LinkedIn Live: Own it Before You Scale it: The Essential IP Playbook for Founders & Creators

0:00Cassine Bering:Okay, so welcome to today's LinkedIn Live. I'm super excited about today's discussion. And this is, of course, a Legally Speaking podcast LinkedIn Live sponsored by Clio, the world's leading legal tech platform transforming the legal experience for all. Let me start by asking you a super quick question. You've built your brand, you've grown your audience, you've even got revenue coming in, but do you actually own it? So with that thought, today, I'm delighted to be joined by the amazing Eamon and Kassine over at RIFA. And they sorted us out with our very own trademark fantastically well at the Legally Speaking podcast.

0:39Cassine Bering:So really looking forward to today's discussion to talk all things intellectual property and give you some strategies, tactics, things to be thinking about as you go on your journey as a creator or business or whatever it might be. So a very warm welcome firstly, Eamon and Kassine. Hi there. Hi, thanks for having us most welcome and Eamon of course I'm gonna start with you because you're returning guest to the legal podcast so I'd encourage folks to go and check out your full episode on the on the show but let's start with the why then why is IP protection so critical for anyone actually building a brand particularly in 2025 yeah it's a really it's a really good question and I suppose

1:21Éamon Chawke:the sort of short answer is because probably at the point at which you're building the brand it's the most valuable and it's the most important thing that you own um and i think when we you know when we think about intellectual property or intangible property people very often forget that it is property you know what like most people when they think of property they think of physical property or real property and everybody gets that buildings and machinery and stock are valuable things that can be bought and sold and rented and licensed and you know when things are valuable we try to protect them um and with physical property we try to protect them by putting them in warehouses and insuring them and stuff like that you can't do that with ip right um so if you have this really valuable thing to do with your business which in the early days is your brand name your brand identity it's literally the thing that people use to find you it's the thing they put into the domain bar it's the thing they search on google all the rest of it it's literally the center of the business that's the sort of first thing um and the second thing I would say, which is a sort of a connected point is the brand and in particular, the brand name is the thing that unlike almost everything else to do with your business will endure forever, right?

2:39Éamon Chawke:You know, your office can change what your website looks like, looks like will change over time. Almost every product that you change will sort of rise and fall. You'll have some hero products, but all that stuff is sort of finite. Whereas the name is the thing that really, really sort of endures and that's reflected in the way that IP law is structured so trademarks which protect brand names and brand assets and brand identifiers last forever as long as you continue to use them and maintain them whereas things like patents designs even copyright which lasts for a very long time all of those things eventually expire and die and go into the sort of public domain so that's what I would say at the point at which you're starting your business your brand is the really really valuable important thing you own and it's going to last forever so protected early.

3:24Cassine Bering:Yeah, and you're absolutely right, because I think because sometimes, like you say, you can pick up a t shirt, and it's got a logo on it, and you see it or something you wear or use, but when it's something perhaps like connected to like for us, a podcast, it's virtual, it's something there is so much value attachment to that. And as you go on your journey as well, not only so that's the start point, isn't it when it gets to a trademark, because then you're building asset value around that, but getting that protection early on. So appreciate that. Okay, I want to talk about some of the myths, Cassine, because you hear a lot of things, you see a lot of things online, particularly a lot of fake news, shall we say.

3:57Cassine Bering:But what are some of the biggest IP myths you've come across from creators and founders and potentially even legal professionals? Yeah, probably one of the biggest ones we see with trademarks is that they're universal. You've got one, therefore you have that protection everywhere. It's not quite the case. uh trademarks are territorial you have to basically go and collect them in each territory that you are providing goods and services in um and when we explain that to clients sometimes they're a bit put out by that i've got to buy lots of trademarks or i've got to uh do lots of things in lots of countries but the reality for most people is they start in one place they build from there you don't have to do it all at once um and yeah it can get expensive if you want to go technically worldwide but I would say there's very few brands that actually do end up purchasing trademarks all over the world you tend to stick to what you actually need yes that's that's the biggest one I see another issue I see is less of a myth but more of a mistake I think people make is that they don't really understand the differences between IP and where it actually lies in in in the business so the difference between a trademark and how that could be helpful in comparison to copyright or a contract that collects all of the IP together and how that relationship works and looks after your IP in different ways so yeah they're the two biggest issues I see time and time again.

5:22Cassine Bering:And that's why from my own perspective as a creator business owner working with legal counsel who can talk you through that in a very simple easy ways which you guys have done for me is so important to actually understand what you're doing as part of your journey so you don't get caught up in these things and you're right I think you know this is the the the world that we're in. Yeah, if you want to protect something valuable, then you do need to put in the work. Yes, you may start in your local jurisdiction. But if you really want to build something global or have something, we're all on the internet, everything is, you know, you have the opportunity to reach everyone in the world, then it's worth over time and investing and putting in the work.

5:54Cassine Bering:Okay, Eamon, could you now talk us through four essential stages of a sort of trademark registration? And what often catches people out, particularly when they try and DIY it?

6:07Éamon Chawke:yeah yeah exactly um there's a lot of things there's a lot of sorts of pitfalls to to watch out for so the four stages i guess first are filing examination publication and registration those are the four sort of main steps um i would say the first step is sort of the most important step and probably the step at which the majority of the mistakes get made um so before you file the application, you want to make sure that you've done a bit of research to see whether what it is that you're trying to register is going to be registrable in the first place. And there are two principal aspects to that.

6:45Éamon Chawke:The first is, are there any absolute reasons why your trademark application might be refused? They're called absolute grounds for refusal. The two main ones are, is it descriptive or is it otherwise non-distinctive? And the rationale is, you know, the government can't give you a monopoly, a legal, a legal sort of exclusive right to use a descriptive word or phrase that everybody else needs to be able to use. So we couldn't get a trademark for, you know, IP law firm, because clearly other people need to be able to use that. So that's the first thing. And you'd be surprised how often people sort of don't think about that or forget about that.

7:26Éamon Chawke:And then they're sort of annoyed when their trademark gets objected to or refused later. The second thing that you need to think about is relative grounds for an objection or relative grounds for refusal as opposed to absolute. And that means, are there other rights out there that might form the basis of an opposition or a challenge to your application? The most obvious place to look for prior rights that might form the basis of an opposition is the trademark register. So if you're filing in the UK, you should search the UK trademark register. But I would always say do a little bit more wrecky than that because it's possible for people to oppose your application on the basis of unregistered rights and you know you won't always necessarily spot everything on the trademark register so I would look at the word or logo that you're going to search for and you know search for it in the trademark register but look on company's house look on domain registers look on social media platforms look on news websites do a bit of a google shake the trees and see if anything sort of pops out.

8:31Éamon Chawke:So that's the stuff that you should try and sort of avoid getting wrong at the initial filing stage. The other thing is thinking about how you're going to use your trademark and in particular, what goods and services are you going to be selling under that brand? And it's very, very common, as you said, when people sort of DIY it to go and say, oh, I'm a clothing brand. I'm going to go and get protection in class 25 for clothing. Yay, everything's done. It was perfect. it was very cheap and easy and then you say right but what if you sort of well firstly if you're selling those clothes it's not just class 25 you need but you also need class 35 which is retail services in relation to those clothes and buying some of those goods very very commonly gets missed by people but also think think into the future if you're selling clothing now is that business going to expand in three four five years time are you going to be selling bags are you going to be selling jewelry are you going to be selling sort of other things so think about whether there's other things that you want to cover in the application and this sort of third I would say big mistake that gets made at the filing stage is something I think Cassine slightly touched on which is people certainly not thinking about the right rights for the right assets and and and in this case a slightly connected point is filing the wrong paying as a trademark it's very common for people to assume if I've got two primary brand assets, primary brand identifiers, a word and a logo.

9:57Éamon Chawke:Think Nike and the Nike swoosh. The quickest, easiest, cheapest way to get protection for those two things is to shove the two of them together into one logo mark and file the application. That's wrong. Almost always that's the wrong way to do that because they're separate brand identifiers. They're going to be used separately by you and they're potentially going to be infringed separately by infringers. So almost always you want to file a separate application for the word mark, which is usually the primary brand identifier and then a second application for any secondary brand identifier which may be a logo which may be a slogan it may be a product brand name as opposed to a headline brand name so that's the other thing i would say is if people sort of file for the wrong reasons if you get all of that stuff right at the filing stage then you go to the examination stage hopefully you don't get any refusals no examiner is saying it's distinctive or descriptive and that's all right then your application gets published it goes to the opposition stage hopefully you don't get an opposition if you've if you've sort of done your searches properly and then you hit stage four and you get registration and your registration certificate that's a very long-winded um

11:02Cassine Bering:but it's important isn't it because i think you know if if you're serious about building a brand and particularly now with with online and you know various ways that you can take things you need to do that due diligence from the start to avoid the headaches in the future and i think there could be nothing worse in terms of like you say they give the example of retail well you think you're covered for this but actually you're then looking to try and do that or you know it may prohibit you you may cause issues and yeah i learned that point actually you mentioned about the different areas because you look at lots of of the big huge corporations they have different variations don't they in terms of what trademarks and of different are done and it makes so much so much sense particularly on the infringement side of things when you see trying to little copycats or things coming in they've already done their due diligence to ensure everything is protected within as much as they can um kassim from your experience dealing with a whole raft of different sectors and different brands how do you think you should pick a brand name that's both sort of commercially savvy but also legally protectable so i obviously classic lawyer answer is the rules are the rules just look at the rules and make your decision based on that from working with clients so much over the years we do appreciate that clients will go no i like this name i get that it doesn't fit the rules but find me a way around it so i would say maybe brainstorm your ideas first be as creative as you can be then once you've got a list of names assess them against the rules we've just talked through so the main one being is there anything out out there that's similar at the moment um by a similar brand is um and then also look at is it entirely descriptive and when you're asking is it entirely descriptive you you ask is it describing what i'm actually providing the goods the services the quality so fine clothing um if it's even if it's being what you think creative about that description if it's still descriptive then there's a chance then once you've assessed that ask okay how much do i like this mark do i want to change it or do i want to change it a bit and i have quite a few clients who say actually we like that it's descriptive because how else are people going to find us and what we do so for those clients who are already sticking to their guns we say okay try and add something distinctive to it because the rule isn't you can't be descriptive it's you can't be entirely descriptive um try and change something at the start of the mark, add something distinctive.

13:27Cassine Bering:Lightning in front of anything is normally a distinctive word, something quite random. The other thing you can do is maybe go for a logo instead. If you kind of accept that this mark is not going to fit within the legal rules as easily, we can go for a logo and see if that adds some distinctiveness. And then that's really all there is to our assessment from the legal side. There's lots, I'm sure there's lots of brainstorming things you can do to come up with a creative catchy name but um to get it to fit within the rules you've got to assess it against the rules and then make a decision yeah no and again thank you for being so so thorough on that and a man a company want to bring it to to our situation really you know i was quite excited when we came up with legally speaking podcast we did a lot of due diligence way back in 2018 i think the amount of times we're searching spotify apple for any episode that ever had any We're really trying to ensure that we were doing our homework.

14:22Cassine Bering:So from our own trademark journey, obviously you guys have helped us in that process. Why do you think maybe for other podcasters, I'm still bullish on podcasting, even the advent of AI where AI will create podcasts, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Why do you think it's still a worthwhile process for people like perhaps myself, creators in this sort of space of podcasting and media to go down this route?

14:46Éamon Chawke:because i mean going back to the answer i gave at the very beginning it's it's a worthwhile exercise for you in particular for podcasters for content creators for influencers for anyone who's doing anything online and where all of your value resides in that sort of online intangible existence this is this is your most valuable asset so it is absolutely 100 an important exercise to do um and i mean your story was interesting rob because you already had legally speaking podcast established as a brand uh name you know you had lots of followers it was sponsored by clio it was really really popular people really already sort of identified not just with the those words but with the visual red black and white combo um and so going back to cassine's point about how you know if there had been an issue with it was a changeable the commercial reality for you in this situation was it wasn't we had to find a way to get it registered and as we discussed going back to sort of the middle of last year um we did have a little bit of a concern around descriptiveness or distinctiveness initially because legally speaking podcast it's podcast we're speaking about law stuff maybe it's a bit descriptive and in the 10 years or so that I've been doing this job, I've seen an increasing willingness on the part of trademark examiners to refuse, even if only sort of at the preliminary stage, trademark applications that were even slightly descriptive or non-distinctive.

16:19Éamon Chawke:That has definitely, the instances of trademarks being refused for that reason has gone up. But I think we sort of thought about it, we analyzed it, and we concluded that it probably was sufficiently distinctive on the basis that one of the things that gets looked at is, is the average man or woman on the street going to see this as a purely descriptive phrase or as purely non-distinctive? Or are they going to understand that it's a designator of trade origin? And one of the things that can be an indicator of that distinctiveness is multiple meanings. So we're very lucky that you have very cleverly chosen something which was, you had two meanings.

16:58Éamon Chawke:It was a sort of a pun because obviously legally speaking is a commonly used phrase that means from the perspective of the law but it also had this much more literal meaning legally speaking we're speaking about the law and so that was one thing that we sort of factored into our analysis about how we were going to go and get it registered the other was obviously the brand um the visual brand assets the colors and the way the words sit together and we had a discussion about word marks and logo marks um and the fact that you don't have a completely non-verbal logo there was no sort of other element so we were happy to go and get you that you're such a stylized version of your word mark and then obviously going back to what you just said about growing the business and thinking about the future we looked at the various different classes of categories that might be relevant to you and we we sort of said okay we're planting our flag this is our first filing in the uk maybe we look at other marks in future maybe we look at other goods and services maybe we look at other territories but this is our core asset that you know anyone who wants to buy your business would be interested in anyone that wants to invest in your business would be interested in and for anything you might want to do in terms of licensing or you know co-branded projects that you know you were sort of covered so for anyone who's thinking about all those things growth investment sale how to sort of have other revenue streams for your brand you know on things like merchandising absolutely this is a key thing to do as as early

18:23Cassine Bering:as possible because the worst thing you could do is build on quicksand you know you could do all of the work and then you know you actually find that someone's already got your trademark or you know actually you can't can't get it trademarked and i guess i mean i mean kassim want to come to you i mean there's a whole rough questions i would love to ask and i know we've sort of only got a short amount of time today but beyond we've talked a lot about ip adding value and you know let's talk about that then beyond the protection side of things protect potentially when you are pitching to investors or sponsors aeman was alluding to like licensing but just talk us about you know again people like still don't still don't see the point you know what is this ip value you know so we've talked about it from a protection point of view but let's talk about it actually in terms of that going a bit further on the ip value yes i think that the best example we can give that we see time and time again is with IP you're really protecting the brand so logos, identity, brand colors, name and in practice most people provide goods and services that are the same as your competitors it's actually quite hard to have a USP sometimes you don't have a USP other than the fact that people know you for that brand and they really like that brand think of our our favorite delivery services there's certain ones that come and drop a parcel off and we're not happy about it there's others who are better but we just believe that it might be true but we we mainly are led that way because we identify from the brand so when someone comes to buy the brand later down the line they want to say okay what am i actually buying you're buying the reputation that comes with it but it's all rooted in the marks it's all rooted in the ip the look and feel of the brand um so when people go to purchase they will be paying more if they think that brand is better known and that if they then take over the brand it's secure so it won't be pulled out from under their feet once they've taken over it um the other thing we see is when we talk about licensing what we're really saying is you you stay in charge of the brand but you're letting other people use different bits of it i was actually looking my friend's a big fan of hello kitty and all those kinds of uh asian cartoons and things like that and she is obsessed at the moment with the movies and all of that and um she put some plates on the weekends and paper plates that had hello kitty all over and i then went on a tangent like nobody asked for about um how hello kitty probably hasn't made those plates but they've licensed the images to other people to use and it'll be a combination of trademarks um copyright same with um marvel characters disney the reason you'll see it on primark t-shirts is there's going to be licensing agreements in place and those brands that own the ip at the top of the chain are making quite a lot of money without having to do too much they're just they've got an agreement in place they own the brand and they've sent someone else out there to further it so yeah you can make lots of money it's a better income stream and you know we we've got ideas about what we're thinking about here on the show as well from that licensing piece perspective particularly when you go into events or you think about living or you think about other jurisdictions and guest hostings and things like that there's quite a few different ways you can go with it but also that kind of enhances your brand but also like you say you own it and you're sort of reaping the rewards of what you've built on that reputation um over time and Eamon it's really important you know I recruit for lawyers day in day out I'm in the legal world day in day out um I come across um a whole raft of different lawyers but how should someone choose the right IP lawyer and what red flags should they

21:54Éamon Chawke:potentially look out for so just go to briffa.com there are no red flags really straightforward no no no no it's a serious question i mean we're not right for everyone let's be honest about it there are different law firms for you know different fits for different people and i would say that is the first thing that you need to identify is what do you want yeah you know what i mean if you want to if you want someone who's a real sort of ip expert then yeah go to an ip firm. Don't go to a general practice firm or a high street firm because you probably are going to be disappointed. You're going to end up either spending more because it's going to take that person longer to do the same job, or you're not going to get the outcome that you want.

22:38Éamon Chawke:So that's the first thing, identify what you want in terms of substance. And then do your due diligence. We're all quite good at looking at things like reviews now because that's the way the whole world works. Look at Google reviews, look at Legal 500 if it's in the legal sector. you know do a bit of research and say does this person actually have the expertise for the job that i want to do that's the substantive stuff then there's the sort of softer stuff what are these people like you know and in particular my biggest test even whenever i'm picking a dentist or a hairdresser or a bank or whatever it's like how well do they communicate how responsive are they are they friendly i think you learn so much from businesses and people about how they actually communicate with you are they happy to see you do they sort of respect that you're a customer they respect that you're paying them money and especially for us you know we this is a professional service and we are charging people hundreds and in some cases thousands of pounds to do it we should absolutely respect their time we should be on time we should communicate well um and i think you mentioned earlier rob about how you know this ip i mean legal stuff in general is complex ip stuff can be particularly complex to people who don't know anything about it our job is to be translators it's not your job to go and read the trademarks act and understand what section five says it's my job to understand it sufficiently well that i can communicate it to you and play in english if i can't do that i haven't done my job properly um so those you know that's those are the sort of first two things i would say make sure you you've actually identified in a substantive sense what you want that person to do and make sure they have the expertise and And then look for, you know, are you going to want to work with this person?

24:19Éamon Chawke:Are they nice to work with? Are they reliable? Are they respectful of your time? Are they responsive? And I guess the red flag is the opposite of all of that. It's a red flag if the person has never filed a trademark application before. And it's a red flag if it's taking them three days to respond to an email. They're not good communicators then.

24:35Cassine Bering:No, all very valid points. And you touched on costs there. And I'm going to come to you on that because then next. but just sort of you know i always talk a lot about in when i do keynotes or speak to people you know there's a lot of focus of roi but i think the coi is very important which is the cost of inaction the cost of not doing something that potentially could hamper you in the future you know because again i i think actually people not doubling down on utilizing ai tools once they've done their due diligence doubling down on social like doubling down on actually protecting whatever it is you're building is a real coi and i think sometimes people see these as nice to have oh oh, you know, it'll be nice to have a trademark.

25:13Cassine Bering:It'll be nice to do this. But I think the actual cost of inaction is potentially huge. So with that, though, it is a barrier for some people. People do look at things as just pure cost. So, you know, and it is a concern maybe for startups or creators that are just trying to get out there that maybe haven't secured the big brand deals as of yet. So could you explain perhaps more why fixed fees make sense, especially for those startups or creators, Cassine? And, you know, is that something you offer over at RIFA? yeah it is most of our work is fixed fees as much as we can do it and it's mainly because a lot of the work is relatively procedural especially with trademarks and we've done it so much that we know what's going to happen we know most of the possible outcomes but for those new businesses especially knowing that a law firm isn't going to turn the taps on is quite important because you only have you have so much resources especially if you're starting you've probably not made any money from the business yet um but you might have a pot of money aside so what we tend to do is we try and give fixed fees then break it down into phases so at the start here's the things you need to do now here's the things you need to do later um but it's it's important for them for certainty and planning because they certainly need it and they need to know that they can afford it but sometimes you need to plan for it you probably can't do everything at once that would be a lot to ask and even even some of our biggest clients wouldn't come to us and order everything we possibly recommend at once but um yeah at least they can plan for it they'll have the fixed fees and you know what you need to actually save up for yeah um quick question um if you've diy'd a trademark and been rejected um is it possible to go through is it possible to get that trademark through and have you had experiences of that where people have tried to do it and actually thought maybe I should get a lawyer to do this and you know is there anything you would you would say to that because I know a lot of people that still sort of you know getting that cost out of their head in terms of you know this is this is a value purchase you know I think this is a valuable thing to do maybe they've gone through it and actually haven't got the result have you had any experiences of that and any success stories or anything you would share

27:26Éamon Chawke:yeah i mean it can be salvageable we definitely have had people who have come and filed an application and it's either been if it's refused on the grounds of distinctiveness or descriptiveness that's harder to overcome it's harder to sort of change the examiner's mind if it's been opposed that can be easier to solve um because either you can defend the opposition or you can try to negotiate some sort of coexistence terms. Very often people will oppose because they're annoyed about sort of a bit of what you're doing, but commercially they can get comfortable. But the sort of premise, the larger premise of your question is around like, should people do this for cost reasons?

28:08Éamon Chawke:It's almost always a false economy to do something yourself when you don't know what you're doing. It is more likely than not that you're going to make a mistake. I could do my own dentistry. I could cut my own hair. I don't do those things. There's a reason for that because the consequences of me trying to do something I don't know how to do are high. It's exactly the same here. I would say the more common outcome when somebody comes to us having had an objection or an opposition is that we end up having to refile the application and the client ends up paying twice. It's like a dictionary definition of a false economy.

28:43Éamon Chawke:You think you're going to do something yourself and save money you end up paying on the double so i mean going back to cassine's point as well about fixed fees and planning i think that's one of the things that we're sort of quite good at is we meet businesses at the early stage we map everything out almost like a mini audit and you give people a timeline and say look here are the sort of 10 things we think you need to do but we can map this out over the course of a year or 18 months or two or even three years and we can help you to do the priority list and then you might spend a couple of hundred quid every you know quarter or every six months and when you divide it down like that for people and they start to see it as an investment rather than a grudge purchase then then it it works then as a as a business strategy as a business proposition yeah and that's the way i view

29:33Cassine Bering:things you know price is what you pay but value is what you get and i think you know the other key point is and you know you don't hire a lawyer to answer my questions you hire a lawyer because they're the right questions to ask in the first place right and that's to your point about you know you you know yes you might be able to go into your mouth and start looking around but you're probably not highly qualified you know to maybe do a filling or something else and it's so true isn't it and i think you know i use the simple analogy of you know you wouldn't necessarily go to your gp if you needed a heart operation you know you would go to a specialist heart doctor that Hopefully it done many, many things.

30:06Cassine Bering:And that's the way I think you need to look at it, particularly when it's sort of invisible type, you know, professional services. You can't physically see maybe, you know, the end result straight away. I think it's so, so valuable, particularly your IP and your assets that you really do protect them. Even now more than ever, particularly in the way of, you know, we can get into deep fakes, AI, and the whole things that's going on. You know, there's a whole minefield out there. I think it really is the absolute non-negotiable base layer for any creator, anyone putting out content, and anyone building a brand to ensure that you look after yourself.

30:36Cassine Bering:And we've touched on it slightly, Kaseem, but anything you would like to build on in terms of other assets, like maybe content, databases, and visuals, can it all be protected beyond the brand name or can it not? Potentially. It really depends on what it is. And again, that's what a lawyer would help you with. It's hard for us to give black and white answers without seeing what we're assessing. But I tend to say to clients, look, write down who you've been working with and what's been made. And then we from there can tell you what it is from an IP perspective and whether the ownership position, which is nearly always the first thing that needs sorting, needs to change.

31:14But, yeah, things like databases, visuals, it will almost certainly be copyright.

31:21Cassine Bering:So it's normally contracts that will help move that. But, yeah, with other assets, who knows? We'll have to look at it. yeah case by case basis and to the point you know that's why you need to have these um initial discussions i mean we've gone through a lot of content there in a short space of time so maybe a sort of wrap-up question to you eamon to to maybe maybe reduce hopefully overwhelm for people you know if someone's listening to this and they are a creator or they have a business or they have a brand and they haven't taken any ip steps as of yet what's maybe the very first thing they

31:54Éamon Chawke:should think about doing or take action on doing now um well rifa.com contact us no actually the very last thing kassine said is probably the it's probably the right it's probably the first thing i would do is blank sheet of paper identify everyone that you've worked with and everything that you have created of value. And the asset test for that is, would I be annoyed if someone else took it? Or would I be annoyed if someone else lost it? Because without getting too much into the weeds, there are registered and unregistered rights. So patents, trademarks, and registered design are these rights where you sort of very, very clearly define the parameters of what you want to protect, whether it's an invention or a product design or a trademark, and you go and send off an application to an IP office and it gets registered.

32:46Éamon Chawke:Those rights tend to be more straightforward just because there's sort of certainty and precision about what you're trying to protect. The IP rights that tend to get lost are the unregistered IP rights, copyright, unregistered designs, database rights, trade secrets. And it's because there are all these sort of default positions in the law. So I could commission you, Rob, if you're an artist to do a piece of work for me. And even though I've paid for it and even though I'm the commissioner you're the author so the law says that by default unless you're my employee you own the copyright in that similarly if I disclose confidential information to you but I don't have an NDA in place or there's no other sort of circumstance of confidence then that that trade secret that the the proprietary value in that confidential information can be lost so if you've done nothing what Cassine just said is right identify all the stakeholders, identify all the works, and then contact BRIFA or contact someone who can advise you.

33:45Éamon Chawke:And we'll do what Cassine just said, which is we start to map out, okay, this is the valuable proprietary information, confidential information, trade secrets over there. We need to get NDAs. We need to get contracts in place to protect this. Here is all the stuff protectable by copyright and design rights, whether it's audiovisual content, literary content, you know whatever it might be educational material marketing material whatever that needs to be protectable usually by a contract to secure its ownership and then maybe there's some stuff over here that's registrable the chief asset registrable asset would be the trademark but you may also have product designs and inventions and we sort of map all that out and try to put a plan in place to do that in a structured and cost efficient way taking account of timelines so novelty for is is relevant for some ip rights but not for others so sometimes there's a particular reason why we do things in particular orders but yeah that's a long-winded slightly waffly way of saying get out a blank sheet of paper identify all the valuable stuff and then talk take legal advice from an ip solicitor or an ip advisor as early as possible and don't disclose anything so if you yeah if you haven't yet disclosed anything keep everything sort of confidential until you've taken advice yeah love

34:58Cassine Bering:that and maybe just one quick final final point for you because i think it leads nicely on we've talked a lot about contracts i think it may come under sort of a bit of a myth or people may not just be aware of it in terms of you know if you are a creator or brand and you're instructing external people to create your visuals or do your content for you is it worth just talking to that because again i think there might be some some assumptions that people think and maybe why the importance of contracts or agreements is is really worthwhile doing yeah it's critical i mean also to have it even if someone puts a contract in front of you but it's been drafted by their lawyers or by them it needs at least checking um we see myths about this like a contract can't be formed unless it's in writing the reality is contracts can be formed in lots of ways but when it comes to ip and actually owning ip it really needs to be written down because assignments which is the posh way of saying transfer and ownership it generally needs to be written down and black and why it also just helps you going forward to have that evidence of it um so have a contract in place and then the other issue we see is that people will say a lot chat gpt contracts or um they've been presented with a contract and they think well the other side's helping me why wouldn't they why wouldn't it help or be my best interest but contracts can be quite complicated and the ip clauses sometimes aren't contingent on the termination clauses when ideally you would have the contingent on each other so you might think this contract you can end it and you can take your IP back at the end of it but it's not always the case and the drafting is very tricky so yeah have them reviewed have them drafted and have your own representation.

36:42Cassine Bering:Love it yeah and I think it was worth going through those extra pieces of detail I've really enjoyed today's discussion it's been And yeah, really rich. So super grateful to you both, Eamon and Kasim, for your time today. If folks do want to know more about your services or indeed get in touch, if they're thinking about trademark, copyrights, all things IP, patents, etc., where do they need to go, Eamon?

37:05Éamon Chawke:For the third time, Rob. Yeah, brifa.com. We're plastered all over the internet. You'll find us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or yeah, just Google Brifa. We'll pop up. We've got offices in London and Dublin, and we work with clients all over the world, particularly for trademark registrations, because as Cassine said, they're sort of global. So, yeah, and anyone can get in touch to arrange a consultation or whatever is needed.

37:37Cassine Bering:Fabulous. Well, look, hopefully folks have enjoyed today. If you have, please do drop us some messages and we may look to do some future episodes as well, as I think the world of IP is also fast changing. And I think it's always good to try and educate and bring value to our listeners. So just remember, a brand isn't just an idea, folks. It's an asset. So you've got to go out there and take the steps to actually protect it. And if you want to learn more, obviously, feel free, as Eamon said, to go to briffer.com. And if you'd like to know more about League's Bean Podcast, feel free to go to leagueleadiespeakampodcast.com as well.