1553 – The Legal Business Importance of Trademarks with Trademark Factory’s Andrei Mincov

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0:58with us right now andre minkov andre you the founder and ceo of trademark factory.com that's the website trademark factory uh.com and andre it's great having you it's actually subject i'm actually really excited about talking about and not often i guess people can get excited about this, but listen, I want to help leaders stay in business. I don't want them to go through a lot of heartache and headache because they just didn't, I'd say, dot their I's and cross their T's. This is basic blocking and tackling in business ownership. So I'm so grateful you're here, Andre. Well, look, looks like we're aligned in what we want out of this conversation, like we want out of your and my relationship with the audience.

1:50So really excited to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So just a quick overview, you know, when we talk about patents and trademarks, what's the difference between a patent and I'm going to ask you some real basic questions first, and then we're going to dive in. What's the difference between a patent and a trademark? There's also copyright that copyright. Yeah. All right. So let me do a quick one. So So copyright is for content, right? Protects books, videos, images, photographs, software, the content of what's written. Patents are for protecting inventions, stuff that's so unique, something nobody's done before.

2:27It could be a method or a product, but it protects the genius idea behind something that can be replicated, right? And trademarks, they protect brands. It's what you put on that product that makes a difference from all the other copies of that product. Like when you go to a store and you see a shelf full of ketchup, well, the brand is really what's different about it, more toothpaste, right? That's what you see. And the fun thing about those products is we as consumers end up calling it, that's my toothpaste, that's my ketchup, right? Because you have, for whatever reason, picked that brand and you associate it.

3:10so much that it's like your brand now, right? Your brand of ketchup or toothpaste. So that's what trademarks protect. Yeah. And so why is it that, let's say that you register a domain name for your website, you start using it, you would think, well, no one can mess with it. And if they do, well, you just handle that. But can you talk a little bit about why that's not good enough? Okay. So there's a million things you can do when you're hoping to protect a brand. Like you can get an LLC. You can register a company. You can send yourself a letter with the brand and not open it. You can get a domain name.

4:04You can get a YouTube channel. You can get a Facebook. Well, all that stuff is great, except it doesn't work, right? There's only one way that will allow you to legally own your brand, and that is by registering it as a federal trademark. Nothing else works. Really, that's the sole reason why trademarks were invented. That's the sole reason that legislation around trademarks exists. And they made it simple enough for those who care enough about their brands to go out there and get it, right? So unlike patents, which are super difficult, that are super detailed, they're super long to get, and trademarks aren't.

4:47And unlike patents, which you have to pay maintenance fees on every single year, once you get a trademark register, it's good for 10 years. And then you can renew it for another 10, for another 10. Literally, trademarks are the only type of intellectual property that you can own forever. Right. Like, for example, Coca-Cola is one of my favorite examples. They filed their trademark in 1892 when they were literally selling nine drinks a day. Right. I call it a lemonade stand with a dream. And they still keep renewing that very same trademark up till this day. And their brand is worth, what, 80 billion dollars now?

5:28Not not not the factories, not the people, not the recipe, just the brand itself. right so whatever they paid to get it done in 1892 paid off handsomely yeah put it that way right so uh going back to you know it's it's really easy to do it uh there's unfortunately a lot of uh websites that take advantage of that uh which is you know you you can find a bunch of companies out there that will promise to file your trademark for like 69 dollars 99 uh that rarely works but the the overall process is predictable enough for it to be uh accessible to people who want it and you know i will never understand those entrepreneurs say you know what i don't i don't i don't really care to protect my brand like there's a reason you came up with that name like you didn't just start selling stuff and call it a generic name you're like Like there was some thought going through your head.

6:31Why did you want to call yourself that? Why'd you come up with that logo? Why'd you come up with that slogan, right? And why do you not want to take that one small step to own it? Like that would be beyond me, but you know. Yeah. And so when I'm sure you've had clients come in and they say, well, you know, we did a low cost$99 trademark or whatever like that. What kind of problems might come up if you go the low cost route? Okay. So there's, or doing it yourself through the patent and trademark office. Yeah. So which basically is the same thing because the$69 filers, when you file through them, you don't have an attorney of record, right?

7:21So all they do is they facilitate the filing of the application but you don't have an attorney of record when you file through them so if something happens you don't even have anyone to help you with that unless you go and find an attorney right so really there's there's two kinds of problems one type of problem one you cancel and fix and the other type of problem is the one you can't and the problem with trademarks the biggest problem with trademarks, really regardless of who you file it with, is that most people don't realize how long the process takes. In the U.S. now it's about a year and a half on average.

8:04In Canada it's close to four years now, right? And when you file your trademark, like they'll take whatever you file and you won't know the quality of the work that was done on the filing until nine months or so in the US, maybe 40 something months in Canada. And when you hear from them that, hey, you did something wrong, that's the biggest problem is if someone, if you have a problem that cannot be fixed, and you have to go back and refile, if somebody else files between those two dates, your first application and your second application, they're going to get the application, you're not they're going to get that trademark right so it's the lack of predictability uh if if you don't really know what you're doing that's the biggest problem right so you can you can have like and by uspto's own statistics uspto is the u.s uh patent and trademarks office so by their own statistics seven 68 percent of all applications filed get initially rejected that's two-thirds right uh and uh after that after all the back and forth that uh people do either directly or with attorneys after all of that said is done said and done uh only 52 percent of all trademark applications eventually get approved right so half dies uh in in in the process right and uh If that's true, well, and you only find out about it, you know, months and months and months and months later, if you're really serious about your brand, I would really be careful who you go with so as to minimize the chance of it not going through.

9:57Right. You know, we can talk about our numbers. They're, you know, significantly better. I don't want to I don't want to turn it into a pitch fest. Yeah. So really, you you you you know, you you guide this conversation the way you want to. Sure, sure, sure. I'm just curious, like what maybe some of the common mistakes might be. Yeah, so what people do wrong is the biggest mistake, they don't do a proper search. They can do a simple search, what's called the knockout search, just to make sure that the exact name has not been trademarked before. But that's pretty useless, because I can, and this is something I've done more than once, just, you know, in real time, you go to one of those websites that offer free trademark search, and you search for micro-soft software solutions.

10:51And three seconds later, it was going to say, you know what? Congratulations. Looks like this name is available. You know, do you want to pay past a little bit of money so we can file it on your behalf? Right. Guess how long it's going to be before you hear from Microsoft lawyers. Guess how long it's going to be before the USPTO tells you that. Never going to happen, right? So that's the biggest, I mean, this was an obvious example, right? Nobody's going to go and try to trademark micro-soft software solutions. But unless you know how to do a proper search, you don't know if your brand is available.

11:26Because with trademarks, trademarks don't only protect identical matches. They protect lookalikes, soundalikes, meanalikes, synonyms, translations to and from other languages, added prefixes, suffixes, all of that kind of stuff. And none of that is happening when you're doing an automated search. search so when we get a client the first thing we do is we take several days to actually do a proper comprehensive trademark search takes us at least two days uh to just do all all of those comparisons and make sure that this is registrable because if it isn't uh we don't want you to waste time you know we don't want you to waste a year and a half only to find out that whoops it didn't work right uh and uh that's the opposite of what everyone else does so if you go with any law firm what they're what they're going to do is uh they will offer you a trade a comprehensive trademark search similar to the ones that we do but the way they're going to offer it you you will not want to do it they're going to say well you know what it's optional it's only going to be an extra five hundred dollars if you want like you know it's up to you really if you want to do that.

12:38And if you're an entrepreneur, if you've never done trademarks before, you have brains like, why would I pay an extra$500? It's a law firm. They're supposed to know what they're doing. Yeah, let's just file it. And somewhere in a tiny fine print, it will say that basically if you waived the comprehensive trademark search, then well, you're just filing, they're filing whatever you tell them to file. So when nine months later, you get an office action. It's what's called when the trademark office says no. When they get that, the law firm is going to say, whoops, believe it or not, we've got an office action, but don't worry.

13:15We have a great team who knows what they're doing. They're going to respond to the office action, leave it to us. And then they do respond. Then you get a bill for$6 ,000 because they only spend, you know, 17 hours responding to that. Then you wait another few months, and then you get a second office action. And okay, don't worry, we're going to handle that too. And this can go on and on and on and on. I mean, look, if it sounds like I'm exaggerating, I'm not. I mean, it doesn't happen in every case, of course, but it does happen in some cases. And nobody, the biggest problem is you don't know whether you're going to be in that spot or not.

13:54It's almost like an insurance problem, right? When you buy fire insurance, right? You sort of don't want your house to burn down, but you know the statistics that eventually some houses will, right? You just hope that it's not yours. And if it is yours, that you have some protection. That's really what the whole concept of Trademark Factory was built on. Yeah. The website, trademarkfactory.com, over 10 years in business, nearly 3 ,500 trademarks filed. You have glowing testimonials from Dan Locke, Kevin O 'Leary, Michael Gerber. And again, you've been doing this for a while. What I like is that you've still managed to productize this so that it makes it very accessible and easy to do.

14:45Pretty low cost, especially compared to if you were to retain an attorney to do this. And you also have some different options as well to how to engage. But to our friend, Andre, that's been listening to our conversation, what's the next step? Maybe they don't know if a trademark is appropriate for them. you know, and they want to find that out, what would be the next step for them? Yeah, so the next step really is to have a conversation with a human. And we offer that free of charge. So you can go to TrademarkFactory.com, click on the big orange button that offers a free call, you know, fill out a short form, watch a short video, and what you see makes sense to you.

15:34you get access to the calendar and you'll be able to pick a time to speak with one of our strategy advisors and you know we they're not there just to sell to you I mean they they will once you're ready but their purpose there is to help you pick the right strategy to answer your questions whether you should whether now is the time and and most importantly you know what to start with because with most business owners, the issue is that they don't necessarily know what to start with, whether it's a name, a logo, a tagline in which country because trademarks are done on a per country basis, right?

16:16So your trademark in the US gives you zero protection in France, for example, right? So there's always this idea that you have to figure out what is the most cost-effective way for me to get the best protection out there, right? Because, you know, if you did have an unlimited budget, you know, it's easy, right? In my almost 30 years of doing intellectual property, right, I've yet to meet a client with an unlimited budget. And I've done work for Apple, Microsoft, you know, all the big names. I've done something for them. And they still have budgets. They still have priorities. and they still need to make those decisions.

17:02So when I came up with the idea of a trademark factory, I wanted to figure out how can we bring my knowledge, my understanding of prior priorities for business owners, how do we give it to people who don't have those budgets? How do we help them not get screwed by law firms, by, you know, those cheap filing websites that will file whatever you give them. How do we give them value and give them the results? And really, you know, you went through some of the steps on the website. The one I'm most proud of is that 99.3 % rate of success. Just compare that to 52, right? 99.3 is better. Yeah. Yeah.

17:49And, you know, the reason, the search, you know, the way we file, you know, filing right classes for the right things because we listen, right? We don't file just whatever garbage you want to throw at us. We'll listen. We'll make sure we're, you know, what we're doing, what makes sense. And if we see that, you know, what, what you're doing doesn't make sense, we're going to tell you, we don't want to do it. Here's your money back. Yeah. Andre Minkoff, again, founder CEO of trademark factory, the website trademark factory.com. When you go to the websites, couple of pricing matrices, you can look and see what all your options are.

18:24But as well, you should kind of compare what your other options are. Like you could do it yourself. You could hire someone cheap and you'll see all the pros and cons of that. And I like that you're pretty upfront on that. And of course, you can go traditional law firms and attorneys. And I think he illustrated that as well. But again, the website, TrademarkFactory.com. Andre Minkov, this has been a great conversation. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me, Josh. I hope this was useful. And if I could add one more, because obviously I couldn't share everything I know about trademarks.

18:59We have a YouTube channel for Trademark Factory. I've published nearly a thousand videos there. You can learn pretty much everything there is to learn about trademarks. So if you're not in the, you know, I need a trademark today mode, but I'd like to learn more about trademarks, that's where I would lead you to. And, you know, just go ahead and go through some of those videos and you'll see if it's for you or not. Yes, you do. You do have a lot of good content here. So it's awesome. Again, Andre Minkoff, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks, Josh.

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