.
So, all right, take care, everybody.
We'll see you.