Unlocking Legal Secrets: Protecting Your Online Business through Trademarks with Samantha Bradshaw (Attorney)

Unlock the secrets to safeguarding your business with our distinguished guest - a small business and intellectual property lawyer - Samantha Bradshaw (Inline Legal), also a trademark expert. 

Samantha lets us in on her entrepreneurial journey and her mission to aid creative entrepreneurs in protecting their ventures. She emphasizes the significance of proactive legal strategies and contracts, and the need for practical business education. We also extend our conversation to the world of trademarks. Intriguingly, trademarks don't just cover names and slogans, but can even protect colors and smells in select categories!

As our conversation flows, we delve deeper into trademark services and the criticality of brand protection, especially for businesses operating across state lines or those with future expansion plans. Learn the difference between TM and R and when to trademark a name, course, or slogan.

Samantha further simplifies the trademark registration process and underlines the importance of a unique brand name. Is trademarking an expensive affair? Is it worth the investment? We dissect these questions and more.

In our final segment, we turn the spotlight on the legal landscape for small businesses. A lawyer specializing in fractional legal services for entrepreneurs shares golden nuggets of wisdom on custom contracts, the perils of sticking to sole proprietorship, and the pressing need for legal and financial advice from the get-go.

Strap in for an insightful journey into the world of small business and intellectual property law. This episode is a must-listen for all entrepreneurs seeking to shield their business and assets through sound legal services.

If you'd like to take advantage of her generous 20% offer, use the code: https://www.inlinelegal.com/5dcfo

And to see if you're ready for a trademark: https://www.inlinelegal.com/trademarkquiz

Follow her on Instagram here.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello and welcome to the 5D CFO podcast. My name is Angela Marie Christian and my mission is to help entrepreneurs and thought leaders rise to the 5D, where we can find wealth in all dimensions, in all areas of life. Enjoy, oh my gosh. You guys. I'm so excited to be back. I was sick. I lost my voice, it still sounds a little scratchy, I still got a cough, but I'm really happy to be back.

Speaker 1: 0:29

So today I'm really excited to introduce you to my guest, samantha Bradshaw. Samantha Bradshaw is a small business and intellectual property lawyer and she's going to be talking to us about all things protection when it comes to your business, and she even has a 20% off coupon that she's going to share with my listeners on templates that most online entrepreneurs will need. So you can get a 20% off if you keep listening and check out the show notes. And she also offers a trademark quiz to see if and when you will need a trademark. So I'm really excited to dive in today. Let's get into it. Welcome to the show, samantha. I'm so excited to have you here. It's been over a year since we chatted last time, so I'm really excited to dive in with you.

Speaker 2: 1:24

I am too. Today's going to be good and I'm hoping your listeners will get some really actionable information about. You know trademarks, illegal and contracts and all the stuff that sounds boring, but we're going to try to make it fun, I promise.

Speaker 1: 1:37

And, as you know, a lot of my listeners are entrepreneurs, or what I call want your entrepreneurs. So they're wanting to be entrepreneurs and you are a perfect guest because I will quote this from your website you help creative entrepreneurs protect and grow their business with proactive legal strategies, contracts and practical education. I love how clear that is and, before we dive into all of your services, I would love to know the story behind finding and creating your business and just sharing a little bit about your background and what led you to starting your business.

Speaker 2: 2:15

Yeah. So it's funny, most people don't think of lawyers as entrepreneurs, but those of us who start law firms are. So you know, the business owner bug started catching me, just like it did everybody who's listening. At some point in time I had one idea, and that's not the idea that you see in front of you today, but when I was working at a firm in Beirut in Lebanon, I was working as the Foreign of Council and I knew that law firms there that were smaller than the one that I was working at had a similar need for English trained lawyers, but could not justify the cost of hiring somebody like me full time. Full time foreign hires tend to be more expensive and my place could barely justify me as big as it was, so smaller places definitely couldn't couldn't afford it. So I started thinking I could create this like English native language lawyer agency sort of thing and give people like part time lawyers that could get packages with a certain number of hours or something at a super discounted rate. Anyway, that was the idea that started it, right, you see this thing and you're like, oh, I can do that better, I can definitely do that better, and so that's what was in my head until a friend of mine who wanted to start a board game store messaged me while I was still working at the same firm and he needed to contact a lawyer. It happened to be me, because businesses in Lebanon must have a lawyer on retainer and that has to be registered with the commercial register as a lawyer. I think this is a brilliant idea if you have a good business lawyer, somebody who's proactively looking out for your business, making sure you're not missing deadlines, making sure all the forms are filled out right, and then they can come in every once in a while and have check ins with you and say, hey, what's going on, what are your plans? Let's make sure you're covered.

Speaker 2: 4:08

So I brought my friend to my firm, I set up a meeting with him and me and the managing partner, and my friend gave this amazing pitch about using board games to heal generational trauma from decades of civil war, like building soft skills for future generations to make Lebanon even more amazing than it already was. And my heart shattered like fell to the absolute ground, of course, and I looked over at my boss. I was like, look, I will do all of the work, I will supervise everything. That needs to be an Arabic with a junior lawyer. So this takes no time out of you, as minimal as possible. Can we give him a good rate? Because he's a brand new business and the managing partner wouldn't lower the price, which he was targeting a different market. He wasn't talking to guys like my friend who were just trying to start up. He was talking to mid-sized businesses that had family money and stuff to throw around.

Speaker 2: 5:05

And so here was a guy who was trying to stay in Lebanon which was rare at the time and still is, to be honest, trying to build something for his community, and it was price that stood in the way.

Speaker 2: 5:16

He eventually found a cheaper lawyer, and I knew that lawyer was taking his money just to put his name down on the register and that he wasn't doing that proactive help. That would actually help my friend and I know there's so many lawyers like that not just in Lebanon, by any means all over the world. Right, and that just that wasn't okay to me. So I wanted to make sure that I could create something where I could help those first generation entrepreneurs, those folks who had an idea that could make the world smile a little more, learn, as we need a little bit of that these days and those folks who were trying to build something for themselves when the world around them left them so few options and that was exciting, that was wonderful to me. If I could be part of helping somebody create that, that's what I wanted to do, so then I opened my own firm.

Speaker 1: 6:08

Yeah, I love that story. It shows that there was a need in the market and that you recognized it and you cared enough to step up and create a solution.

Speaker 2: 6:23

I appreciate that. There's definitely and there's also on top of it there's this idea that legal is scary and terrifying and hard and something to be avoided until there's a problem and you absolutely have to drag your feet to go talk to the lawyer. I want to change that. I want to make it just a regular meeting that you have and say, okay, what's on tap? What are we doing next? How can we make your investment and your risk level match what you think you're going to get out of this? It doesn't have to be that hard. Lawyers have a tendency to try to make things harder to justify their cost, and there's no need for that. We can pre-value without having to confuse people.

Speaker 1: 7:06

Yeah, well, and that's what I like about your offerings they're very clear and it's kind of like you have something for each stage. So I would love to kind of go through the way that you work with people, because I think it would be super helpful, because there are people just starting who you know like your first offer, the plug-in place. So can you tell us what entrepreneurs would find in the plug-in place service and who it would serve?

Speaker 2: 7:37

So our plug and play is it's essentially a template store and they are lawyer drafted templates for various contracts that are very common to need in small businesses. We're expanding on it. Every every couple months we add a new template and if you've got a request for one and if we get enough requests, we try to fast track that to make sure we're being as helpful as we can to people. But the idea is it's for those, those, those baby businesses, the ones that know they need legal protection of some kind, know that whatever they're going to grab off of Google is not going to suit and don't really understand what they're grabbing off of Google anyway.

Speaker 2: 8:15

Anyway, what we do is what we use common sense language. We say, hey, you're selling this thing. You probably need a contract to tell people you don't have a refund policy or that you have sorry that you having no refund policy, or that you have late payment policies. Right, what happens if you don't have the product you're trying to sell? What happens if something prevents you from being able to provide the service that they bought from you? We cover those kind of things and we explain that not only in the description before you buy the thing, but on top of it? I think. I think don't. I haven't gone and searched everywhere, but to my knowledge we are the only lawyer drafted template store that comes with explainer videos for every contract that we put out. And if we haven't recorded the explainer video yet, we typically give you a bonus where you get to come have a meeting with us. We record the explainer video while we talk to you and cut your face off, and then that becomes the explainer video for everybody that buys it after you.

Speaker 2: 9:17

So, if you don't get the explainer video, you get a one on one with us.

Speaker 1: 9:22

That's awesome. That's so hard.

Speaker 2: 9:25

We're really trying to make legal more accessible and if you're really just at that starting point, being able to take just a few hundred dollars and tweak something enough yourself Is such a better option than going on Google and copying and pasting whatever you find and like praying, it works. Alternatively, our contracts are specifically drafted to suit Virginia businesses. I'm Virginia licensed. What we also recommend is when folks don't have a lawyer they know or trust wherever they are in their state, because state walls change. What works in Virginia may not work perfectly in Texas. Right, virginia has a cap on how much you can charge on like fees. Texas doesn't.

Speaker 2: 10:08

There's things like this, but you can buy one of our templates that's specific to what it is that you need and you can take it to a Texas lawyer and say can you just tell me the things in this that aren't applicable to Texas? Right, how much is one hour of your time? How much can you fix on this contract in one hour of your time? You've got a semi custom contract for less than a thousand dollars. Yeah, we're talking to you for less than a thousand dollars most of the time. So we really are trying to make this, even if it's Virginia specific, we're trying to make it accessible for anybody who can and needs to have that protection, which really is every business owner. If you're selling something above 20 bucks at this point, like, go get yourself a basic contract, and we've got all sorts of other things in there too.

Speaker 1: 10:55

Yeah, no, I remember during our last conversation, you had mentioned this to me and I've actually shared it with other people. What About the chargebacks and like, if you don't have that in your contract? You had shared something about that during our conversation.

Speaker 2: 11:12

Yeah, I shared that with someone else, so it becomes, it becomes a lot harder to win a chargeback fight. And if you've got language specifically in your contract saying like you know, we don't allow you to do chargebacks, and if you have this contract visible before somebody buys from you and you can show that it's visible, you know the one they let check that little box. I agree to the terms and conditions that if you can show that to the credit card company, the bank that's processing the chargebook from chargeback from some angry client, you become so much more likely to win that chargeback and be able to keep the money that you have earned Right. There's a term now for for chargebacks called friendly fraud. I think that is the most bullshit thing I've ever heard of in my life.

Speaker 1: 11:58

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 11:59

But to try to keep it more friendly and aka the lack of fraud and keep the funds in your pocket from angry customers. When you have done things right, when you have tried to manage things in a good way, right, and because sometimes people are just people will people. It's my job to to plan for the worst and hope for the best. That's, that's my job. So I try to set people up for that.

Speaker 1: 12:23

That's kind of how we approach things. No, that's great and that's so necessary in this online space. It's like I know of so many creators who have experienced that, like someone will purchase their you know course, or whatever they tell their bank, oh, it's fraudulent, you know, and it's it's so messed up for the digital creators out there.

Speaker 2: 12:45

I will give you a really quick tip for the cost of registered mail. You can make this almost foolproof if, whenever somebody buys your digital product right, because you're just delivering it, whatever set up an automation with some company that sends a postcard that just says like thank you for buying our product.

Speaker 2: 13:06

Or print out. Print out your digital workbook If that's what you're selling and physically mail them a copy via registered mail. Oh, then you have physical evidence that it showed up to their address, and then you have their address to the combination of, like a contract and physical evidence. I can't imagine how you would lose a charge back claim if you've got both of those things in front of you.

Speaker 1: 13:31

Yeah, wow, that's so helpful. Thank you, of course, I agree. I wonder if that's why I was just thinking. I've invested in a couple of courses where they've you know, offered as a gift oh, we're going to send you a workbook.

Speaker 2: 13:46

I wonder if that's why a part of their I mean to you, to you as the customer, this just looks like a beautiful, you know, delightful thank you for purchasing. Yeah, well, to the business it's, it's a risk mitigation strategy. Yeah, it's amazing when you can find moments where those things can overlap, yep.

Speaker 1: 14:07

Exactly. Yeah, wow, that's, that's huge Thank you. So I would love to talk now about your trademark services. I actually did have a couple of clients ask me recently and I did mention your name because they were trying to figure out well, should I trademark this? So I would love if you could tell us a bit about that, like when should someone trademark their name or their course or slogan? And then, what's the difference between that little R versus the TM?

Speaker 2: 14:43

So the way that I approach trademarks is a little differently than most trademark lawyers are going to tell you. Most of them are like oh okay, this is possible, let's file and that's just, that's it. Much like my friend opening the board game cafe. I know small businesses don't have unlimited funds to throw illegal. They need to set aside a percentage, and I wish that was a discussion when people were putting together business plans and all of that of like look, we are part of your budget. If you don't want to get shut down at some point later or deal with a lawsuit where you have to come up with tens of thousands of dollars, just put us in the budget. It'll be cheaper in the long run. That much I promise you.

Speaker 2: 15:24

But with that in mind, the way that I approach trademarks is I don't even care what your trademark is at first. I want to know what your plans are for the next five years because I want to figure out if it's worth it for your business to get a trademark. If it's not, you're just throwing away. It's been out here you work with somewhere between three and $5,000. And a good chunk of that's just going to the US Patent and Trademark Office as a fee. I look, I don't want to give the US government any more money than you do, so let's not do it.

Speaker 2: 15:59

So how do we look at that? Who is it? Who is it going to make sense for? Really make sense for people that are operating across state lines, right? So my digital creators, who are operating nationally by default anyway, makes really good sense for them. It makes a lot of sense if somebody stole your most popular product or service name or your business name tomorrow and it pissed you off and you've invested money into coming up with that branding and you've had it for a long time and that's how people know you, that's how people refer you. It's going to cost you money not just to fight that and potentially lose.

Speaker 1: 16:35

Right.

Speaker 2: 16:37

But the lack of business that you wouldn't be getting, because if somebody starts to shut you down, you're going to have to shut down everything immediately. If you've got physical products with the branding on it of that name or phrase, you can't use it, right? You've thrown all of that, all of that labeling, all of that packaging out the window if you haven't protected it beforehand. If it's your website and you've got your big product name up at the top, you have to go in and make all those changes to your website. And if that's how people recommend you, they're going to be recommending you to the other guy, right? So that's when we really look at it.

Speaker 2: 17:13

Have you put stuff into this that it's going to cost you? If you have big expansion dreams, that's something we want to protect too, because you don't need that weighing over you as you move forward. And then there's some people that are like no, I don't have any of this, I just want to check the box. I know my worth. I want to protect my stuff, right? I don't want to even have to think about this. I don't want to worry. I don't want to have this sitting on my head.

Speaker 2: 17:41

Even if they're not expanding, even if they're not operating out of state lines. Cool, that's a totally valid reason too, but it's making sure that you understand. These are the reasons to do it. There's a couple others, but those are the big ones. So we start with that and then we start looking at okay, what makes sense to trademark for you and what does that mean?

Speaker 2: 18:03

Trademarks are phrases, slogans, words, colors. In some cases, smells, colors and smells. I've been seeing, like Tiffany Blue, the smell of Play-Doh. You know, those are very specifically associated with the brand and it can be logos too that identify the thing being sold. So I know a t-shirt is from Nike because it has the Nike logo on it and if anybody else puts that logo on it it's counterfeit. Right, that's the idea of the protection. But if somebody puts that logo on a water bottle well, maybe water bottle is not the best example there in sports on an air conditioning unit, let's go with that, because it's hot. Right now I'm in Brazil and it's hot, I'm sweating. So if somebody puts the Nike logo or the Nike phrase on an air conditioning unit, I'm probably not going to think that Nike that makes running shoes and sports gear and all this stuff is suddenly making air conditioners.

Speaker 1: 18:55

Right.

Speaker 2: 18:56

So it doesn't mean you get to own that phrase, that logo, that color, that smell in everything. It means you own it and the thing that you sell and all the related stuff. Right, because maybe Nike makes water bottles they probably do, actually, now that I think about it. So we're making sure that we're protecting you in the right categories, because each of those categories, when you file a trademark, is fees to the USPTO.

Speaker 2: 19:20

If you want to sell t-shirts and water bottles. You got to pay money. Two monies Got it. T-shirts there's one set of fees. Right, but every category we added on to another set of fees.

Speaker 1: 19:32

Okay, so I'm just thinking. I know we chatted about this. So, as an example, and this makes me think, like people should actually, if they are considering expanding and have big goals, they should actually talk to you or a trademark attorney before they even start expanding, because then, if they've spent all these years like mine, the 5DCFO, if I couldn't even patent that I would want to or trademark that I would want to know, that. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 20:02

And you would want to know it now before you start putting a whole lot of effort and time into it and getting associated with that name, right? So and that's actually a good point to answer your other question so as of right now, for example, you could use that little TM symbol after the 5DCFO. Okay, Because the TM symbol just announces to the world that you intend to trademark it.

Speaker 1: 20:24

That you're thinking about that, you're claiming this name that it's yours.

Speaker 2: 20:27

Right, you're the dog who went peed on the tree and that's where we're at right. It doesn't mean it's your tree, yeah, it's bouncing to the world that it's your tree. Okay, that little R is once. The US government has said you peed on the tree, we acknowledge it's your tree. Okay, but that process takes it's taking about 18 months right now. Oh gosh, that's a long time.

Speaker 1: 20:52

That's a long time.

Speaker 2: 20:56

Before the pandemic it was taking about nine, but of course US government everything is still playing catch up from the pandemic. There was also a slew of Chinese companies who mass filed trademarks during the pandemic, a lot of which fake filings just trying to claim other people's names create all sorts of issues. So they're still processing all of that but just slowed everything down as well, and it's actually it's taking as of right now. I checked this a couple of like two weeks ago. If you filed today, it was like next September or November. One of the two was when you would get an examining attorney. So the person at the US Patent and Trademark Office that would actually look at your application.

Speaker 2: 21:41

It's taking that long, it's crazy, yeah, and you can't use that little R until after somebody has looked at your application, said there's no problem published it. Meaning in a wedding, you know that moment where they're like hey, anybody have any issues with this? Speak now, forever hold your piece. Yeah, there's a speak now, forever hold your piece. Version and trademarks. We call it publication. You have to get past that point and if nobody says anything, then the US government's finally, after they process some more paperwork, right. Then they're like, Okay, sure, Now it's yours.

Speaker 1: 22:14

Wow, that is a process.

Speaker 2: 22:17

It is a process and there's all sorts of scammers out there. One of my clients message me literally last week and she got one and demanding they're good, they're good. Even the attorney groups that I'm in occasionally and no one pops up. We're like, we're kind of impressed at how good they are at scamming people. We see so many bad scams that sometimes we get happy when somebody put an effort Right.

Speaker 2: 22:43

But of course we share all this information to make sure our clients are paying extra money because you'll get letters from these scammers saying you have to file this thing, which is a real thing, you have to file, right, they're not making that part up, but they'll be like file it to us and pay us a fee and then they'll never file it with the USPTO. Even if you have an attorney, right, they'll still send you these letters. So we try to keep that as neutral as possible and when we work with our clients we're like look, do you hear from anybody else about your trademark? It's not real. Yeah, yeah, uspto has our address, our email, our phone number. They will contact us. We will keep you updated, I promise, right, right.

Speaker 1: 23:23

That's scary. Yeah, yeah, wow. And so what would be the first thing someone should do if they're considering getting a trademark for their? So I guess this is where I get confused, and I'm sure my listeners too, For example, my brand is the 5D CFO. I mentioned that on my website. I have a podcast. I'm going to write a book. Really, I should have looked into that first, if it was even trademarkable, right Before I even started doing all of this.

Speaker 2: 24:01

I mean it's Again. I will go back to the idea that small businesses don't have unlimited legal funds.

Speaker 1: 24:08

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 24:08

They don't. They don't have a legal fund. So an affordable way you can do that is to ask a lawyer if they do something called a knockout search which will tell you at that moment in time there is a low likelihood. Hopefully they'll come back and tell you low, medium or high. That's how we do it. We red light, green light or yellow light of this being a problem to a trader Green, being like no one can say 100% Right, we don't know.

Speaker 2: 24:39

We don't know whether they're stuffed two days before you and they just haven't put it up yet. Yeah, but we can give you a really good option and we access all sorts of non-public search engines and all those things to be able to give you that information. But if you go to an attorney and they're like, look, can I get a knockout search? I'm thinking about this name that's something you can do for less than $1,000.

Speaker 2: 25:00

I don't know any attorney charge more than If someone's charging you $2,000 for a knockout search. Run the other way. But that's something you can do, going in of like, look, these are the names. And if you don't know what the name is yet, if you've got like three names floating around in your head, be like can you look at all three of these? Tell me which one's the lowest risk? Yeah, what's that? If you're not ready to trademark yet, because maybe you're not Right, maybe you still want to figure out what this is before you invest that $3,000 to $5,000. Right, it's not cheap. Right, you want to make sure your business is still going to be here by the time the trademark is approved in a year and a half by the US Department of Trademark Office.

Speaker 1: 25:37

Right.

Speaker 2: 25:38

But yeah, making sure you're kind of good to go before then is checking with a knockout search where the lawyer would be the probably the most budget friendly way to do that. Okay.

Speaker 1: 25:49

Yeah, and does that help people? If they have, I guess helped their case, maybe if someone tries to steal their name. But if they have, like you know, the 5dcfocom, Like if I own that, which I do, does that help at all?

Speaker 2: 26:03

No, I mean here's the thing in the US. It's very odd. It's very odd and this is going to be kind of complicated Until you have a federally registered trademark. We have something called common law trademarks, which is this idea of like, well, I registered it first, but you had it first, but are you selling the same thing? And like people can fight it out? You're going to spend $50,000 in litigation to fight that out. Wow, yeah, unless the business owner on the other side is reasonable, they know you're not going to compete in their market and you guys can come to an agreement.

Speaker 2: 26:43

And we have agreements for this, we have contracts for this. Let's say, like, we both agree to use this phrase, this word, this thing that we want to mark, and we're not going to sue each other over it, as long as we don't cross into each other's markets or start selling the other thing. You can do that. That's the cheapest option too, but if it gets to litigation, yeah, you're talking $50,000. Wow, that's crazy. So you can do your knockout search right, we're talking max and grand. Or you can just go straight for the trademark, because there's two trademark applications. There's one that says, basically, I'm already using it, and then there's another one that says I want to use it, so I'm going to pee on the tree early, okay, and I'll prove to you that I'm using it shortly.

Speaker 2: 27:27

But we've got these two options. So you can do that knockout search and just pray until you have the funds to actually file the trademark. Or, if you have the funds to file the trademark, you can do that from the start. Either of these are infinitely cheaper than your litigation strategy down the road once there's a fight. Yeah, wow, million, yeah.

Speaker 1: 27:49

Not a million.

Speaker 2: 27:49

I don't do math, guys. That's why I went to law school, whatever that math is.

Speaker 1: 27:56

You all can do that right, and if so, for people listening, do you offer the knockout search as a service?

Speaker 2: 28:05

So we actually we do the knockout search as part of our trademark application.

Speaker 1: 28:10

Okay, got it.

Speaker 2: 28:11

And we search all of these public and private search engines and we give you that green light, yellow light, red light and particularly for us and there's not many lawyers who do this if it comes back after the knockout search that it's a red light for us and we're like, and we're explaining to you all the risks and you don't want to move forward with it. Or even if it's a yellow light, and we're like we can, but like we can't promise you there won't be any fights with USPTO.

Speaker 2: 28:38

You're like no, I'd rather try something else which is good for people. In the very beginning, we give you a second knockout search and analysis and opinion letter for free. Wow, if we green light you and go for it. We don't do that because you're green lighted. Let's just go, let's file, let's stop wasting time, right.

Speaker 1: 28:54

Right.

Speaker 2: 28:56

But if you're not comfortable with the risk level, then we give you another option to find another name.

Speaker 1: 29:01

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, that's really fair. And I think you mentioned, I think so. No, I think. I mean, I think that would be hard to find somewhere else. To be honest, just you know, in my experience with a lot of attorneys, they usually don't do that.

Speaker 2: 29:19

Yeah, we're screwed up, Brady, all I'm sorry. And you had mentioned you had the USPTO site up, but I can't remember what you said exactly you were doing there, I do, I do so I thought I thought it would be helpful, maybe for your listeners, because, as you said, you're not registered. We could go through and I could do, like the initial search. The knockout search we do is many, many steps.

Speaker 2: 29:47

I could do the initial search for our knockout search for your brand. Oh, okay, yeah, walk you through how we analyze it, because I think that would be really helpful for both you and your and your customers, yeah, definitely, and your listeners. That's the word. Okay, it's one of those days, all right. So if you're still listening to us, it is October of 2023.

Speaker 2: 30:14

And I have just done a search for 5D CFO, exactly as it's called for the whole brand, right, for the books, for the podcast, the company, everything. Looking onto that. And this is just the direct search, right? I'm not searching anything that could sound like 5D. I'm not searching 6D CFO. I'm not searching any of that. Why is that important? Because the fastest way to get a trademark refused is if somebody already has another trademark. That could be similarly confusing. So if I know a year five DCFO and someone opens six DCFO, it's reasonable that I could think that they were you.

Speaker 2: 30:55

Or mix up the name, right, yeah? Or I call something sticks, I don't know, doesn't matter when selling. There's a band called sticks. There's a company that makes the things you hit a drum with. I'll drop my house. Oh my God, drums, my host, that would kill me. I'm in a room with like 10 instruments. Oh God, I want to listen to this. No, just kidding. So there's that company that does that. I'm sure there's a bunch of other companies.

Speaker 2: 31:29

Actually, let's just see. I'm going to see now, and it doesn't matter how I spell it. It doesn't matter if I call it STICK, stics, stix. Wow. I need to review all of these things and make sure none of them would be consuming, confusing to someone buying whatever it is that you sell. It's confusing. Uspto is going to say no, we're going to be much off the bat. That's the fastest way for us to get a no on one of those. And so look on STICS right now. I've just done a search for STICS, literally the word STICS. Anything that starts with STICS ends with STICS, is with the CK or the X, with an S, without. There are 10,368 results in the USPTO system.

Speaker 1: 32:25

See you, that's crazy.

Speaker 2: 32:32

Let's go back to yours so we can walk through a more tangible idea, because yours is smaller, but sticks is a common word. We can use it to sell a lot of things. Leads us to a really good point In trademark law. The idea is that if a word is common, you can't be the only one that's exclusively allowed to use that word to sell something. Because it's not fair for somebody to own the word studio, right. It's not for someone to own the word agency law firm. These are all words that should be open to the public as long as that's what they're selling, right. We try to avoid those words as the only part of the trademark. The best trademark you can come up with is taking two words, two real words, cutting them in half and slamming them together to make a fake word.

Speaker 2: 33:26

It is the best way you can come up with a trademark, because we don't run into that issue. Yeah, pinterest, right, you pin your interest. Netflix we're watching movies on the internet. Yeah, it's on the net. This kind of idea, it's because they had a trademark lawyer in the office when they were coming up with the name, right, all right. So let's go back to 5D CFO. And if I search exactly 5D CFO, we've got 234 live applications. Does that mean necessary registrations? That does mean people who have used the words 5D or CFO or a logo with the language in it in some way directly. If I search in that way of like, let's add an S, let's do some new spellings, which we do have to check. That increases to, oh dear God, 21,526.

Speaker 1: 34:32

Ok, I thought this would be an easier one to analyze.

Speaker 2: 34:34

It's not, I'm sorry. Is it because we're doing live? It's not pre-recorded.

Speaker 1: 34:40

I didn't know this. Is it because CFO is in the name?

Speaker 2: 34:45

5D as well. It's pulling up everything that's got 5D or CFO. Now that in and of itself is not necessarily an issue. Back to, we have to look at what it is you're selling. Yeah, so we're talking about a book, probably educational material, maybe some merch Right. So each one of these things is a different category. Remember, I told you we might have to pay extra fees for every category. Yeah, but depending on which one is the one that you're making money from. That's the one we want to protect first, and we can always add on to this later. But it's cheaper to do them all at once, because then you pay the legal fees once instead of a legal fee category Tip, if you got it if you got a little bit of money, increase it and do it right the first time, yeah.

Speaker 2: 35:33

But, for example, I'm looking here and just pulling a random one. There is a registration here. Are you registered? Just got registered, actually. So, one called 5D Lash Pow.

Speaker 2: 35:50

I am assuming and let's see, I'll pull it up that they are probably selling, yeah, cosmetics makeup, mascara, eyelash extension, unless you plan on doing a side hustle into makeup based off of this brand you're building. That's not an issue. Uspto is not going to say don't get your trademark because of 5D Lash Pow, right. But what happens is when you hire a lawyer to do all this, a lawyer myself would go through these 21,526 results and say these are no problems, we'll throw all those out immediately. We won't even look at them. Anything that gets close to what you're selling.

Speaker 2: 36:30

Then we individually analyze to see how much of a problem they could be Wow. And if we can get you to a green light, we just file and move forward. If we're at a yellow light or a red light, that's when we tell you OK, maybe consider a different name. If we're super in red and you don't have money, you just want to throw at it to see. So it works. But I don't recommend that necessarily. Just if somebody has extra money and they want to, they're stuck on the name, right, they're like this one, I need this one, right. Or if we find somebody who's doing something similar, we can reach out to them and say hey, can we get an agreement where we could both use this name? And then we get that before we file. Then when the USPTO says whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you're like yeah, no problem, he agreed, here's the paper.

Speaker 1: 37:12

Right, that's smart.

Speaker 2: 37:15

Yeah, so that was a long explanation of how this process can look like, but I think an explanation that's important for people to have. No, dr Stoker, it's such a. People are like oh yeah, I got my trademark and you're like, ok, but what does it do, right? How'd you get it? What are you selling? What is it protect? Yeah, how long did it take?

Speaker 1: 37:40

Yeah, I know that's super important and definitely I'm sure the listeners will be like, ah, I need to look into this, because I just think we get so creative in our mind we're like, oh, I'll use this name, and then we don't really think about the legalities of it.

Speaker 2: 37:56

So Well, the more creative you can get with the name, actually the easier it makes my job. It's the marketers that are heavy on SEO that actually make my job difficult, because they want easily recognizable descriptive words to be your name, right. Those are really hard for me to get through If you start making up words. Oh, we're in such a better place, such a better place. I would love for you to make up words please. It makes my job easier.

Speaker 1: 38:28

Yeah, that's so interesting, well, and I appreciate you doing such a deep dive, because it's helpful to just kind of know behind the scenes what's happening and what goes into all of that. So, yeah, thank you for that. Is there anything else you'd want to say about trademarking, I mean?

Speaker 2: 38:48

the biggest thing for me. The importance for me is and the reason I harp on this so much on social media the vast majority of the intellectual property in the world is owned by straight white men. Yeah, no offense to the straight white guys. They've had this Right. It's time for everybody else. And that is 100. And look, intellectual property is the way that you're able to step out of your business and have other people start doing the work for you, have a brand, start selling for you, be able to expand without you physically needing to be the one at the other location. This is how you scale with these.

Speaker 1: 39:32

Yeah, that's so important, yeah, and so people can also hire. I doubt you guys do this, but like say it came back yellow light, red light, like there's probably just help someone come up with a good brand name, absolutely, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 39:53

And we're actually we're actively working right now to get a list of, like, really great referral partners that we trust yeah, that know our process really well that we can hopefully send over, and I'm thinking about for next year having a different tier package that would include their services if it's necessary. But that's future stuff. Right now, but look, I mean as of this moment, if you hear this early on and we don't have this yet, ask the trademark lawyer that you're working with, even if it's not us. Ask them what the options are if your name or your phrase or your logo comes back and like it looks problematic. Ask them if they can give you any help with that. If they can't and you don't know what to do, maybe find somebody who can.

Speaker 1: 40:40

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's a lot better to do that sooner than later.

Speaker 2: 40:48

Look, everything illegal. It's like insurance or you know, going for a 30 minute walk every day. It's preventative. That's the entire way that my firm runs. Everything about it is look, I'm a lawyer and I don't like going to court. That's why I run the firm I do. Business owners are terrified of court.

Speaker 2: 41:10

I'm not scared of it, but I don't like doing it. I much rather be gallivanting around the world popping off to a different country all the time. Right, I can't do that. If I have to go to a courtroom, yeah. So my entire firm is centered around keeping small businesses in line with their compliance stuff. To keep them out of a courtroom, yeah.

Speaker 1: 41:31

And while speaking of that, so there's another option for people listening where they can just pay you for. Is it an hour of your time to just ask you questions?

Speaker 2: 41:41

Yeah, we've got the other two offerings we have is exactly this we have an ask a lawyer session, which is 75 minutes. You come with as many questions as you can spout off and I will answer them as quickly as I can. If you've got a contract template from somewhere else and you want to tweak it to make sure it matches Virginia law, you can bring that contract template. We'll fix as much of it as we can in 75 minutes. We record them, send you the recording because I know legal can be a lot to absorb and I don't want people to have to be ferociously taking notes. I want them to be able to focus and come up with all the questions that are actually happening in their head, and that's really great for folks who know they need help and would prefer to have a regular person that knows their business rather than having to explain it again every time to someone, but aren't ready for a full fractional legal officer yet, which we have that too and we just do flat monthly payments so you can budget what's going on.

Speaker 2: 42:42

And actually our fractional services come with all of this stuff. It comes with the templates, it comes with the trademarks, it comes with custom contracts. These ask the lawyer sessions quickie like what about this? 30 minute chats? We do strategy sessions every quarter just to figure out what's going on in your business and really try to be that support. And we've got three different levels of that retainer package depending on where in your business you're at whether you're in full growth, aggressive mode or you're just in kind of chill. It's like fix this, things are going kind of nice right now. We want to make sure we've got somebody on tap ready, that's all.

Speaker 1: 43:17

Right Now. That's nice, so you have three different tiers for people who are looking for fractional legal officer. Basically, yeah, that's great.

Speaker 2: 43:26

As you're building up to that. We've got our outside services the ask, the lawyer session, the templates and the trademarks, because we do think that's an important one to get right relatively early. So we separated that one out for folks who aren't ready for full legal support yet.

Speaker 1: 43:43

And so in the full legal support, though that includes filing a trademark.

Speaker 2: 43:49

It can, depending on the level. It comes with custom projects, and one of your custom projects could be a custom client contract if you're in services, checking that all your marketing is compliant with the necessary laws can be one. Filing a trademark can be one. Setting up your business, all right, setting up the LLC or the corporation, and all of that can be one. And that's something we just we agree with our clients on that. For every every season that renews, if they've got those custom contracts in their pack, the custom projects in their package, we agree what the most benefit they would get during that next season of six months would be Okay, got it. That's what we tackle first. Everything about what we do is like okay, where's the biggest risk?

Speaker 1: 44:39

That's what we do. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, that's that's great that you offer things at all different levels so people can really get the help that they need. And then so now that we talked about a lot of that and how people don't think about you what are, like you know, the top few mistakes that you're just seeing small business owners making, or even if you can't think of a few, just like a couple.

Speaker 2: 45:09

Yeah. So the first one that I see for like new business owners is they go and grab. They know they need a contract or whatever it is they're selling, especially service providers, and they'll just grab something off the internet. And they're terrible most of the time Like you don't know what the source is, you don't know what their logic was in writing it, or if it was even was a lawyer writing it, or if it even's meant to apply your industry, or if it's specific to your state, right that you, just you don't know any of that and it's it becomes an issue. So I had a. There was a girl and one of the. There was a woman and one of a marketing group that I'm in. We were talking, just like on a side accountability thing While we were talking about terms and conditions on her website.

Speaker 2: 46:03

She was a coach. The terms and conditions on her website were from copied and pasted from Twitter. Look, I spend a lot of time reading terms and conditions, which I know is not everybody's idea of fun, but in case you didn't have a chance to read Twitter's terms and conditions, they do say that you're very explicitly that you're not allowed to upload explicit or adult content. She had a website with a contact form. It's not possible. It's not possible. So, making sure that you have stuff that suits your needs and protects what you actually need protected, which she needed a better privacy policy because she was collecting personal information. She doesn't need language that says don't upload adult content. There's no upload button. So that's a big issue that I see People try and I respect where they're coming from. I do. They're trying to say like oh, I did it, I checked the box.

Speaker 1: 47:11

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 47:11

Right, I put the thing that I know I need to put, but it doesn't match what it is that they're doing. I see a lot of new business owners hang on to sole proprietorship because they've heard somewhere that, like that's a business. It's not a business, there's no protection in that and unless you're in California where an LLC costs like $800, please go get an LLC. There's just it's. They're relatively simple that you can, even if you're not comfortable with it. You can do that whole thing. Pay somebody the one hour of the ask a lawyer session See what an hour of their time is and say welcome me through this. Right, if you can't afford for somebody else to set up for you, have them do it with you, because, especially once you get to the point where you're selling, you know a decent amount of stuff. You don't need one angry client who just has a stick up their butt to come and like sue you and then all of a sudden your car, your house, all of these other things are at risk. Because of what? Because you were trying to save a hundred bucks a year. Really, now it's not worth it and, like I said, most states it's a relatively simple thing to do.

Speaker 2: 48:19

California sucks. If you're in California, I'm sorry. Actually, if you're in California, call me and I'll give you a referral to somebody who will walk you through a DIY way to do it in California in a good way, and he's a lawyer. Oh, I need the contact. Send me a message on Instagram. You can find me at Inline Legal and I'll give you his information. If you're in California, because California is weird, guys, I'm sorry. And then I think the biggest issue for all levels, all levels of business people just they wait too long to talk to not only a lawyer, to a CPA, right to potentially marketing out to the things that aren't inherently what your business is.

Speaker 2: 49:05

Waiting too long is only going to cost you money and probably a few sleepers nights, and I'd rather you not do that. I'd rather you sleep like a baby, right?

Speaker 1: 49:15

No, it's so true I mean, even in you know my line fractional finance in a county, and it's like people will try to do it themselves. Same thing Like, and then it's just a disaster and it ends up costing them a lot more to fix. So yeah, every time.

Speaker 2: 49:32

Sorry, go ahead. No, no, I was just thinking I've seen, I've seen. Please don't like, if you want a trademark, I've seen people try to do it through legal zoom. I was going to ask about that.

Speaker 1: 49:43

Actually, Like, don't do it because you're just going to hire me in two years when you still?

Speaker 2: 49:47

don't have your trademark to fix it and I'm going to charge you $6,000 to fix it. Right, that's good to know. I would try to do it. I would charge you three to do it in the first place.

Speaker 1: 49:59

So yeah, a lot of people using like I can't even remember all the names like rocket, something, and then legal zoom. There's all these different online places that you know look like they're trying to help you at a low rate, but I wasn't sure. If, yeah, there's certain things you should just stay away from there. Just don't.

Speaker 2: 50:22

Yeah, Just don't Look. It's one of those things like you know what? I'll put this in really simple way If you have one job and you live in one house and you're not married and you've never been married and you don't have any kids and no dependents and no tax write-offs, use TurboTax, It'll work. Yeah, Any of those pop up. Don't use TurboTax, it's going to start getting complicated.

Speaker 1: 50:48

That's very true.

Speaker 2: 50:50

It's the same thing with us? Yeah, but there's not really a lot of circumstances, like if you know you're going to sell I can't say clothing, because the clothing stuff is actually more complicated than it appears in makeup Like if you get in trouble and somebody's face breaks out, you definitely want to wear. Yeah, I know, if you're selling candles, right, and you're only ever going to sell candles, and you know you've made up the word that's the brand of your candles, and you know exactly how to take a picture of your candle to show that your brand is on your candle, because that's a whole specific thing too, and you can tell the difference between the scammers and the USPTO and you understand what categories you need to file in. Be on to this conversation, because it's more complicated than what we've spoken about here. Go for it. Yeah, you can use. You can use what legal zoom? Yeah, right. If that doesn't apply to you, please call a lawyer. Yeah, I don't want you to spend more money than you need to. I really don't?

Speaker 1: 51:58

Yeah, now that makes sense, and so I will link your website in the show notes, which, for anyone listening, it's inlinelegalcom. And then, where else are you the most active, where people can find and connect with you?

Speaker 2: 52:15

Yeah, so I'm the most active on Instagram. We're also over on TikTok same handle, inlinelegal For anybody who was listening, especially to this trademark bit, because that was a good chunk of it. If you've heard all this and you're like, okay, I got questions, but I'm still not sure and I don't really want to talk to somebody yet, we actually put together a quiz that walks you through whether you might have something worth trademarking and then how strong of a possibility the name that you're using or the phrase that you're using is, and you can take a near underwear on your couch. You don't have to talk to anybody until you want to, Right? I think it's a great moment. And if you want to head over to our website, inlinelegalcom slash trademark quiz, that's there.

Speaker 2: 52:57

We've also got resources on, like we were talking about earlier, the charge backs If you go over to our free resources. We've got some extra website terms a photographer legal audit quiz if you're a photographer, and then you can take a look at it here and then you can check out the templates that are there too. And, as a matter of fact, actually I'm going to do something. Yeah, let's do it. I'm going to make a code for your listeners. Oh, great To get a discount in our template store. Okay, I'm going to go make the page after this recording.

Speaker 2: 53:36

Oh that's great, but so what we'll do? We'll make a page. It'll be like inlinelegalcom, slash 5dcfo, and if you all head over to there, we'll send you a code for a discount on our template store. In case any of this is struck a bell.

Speaker 1: 53:54

That's awesome. Thank you so much. Absolutely my pleasure. It's great. Yeah, I'm sure a lot of people will be checking that out.

Speaker 2: 54:03

We're happy to help. And if you see something, if you know you want something from our template store and we don't have it, send us a message. We'll probably get it created within the next two months. Generally they turn around. If we've got more than like four or five people asking for it, we'll fast track it, okay great.

Speaker 1: 54:22

Well, thank you so much for your time and for coming on. This was great.

Speaker 2: 54:26

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me again. It's been an absolute pleasure.

Speaker 1: 54:31

Thank you so much for listening to the 5dcfo podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it and tag me on social media. You can find me at Angela Marie Christian on Instagram, facebook and TikTok. If you haven't purchased my bestselling book Manifestation Mastery yet, it's priced at 99 cents on Amazon for the Kindle version.