1963 – Protecting Your Brand and Content in the Digital Age with Ana Law®’s, Ana Juneja

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1:05With us right now, Anna Janaja. Anna, you are an intellectual property attorney and you are the founder of Anna Law. Now you are found on the web at annalaw.com. That's A-N-A law.com. Anna, it's great to have you. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah. So give us an overview of your work, who you serve and what you do. Sure. So I am an intellectual property attorney. So we do patents, trademarks, copyrights. We also do some business law and we serve all types of businesses from solopreneurs, medium-sized businesses, as well as corporations and celebrities, influencers. So anybody that is innovating and doing anything, you know, that's who we serve.

1:52Yeah. So what types of, you mentioned influencers and that's kind of interesting. Can you share maybe just a little bit about that? So let's say that you, like your business is you, right? And you are out there, maybe you're working with brands, you know, certainly you have a presence and a brand that happens to be you and you're using social media. I don't know that anyone initially thinks or thinks early on, you know what? I need to protect my own identity. Can you share just a little bit about that? Yeah. Well, I think now when people want to get into the influencing space or being a creator, they are realizing pretty early on that they kind of have to run it like a business because it is a business.

2:40You're just productizing services that you offer, which is production of content for brands or for yourself and affiliate links or your own products. So it is actually just a business, just like any other business, even if you want to call it an influencer. So why they, you know, influencers need to protect their identity and how they can do that is because you are risking someone else taking it from you. If you don't, it's kind of your insurance policy. There's a story, you know, that's really big in the news. I don't know if anyone who's listening has watched the show, say yes to the dress, But the fashion designer of that show, it's a pretty famous show, but she, Haley Page, lost the right to use her own name in business.

3:23She lost the right also to her Instagram account with her name on it. So her Instagram account with over a million followers that she was doing brand deals with that she was, you know, making her income from. So, you know, losing your trademarked name, either signing away your rights or somebody else filing that trademark on it first and, you know, preventing you from using it, then, And those are really bad things that can happen to an influencer or a celebrity who needs to rely on their name to be making money. That is just amazing that someone could literally lose their own intellectual, like their brand, their name.

4:00Well, it's not their brand. You never have a brand unless you have a trademark. That's the thing. You look at the financials of a business. You don't have a brand if you don't own your trademarked assets. There's no such thing as their brand. unless they own it. Yeah. Well, you know, and again, I think most of us, you know, in the business, like when we start a business, we know that pretty soon or pretty quickly, we're going to want to make sure that we have our legal P's and Q's all taken care of. Ideally, that would happen right at the get go, right? Right. As soon as you come up with the idea, can you talk maybe a little bit more about timing of some of these legal must-dos for a lot of business entities?

4:46Yeah, definitely. So I think most people are pretty good about setting up their LLC right at the start because it's really easy. Most states just let you do it online. It's really cheap, quick, easy. And you don't need, in most cases, you don't need an attorney for a small business. Now, if you have any sort of business partner or if you have any sort of other special circumstance where you need a corporation maybe instead of an LLC because you're planning on getting investors, things of that nature, then yeah, your business really needs to be solidly set up. And even to set up your business and register, you should probably use an attorney.

5:18Do not use an accountant. Accountants mess everything up every time they do anything, every time they touch business paperwork, I swear. Just no offense to any accountants listening to this, but it is a huge portion of what I've done over the last 72 hours. This is correct, about 30 business filings that were done by a CPA, multiple CPAs. So just a word of caution. So in LLC, people are pretty careful about setting up when they start their business. When it comes to IP, there's different types of IP. So I'll just quickly give like a one sentence overview. Copyright protection, there's copyrights, patents, trademarks, copyrights, cover content, I like to say, you know, audio vision.

5:57So, um, movies, videos, photos, text, text, copy on websites, um, uh, software architecture, things of that nature, works of art, things that are more artistic and then trademarks protect brands. So this is going to be name, logo, slogan. Those are the big ones for people listening. You can also trademark things like colors and motions and and jingles and sounds and smells even. But those are more maybe for corporate clients. And then there's patents. Patents cover invention. So if you've invented a chemical, a tool, some sort of machine or technology code, piece of code that does something, software like that.

6:37So that is what patents cover. So for the most part with trademarks, it's kind of the earlier, the better. So the best time to file a trademark is actually about one to two years prior to publicly launching your business. Um, this is because there's a loophole that allows you to kind of reserve a name for a couple of years. So if you ever want to go look up what your favorite celebrities or athletes are doing, you can actually go look up what they'll do in about a year or so what they're going to launch. Um, so you can go, it's public knowledge, it's public records. You can go look it up what they're going to be doing, uh, with patents.

7:10The timing is, uh, so like I said that with trademarks, that's the ideal timing, sorry, is one to two years before you publicly launch. With trademarks, another thing is if you haven't done it in that timeline and you've already started your business, the best time to do it is now. So it's kind of that saying that the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. That's kind of how it goes with trademarks. The earlier, the better. You might be able to fight things out if someone files the trademark for your name before you in certain circumstances, but it is exceptionally expensive, about 10 times the cost of just kind of doing things properly at the start.

7:46So with patents, that is not the case. With patents, the timing, if you've invented something that is, you know, a novel invention and it's really useful, the timing is much more critical because you only have one year from publicly launching something to get a patent on it. And America is a strict first to file country. So even if you've actually invented something before somebody else, if they file it before you, you're done. There's really not really anything you can do. It's a strict first to file versus trademarks, which are first to use the brand. There's options to fight it out to prove you were the first to use it.

8:21So with your brand, even if you don't file your trademark before someone else, you might have to spend, you know, 10, 20, 30K dealing with it, but you can still get that. With patents, you're out of luck. And you can also bar yourself from obtaining patent protection. So if you don't have proper NDAs, if you have not taken proper precautions and then you've, or you've disclosed something and then you've not filed your patent on time in that one year grace period, which you can't go to an attorney on the last day, by the way, it takes like two months to draft a patent. So, you know, if you don't do things properly with the timeline with patents, you've completely barred yourself from obtaining protection.

9:00So there's different types of patents you can file to like placeholders, which will buy you, you know, provisional patents, buy you another year, things like that. So the timing with patents is a lot more critical and people mess it up a lot, even seasoned business owners. So do not do that. Do not bar yourself from obtaining patent protection. Do not skip out on the contracts that you need in order to prove that you were keeping everything under wraps, that kind of thing. Yeah. Anna, in your work with the lot of content producers that you do, I would imagine you've seen some, and I'm just kind of looking through some of your LinkedIn content, that you've seen some really interesting stuff.

9:37You know, when we're thinking about how social media is such an integrated way and how we're doing everything. And sometimes there is the potential for exposure or risk. Like you just mentioned something about being very careful about what you admit to or say in comments, in anything online. Could you maybe share maybe some best practices from a legal perspective when it comes to social media or just anything that comes to mind? So I will say that every single thing ever in life that you'll ever do is a risk, right? You comment on someone's post, you post a video, you comment on your own post, you know, everything you do is a risk.

10:12What can you do to kind of mitigate your risk for any behavior that you take, right? You know, don't admit to any activity that you, you know, is illegal online, I would highly recommend like basics 101, like life 101 lesson, you know, don't admit to your crimes online, in a public forum that's permanent. You know, also, when you are doing something, whatever type a professional or service provider or business you are, stay in your scope. And if you do things that you aren't supposed to do, you know, don't admit to them at least online. You know, that's what I would kind of recommend at baseline.

10:47Hopefully don't do them, but if you do them, don't admit to them online. So one thing I see a lot in this industry, in every industry, because now every business is basically a media company that sells a side service. Like we're all in the production business in some sense, everyone who has a business, you know, we're, we're on, we're making content of some sort generally, and it's a huge part of the business. So one thing you want to do is when you're working with marketing agencies and marketing companies, you want to make sure that they are not putting you at risk because they often do. And then they are not just putting you at risk, like, oh, you might have to go fight out a trademark.

11:25You know, sometimes it's like you're now liable for statutory damages, like for IP infringement. I mean, statutory damages, like the least one, which is copyright is 150K per incident of infringement. So this is not like a little bit of money that you're now on the hook for. So you are, and you know, IP infringement. So patent trademark, copyright infringement is a strict liability tort, which means your LLC does not save you. Your LLC doesn't matter. So they're going to go have to be personally and your business and everything, pretty much everyone involved. So IP infringement is kind of a serious thing.

11:59And it is, you know, when you're working with marketing agencies and when you are doing activity online, there's certain things you can do that are putting yourself at risk. So you don't want to take legal advice from people that, you know, maybe sounds fishy. Like if it sounds like maybe you shouldn't listen to them, maybe that's a sign. and then also just you know when it comes to using other people's intellectual property so their content or their name you know you need to be really cautious because you probably are not allowed to do that and if you do it it's a risk and the risk is maybe the percent of getting caught is and sued for it is low like maybe you only have a five percent chance of getting you know sued for that but if you do i mean you're on the hook for you know hundreds of thousands tens of hundreds of thousands, you know, of dollars, you know, lots and lots of money that you probably don't have to spare.

12:50So you shouldn't get caught up in that situation. Another issue that I think has likely been in your sphere a little bit is the use of AI. And just because AI, let's say it generates some content or copy for you, or it generates material for you. AI is likely not creating super, super original stuff for you. And there is the possibility, I've heard of this, where AI has absolutely just delivered something that was not legally, you know, it was basically someone else's intellectual property that AI delivered for someone that was just using a platform. And I think you may have been maybe advising some or giving some good advice around AI as well, right?

13:44So there's a couple of things that can happen with AI. One is, yes, you don't know what's going on. Like you don't have, you're not writing that code. So you don't know if it's just pulling things from the internet that are copy paste. You really don't know at the end of the day. At least I'm not anybody who is writing a AI code and knows exactly what's going on. So that's one risk you have. Or maybe it's just not unique enough. It's pulling it, but it's not paraphrasing it enough from the source that it's pulling it from. So whatever risk that is, you're undertaking that. The other risk is even let's say it is original, whatever AI is producing for you, that it is truly original.

14:22Its algorithm did its job and it's given you whatever that you've asked for in an original format that is not elsewhere on the internet. That is still not really yours. So you cannot use it commercially, which means you can't write books with AI and go sell them. You also cannot obtain protection from it. So if you are using AI to write your blog posts on your website, because it's really quick and easy and people are into doing this now, it's a common thing. And someone else goes and copies your exact blog post, word for word, there's not really anything you can do about it. There's literally nothing you can do about it.

14:58The courts are pretty definitive on this. So whether it's images created, text created, whatever that is created by AI, you do not own the, you don't own that work. So that's just something to consider that, you know, yes, it's very easy to mass produce content with AI, but you know, you don't really own it. So you are every single thing you're doing, then you're putting yourself at risk that someone else is going to take it. Anna, yeah, thank you. Very important considerations. Your website, annalaw.com, patents, trademarks, copyrights, and other business services, including contract templates and drafting.

15:37To our friend that's been listening to our coverage, we'll share just a bit. Again, you kind of talked about those services, but you seem to have some pretty good resources. And certainly I would recommend following you on LinkedIn. But when someone goes to your website, what would you recommend they do? Um, they can either call or email us and, or they can, um, book a call. They can book a call directly on our website with one of the attorneys. Yeah. And, and what typically, like what, what kinds of things can they call with or like what generally happens? So typically people are coming to us because something has happened in terms of they have either launched a new business or launched something within their business or develop something in their business and they need new registrations or protection protections for it, or they have a question of if they can register that.

16:25Alternatively, people mostly contact us when something has gone on. So either they've found somebody who's copying them, or they have been sent some sort of cease and desist or notice of a lawsuit or things like that. So if anything like that happens, you can contact us then. Yeah. That website, once again, is AnnaLaw. That's A-N-A-Law.com. Anna Juneja, Thank you so much. Again, your intellectual property attorney and the founder of Anilaw. And it's been a great conversation. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me.

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