The E-commerce Leader

[00:00:00] Michael: if you have, intellectual property, related people like graphic designers, writers, or photographers working for you, make sure you get written on a piece of paper somewhere that you own it, and you own not only the property, but you own the rights to use it.
[00:00:11]
[00:00:41]
[00:01:19] Jason: Intellectual property is becoming a greater and greater issue for e-commerce operators. And in today’s podcast, we’re going to dive into this important topic. I know it might sound boring, but there’s fun stories to be told. There’s important concepts. And Michael has outlined. Great, eight point a tip sheet and areas for action that every e-commerce operator needs to hear about and understand just jot these down and, you’ll be well on your way to understanding intellectual property issues for your e-commerce business.
[00:01:50] Michael, are you ready to jump into this fun topic?
[00:01:53] Michael: Yes. As you say, iP can sometimes be a, an area like any legal thing that you feel like a is boring, just like accounting a is boring and B a it’s complicated and yeah, sure. It might be a little bit of both, but I would say one of the reasons I want to bring it up is because defending our business as we’ve got a whole mini series with doing, like defending your title.
[00:02:11] Probably the number one thing that I seen people not doing in the lesson in the early stages. So we talked about that, but defending your intellectual property rights, is one of the biggest neglected areas I see with people who otherwise work incredibly hard to develop beautiful products, wonderful images.
[00:02:25] Even sometimes they have their financials in order, but they haven’t got their intellectual property defense in order. And that’s, I believe a huge.
[00:02:32] Jason: I’ve seen this before as well in my consultancy and in people we’ve worked with. And somehow it’s almost out of sight out of mind. Yes. Some people have thought maybe this doesn’t apply to me.
[00:02:43] I just sell, a million and a half dollars or so of Mattel products. Like whatever it is, or Hasbro toy products or Legos or whatever, I don’t need to care about intellectual property. Those kinds of comments and I’m over-exaggerating, but you get the idea. I think sometimes people can take I’m too small and operators for this to matter until it matters.
[00:03:04] And then you realize I’m not too small enough operator.
[00:03:09] Michael: I guess people assume that it’s something big corporations need to worry about. And we, it doesn’t apply to us, but you’ve just mentioned some brand names. And that’s part of a brand is not just a marketing thing. It’s, it is a marketing thing and it’s a legal thing.
[00:03:20] And that’s the point? Hasbro and Lego would not be the powerful brands they are if they didn’t defend the intellectual property, because somebody else would be selling that product. And calling them Lego or something like that, Lego with two L’s or something dodgy and therefore they wouldn’t be powerful brands.
[00:03:34] And the other one to say is the flip side of that. If you’re reselling products, of course, those people have a very valuable brand name and they are. If you think that you can fly under the radar? Sadly, I think you’re mistaken. And I think you put your finger on it. We think I would too small.
[00:03:48] This isn’t gonna apply to me. That’s absolutely not true. And if you sell on Amazon, you’re utterly in the cross-hairs for intellectual property issues, whether you like it or not, you have to grasp the nettle,
[00:03:58] Jason: I think. Absolutely. Okay. So I’ve got some intro questions here for you, but do you want to make any other kind of preparatory comments before we kick things off?
[00:04:05] Or do you want to jump right?
[00:04:06] Michael: Yeah, just one comment, which is, on the one hand, it doesn’t seem pleasant to deal with it. On the other hand, if you defend your business will make it more defensible. And this is the general topic we’ve talked about before, and you’ve talked about it in your businesses, nine moats of defensibility and all the rest of it.
[00:04:21] Valuable property, which means, Hey, you can sleep at night because your cashflow is more secure. And B if you sell it to somebody, they’re more likely to buy it and pay a higher price. So there’s very big upside to sorting out intellectual property. And the other thing I would say is, so it’s not all just downside is opportunity as well.
[00:04:36] If other people don’t do it and you do your businesses more valuable. And the second thing is it’s not as hard as it seems. You just need to a understand the basic concepts, which hopefully we can get some across today. If they’re not familiar and B just get a good lawyer. That’s human and you can work with, isn’t just speak.
[00:04:51] Legalees understands your situation as an e-commerce operator.
[00:04:54] Jason: Yeah. And we should point out right from the top. We’re not attorneys and we don’t want to play one on YouTube or anything like that, but we are, consultants and have worked in our own right. In our intellectual property issues inside our businesses, and have worked through these processes.
[00:05:09] So with that said, let’s jump into it. I think this probably a conversation that we can talk about offense and defense in soccer terms or football terms or whatever. So as you think about defending yourself or your business rights, what are the threats against which you think you need to defend yourself?
[00:05:27] Are there any that are top of mind?
[00:05:28] Michael: Yeah, there were three. Let me give you the general in this wrapped in this specific, if you like. So copyright is a general area of intellectual property law, and specifically where I see that happening a lot in the world I operate in is mostly Amazon centric, although not exclusively.
[00:05:43] And I know you’re slightly broader in your approach, your own business and Shopify, but copyright infringements on Amazon is a really huge thing. And by the way, it’s quite easy to fall into if you’re really naive and you’re selling, Hasbro toys or something, and you start copying somebody else’s images, you can very quickly for file of that as well.
[00:05:59] So that’s the first type of thing. So copyright infringement, particularly on Amazon, but that applies to anyone across the net. Second one is designed patent infringement. In other words, the design of your actual product is copied. Absolutely not bolt by bolts as it were by the Chinese factories. They’re very good at doing that.
[00:06:15] But obviously that’s a huge problem for you. Two more. The third, the trademark issue is less of a, less of an issue. You don’t. Normally, if you’ve got a small business, see somebody copying your exact trademark name, but if you don’t have a trademark, you can’t be brand registered and that weakens your defense in on Amazon.
[00:06:31] And indeed elsewhere. And then the last one is spirits are unfunded allegations against you by competitors on all three grounds that could apply to anyone. Platform, but particularly on Amazon, people accusing you of intellectual property rights. What happens is it’s a shoot first explain later system.
[00:06:46] So they’ll take, Amazon will take your listings down and then you have to defend it. So you need to be really ready for that moment. Unfortunately, I
[00:06:53] Jason: have ridiculous. Examples of in all of these areas. What do you want me to tell stories today?
[00:07:00] Michael: Some stories, cause we gotta make humanize intellectual
[00:07:03] Jason: property.
[00:07:03] The funniest one that was so instructive to me, I think I’ve said this on a prior podcast, but it was a time. Okay. So my wife does design work and we name each. Designs, it’s for passion in miniature. And so she’ll come up with something that’s called, the Malibu Libby outfit or the, Outback w thing or whatever.
[00:07:19] And, so she does like European designs, Japanese, like Harijuku and on. So anyway, she has an Outback. And, one of the, so we always try to find a name, like from the Outback or whatever, Australia and stuff. And, so she, she had this one called boomer. It falls that we look on the map and we were like, what place in Australia could we call this outfit?
[00:07:41] So she had the boomer. Dress and boomer, it falls B O M E R I T boomer. It just someplace on the map we saw. So anyway, so we sold that on, I think it was on eBay originally as auctions, and then patterns came out and, it’s been probably a decade of kind of being familiar with that name. We had no intellectual property claim to it or anything.
[00:08:01] We just used it. So I got a, a, a. Chat first and then a phone call with a guy from Australia and he was demanding. He was demanding that we cease and desist using that name in any of our marketing, because he had purchased the domain name, boomer. It. Dot com and he wanted to create an it company for boomers.
[00:08:31] Like baby boomers, but it so boomer it, and somehow he thought, because he bought the domain name. He could try to get me to S I don’t even know how he thought. Somehow stop using stuff that we had done photos of. And, we had used for a decade, it was all over the internet. It was on Pinterest, probably like thousands and thousands of times.
[00:08:55] But his mind was so muddled with what was, like what the laws were that he thought he could just tell me to stop using a phrase like that. And I said to him with respect, I tried to be as respectful as possible. It doesn’t work like nothing you’re describing works in the way in which you think it works.
[00:09:15] So I can’t unwind the clock and not use this. And actually, as I published it originally, I do have copyright claim for the term. So I’m sorry, but I can’t do what you’re asking me to. To be completely honest. You probably need to get an attorney on your side to understand how this stuff works. And so that was just always so comical to me because it was just a reminder that sometimes if we think we know what we’re doing, but we really don’t.
[00:09:42] And I knew what I was doing on my side. He didn’t know what he was doing on his side. It can create comedy and just stress and drama. And he was so agitated. He wanted somehow Google search engine results pages to Dom. Just for this pages. And, anyway, it was just a ridiculous story, but there you go.
[00:10:03] That’s one, as it relates to understanding how some of this works and the areas in which you have to understand things.
[00:10:09] Michael: Yeah. Interesting. There’s a few interesting reflections. I’m not, if the first thing is, understanding what’s going on means you don’t panic. It buys you didn’t, you just laugh because you understood the basics of intellectual property law.
[00:10:21] Yeah. You might consult with an attorney, but the second thing is, I guess it’s possible that somebody might’ve had a legitimate claim. So one thing I would say. Yeah, pick a place on the map. Just a couple of things. First of all, do your homework, just have a quick Google at least, and preferably research to the intellectual property, trademark databases.
[00:10:36] If you choose the sound name thing is, place names are tricky to defenders as trademarks because there are not necessarily exclusive to your brand. And that’s one thing that if you. Create something like Mike’s marvelous, widgets, because you sell widgets. We’re like, could this apply to anything that’s hard to defend as well?
[00:10:52] A couple of other things, is this person didn’t understand the concept of intellectual property classes, that if he was trying to create an intellectual at what do you call it, some kind of software and you’ll set a doll’s clothes. They’re not in the same situation. So it’s quite interesting that a few things came out of that.
[00:11:07] Jason: What was interesting to me was I had no interest in defending the intellectual property. I didn’t treat it really like defendable, IP. I just treated it like a name of a, an idea. I, it wasn’t a big deal to me, but it was obviously a big deal to have. And, so that was the funny part.
[00:11:22] So yeah, I think it’s important to understand these areas. Trademark is one, copyright is a different one in patent is the third one that you mentioned. Okay. So let’s keep going. What are the most common types of attacks you’ve seen or challenges tra trauma drama that you’ve seen come up for operators?
[00:11:38] Michael: Sadly, there are so many ways it can happen actually. One thing, for example, just to touch on your story, that okay. If I were the Australian chaplain, I did actually have some kind of a wish to sell dolls, clothes, patterns, or something like that. And use boomer at falls. There is an implied, there’s a trademark is instinct cause you have implied rights to trademark through usage, through common law systems.
[00:12:00] That will be the USA UK, for example, I don’t know, Australian legal system as well as registered trademarks. So just because the fact that you haven’t registered your trademark would not necessarily mean that guy had the right. Just start using that name. So that’s one thing to be aware of, and this is why good, quick Google search before you create a, in your case, an individual product line or an entire brand name is really useful idea.
[00:12:22] And if necessary, do some more thorough research, because if somebody has been out there training on a name, then, that can be a problem. So that’s one area I see. But really, I think that the ones who have outlined a copyright infringement on Amazon is huge people. Copying your listing, wholesale, all the words, all the images and everything you say about the product, except I guess for the reviews, because they’re not
[00:12:41] Jason: under that.
[00:12:42] So just unpack that for a moment for people who maybe aren’t Amazon sellers or don’t understand what copyright infringement implies by that. So what you’re saying is if you have a listing that you created on Amazon, that you have images and text. To build a listing. If someone’s straight copies those photos and uploads them in the text and creates a new listing on Amazon, they’ve clearly violated your copyright, by using your images in your.
[00:13:10] That’s right.
[00:13:10] Michael: Yeah. Yes they have, because basically there’s an implicit, ownership of a corporate rate for the person who creates the a form of words or the exact images. So you can’t copyright an idea by the way. So if they copyrighted your idea for a product and the rough idea of the words, you can’t get off to them, but they’ve used the exact same words or images they can.
[00:13:28] The nice thing about copyright is first of all, You can register it in the USA and the system. We don’t have, as far as I know, a comparable system in the UK or EU. But even if you haven’t got it registered, it’s implicit, by the fact that you created it, by the way, little nuance that is that if you have, intellectual property, related people like graphic designers, writers, or photographers working for you, make sure you get written on a piece of paper somewhere that you own it, and you own not only the property, but you own the rights to use it.
[00:13:54] That’s effectively a license. But there’s a little side note. So that wins. It’s not that hard to go after these people and bring them, take them down because that’s a lot less complex than patent law, or even trademark that you can just say, okay, this is exactly the same photograph as we’ve used.
[00:14:09] And you can use that as a lever to kick people off.
[00:14:13] Jason: Yeah, I think the important idea here is that just for people who are new to the topics, and again, we’re not attorneys, we don’t pretend to play one, but just the basic understanding is people have in the olden days, pre-internet assumed that copyright meant.
[00:14:29] Publication was somehow formally documented through a publisher or some kind of written, send yourself a letter and have those words on it, or, stupid stuff like that. But it’s somehow publicly, yours to own in the internet age. The same idea applies, but now it’s basically in a way it’s like first usage.
[00:14:50] It’s the right of first use. In a way. And if you publish, like on a blog post, you have copyright, you have published it’s out there publicly. And so I think people get tripped up as oh, this wasn’t official. It was just on a blog. Yeah, no that’s official, and again, I’m not an insurance.
[00:15:09] The best I understand when it’s out there in cyberspace, it’s under original chronic creation. It’s, there’s a claim there. The other thing that I think people get, befuddled by is just this, this idea of, it’s almost like plagiarism is in grade school, did you copy. Sentences.
[00:15:27] Yeah, no, I changed a word. Yeah. It’s almost stuff like that. That’s the basis for this stuff. And so I think it’s important to just, approach these things with, you have to put in your mind, what is the. Honest and into integrity driven approach to this that I can take. Do I see somebody staying and do I literally knock it off?
[00:15:50] Or am I trying to knock it off? Am I trying to copy it? All of those things are gray areas that turned to black and that are problematic. And the best thing you can possibly do is. When you see somebody else Zig and a beautiful, amazing, wonderful, successful way zag don’t Zig with their Zig. You know what I’m saying?
[00:16:13] Don’t try to be as close to them, play off of them completely oppositely. And so I think it’s important just to, how do we approach this stuff is you don’t want to be a cop. Yeah, I agree. You just don’t, it’s not even a good sales strategy or marketing strategy maybe for the short term may be in a confused market for, a short term opportunity, something that’s a fad or something, but for the long-term and for quality brand and marketing and a business building.
[00:16:40] You just don’t want to be a copier of other people’s work. And that’s really what the heart of the, the issues are related to, copyright issues.
[00:16:48] Michael: Yeah. That’s true. And also across intellectual property, generally, really it’s stealing somebody else’s work that they’ve given the form of a product, the patent, the form of a, an identity trademark or the form of words or images that copyright and to your point, and I think this is a critical point you’ve just made, I just want to hammer this home.
[00:17:05] The idea that IP is separate farm on boring compared to with marketing is a myth because really it comes down to uniqueness of identity. So greats and the unique don’t copy. Absolutely. Because then the flip side of defending your own intellectual property is being vulnerable to other people, making allegations that you’ve stolen theirs.
[00:17:20] And if they’re right then really up, up the Creek without the paddle. So yes, never copied, but also create something original and then defend it very vigorously. So we’ve got to get through our I’ll list seven. I feel like. We’ve advertised that we ought to give some, I’ve put what I’ve called action areas.
[00:17:36] So in other words, you’re going to need to stand. The first action area is, as you, you put this in Jackson, you’re right. First of all, know the basics and be responsible, but don’t try and play your own lawyer. So learn the basics so that when you speak to an IP lawyer, you’ve, you’re, into the flow of the conversation, you understand the basic concept.
[00:17:51] So of talking about, and. Then get them to explain the nuance and the gray areas, as you say, when there’s gray turned to black, I’m sorry. My recommendations, a couple of guys that I know very well, but Wright of counseling, the cloud, who really specializes in intellectual property for, private label and custom product service, particularly on Amazon and CJ Rosenbaum of Amazon sellers, lawyer.
[00:18:12] So they haven’t, I was in centric app as e-commerce does, but they would also be useful people at least as a starting point to discuss for e-commerce more and more generally, even if you sell on your own site, Yeah,
[00:18:23] Jason: I think this one is really important to, understand you’re responsible for the intellectual property management in your business.
[00:18:31] And that’s the bottom line of it all. You can’t abdicate responsibility to whoever you it’s on you from day one. And I see a lot of people who come into the marketplaces, especially like Etsy or marketplace, where, it’s a handcrafted area or something like that. And they feel like they get a pass or they just don’t even know, oh, I can’t make.
[00:18:51] Coasters and cups and, t-shirts and, or I can’t do this or that. And they almost have a, like it’s, this doesn’t apply to me type approach and then. It’s just not reality. The reality is it doesn’t matter how small a e-commerce operation you’re setting up. You’re the one who’s responsible.
[00:19:09] And if you don’t understand the rules of the road, start watching YouTube videos and, as the first step and understand what are the basics. This podcast we’re outlining the basic content. Google each one and learn what they mean, how they apply to your specific business situation. And then to your point, yeah, Michael, I think getting an IP attorney started repeat everything you were just saying, but I think getting an IP attorney is important.
[00:19:32] You can just Google in your area, intellectual property, attorney, Philadelphia, intellectual property, attorney, Seattle, that kind of thing, and find an IP attorney, which is different. Of course. Ambulance chasing attorney or somebody who does different type of corporate practice or whatever. So you want to find the right person and they’re there.
[00:19:50] They’re obviously they’re all out there on the internet ready to work with you and answer your questions. And I think that’s the very first area of action. Every business owner should be in. And, before. Even have problems or challenges, you think it through, understand it. And, you’ll be off to the races in terms of really understanding how best to operate professionally in this way.
[00:20:10] So there you go. That’s the first one. What’s the second one.
[00:20:13] Michael: The second one is defending your copyright. We’ve really talked about this, but the reason to start with it is because you don’t necessarily have to register it or. Good plan if you do. And that’s true for quite a lot of intellectual property.
[00:20:23] This is not a legalist professional view. But my understanding from talking to lawyers and doing this stuff, let’s see my clients is a lot of the time you can have a twin track, which is keep track of what you do, yourself. And actions you take because that kind of produces some kind of documentation that you have the rights to things, but also register everything you can whenever possible with every official body that’s relevant.
[00:20:44] So if you’re selling in the USA or indeed, if you’re based in the USA, I would do it anyway, register with a DMCA guys. Copyright is great because it’s straightforward. When somebody copies an exact photo, it’s quite easy in some ways to, to prove that it’s an exact copy, exact copies of words is even easier.
[00:21:00] Of course, it’s very obvious to anyone. So this is a great way to do it. You can find it yourself. You can get somebody else to do it. Just go to. Dot gov, the DMS. Yeah, that’s on us. And it can be very quick and easy and cheap way to get intellectual property protection. And given the prevalence of people, try to just copy even now in a naive way, it defends you against a big percentage of the, attacks you’re going to get.
[00:21:21] So it’s a beautifully, simple, cheap and straightforward thing compared to some of the other forms.
[00:21:28] Jason: Yeah. A couple thoughts on this one. Obviously, if you’re operating in the marketplace, That are controlled by professionals, then it’s easy because you can, of course, use the marketplace system to report violators or let people in the marketplace know that someone’s copied your work.
[00:21:45] And so that’s simple enough. We do this frequently. The bigger challenge is honestly, when you have international. Inappropriate use of your IP and that’s outside of basically any marketplace that you can control. I guess what I’m saying is if you see something on eBay, that’s a straight copy of your photos in your copy writing or something like that.
[00:22:04] You can just, you can report that on eBay. But if you see, other use cases in China or other places, it does become harder. We have this happen frequently where we have our, intellectual. Used in appropriately. And, it’s outside our jurisdiction of our attorney. There’s no real means for resolution.
[00:22:22] Sadly, and so we work through this a lot, but I think the basics is to understand if someone’s doing something wrong to you, you do have mechanisms by which you can defend yourself the second step, if it’s not in a marketplace and it is some kind of, American or European operator, who’s doing the violent.
[00:22:41] As you can have an attorney, send them a boilerplate letter. That’s not difficult to have created that basically says to that person, we see what you’re doing. We have copyright, for this content, please stop. And, and then at least it’s like a shot across the bow from a big. It’s it lets them know that they’re not operating underneath anybody’s radar.
[00:23:02] And generally speaking, that’ll go a long way to clipping off things. Now, beyond that, you can defend yourself legally in court. And there’s a process by which to do that. And I will say this because I’ve looked into this because I’ve been, nose to nose with, bigger brands than me. The way this works is you violate somebody else’s copyright.
[00:23:24] They will Sue you. It like, if you don’t stop, they will Sue you in their court of jurisdiction. That’s relevant to them and you have to show up and defend yourself and you won’t be going by yourself. You’ll be going with an attorney that has spent thousands of dollars preparing or tens of thousands. You have to present yourself.
[00:23:43] It’s not an option. It’s not like that. There’s no consequence. And what a lot of big brands do is they know that. And you just don’t want to act as if you can blow this stuff off. So you want to defend yourself, but you also want to be prepared, and understand that other bigger brands can defend themselves.
[00:24:01] And how that might play out in real consequence in your life and in your pocket book and stuff like that. So there you go. So this is my commentary on that one. Yeah.
[00:24:09] Michael: Yeah. That’s all, yeah, a lot of detail to adore, but there’s a lots of. Yeah, caution is advice. Let’s put it this way, I think.
[00:24:14] And as you implied at the top of the show, it’s really not an optional extra, it needs to be part and parcel of your sourcing strategy, particularly if you’re reselling, but any kind of strategy. One thing I just wanted to point out is that, there is some good news amongst this with foreign operated or apparently foreign operated.
[00:24:28] And so Alibaba is obviously a marketplace to your point. It is easy to do with marketplaces. However, it is apparently a Chinese company, but of course it is floated on the New York stock exchange. So they will take, IP challenges from the America very seriously. And the, communist thing is people just simply leave.
[00:24:44] Product photos wholesale. So that’s a copyright infringement. And especially if you’re a DMCA registered, if you get in touch with Alibaba, especially if you can just give them a registration number, they will normally take it down. So there’s a bit of good news that the international you’re not completely powerless in marketplaces.
[00:24:57] Jason: Yeah. In marketplaces. Yeah. Okay. So what’s actionary.
[00:25:00] Michael: So action area. Number three is register your trademark. The particular reason you want to get it done, if you’re an Amazon seller is to be able to get rent brand registry access. And the reason that’s important is because it makes it much easier to, defend your intellectual property on Amazon and indeed to defend yourself against allegations of intellectual property strikes.
[00:25:18] So that’s really important reason to do it. Even if you’re not on Amazon, of course. So your trademark registration, again, to the points we’ve made, if you’ve been selling something called boomer falls for 10 years, you’ve got a body of evidence out there in the internet. And indeed in people’s homes, if they’ve printed off a PDF or something that you’ve been trading under this name, And that gives you under common laws and protection, but it’s better to register it as well.
[00:25:42] So that it’s a simple matter of going click, click, here’s the registration number. If there’s ever any challenge from a lawyer or you want to change somebody else, it’s quick and simple to, to deal with that. So for all those reasons, you want to get the trademark sorted as soon as you can.
[00:25:54] Yeah. This is
[00:25:55] Jason: a tough one. We can use that example just to play with, but, the challenge most people have is what is a brand in my business? What is it. Legal item that I’m trying to defend or protect. And at what point do you do the registration process? That’s really the heart and soul of the challenge for people who are creating products and product lines and naming things, the original creation of work.
[00:26:17] And it is something to think through and over time in your business, you just have to decide at what level you register items. And at what level you say, I have intellectual property claim to this. And it’s, sufficient, in that example, we could care less about having registered trademark because that’ll cost us a thousand bucks and we have what you might call.
[00:26:35] The law of the jungle, he usage, which is Google it. And you’ll see, we own all of the search engine results pages, and so in a way, it, you have to decide what matters to you and what you want to defend. And what’s not defending. And it’s really a mathematical question for every operator and cause sometimes we start little things and then they take off.
[00:26:58] I’m wearing a t-shirt for three Esther’s farm, that’s a brand that we have for our ministry work in Zambia. And and it’s a cool brand. I like it. I got a logo off Fiverr for $5 and this is not a registered trademark, but if anybody started using it, I suppose I would have a. But so I’ve made those choices.
[00:27:15] I’ve made that, that logic in my mind, like when should I, what should I do? And then, and at a point at which in my mind, I’m like, okay, I have a concern here. I definitely want to have this on the registered trademark list and go through that process. Then you do that. Technically in the U S you can do that, work yourself on like legal zoom or something like that.
[00:27:36] I always recommend to people that they, they work with a real attorney and it’ll probably cost you between 700 and $1,200. That’s the going market rate, around a grand basically. And, and it might take six to 12 months and the process is a couple stages. First. They’ll do a search and inquiry and say, is this.
[00:27:57] For the taking and, and they’ll come back and say, basically it was an opinion. Yes, no. Or maybe and yet. And usually they don’t say yes, usually they say no, or maybe because, there’s always something out there that’s to some degree similar usually, but, that’s why there’s pros and they weave together what’s right.
[00:28:13] And by category and that kind of thing, as you mentioned, and then they go through the process of application. There’s a period by which other companies can review. Audit what’s occurring in the registered trademark space. And there are companies that do this. Corporate, lawyers that do this for their clients and it can be reviewed by, by bigger companies.
[00:28:35] I’ve had that happen. Liberty of London is a big shop there in your neck of the woods. And, so they’ve, interacted with us during a registered trademark process. And, so that’s the, and then it clears that period of a public review. And then, you have claims. And then you have after five years real, Bulletproof claim to it.
[00:28:56] So it’s not a fast process, but, and again, I’m not attorney, so go talk to your own attorney about how it works and research it yourself. But in general, it is important thing to think through when you want to do it, how you want to do it. And, what rises to the occasion. And I would just say this too, if you’re a creator and you’ve got a million ideas, you really want to think this through because it can become very.
[00:29:16] And you want to think through your brand strategy. You’re not spitting off new brands every 10 minutes, because you really can end up with a lot of IP that you really should have registered for defense, but it really creates a big expense. So anyway, those are just some reflections on this one here.
[00:29:33] Michael: I like that. So again, this is where intellectual property, strategy or legal strategy is absolutely part and parcel of a. Business strategy. So the number one value judgment, is it worth defending this? And if it isn’t, I would argue, I’m not sure you should spend too much time and energy of any other kind on it either.
[00:29:48] But if it is worth defending, then you need to do it properly. And as you say, if you really have anything worth defending, it’s worth doing with a lawyer in the UK, it’s a simple jurisdiction because you don’t have state law. English law, we do have Scottish doors, different kind of it’s one unity.
[00:30:03] So a DIY in the UK, I think is a little bit less risky than the U S I’m not an attorney. And I sure had said he would tell you something different and it’s a bit quicker. It can happen in four months. Very similar process. It’s less, it’s easy to get UK or copyright as I understand what we’ve trademark, sorry, I should say then it isn’t us because in the U S you have to actively.
[00:30:21] There is active kind of interrogation of your idea, by other lawyers. Whereas in UK, we don’t get otherwise involved in this fancy. So you just put out a public notice on the tree saying, hi, I want to apply for this pocket. Just like you do with, property development here. There’s a notice that goes up.
[00:30:35] Most people don’t bother reading it. And then after a while, it’s okay, we tick that box and you’ve got it. So
[00:30:39] Jason: in the town square
[00:30:40] Michael: or whatever it is exactly. And the point is nobody’s really that interested in the UK compared to yeah. But it doesn’t mean they have problems. The third thing I would say to your last point, and this is why.
[00:30:51] Strategy meets the boring stuff of accounting and legal is this that if you have, an accounting burden, for example, every time I do a transaction, it’s going to push up the transactions that my bookkeeper’s going to charge me for. If I go above a certain number, even that mundane level, every time I come up with an idea and I need to defend it, it’s going to cost me a visit to my lawyer.
[00:31:10] It makes you realize that there is a sort of project cost to that. Whatever that seventies book is to everything you do. And that being focused is once again at a strategy. Level of decision that has other implications. So if you have 10 million bits of IP, none of which are worth very much, you probably got a strategic problem.
[00:31:27] And your IP strategy is just shining a light on the fact that you’ve got an overall approach problem. That’s not focused.
[00:31:33] Jason: Totally. And that’s why newbies to this space have to learn through the school of hard knocks. And sometimes if they’re super creative, Then, and they don’t understand any of this stuff.
[00:31:41] Then after a couple of years, they’re like, oh, I got to focus. I got to sort this out and prioritize and really create a valuable brand that I can use as an umbrella. And because there’s just a lot of nuance here to your point about marketing and overall strategy in your business, okay.
[00:31:59] Let’s keep going. I think action area four, which is register your IP with all possible authorities. We’ve covered. We have.
[00:32:06] Michael: Yeah, it’s just with bearing them on to your point. You may, and this is a thing where it might be cheaper to talk to a lawyer, but not go through the whole, trademark application process, as you said.
[00:32:15] Okay, Mr. Lawyer, let’s go through here’s my evidence I’ve collected. And by the way, you should really document this stuff. Of the boomer falls being used for 10 years within our business. We clearly have a sort of proclaim to the usage of it as an identifier of our business. And, you may find that you don’t need to register.
[00:32:32] It’s not always necessary, but it’s always advisable.
[00:32:35] Jason: I think that example a lot. I’ll respond to that. I’ll respond to that comment then. I didn’t care cause honestly Google it, that’s my response. Hey bro. Google it. I can’t undo Google’s algorithm. I’m not taking down YouTube videos and Pinterest pins and dah.
[00:32:50] Michael: So that doesn’t really, go against your main. Yeah, because I don’t think you’re necessarily planned to sell the business two points. You can get Google to take things down. I know this because there was a bit of a snafu recently with, somebody who runs some online. I’m not going to name him because of the nature of it, but he runs online training.
[00:33:07] I’d interviewed him for the podcast and therefore I’d mentioned some of the concepts he mentioned on the podcast and put them in show notes. Then I got a cease and desist type letter from some corporates of law legal system. Hired and they said, we’re going to take these results. We’re going to apply to Google to get these results taken off Google.
[00:33:24] So that is actually a thing weirdly enough. So I now know this to my cost. I got in touch with immediately said, dude, this is a bit weird. Isn’t it? You actually got interviewed on my podcast and you shared this stuff freely. This I’m so sorry. My, my sort of legal has got out of control here and he shut it down.
[00:33:38] But that, so there can be issues. The only other thing I’d say is. It may seem like a theoretical distinction or not worth spending time on, unless you’re going to sell the business. In which case it’s really worth cleaning up because that’s the kind of thing that if you’ve got a nervous buyer, their legal team might, turn around and say, this is, we’re not comfortable with this.
[00:33:55] We’re not going to buy the business.
[00:33:56] Wrapup: Hey folks. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of the e-commerce leader. So today obviously intellectual property, but of a spiky kind of area in our mind sometimes isn’t it, the law generally and intellectual property law in particular concerned, complex uninviting and something that we just want to bury under the, bury it, bury the bad news, sweeping under the rug, et cetera.
[00:34:18] Unfortunate. It is something we have to grasp in an active digital environment. I’ve got to say that for those who are focused on Amazon, particularly, it’s something you’ve got to deal with and deal with early. The good news is if you delete, you, won’t have a more valuable business, more defensible. And the money streams that you like are going to be more stable.
[00:34:38] Plus if you try and sell those income streams, I sell your business in the future. I can promise you that if you don’t get this stuff sorted out, it’s really going to get in the way of a sale. I’ve seen that personally, with some of my clients, Fortunately, it’s not as hard to deal with, as you might think you need to educate yourself.
[00:34:52] And that’s where we come in. So today, the basics of what we’ve covered, first of all, what are the threats against which we need to defend trademarks at the best known copyrights, which is probably the easiest sort of form of defense you can use and patents, which are more expensive than the other things.
[00:35:10] And take more. But the good old design patent is really the answer or utility patent is as expensive and hard to do as you would traditionally perhaps think, but a design person can be yours for a couple of thousand dollars and maybe a year of work. The most common types of attacks I see are copyright infringement on Amazon design patent infringements by Chinese factors.
[00:35:31] If you’re manufacturing abroad, trademark infringement, less common, but it means if you don’t get your trademark, you don’t have. The registry on Amazon and that’s what I’m most, but there are other equivalents and also spirits are unfounded allegations against you on any of the above points. So if you get this sorted, your business is going to be much safer to run.
[00:35:51] So don’t bury your head in the sand is my advice. Let’s grasp this nettle and get yourself a good attorney as well or lawyer. If you’ve enjoyed today’s show, you can find that some more details on the e-commerce leader.com to get. Show notes and some details and links mentioned today. And as we mentioned, we’re going to be on the calling app every single Tuesday, 8:00 AM, Pacific 11:00 AM Eastern or 4:00 PM UK time.
[00:36:15] And we have our hot takes with Chris green. Who’s a master of many things. Amazon centered. Kyle Haman, who is Jason’s business partner and also very smart e-commerce operator in his own, right? A very successful Amazon custom product seller. And of course Jason Miles and myself Michael VZ.
[00:36:32] So if you want to join us live there, we are blowing up in popularity. We are, we got to about number seven in the education, categories there. And also we’ve sort of 10 X star downloads recently of people who are watching a, so do you come and join us there? The call-in app CA L I N for November on your iPhone.
[00:36:49] Thanks for listening. And, stay working on your business to become the best e-commerce leader. You can be.
[00:36:55]