How to Keep Your Ideas Protected: Trademarks, Patents and Copyrights

Ever wondered how to keep the inventions and trade secrets that make your business unique yours??  Join me, Erin Olson, as I share my journey through the maze of copyright, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets. With the stories and wisdom gained from personal battles and victories in the IP arena, this episode is perfect for anyone with an idea worth protecting. Discover the nuances of patents, including the different types and their costs, and why securing the right legal counsel is critical to navigating potential pitfalls.

I've had my own challenges with trademarks, offering an eye-opening look at the strategic value of building a powerful brand presence. Learn why trademarks aren't just legal formalities but essential tools for commercial dominance. This episode also covers the significance of copyright protection, from automatic rights upon creation to the benefits of registration that can extend your control for a lifetime. Protecting your IP isn't merely about legal defense; it's about building the foundation of your future success and peace of mind.

Resourses:
US Patent and Trademark Office
US Copyright Office
Inventors Notebook

Thanks for listening! I'm glad you're here.

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See ya next week!
Erin

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

Welcome to the Quality of Life podcast. I'm Erin Olson, a wife, a mother and a serial entrepreneur. After starting three successful businesses, I've learned some hard lessons regarding the ins and the outs of starting and running a small business. My intention is to share my knowledge that I've learned from the School of Hard Knocks, so you don't have to learn it the hard way like I did Each week. I hope, to guide you to the next level in your business or in the business that you work in. So let's go. Hey guys, welcome back to the Quality of Life podcast, erin Olson here, guiding you from business idea to big business.

Speaker 1: 0:49

So far this season, we've talked a lot about protecting you and your business with insurance contracts and protecting your time and hopefully even a little bit of your sanity. Today, we are still on the protection train, as we are going to talk all about protecting your IP, and IP stands for intellectual property. That sounds very complicated and it can be, but intellectual property is just business lingo for creations of your mind, of your mind. These things include things like inventions, trade secrets, designs, logos, symbols, artistic works and things you write. These are all things that you own and you should protect, even though that's quite a list of stuff. There are really only four types of intellectual property. They are copyrights, patents, trademarks and trade secrets. My goal today is to clarify what they are and to help you determine if you need them. Now, all of this info is found on the United States Patent and Trademark Office website, at usptogov or at trademarkgov, but you could spend hours on there and still be just as clear as mud. I have had a few patents, trademarks, copyrights, and I've had lots of trade secrets of my own and have learned the hard way what protection each of these give you and whether or not they will be worth the hassle and the investment.

Speaker 1: 2:24

Now, guys, I am not a lawyer. I know, I've said it many, many times, and there are tons of lawyers out there that can help you navigate the world of IP, and you should probably consult one for legal advice. And let me tell you, I've got some story about some IP attorneys. But if you have a secret sauce, if you will in your business and you want to keep it that way, you have a secret sauce, if you will in your business and you want to keep it that way, you should search for a reputable attorney you can get along with. That is normal, as they are not all created equal.

Speaker 1: 2:53

My first run-in with a patent attorney was like something out of Twilight Zone. The office was in this old, creaky house in St Paul, minnesota, and the first red flag was that his sidewalks weren't shoveled from the snowfall a few nights prior. Now I know IP attorneys probably should know a little bit about liability, so we should have just turned around and left, but we wanted to give the guy the benefit of the doubt. So in we went and when we got in the living room had about 20 folding chairs facing a huge old desk with a yellow legal pad and the most ancient phone and huge computer, circa the 1980s. Then he asked us to explain the IP that we wanted to cover. The guy then proceeded to write down everything we said verbatim, filling the front, the back and the margins of every piece of paper that he used. It was wild, okay. When asked if he had a restroom, he said no and then there was silence. It was so creepy, to say the least. I felt kind of a weird. You know murder know murder. He wrote vibe and quickly made an excuse about an upcoming meeting I had to get to and I worked my way out the door. Moral of the story don't go for the cheapest one you find in the yellow pages. And yes, this is back in the day of the yellow pages. The good news is that we finally found an IP firm that could help us with all of our needs, minus the creepy vibes.

Speaker 1: 4:29

Okay, so back from story time to the four types of intellectual property. Patents are the thing that most people know the most about and think are the most important. So let's start there. Remember those commercials back in the day with a caveman chiseling out a wheel from a rock? You know that cartoon? They were the Invention Submission Corporation and their job was to help you to get a patent on your idea. Well, they did succeed in getting over 10,000 patents. I find it hard to believe that they made anybody rich. Back then it was a common belief that a patent could make you a millionaire, and to some it did. But it is way more complicated than that now. Just like on Shark Tank, a patent doesn't necessarily get you the shark.

Speaker 1: 5:18

So to simplify things, we are going to cover three types of patents. First, the utility patent. This is the most common type of patent that people tend to go for. This is for inventions and for new and useful processes and machines. It essentially provides protection for how an invention works and its functional parts. It is considerably more involved than a provisional patent, which we'll cover in a minute, and it requires detailed descriptions, lots of drawings and what you claim makes this unique and new. After you submit this, the USPTO the US Patent and Trademark Office thoroughly examines it and compares it to everything already in existence and the existing patents that have ever been filed.

Speaker 1: 6:08

This can be done DIY style, but I highly recommend using a lawyer for this one, as you will need to be fluent in legalese and lawyer speak, to file and to argue it effectively. If you do it on your own, you might be able to get a patent for as little as $900. But by the time you're done with legal fees and filing fees, most patents cost between $5,000 and $10,000 for a simple mechanical type device, and upwards of $12,000 to $20,000 for things like medical devices or software, since they need to be quite a bit more detailed and require a lot more documentation. If you are granted a utility patent, you have exclusive rights for 20 years from the date it was filed. Now there is a myth that most people have heard that you need to only change a patent by 10, 20, or 30 percent to not infringe on it, and that is just what I said a myth. When you make certain claims, those are the things that are protected. So, even if it looks nothing like your invention, you may still actually be protected if it meets the same claims as your patent covers. This is a very tricky thing to understand. Thus the need for a lawyer. Plus, even though the USPTO website has a search bar, if you are looking to get a utility or design patent, you should probably spring to have a lawyer do a search for you, just to make sure you won't be wasting any time and money applying for a patent that you probably won't get.

Speaker 1: 7:43

The next kind of patent is a design patent. This type of patent focuses more on how an object looks, not necessarily how it works. It is usually sought after for furniture, consumer electronics and other things where the eye appeal of something is its main selling point. A design patent is less rigorously examined than a utility patent and is much cheaper too, usually ranging between $1,200 and $3,000. The drawings seem to be the most important part of this type of patent, so an artist's rendering is important, not just a sketch. This type of patent protects the design of something for upwards of 15 years. And the third type of patent is my personal favorite. If I did have a patent, that was a favorite.

Speaker 1: 8:34

This is the provisional patent. This is basically a form you can fill out and submit, with a filing fee, by yourself, online for as little as $75. And then you can plaster the words quote patent pending all over your marketing, your labels and your packaging. While this type of patent only protects your place in line at the patent office, it can discourage copycatters temporarily. You only have one year to convert this provisional patent into a utility or a design patent application. Into a utility or a design patent application, the true purpose of a provisional patent is to give you time to further develop your invention or to get funding without the immediate costs associated with getting a non-provisional patent.

Speaker 1: 9:19

There is no examination by the USPTO for this one either. It does establish something called prior art, though. Prior art is basically proof that you had the idea first, and if someone else is trying to get a patent or a trademark or a copyright for something that you have prior art on, they will likely not get the patent, the trademark or the copyright. There is another way, though, which every person who has ever had a great idea for products they should use it. It is the inventor's notebook. Now, an inventor's notebook is a thread-bound notebook with page numbers, if possible. This cannot be wire-bound. It cannot be a three-ring binder or loose leaf. You need to draw and explain all of your ideas in ink, and every empty line on the page needs to be filled with lines or cross hatching. Then you need to describe what you're trying to solve, then sign and date each page. Now the secret is to have a witness sign the pages of the book with a date. That way, if someone else gets word of your idea and tries to beat you to the punch, you have proof that it was yours to begin with.

Speaker 1: 10:36

The next type of IP is a trade secret. Trade secrets are essentially just information that is kept secret about how you manufacture your product or do a service, how you test it, and commercial information like who your suppliers and clients are, and they may also cover your advertising strategies. There is no way to register these trade secrets, so the only way to protect them are with a non-disclosure or confidentiality agreement signed by all who know the secrets. It can be useful and a free way to keep your secrets well secret, and for many businesses this is a suitable way to go, but it is very hard to enforce in court, so documenting everyone who knows is crucial. So now we come to the trademarks and copyrights part.

Speaker 1: 11:30

Copyrights protect original works of writing, music, artistic and other creative works. Having a copyright gives the owner the exclusive rights to reproduce, license, sell, perform and display original work. Perform and display original work. Copyright protection is automatically granted when you create it, but registration with the US Copyright Office can offer legal benefits, like the ability to sue if your works are copied. Registration requires an application and can cost as little as the $35, and it can last as long as the life of the creator. So 70 plus years After that, it becomes what's called public domain. That means that anyone can quote or copy it. Now you can register this on your own at the website copyrightgov.

Speaker 1: 12:25

The trademark this is where you protect your brand. Brand names, logos and slogans are all protectable under trademarks. Words, phrases, symbols or designs that identify you are included in this. A trademark prevents others from using similar marks in a way that can cause confusion among consumers. This is called brand confusion, but there are some specific things to know about applying for a trademark.

Speaker 1: 12:56

But to give you context, it's story time again. When my last company was first born, we called it Cinch Chicks. When my last company was first born, we called it Cinch Chicks and we got a trademark protecting the name. Now fast forward a few years and we were at a trade show in Texas and we were checking in, but they wanted to move us. Since we were located right next to a western clothing company named Cinch, we were so naive and thought nothing of it and, honestly, we liked our new spot even better.

Speaker 1: 13:25

While we were in the business of horse hay feeders, we had tank tops, t-shirts, bandanas all to sell, with our brand on them too, you know, for marketing. We had a great show and went home Fast forward four months. We get served with papers to cease and desist selling our products and to close down our website. Wait what we called our IP lawyer and he explained that our trademark only protected us in one class of products hay feeders. Turns out we had no protection in clothing, western events, trade shows, hats and bandanas and any other class. So in that four months since the show, the company Cinch got the copyright for the use of the word Cinch in every imaginable classes of goods and services. Which can you blame them? Therefore, we couldn't sell anything but hay feeders. Four we couldn't sell anything but hay feeders. Long story short, we ended up doing a whole rebrand and Hay Chicks was born. Personally, I think it was God steering us towards branding a company that was not limited by our name, and I guess if I was in their shoes I would have done the same thing.

Speaker 1: 14:41

Now, there are some valuable lessons here. In order to get a trademark, you have to have sales in the classes that you want coverage in. Now it only has to be one sale that is documented, so keep that in mind. Then you have to file with the USPTO, and it can cost anywhere between $250 to $700 plus your legal fees per class. You can make this either a wordmark or a design mark. Now, a wordmark protects anyone from using a specific word, where a design mark protects the logos or symbols that represent your brand. We had used the wordmark cinch chicks. That includes any combination of the two words. Now, cinch, they only needed one word. It was the use of the word that was protected.

Speaker 1: 15:33

Well, trademarks are established simply by selling your products or services, you don't get any legal protection that you would by registering it with the USPTO. The best part is that if you maintain the registration with the USPTO, it can be yours forever. So when you have something that you want to protect, it may be worth getting a patent and or a trademark. It may be worth getting a patent and or a trademark. In my experience, though, we spent over $40,000 to have a patent that we couldn't even enforce. I wouldn't waste my time and money going through the process. Personally, I would just file a provisional patent and register the name in all of the classes that you might want to sell it, and then use any extra money that you might have to market the crap out of it.

Speaker 1: 16:22

In this day and age, if you get knocked off, like we did, by a big company, they can keep you in court long enough to bankrupt you, and that's the way that this legal system works. Guys, you have to protect yourself, but be smart about where you spend your money. You want the best return on all of your dollars. Talk to a lawyer, ask the hard questions before you work with them, and never underestimate the amount of protection building a huge brand can, in itself, give you. Well, guys, this was a lot of information, but that's all I've got for you today.

Speaker 1: 17:00

If you know somebody who is considering protecting their IP, shoot them this episode. You might help them out considerably. I really hope that this helps you get from your business idea to big business and helps increase your quality of life. I will see you next week, see ya. Thanks for listening to today's episode. Be sure to check us out on the Quality of Life podcast, facebook and Instagram pages and our website, the Erin Olsoncom, for downloads and more information. That is T-H-E-E-R-I-N-O-L-S-O-Ncom. Stay up to date by joining our email newsletter. Together, we can improve all of our quality of life.