November 10, 2024 • 47 mins
Uncover the transformative power of trademarks in branding with Andrei Mincov, founder of Trademark Factory. Learn how owning a trademark can reduce CPC bid rates, protect your brand, and uphold authenticity in today’s crowded digital marketplace. This episode is packed with insights for digital marketers and business owners, highlighting why a strong, protected brand is essential to stand out amidst AI-driven ad content and fierce competition.
Explore the evolution of trademark laws and their impact on modern businesses. Hear the story of Sean Merriman’s “Lights Out” brand triumph against industry giants, demonstrating the power of trademarks in defending brand identity. Andrei offers practical advice for small businesses facing brand disputes, emphasizing the importance of common law and first-use principles in protecting your brand.
We also dive into the future of AI and intellectual property, discussing the impact of AI-generated content on existing IP laws. Andrei shares tips on prioritizing trademark strategies to maximize brand potential and safeguard against scams.
-----
Guest Contact Information:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreimincov/
https://trademarkfactory.com/
—-
More from EWR and Matt:
Leave a Review if it was content you enjoyed: https://g.page/r/CccGEk37CLosEB0/review
Free SEO Consultation: https://www.ewrdigital.com/discovery-call
One-on-One Consulting: https://www.ewrdigital.com/digital-strategy-consulting/private-consulting-session
—
The Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing podcast is a podcast hosted by Internet marketing expert Matthew Bertram. The show provides insights and advice on digital marketing, SEO, and online business.
Topics covered include keyword research, content optimization, link building, local SEO, and more. The show also features interviews with industry leaders and experts who share their experiences and tips.
Additionally, Matt shares his own experiences and strategies, as well as his own successes and failures, to help listeners learn from his experiences and apply the same principles to their businesses. The show is designed to help entrepreneurs and business owners become successful online and get the most out of their digital marketing efforts.
Find more great episodes here: bestseopodcast.com/
https://seo-podcast-the-unknown-secrets-of-internet-marketing.buzzsprout.com
Follow us on:
Facebook: @bestseopodcast
Instagram: @thebestseopodcast
Tiktok: @bestseopodcast
LinkedIn: @bestseopodcast
Powered by: ewrdigital.com
Hosts: Matt Bertram
Disclaimer: For Educational and Entertainment purposes Only.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Howdy, welcome back to the Unknown Secrets of
Internet Marketing.
I am your host, matthew Bertram.
Today we are going to be goingto the unexplored with the
unknown secrets of internetmarketing.
And as we've been talking aboutbranding, I thought that it
would be good and I had somegreat, really referrals from
(00:37):
just some industry leaders tobring on Andre Markoff.
Andre Markoff.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
You almost got it right.
You almost got it right, youalmost got it right.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
He is the founder and owner of Trademark Factory, and
so we're going to be digginginto how trademarks can help
protect your brand, what you cando with them.
I know from a CPC standpoint.
If you own your name, you canget the bid rates down pretty
(01:10):
low.
We've done some differentstrategies with a few clients to
develop markets or to own namesand protect that.
But the big thing I know abouttrademarks too is if you have a
trademark, you have to defend itright If people start to
infringe on it.
And I don't know much about itI'm not sure if you're listening
(01:32):
if you know much about it butthis would be a special podcast
to cue in to find out how youcould leverage this to help grow
your brand.
I know that there's a lot ofgreat e-commerce brands out
there that I think could utilizesome of these skills, so
welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Thanks for having me.
I see why you gave me the wrongname, because trademarks Markov
makes sense, right.
And let's see how we can breakthis down and explain the
benefits of using brands andowning brands to build the
(02:11):
business and grow the business.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Yeah.
So I mean, I really think thatthere's a resurgence of
creativity and branding that areon the horizon.
I think that AI is reallydisruptive in DA, but a lot of
people are using the same largelanguage models, the ads are
starting to look very similarand there's a lot of noise out
there that's being created.
(02:35):
So, really cutting through theclutter, you need to have a
brand and Google loves brands.
Google gives you a nice liftwhen they start to see people
searching for you on differentplatforms and you want to be
able to protect your brand andown your brand.
And I can tell you I have to bea guardian roofing.
And there's other industries aswell that um, like for
(03:08):
protection, like so, alarmsystems, guardian um, alarm
systems.
There's some of the strategiesthat we have to do.
On an SEO standpoint is okay.
There's four other people thathave a very similar name to you,
that has a very similar keywordthan you, and we need to rank
for your name first and be atthe top of the pile before we
can even go after unbrandedkeywords.
(03:31):
And it becomes really crowdedtoday, with so many more people
starting companies, so many morebrands, so much more noise out
there.
Also, really competitiveadvertising where people are
bidding on people's name orusing their likeness.
We've seen, actually, even inthe crypto industry, there's a
lot of scams going on.
(03:52):
People are putting their moneyinto something that's not even
real, right, and they're usingsomebody else's name.
There's a lot of peoplepromoting at that and you really
have to protect your brand.
So I just thought it'd be greatto kind of come on and give the
foundation of it how to view it,how to look at it.
If you're a e-commerce business, if you're a growing business
(04:13):
in the space, if you'reexpanding outside your state
right.
So I have another client.
It's a garage door doctor, okay, and there's a garage door
doctor in almost every state,right.
So how do you protect yourbrand If, if other people have
your name, it goes back, I think, to you know who, who, who
(04:34):
started using it first?
I don't know the details, so Iwould love to turn it over to
you to just give us kind of aone on one class.
I think it'd be really helpful.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Well, with all the topics you brought up, it's
probably going to be like asix-hour podcast.
But look, in all seriousness,let's start with this.
Trademarks is really the onlytype of intellectual property
that has a dual purpose.
The dual purpose of number onehelping brand owners get the
(05:07):
most out of their brands.
But the second part, which isequally important, is to protect
the public, so that the publicknows that when they're buying a
product, they're buying theauthentic product, not a copycat
product, not a copycat product.
(05:28):
And the only way to accomplishthis is by giving the brand
owners a legal right, basicallya legal monopoly, to go and stop
everyone else from callingtheir products or services the
way that's going to confuse themarketplace.
And when you mentioned, you knowGoogle and all those other
platforms, they have pretty muchthe same purpose, because they
want to make sure that peoplewho get to landing pages and
(05:52):
websites through Google they endup on somewhere else.
They end up giving them theirmoney and who they're going to
blame when they realize thatthey were taken.
They're going to go back toGoogle and say you showed me the
(06:14):
wrong link.
And Google is not stupid.
Whether they're evil or not isa different issue, but they're
definitely not stupid.
So what they want to do is theywant to add their own
mechanisms that ensure thatthere's not a lot of this bait
and switch happening.
And so Google and Facebook andall those other platforms they
(06:38):
give priority to advertisers whocan prove that there's actually
their brand, advertisers whocan prove that there's actually
their, their brand, it'sactually their stuff, that the
thing is legitimate, becausethey want to make sure that
people who click those linksthey end up, uh, having good
experience with what they payfor, uh, and the brand is what
(06:59):
allows you to have that monopolyand stop others from doing this
, right.
So that's why all thoseplatforms, they actually look
very seriously as to whether youhave a brand, whether you have
a trademark, and TikTok,actually, TikTok advertising
requires you to have a trademarkfor that same very reason,
because they don't want to endup in a situation when you're
(07:23):
promoting something that ain'tyours Right?
So that's like yeah, so whoenforces that?
The beginning of this, so who?
Speaker 1 (07:33):
I have some questions from that, okay, so I will have
some questions.
I'm learning, I'm learningeveryone.
So who enforces trademarks Like?
Is it like like FTC, like likewho, like who?
What's the regulatory body thatthat helps enforce it?
Or do you have to personallyenforce it if someone's
(07:54):
infringing upon it?
Like you have an you, you, youhave a trademark, but if you
don't enforce it I've heard that, um, you kind of if you don't
enforce it, you lose it, or theykind of just run over you.
How do you view that?
I don't know how to look atthat, okay.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
So you enforce it Like you're the owner of the
trademark.
It's your responsibility toenforce it.
Nobody's going to be lightyears easier and tons cheaper
(08:30):
than doing that without aregistered trademark, because
here's what happens.
So let's say you're building abrand, you're a company, you put
a product out there, a service.
People start liking you, you'veestablished some sort of a
brand and you start seeingsomeone else I don't know in a
different state or maybe acrossthe street from you, doesn't
(08:53):
really matter and you see thatthey're doing something very
similar under something thatlooks very much like your brand
or what you thought was yourbrand.
So you send them a demandletter saying hey guys, this is
my brand, stop doing this.
The first thing they're goingto do those other guys in the
other state or across the streetthey're going to show this
(09:14):
letter to a lawyer, right.
And the first thing the lawyeris going to do the lawyer is
going to check did you bother totrademark that brand?
And if the answer is no, youdidn't file a trademark, you
didn't get a trademarkregistered.
The lawyer is going to tellthem look, these guys are clowns
because they haven't botheredto spend a little bit of money
(09:36):
to protect their brand.
What's the likelihood thatthey're going to spend $150,000
taking you to court over thisZero right?
So the lawyer is going to tellthem ignore this.
If they're actually seriousabout this, if they actually
have the budget to fight overthis, let's wait for a lawsuit
and then we'll figure out whatto do about it.
(09:56):
But the likelihood of that, therisk of that, is very small.
Now, the opposite, the otherside of that coin, is if you do
have a trademark registered,right, you send that letter.
They take this letter to the tothe lawyer.
Lawyer opens up the database tosee if that brand is
trademarked.
And he's like you you own thistrademark.
So what he's going to tell hisclients is that, guys, uh, I
(10:20):
suggest that you very quietlychange this brand, remove this
from everywhere.
Like, take this site down totake the sign down, you know, go
to a different domain name andhope that these guys don't take
this any further and basically,you taking it down is enough for
them to go away, because thisis a dispute you won't be able
(10:43):
to win, right, and this is thebig difference.
Right, the purpose of atrademark is not to go and sue
everybody.
The purpose of a trademark isto avoid avoidable disputes,
because litigation is reallyreally, really expensive, right,
and that's what the trademarkdoes.
So if you, if you think aboutit, like, let's go back to when
(11:06):
the trademark laws were eveninvented, right, we didn't have
AI there, we didn't have likelots of things that we have now,
nobody had.
But here's, here's what happenedbefore, like in the, in the
very early days, they didn'thave trademark laws.
They didn't have trademark laws, right, they had what was
called common law, that ifsomeone started a business and
(11:28):
made a name for that and someoneelse was trying to copycat that
, it was called passing off.
Right, they were passing offtheir products as products of
someone else.
Judge and explain all of thisand try to prove to the judge.
Bring all the evidence thatshowed the judge how much of a
(11:49):
name you've made for yourselfand how bad of a person the
other guy was.
Right, it was very difficult,it was very long and it worked
on a small scale, right, yeah.
And then industrialization cameright, the factories came, it
(12:09):
became a lot easier to build newproducts, it was a lot easier
to reach bigger markets, and sothey realized that you couldn't
just have those disputes done insuch a one-off manner.
(12:29):
And so they said why don't wegive those brand owners who
actually care about their brandsan easy mechanism where they
can tell the government that,hey, I care about my brand, I
want this protected so that ifsomeone infringes on it, I have
an easy path to go after them?
Right, and that's howtrademarking laws were born.
(12:50):
Basically, that allowed peopleto take the, the, whatever brand
, whether it's a name or a logoor a tagline to a government
registry and have them recordedthere and, uh, just sit there as
proof that what's called likethe legal term here is
rebuttable presumption.
(13:11):
Basically, the, the, it, youget the presumption that your
trademark is a valid brand andthat you are the owner of it.
Right, that's what this pieceof paper means.
Now I'm almost there to defense.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
No, no, I want to hear it.
I want to hear it.
I'm getting like all thesequestions now that I have Right.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
So you get this piece of paper that says that's your
brand and you own it, and nowit's up to you to take this
thing to court.
But and really it acts this,this registration, acts as a
litmus test of whether you careabout the brand or not, because
when courts see this right, whenyou take something to court,
(13:50):
it's never really about law.
It's always about who's got abetter story Right and the judge
who listens to someone who'slike hey, you know, I've been
building this for 27 years andyou know, and these guys are
stealing from me.
But the first thing the judgeis going to look at did you
protect it?
Right?
We gave you, the government,gave you a really simple way to
(14:12):
protect this.
Why didn't you?
Why didn't you Right?
And so the judge will belistening hard to what the other
party has to say in terms ofthese guys don't care about
their brands.
Why should the governmentprotect it?
Right?
And so that's really how thisworks.
(14:32):
And so, with the trademarking,it's a much simpler.
Basically a trademarkregistration process, right,
give or take.
And we can talk about howTrademark Factory does this, but
give or take, you're going tospend a couple of thousand
dollars, right?
Two, three, five, whatever,right.
(14:53):
There are some cheaper ways toget started, which may or may
not be successful.
But let's say, anywhere fromone to $5,000, right, it's going
to cost you to get a trademarkdone.
A litigation over anunprotected brand is going to
cost you, like I said, around$150,000, right, these are just
(15:13):
completely uncomparable numbers.
So it's a lot easier to do theeasy way and avoid all this.
And I mean, look, are there bigtrademark litigation disputes?
Of course there are, right.
And a lot of people say, hey,you know, trademarks and
intellectual property is justfor the big guys.
I said you couldn't be morewrong about this, because big
(15:36):
guys don't need trademarks asmuch as little guys do.
Big guys have all the money inthe world that they can drown
you in litigation motions andall the paperwork, and they can
drown you in marketing money.
They can drown you, like, inall of that.
They can out-compete you onanything, pretty much on any
(15:59):
level.
The brand, owning the brand, isreally the only asset you've
got as as a little guy.
That's the only one you got tofight.
And so, uh, one of the goodexamples that I have is, uh,
what's his name?
Sean Merriman.
Uh, the the lights out uh,football player, right.
So he came up with a brandlights out.
(16:20):
He trademarked that and hesuccessfully went against Nike
and Under Armour Both of themtry to get the brand and he won
both times right.
The only way he was able to winin this David and Goliath fight
is because he had somethingthat he could show to the judge
(16:43):
this one stupid piece of paper,right.
Without it, there's, there's,there's really no fight, there's
just a super interesting.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
So I have like four kind of independent questions
that came out of like what youwere talking about.
So we can, we can kind of godown the list.
Let's start with, like thesmall guys first, because, based
on what we were talking aboutand I brought that up at the
beginning and hopefully myclients won't be mad at me
mentioning their names but ifyou're in the situation that you
(17:16):
have a small business andthere's somebody else either in
your area or in the country thathas your name, right, and the
only thing that I knew it alwayskind of goes back to who was
maybe using it first I guess thecommon law of what you were
talking about, of what to do inthis situation.
But if you have the same nameand you've been operating under
this business and a lot of thesebusinesses have hundreds of
(17:41):
Google business reviews, theyhave Facebook pages with this
name.
Maybe it's this name plus alocation or something like that.
Um, you know, there is someconfusion, like is this part of
a franchise?
Like you know what, what,what's going on here?
But if, if you find yourselfand you're operating in that
space today and you have a namethat somebody else has, or
(18:03):
somebody started a name, notintentionally trying to go after
you that's actually my nextquestion.
But, um, if, if they have aname and you've been operating
as it, they've been operating as, what's the best way to do that
?
Like cause, they're alreadyusing it, you're already using
it, so is there value in goingto register it?
Or, like, what's their approach?
Approach?
Speaker 2 (18:24):
look, sometimes there is no good answer to this.
Sometimes the only good answeris go back to the drawing board
and come up with a new brand.
Uh and uh, it it freaking hurts.
Uh, and we've had, you know,dozens and dozens of these
conversations.
When we, when they're finallyready to go and trademark their
(18:45):
brand, we do the search becausethat's the first thing we do
with our process to ensure thatyour brand is even trademarkable
.
And when we tell them that it'sreally not, there's always the
shock and, like, I've been doingthis for four years, what do I
do now?
And uh, one of our clients saidit best.
(19:06):
Uh, he says if, if you, if youmarry to a brand, but it's a
brand that you can't have, get adivorce right, because there's
really no good reason for you tospend a dollar out of your
pocket or a minute out of yourlife trying to promote a brand
(19:28):
that you don't own.
Right?
Basically, you're buildingsomeone else's brand that can be
always taken away from you andthe problem there again, like I
said, there's really no goodanswer here.
The only kind of semi answer isyou know, get a time machine,
(19:48):
go back to when you started andactually find a name that you
can own, because it's not reallyabout the name that you pick.
Nobody cares about it.
The value of the name at thetime when you come up with it is
zero.
Nobody knows about it, right?
It's not about coming up with acute name, uh, it's about an, a
(20:08):
name that you can own.
And then you build that byproviding to the market great
products, great services thatpeople fall in love with, and
that's what gives the value tothe brand, right?
What?
What a trademark does really.
A trademark is investment inthe future of your brand, and
(20:30):
it's never too early to protectit, but it's often too late and
kind of.
Another question that peoplealways ask is when should I
trademark my brand?
I said, well, look, you can doit really any time, as long as
it's one day before somebodyelse does.
Right?
It's kind of a little bittongue in cheek maybe, but you
(20:53):
know you would know 11 labs,right?
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Love the guys, amazing products Like I use them
all the time.
So what happened to them isthey filed their trademark, they
, they, they thought they weredoing everything right.
Problem is they trademark.
They filed their trademark onthe same day, just a couple of
hours after someone else didSome guy did same day, right,
(21:18):
and now their application isbeing denied by the USPTO.
So they're going to go into bigfight.
They're going to probablythey're going to have to figure
out a way to pay him off, but onthe books he is the first in
line and now they've got acompletely avoidable problem
(21:38):
that they need to solve Right,same day, same day, go check it
out.
The USPTO check for 11 left.
And that's kind of the the bigproblem, right, when I say you
know, as long as you do it a daybefore someone else does,
you're good.
Problem is you don't know whensomeone else does, uh, and like,
imagine, like any, any goodbrand, like any, any, any brand
(21:59):
you look up to, imagine it's nottrademarked and you can have it
today.
Like there'd be a lot of peoplewho are going to be trying,
trying to, you know, monopolizesome someone else's goodwill,
and that's what happens in reallife.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Do people like just like with domains, do they sit
on brands?
Do they like is there peopleout there that it's very
lictitious or like tissue Ican't say it but essentially
like very legalistic as far aslike their business model?
Or even like you got we talkedabout at the beginning what I
(22:34):
thought of like counterfeiters,right, so like people selling
counterfeit merchandise andthey're changing the name a
little bit.
Or there's a lot of likephishing scams, where people
change like one letter andthey're sending you stuff to try
to get you to be associatedwith the brand.
When people are doing that, isthat viewed differently, legally
(22:58):
?
And also a lot of times, ifpeople are doing this, they're
maybe outside the United States.
If you're operating in theUnited States, and how do you
deal with international law?
Speaker 2 (23:09):
You are a big fan of asking seven different questions
in one.
It's really hard to answer thatkind of stuff.
But look, trademarks are verydifferent from domain names In a
few material aspects.
One is that getting a domainname takes five minutes.
(23:30):
Getting a trademark takes abouta year and a half in the US and
about four years in Canada.
It's a much longer process.
Second big difference is thatwith domain names you know right
away whether it's available ornot.
Well, with trademarks in USyou're going to find out about
nine months in whether thegovernment is okay with that,
and Canada is going to takeagain again about three years.
(23:51):
Um, the third big difference isthat domain names you, as you
said, you can add a typo, changean eye into a one or O into a
zero, and you're good to go.
Or you just add my in front ofit and again it's, it's yours.
With trademarks not so muchtrademarks are built on the idea
(24:13):
of similarity, likelihood ofconfusion.
So the idea with trademarks isthat by getting one trademark,
you are essentially protectingyourself from all the lookalikes
, all the soundalikes, from meanalikes, if, like if someone
comes up with a synonym or eventranslation to a different
(24:35):
language, like for example, inthe US you can't get something
in Spanish, that means the samething as something that was
registered in English, or theother way around text you
(24:55):
against lots of them or whichalso means that even you came up
with what you think is a uniquedomain name.
Unique name because you searchfor identical name and it's not
trademarked doesn't mean thatit's registerable, because there
may be something similar thatsomeone else had already done.
Right, so that's kind of thebig difference with domain name.
So are there brands, quarterslike this?
Yes, but the scale of that issignificantly lower because
(25:18):
again costs what Eight bucks toget a domain name.
It takes much more withtrademarks and it takes longer,
but in some cases when you seesomeone whose brand is going
like hockey stick and you seethat they haven't trademarked
their brand, it gives you, ifyou're a bad person, you can see
(25:43):
that as a great opportunity tomake easy money pretty quickly,
because you know they're goingto get up there and you know
they're going to take care ofthis and you know that, um, you
know if, if you did take them tocourt, they'll probably just
want to pay you off for you toget, for you to go away yeah, so
(26:04):
.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
So I mean definitely startups and uh, sas products
and e-commerce products outthere.
I I like to hear that itprotects you from all the things
that are just have an affinityor similar to what you're doing
out there.
It's kind of broad reaching andyou don't have to protect every
little thing.
So if you are like a companyand you're like we're gonna
(26:28):
become a unicorn or we'regrowing at a rapid pace, we're
gonna get venture capital, we'regonna get private equity, we're
going to become a unicorn, or,um, we're we're growing at a
rapid place, we're going to getventure capital, we're going to
get private equity, we're goingto keep growing.
And you, how are trademarkslooked on the books when you're
trying to sell like from a valuestandpoint?
Because you you mentioned thata few times I'm just curious,
how is it typically looked at,um, if you do have a trademark
(26:49):
versus not if you're sellinglike multiple wise?
Speaker 2 (26:52):
yeah, let me, let me.
Let me give you an example ofan actual unicorn, true story.
Um, you know the scooter rentalcompany bird right yeah uh, they
were the fastest to get to abillion dollar valuation.
Like it took them the the leastamount of time.
I, I think it was 21 orsomething, 22, something like
(27:16):
that.
I don't remember the exact year, but they had this honor of
being recognized as the fastestones to get to unicorn status
and it took them 13 days betweenthem starting the company and
filing their first trademark.
Right, it was before they hadany scooters.
(27:37):
It was before they had anyagreements with the cities.
It was before they had anyannouncements, before they had
the website.
Someone realized that, hey, ifthis business model is to work,
we need to own this brand,because if anyone can have a
scooter and put a bird on it,like, the whole model collapses.
(27:58):
Right, uh, because how?
How would people know ifthey're renting the real one or
not?
Right and so.
But when they were starting,they weren't a unicorn company.
They were nothing.
Burger with an idea, uh, andthe good understanding that the
only way it works is if they ownthe brand.
Now that they are everywhereand they've got the network and
(28:22):
they've got the app and they'vegot the brand recognition,
obviously, if someone were tobuy this off of them, the brand
will be a very significant partof the value them.
The brand will be a verysignificant part of the value.
Nike the whole.
The valuation of the entirecompany is $97 billion.
The brand is 47 out of that, 97.
(28:46):
It's more than half right.
Not the sneakers, not theshirts, not the factories, not
the employees like the brand.
And here's why Because theytake a white T-shirt that has
nothing on it.
It costs them what 50 cents?
They slap a swoosh on it andthey sell it for 50 bucks.
(29:07):
That's what the value of thebrand is, and you can look at
companies like this and you canjust list them all day long,
because Alex Hermosi talks aboutit all the time.
Really, the value of the brandis the degree to which you can
charge more for the same thingwith the brand as opposed to
(29:29):
without right, and and uh, themore you grow, uh, the the the
higher chunk of the valuationthe brand is going to take.
So if you're starting out right, you're just starting out a
company and you're starting upand you're building something,
really the big question to askis if someone acquires you will,
will they keep the brand?
(29:50):
Uh, if the answer is, theywon't keep the brand.
We just want investors to buyus out and merge us into
something else, probably thenthe brand isn't that important.
But if you expect the brand tobe retained, then you got to
bring something to the table tothe investor and say, hey, this
(30:10):
is not just a cute name, this isnot just a cute logo that my
sister put together.
It's something that we own andwe can defend, and you will be
able to defend it if we sell itto you.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Okay, and what's like the rule of thumb when you're
looking at a company of like,okay, how did they come up with?
Like my Nike is a great exampleand it's probably pretty easy
to do it.
But is there like a rule ofthumb when you have smaller
brands on?
I guess it's what someone willpay for, of course, but like how
, how do you like look atbusinesses and you you can
(30:43):
probably eyeball.
You know the brand's probablyworth X, y, z or something like
that.
Is there any kind of metricsyou use or thoughts, or is it
just really difficult?
Speaker 2 (30:52):
It's really difficult .
Metrics you use or thoughts, oris it just really difficult?
It's really difficult.
There are people who pretend tobe experts but I mean, look,
it's an intangible asset, right,it's very hard to value that
kind of stuff, but it's really afunction of how many people
(31:17):
know about you, how many peoplebuy this because of the brand.
Like, if you think about phonesright, people buy iPhones not
because they expect the miracleof technology, but because
they're fans of Apple.
Right, and they line up at fivein the morning, not even
knowing what is in the phone.
(31:39):
Right, but they're there to buy.
Like, if you think about, youknow sales conversion metrics
and brand helping you with that,you know how much selling does
McDonald's need to do?
When you're up there, you knowtelling, hey, I want a burger.
Or when you go to to Applestore on the day of the, you
(32:01):
know when they first startselling the phone, right,
they're like how many do youwant?
Right, that that's really allit takes.
Or when you go to your favoritesupermarket to buy your
toothpaste and you notice I saidyour toothpaste because you, as
you, you, you associate with abrand.
(32:27):
Uh, it's a certain identity.
Yeah, it's the same glop indifferent tubes.
It's just some tubes have onename and the other tubes have
different name, but you areaccustomed to keep buying that
one all the time.
Right?
That's the power of the brand.
So, and and and.
That's what these guys who saywe're, you know, we do ip
valuation, that's what they lookat, that's what they uh take
into account when they writetheir you know long reports and
(32:49):
say we think that, based on thatand based on how much a company
makes, we think that this partof that is due to the brand
value.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Awesome, andre, I'm going to switch gears on you
really quick.
I wanted to get your input onfrom an IP standpoint, from a
trademark standpoint, what'sgoing on with the big large
language models and AI using allthe pictures or content on the
internet right and otherpeople's IP and brands to come
(33:22):
and build their language models?
How do you think that's goingto all shake out at the end of
it?
Speaker 2 (33:30):
My crystal ball is not really working today uh but
I mean, look, uh, who could havepredicted that the growth will
be so fast even 35 years ago?
Nobody, right.
And I, I mean, I use ai all thetime and, uh, lots of people do
, and they should, uh and uh.
I think the the way things aregoing to be looked at from the
(33:56):
legal perspective five to 10years from now are going to be
very different from what theyare today, and how, I've no idea
.
But I use a lot of those AImodels that do music, like Sudo
and Udio, and I freaking lovethem, right.
(34:19):
Sometimes they generate musicthat's much better than the new
music that comes out, even fromthe artists that I used to love,
right?
And is that the same thing?
No, is it new?
Well?
Well, that's not trademark,that's copyright.
And the question is, istraining the model the same as
(34:41):
using the song?
And I actually got into IEPbecause of unauthorized use of
music, right, because of my dad,who was a composer in russia,
who had one of his songs takento to turn that into an ad for
samsung without his permission.
So I actually am very proauthor kind of person because,
(35:02):
again, that that's how I gotinto this whole whole thing, but
I, I don't think that uh, asthat training the model uh is
necessarily copyrightinfringement.
I don't think that.
It's kind of my personalopinion.
The question is whether theoutput is going to be so close
(35:28):
to the original that it'sindistinguishable.
There were talks before AI frompeople who wanted to prove their
point and abolish copyrightbecause they were like, let's
free up copyright for the masses, the public should be able to
(35:48):
use the creative works of otherswithout any restrictions,
without paying any licensingfees, and that was a horrible,
horrible approach.
But what these guys were tryingto do is they were looking at
music as math.
Basically, there's only so manycombinations a 10-note melody
(36:12):
can have, right, and they werebasically going out there and
trying to register them all andsay, hey, we now own all the
melodies.
But that's not really whatcopyright is or what creativity
is.
Or like same thing with books,right, you can in theory just
(36:35):
take a dictionary and generatean unlimited number of
combinations a paragraph canhave.
But again, that's notcreativity.
And I think what the Sunos ofthe world do is significantly
more than just random soundsright, and they, they, there's
actually, there's there, there'sa.
(36:57):
There's actually lots to say tothat um, to to actually answer
a question.
I don't know what's going tohappen.
I think that nobody reallyknows and, um, I think there's
lots of.
There's more good stuff comingfrom AI today than bad stuff.
I also think that in nearfuture I don't know how near
(37:20):
intellectual property laws willneed to be revised, not just
because of AI, but because ofthe world.
Today is very different from theworld that existed in mid 19th
century century, right, or 20thcentury, even, because the speed
(37:41):
at which you build products andmake them available to the
whole world today is vastlydifferent.
Right, you can have an idea andhave the product available for
purchase in Africa, in Asia andNorth America at the same time
is like ours, right?
(38:02):
Whereas the whole system wasbuilt on the idea that, yeah,
you can start in one country,which is why intellectual
property protection is done bycountry by country basis.
Right, because their assumptionwas and it's also with
trademarks, when we're talkingabout trademarks basis.
Right, because their assumptionwas uh, and it's also with with
trademarks, when we're talkingabout trademarks, it's also done
by industry, right, on a perindustry basis.
(38:23):
So the idea behind that wasit's going to take a long time
for someone to expand to adifferent country or expand to a
different industry, and nowthis assumption doesn't work
anymore.
Right, people come up with anidea like and and tomorrow
they're doing somethingcompletely different under the
same brand and they're doingsomething completely different
in a different country.
(38:44):
So they will have to figure outa way how to do that, and
probably a lot of it will haveto do with private brand
registry, something similar towhat Amazon is trying to do, but
now Amazon is running off ofthe government registries.
So basically they're saying,hey, file a trademark, bring it
to us and we'll protect you onour marketplace.
(39:11):
And at some point I thinkthey'll have to come up with
something similar that's moreglobal, that's faster and that
might actually be AI-driven.
Because if you look at how longit takes them to examine patents
, it takes years and years, andyears and years.
And the big reason behind thatis you've got a dude who looks
(39:33):
at the application very smart,and then he opens up a bunch of
books and he goes through thosebooks and the databases and it
takes a long, long, long time,whereas if you feed all this
data to AI, if it's properlytrained I don't know if it's
ready for this today, but I'mdefinitely sure it's going to be
ready for that a year from nowand just say, hey, is this
(39:57):
invention actually new?
Ready for that, you know, ayear from now, and just say, hey
, is this invention actually new?
Non-obvious, uh, and all thoseother properties that that are
required for a patent, or not?
Um, so that that's that thatwill force the change eventually
.
But when it's going to happen,I don't know, because
governments and, um, uh,bureaucrat, bureaucrats they're
not known for being open to bigchange right, they're going to
(40:23):
try to preserve the status quofor as long as humanly possible.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
Awesome, andre.
So I wanted to tell you I justwent to the opening night of the
Houston Symphony.
So really, you know, to hearthat I didn't know that about
your father and music I think isjust amazing, Like there's just
something magical about it thatit does to you and I think that
(40:51):
that's really awesome.
We are getting kind of close tothe time to wrap up here.
I wanted to ask you we'vetalked about a lot of things,
we've covered a lot of stuff.
I think it's been superenlightening.
Is there anything out therethat digital marketers or small
business owners or e-commercebrands should really be thinking
(41:11):
about a unleveraged opportunitywith their brand?
I really like the aspect of youreally want to build on
something that's yours right,like until you have the
trademark, it's not really yours.
So what are you doing Right andwhat are you building on?
But I think if there's anythingbeyond that that might be a
(41:32):
little bit of a secret thatpeople don't think about from a
trademark standpoint, would lovefor you to share it.
Speaker 2 (41:38):
Yeah, well, I kind of touched on this, but let's
actually focus on this for asecond.
From the marketing perspective,especially paid traffic
situation.
Right, it's all about your costper click, right?
Your lead cost, your CAC andyour conversions.
So, with with an unknown brand,if you just start a company,
(42:02):
come up with a new brand and youtry to run google ads, google
is going to give you a muchhigher cpc compared to a
well-known brand.
Because remember, like when westarted with, nobody wants
confusion on the marketplace.
So when nike goes to sell shoesthrough their Google ads if
they did that or if they do that, I don't know right their CPC
(42:25):
is going to be significantlylower than the, the, the, the
cost that Google is going togive to a new, new player on the
market that has a name thatnobody's ever heard of.
And the reason behind that isthat Google knows that when Nike
advertises Nike shoes andpeople click to buy Nike shoes
from a Google ad, they're goingto get a Nike shoe and they're
(42:48):
going to be happy and they haveno idea about you.
So owning that brand, buildingup that brand, and owning that
brand reduces the CPC.
It increases the conversionrates because, again, when
people know the brand, they'remore likely to give you the
money.
You don't have to do as muchconvincing, as much proof
(43:09):
compared to someone who's newand who's never been heard of.
You don't need a long VSL toexplain hey, this is a great
shoe, it's called Nike, we'vebeen building it in the garage,
it's a Nike, that's it.
That's all you need to know.
And so there's a lot less workand so the cost is lower.
(43:30):
With a brand that's known, theconversion is higher, and that's
really all that marketing isall about.
Right?
You want leads for as little aspossible and you want to
convert as many of them intobuyers as humanly possible.
And last thing, actually yourAOV.
Nike can sell their shoes formore money than someone who has
(43:52):
shoes that no one's ever heardof before, right?
So you three uh parts of the ofof of the marketing equation,
right.
Lower cost per lead, higherconversion into sales and you
get a higher aov.
That's what the brand does, butonly if you own that brand, and
(44:12):
the only way to own that brandis to get that trademarked right
.
Nothing else works.
Copyright doesn't do it.
Copyright doesn't do it.
Registering your companydoesn't do it.
Getting a domain name doesn'tdo it.
If it did, why would Google andFacebook trademark Google and
Facebook right, if all theyneeded to do is just register a
domain name?
Just think about it.
And these guys own hundreds andthousands of trademarks because
(44:33):
they want to protect the brand.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
So that's how it works of trademarks because they
want to protect the brand.
So that's how it works.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
Trademark Factory.
Check it out, andre.
How do people get in touch withyou?
Well, you just said attrademarkfactorycom, you get on
that website and you request afree call with one of our
strategy advisors.
And I wanted to say this Well,obviously we're in the business
of helping you trademark yourbrand.
That's what we do.
That's the only thing we do.
We do nothing else.
But when I say, get on a freecall with a strategy advisor,
(45:09):
it's not just going to besomeone who's going to hard sell
you into buying our stuff.
Their job is to help you figureout how to prioritize, what to
start with, because the biggestquestion is that I mean,
everyone's got a limited budget.
I get that, and I've done workfor nine figure companies, I've
(45:29):
done work for eight figurecompanies, I've done work for
seven figure companies, sixfigure companies-figure
companies, but they all havebudgets right, and the idea is
that what we can help you withis figure out where to start
with.
Do you start in the US?
Do you start in Canada?
Do you start with a logo, witha name, with a tagline?
How to prioritize, because ifyou only have the money for two
(45:52):
trademarks, which ones do youpick?
And so that's their job tounderstand your business, to
understand your plans for thebrand, how you're going to grow
that brand, and they'll be ableto help you figure out how to
start with which of the packagesand things like that.
So, trademarkfactorycom, get onthat free call, we're going to
help you out.
Speaker 1 (46:11):
I love that.
I love the strategy componentof it.
I love the advisory componentof it.
I think a lot of times whenpeople go to lawyers, the lawyer
looks at you and says, well,what do you want to do?
Right, and they're, and you'rekind of like, well, I want you
to help me figure out what Ishould do, right, and then, and
and not all, not allorganizations are like that,
(46:34):
right, and so I think it'sreally important at least I've
found a ton of value in itpersonally to find an
organization that will work withyou and that will give you the
strategy, and those are the typeof lawyers that I keep in the
Rolodex, right, so I wouldencourage everybody to go check
out Trademark Factory.
(46:55):
Andre, it's so great to haveyou on.
Until the next time, everyone.
Bye-bye for now.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
Thanks for having me.
Howdy, welcome back to the Unknown Secrets of
Internet Marketing.
I am your host, matthew Bertram.
Today we are going to be goingto the unexplored with the
unknown secrets of internetmarketing.
And as we've been talking aboutbranding, I thought that it
would be good and I had somegreat, really referrals from
(00:37):
just some industry leaders tobring on Andre Markoff.
Andre Markoff.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
You almost got it right.
You almost got it right, youalmost got it right.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
He is the founder and owner of Trademark Factory, and
so we're going to be digginginto how trademarks can help
protect your brand, what you cando with them.
I know from a CPC standpoint.
If you own your name, you canget the bid rates down pretty
(01:10):
low.
We've done some differentstrategies with a few clients to
develop markets or to own namesand protect that.
But the big thing I know abouttrademarks too is if you have a
trademark, you have to defend itright If people start to
infringe on it.
And I don't know much about itI'm not sure if you're listening
(01:32):
if you know much about it butthis would be a special podcast
to cue in to find out how youcould leverage this to help grow
your brand.
I know that there's a lot ofgreat e-commerce brands out
there that I think could utilizesome of these skills, so
welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Thanks for having me.
I see why you gave me the wrongname, because trademarks Markov
makes sense, right.
And let's see how we can breakthis down and explain the
benefits of using brands andowning brands to build the
(02:11):
business and grow the business.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Yeah.
So I mean, I really think thatthere's a resurgence of
creativity and branding that areon the horizon.
I think that AI is reallydisruptive in DA, but a lot of
people are using the same largelanguage models, the ads are
starting to look very similarand there's a lot of noise out
there that's being created.
(02:35):
So, really cutting through theclutter, you need to have a
brand and Google loves brands.
Google gives you a nice liftwhen they start to see people
searching for you on differentplatforms and you want to be
able to protect your brand andown your brand.
And I can tell you I have to bea guardian roofing.
And there's other industries aswell that um, like for
(03:08):
protection, like so, alarmsystems, guardian um, alarm
systems.
There's some of the strategiesthat we have to do.
On an SEO standpoint is okay.
There's four other people thathave a very similar name to you,
that has a very similar keywordthan you, and we need to rank
for your name first and be atthe top of the pile before we
can even go after unbrandedkeywords.
(03:31):
And it becomes really crowdedtoday, with so many more people
starting companies, so many morebrands, so much more noise out
there.
Also, really competitiveadvertising where people are
bidding on people's name orusing their likeness.
We've seen, actually, even inthe crypto industry, there's a
lot of scams going on.
(03:52):
People are putting their moneyinto something that's not even
real, right, and they're usingsomebody else's name.
There's a lot of peoplepromoting at that and you really
have to protect your brand.
So I just thought it'd be greatto kind of come on and give the
foundation of it how to view it,how to look at it.
If you're a e-commerce business, if you're a growing business
(04:13):
in the space, if you'reexpanding outside your state
right.
So I have another client.
It's a garage door doctor, okay, and there's a garage door
doctor in almost every state,right.
So how do you protect yourbrand If, if other people have
your name, it goes back, I think, to you know who, who, who
(04:34):
started using it first?
I don't know the details, so Iwould love to turn it over to
you to just give us kind of aone on one class.
I think it'd be really helpful.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Well, with all the topics you brought up, it's
probably going to be like asix-hour podcast.
But look, in all seriousness,let's start with this.
Trademarks is really the onlytype of intellectual property
that has a dual purpose.
The dual purpose of number onehelping brand owners get the
(05:07):
most out of their brands.
But the second part, which isequally important, is to protect
the public, so that the publicknows that when they're buying a
product, they're buying theauthentic product, not a copycat
product, not a copycat product.
(05:28):
And the only way to accomplishthis is by giving the brand
owners a legal right, basicallya legal monopoly, to go and stop
everyone else from callingtheir products or services the
way that's going to confuse themarketplace.
And when you mentioned, you knowGoogle and all those other
platforms, they have pretty muchthe same purpose, because they
want to make sure that peoplewho get to landing pages and
(05:52):
websites through Google they endup on somewhere else.
They end up giving them theirmoney and who they're going to
blame when they realize thatthey were taken.
They're going to go back toGoogle and say you showed me the
(06:14):
wrong link.
And Google is not stupid.
Whether they're evil or not isa different issue, but they're
definitely not stupid.
So what they want to do is theywant to add their own
mechanisms that ensure thatthere's not a lot of this bait
and switch happening.
And so Google and Facebook andall those other platforms they
(06:38):
give priority to advertisers whocan prove that there's actually
their brand, advertisers whocan prove that there's actually
their, their brand, it'sactually their stuff, that the
thing is legitimate, becausethey want to make sure that
people who click those linksthey end up, uh, having good
experience with what they payfor, uh, and the brand is what
(06:59):
allows you to have that monopolyand stop others from doing this
, right.
So that's why all thoseplatforms, they actually look
very seriously as to whether youhave a brand, whether you have
a trademark, and TikTok,actually, TikTok advertising
requires you to have a trademarkfor that same very reason,
because they don't want to endup in a situation when you're
(07:23):
promoting something that ain'tyours Right?
So that's like yeah, so whoenforces that?
The beginning of this, so who?
Speaker 1 (07:33):
I have some questions from that, okay, so I will have
some questions.
I'm learning, I'm learningeveryone.
So who enforces trademarks Like?
Is it like like FTC, like likewho, like who?
What's the regulatory body thatthat helps enforce it?
Or do you have to personallyenforce it if someone's
(07:54):
infringing upon it?
Like you have an you, you, youhave a trademark, but if you
don't enforce it I've heard that, um, you kind of if you don't
enforce it, you lose it, or theykind of just run over you.
How do you view that?
I don't know how to look atthat, okay.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
So you enforce it Like you're the owner of the
trademark.
It's your responsibility toenforce it.
Nobody's going to be lightyears easier and tons cheaper
(08:30):
than doing that without aregistered trademark, because
here's what happens.
So let's say you're building abrand, you're a company, you put
a product out there, a service.
People start liking you, you'veestablished some sort of a
brand and you start seeingsomeone else I don't know in a
different state or maybe acrossthe street from you, doesn't
(08:53):
really matter and you see thatthey're doing something very
similar under something thatlooks very much like your brand
or what you thought was yourbrand.
So you send them a demandletter saying hey guys, this is
my brand, stop doing this.
The first thing they're goingto do those other guys in the
other state or across the streetthey're going to show this
(09:14):
letter to a lawyer, right.
And the first thing the lawyeris going to do the lawyer is
going to check did you bother totrademark that brand?
And if the answer is no, youdidn't file a trademark, you
didn't get a trademarkregistered.
The lawyer is going to tellthem look, these guys are clowns
because they haven't botheredto spend a little bit of money
(09:36):
to protect their brand.
What's the likelihood thatthey're going to spend $150,000
taking you to court over thisZero right?
So the lawyer is going to tellthem ignore this.
If they're actually seriousabout this, if they actually
have the budget to fight overthis, let's wait for a lawsuit
and then we'll figure out whatto do about it.
(09:56):
But the likelihood of that, therisk of that, is very small.
Now, the opposite, the otherside of that coin, is if you do
have a trademark registered,right, you send that letter.
They take this letter to the tothe lawyer.
Lawyer opens up the database tosee if that brand is
trademarked.
And he's like you you own thistrademark.
So what he's going to tell hisclients is that, guys, uh, I
(10:20):
suggest that you very quietlychange this brand, remove this
from everywhere.
Like, take this site down totake the sign down, you know, go
to a different domain name andhope that these guys don't take
this any further and basically,you taking it down is enough for
them to go away, because thisis a dispute you won't be able
(10:43):
to win, right, and this is thebig difference.
Right, the purpose of atrademark is not to go and sue
everybody.
The purpose of a trademark isto avoid avoidable disputes,
because litigation is reallyreally, really expensive, right,
and that's what the trademarkdoes.
So if you, if you think aboutit, like, let's go back to when
(11:06):
the trademark laws were eveninvented, right, we didn't have
AI there, we didn't have likelots of things that we have now,
nobody had.
But here's, here's what happenedbefore, like in the, in the
very early days, they didn'thave trademark laws.
They didn't have trademark laws, right, they had what was
called common law, that ifsomeone started a business and
(11:28):
made a name for that and someoneelse was trying to copycat that
, it was called passing off.
Right, they were passing offtheir products as products of
someone else.
Judge and explain all of thisand try to prove to the judge.
Bring all the evidence thatshowed the judge how much of a
(11:49):
name you've made for yourselfand how bad of a person the
other guy was.
Right, it was very difficult,it was very long and it worked
on a small scale, right, yeah.
And then industrialization cameright, the factories came, it
(12:09):
became a lot easier to build newproducts, it was a lot easier
to reach bigger markets, and sothey realized that you couldn't
just have those disputes done insuch a one-off manner.
(12:29):
And so they said why don't wegive those brand owners who
actually care about their brandsan easy mechanism where they
can tell the government that,hey, I care about my brand, I
want this protected so that ifsomeone infringes on it, I have
an easy path to go after them?
Right, and that's howtrademarking laws were born.
(12:50):
Basically, that allowed peopleto take the, the, whatever brand
, whether it's a name or a logoor a tagline to a government
registry and have them recordedthere and, uh, just sit there as
proof that what's called likethe legal term here is
rebuttable presumption.
(13:11):
Basically, the, the, it, youget the presumption that your
trademark is a valid brand andthat you are the owner of it.
Right, that's what this pieceof paper means.
Now I'm almost there to defense.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
No, no, I want to hear it.
I want to hear it.
I'm getting like all thesequestions now that I have Right.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
So you get this piece of paper that says that's your
brand and you own it, and nowit's up to you to take this
thing to court.
But and really it acts this,this registration, acts as a
litmus test of whether you careabout the brand or not, because
when courts see this right, whenyou take something to court,
(13:50):
it's never really about law.
It's always about who's got abetter story Right and the judge
who listens to someone who'slike hey, you know, I've been
building this for 27 years andyou know, and these guys are
stealing from me.
But the first thing the judgeis going to look at did you
protect it?
Right?
We gave you, the government,gave you a really simple way to
(14:12):
protect this.
Why didn't you?
Why didn't you Right?
And so the judge will belistening hard to what the other
party has to say in terms ofthese guys don't care about
their brands.
Why should the governmentprotect it?
Right?
And so that's really how thisworks.
(14:32):
And so, with the trademarking,it's a much simpler.
Basically a trademarkregistration process, right,
give or take.
And we can talk about howTrademark Factory does this, but
give or take, you're going tospend a couple of thousand
dollars, right?
Two, three, five, whatever,right.
(14:53):
There are some cheaper ways toget started, which may or may
not be successful.
But let's say, anywhere fromone to $5,000, right, it's going
to cost you to get a trademarkdone.
A litigation over anunprotected brand is going to
cost you, like I said, around$150,000, right, these are just
(15:13):
completely uncomparable numbers.
So it's a lot easier to do theeasy way and avoid all this.
And I mean, look, are there bigtrademark litigation disputes?
Of course there are, right.
And a lot of people say, hey,you know, trademarks and
intellectual property is justfor the big guys.
I said you couldn't be morewrong about this, because big
(15:36):
guys don't need trademarks asmuch as little guys do.
Big guys have all the money inthe world that they can drown
you in litigation motions andall the paperwork, and they can
drown you in marketing money.
They can drown you, like, inall of that.
They can out-compete you onanything, pretty much on any
(15:59):
level.
The brand, owning the brand, isreally the only asset you've
got as as a little guy.
That's the only one you got tofight.
And so, uh, one of the goodexamples that I have is, uh,
what's his name?
Sean Merriman.
Uh, the the lights out uh,football player, right.
So he came up with a brandlights out.
(16:20):
He trademarked that and hesuccessfully went against Nike
and Under Armour Both of themtry to get the brand and he won
both times right.
The only way he was able to winin this David and Goliath fight
is because he had somethingthat he could show to the judge
(16:43):
this one stupid piece of paper,right.
Without it, there's, there's,there's really no fight, there's
just a super interesting.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
So I have like four kind of independent questions
that came out of like what youwere talking about.
So we can, we can kind of godown the list.
Let's start with, like thesmall guys first, because, based
on what we were talking aboutand I brought that up at the
beginning and hopefully myclients won't be mad at me
mentioning their names but ifyou're in the situation that you
(17:16):
have a small business andthere's somebody else either in
your area or in the country thathas your name, right, and the
only thing that I knew it alwayskind of goes back to who was
maybe using it first I guess thecommon law of what you were
talking about, of what to do inthis situation.
But if you have the same nameand you've been operating under
this business and a lot of thesebusinesses have hundreds of
(17:41):
Google business reviews, theyhave Facebook pages with this
name.
Maybe it's this name plus alocation or something like that.
Um, you know, there is someconfusion, like is this part of
a franchise?
Like you know what, what,what's going on here?
But if, if you find yourselfand you're operating in that
space today and you have a namethat somebody else has, or
(18:03):
somebody started a name, notintentionally trying to go after
you that's actually my nextquestion.
But, um, if, if they have aname and you've been operating
as it, they've been operating as, what's the best way to do that
?
Like cause, they're alreadyusing it, you're already using
it, so is there value in goingto register it?
Or, like, what's their approach?
Approach?
Speaker 2 (18:24):
look, sometimes there is no good answer to this.
Sometimes the only good answeris go back to the drawing board
and come up with a new brand.
Uh and uh, it it freaking hurts.
Uh, and we've had, you know,dozens and dozens of these
conversations.
When we, when they're finallyready to go and trademark their
(18:45):
brand, we do the search becausethat's the first thing we do
with our process to ensure thatyour brand is even trademarkable
.
And when we tell them that it'sreally not, there's always the
shock and, like, I've been doingthis for four years, what do I
do now?
And uh, one of our clients saidit best.
(19:06):
Uh, he says if, if you, if youmarry to a brand, but it's a
brand that you can't have, get adivorce right, because there's
really no good reason for you tospend a dollar out of your
pocket or a minute out of yourlife trying to promote a brand
(19:28):
that you don't own.
Right?
Basically, you're buildingsomeone else's brand that can be
always taken away from you andthe problem there again, like I
said, there's really no goodanswer here.
The only kind of semi answer isyou know, get a time machine,
(19:48):
go back to when you started andactually find a name that you
can own, because it's not reallyabout the name that you pick.
Nobody cares about it.
The value of the name at thetime when you come up with it is
zero.
Nobody knows about it, right?
It's not about coming up with acute name, uh, it's about an, a
(20:08):
name that you can own.
And then you build that byproviding to the market great
products, great services thatpeople fall in love with, and
that's what gives the value tothe brand, right?
What?
What a trademark does really.
A trademark is investment inthe future of your brand, and
(20:30):
it's never too early to protectit, but it's often too late and
kind of.
Another question that peoplealways ask is when should I
trademark my brand?
I said, well, look, you can doit really any time, as long as
it's one day before somebodyelse does.
Right?
It's kind of a little bittongue in cheek maybe, but you
(20:53):
know you would know 11 labs,right?
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Love the guys, amazing products Like I use them
all the time.
So what happened to them isthey filed their trademark, they
, they, they thought they weredoing everything right.
Problem is they trademark.
They filed their trademark onthe same day, just a couple of
hours after someone else didSome guy did same day, right,
(21:18):
and now their application isbeing denied by the USPTO.
So they're going to go into bigfight.
They're going to probablythey're going to have to figure
out a way to pay him off, but onthe books he is the first in
line and now they've got acompletely avoidable problem
(21:38):
that they need to solve Right,same day, same day, go check it
out.
The USPTO check for 11 left.
And that's kind of the the bigproblem, right, when I say you
know, as long as you do it a daybefore someone else does,
you're good.
Problem is you don't know whensomeone else does, uh, and like,
imagine, like any, any goodbrand, like any, any, any brand
(21:59):
you look up to, imagine it's nottrademarked and you can have it
today.
Like there'd be a lot of peoplewho are going to be trying,
trying to, you know, monopolizesome someone else's goodwill,
and that's what happens in reallife.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Do people like just like with domains, do they sit
on brands?
Do they like is there peopleout there that it's very
lictitious or like tissue Ican't say it but essentially
like very legalistic as far aslike their business model?
Or even like you got we talkedabout at the beginning what I
(22:34):
thought of like counterfeiters,right, so like people selling
counterfeit merchandise andthey're changing the name a
little bit.
Or there's a lot of likephishing scams, where people
change like one letter andthey're sending you stuff to try
to get you to be associatedwith the brand.
When people are doing that, isthat viewed differently, legally
(22:58):
?
And also a lot of times, ifpeople are doing this, they're
maybe outside the United States.
If you're operating in theUnited States, and how do you
deal with international law?
Speaker 2 (23:09):
You are a big fan of asking seven different questions
in one.
It's really hard to answer thatkind of stuff.
But look, trademarks are verydifferent from domain names In a
few material aspects.
One is that getting a domainname takes five minutes.
(23:30):
Getting a trademark takes abouta year and a half in the US and
about four years in Canada.
It's a much longer process.
Second big difference is thatwith domain names you know right
away whether it's available ornot.
Well, with trademarks in USyou're going to find out about
nine months in whether thegovernment is okay with that,
and Canada is going to takeagain again about three years.
(23:51):
Um, the third big difference isthat domain names you, as you
said, you can add a typo, changean eye into a one or O into a
zero, and you're good to go.
Or you just add my in front ofit and again it's, it's yours.
With trademarks not so muchtrademarks are built on the idea
(24:13):
of similarity, likelihood ofconfusion.
So the idea with trademarks isthat by getting one trademark,
you are essentially protectingyourself from all the lookalikes
, all the soundalikes, from meanalikes, if, like if someone
comes up with a synonym or eventranslation to a different
(24:35):
language, like for example, inthe US you can't get something
in Spanish, that means the samething as something that was
registered in English, or theother way around text you
(24:55):
against lots of them or whichalso means that even you came up
with what you think is a uniquedomain name.
Unique name because you searchfor identical name and it's not
trademarked doesn't mean thatit's registerable, because there
may be something similar thatsomeone else had already done.
Right, so that's kind of thebig difference with domain name.
So are there brands, quarterslike this?
Yes, but the scale of that issignificantly lower because
(25:18):
again costs what Eight bucks toget a domain name.
It takes much more withtrademarks and it takes longer,
but in some cases when you seesomeone whose brand is going
like hockey stick and you seethat they haven't trademarked
their brand, it gives you, ifyou're a bad person, you can see
(25:43):
that as a great opportunity tomake easy money pretty quickly,
because you know they're goingto get up there and you know
they're going to take care ofthis and you know that, um, you
know if, if you did take them tocourt, they'll probably just
want to pay you off for you toget, for you to go away yeah, so
(26:04):
.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
So I mean definitely startups and uh, sas products
and e-commerce products outthere.
I I like to hear that itprotects you from all the things
that are just have an affinityor similar to what you're doing
out there.
It's kind of broad reaching andyou don't have to protect every
little thing.
So if you are like a companyand you're like we're gonna
(26:28):
become a unicorn or we'regrowing at a rapid pace, we're
gonna get venture capital, we'regonna get private equity, we're
going to become a unicorn, or,um, we're we're growing at a
rapid place, we're going to getventure capital, we're going to
get private equity, we're goingto keep growing.
And you, how are trademarkslooked on the books when you're
trying to sell like from a valuestandpoint?
Because you you mentioned thata few times I'm just curious,
how is it typically looked at,um, if you do have a trademark
(26:49):
versus not if you're sellinglike multiple wise?
Speaker 2 (26:52):
yeah, let me, let me.
Let me give you an example ofan actual unicorn, true story.
Um, you know the scooter rentalcompany bird right yeah uh, they
were the fastest to get to abillion dollar valuation.
Like it took them the the leastamount of time.
I, I think it was 21 orsomething, 22, something like
(27:16):
that.
I don't remember the exact year, but they had this honor of
being recognized as the fastestones to get to unicorn status
and it took them 13 days betweenthem starting the company and
filing their first trademark.
Right, it was before they hadany scooters.
(27:37):
It was before they had anyagreements with the cities.
It was before they had anyannouncements, before they had
the website.
Someone realized that, hey, ifthis business model is to work,
we need to own this brand,because if anyone can have a
scooter and put a bird on it,like, the whole model collapses.
(27:58):
Right, uh, because how?
How would people know ifthey're renting the real one or
not?
Right and so.
But when they were starting,they weren't a unicorn company.
They were nothing.
Burger with an idea, uh, andthe good understanding that the
only way it works is if they ownthe brand.
Now that they are everywhereand they've got the network and
(28:22):
they've got the app and they'vegot the brand recognition,
obviously, if someone were tobuy this off of them, the brand
will be a very significant partof the value them.
The brand will be a verysignificant part of the value.
Nike the whole.
The valuation of the entirecompany is $97 billion.
The brand is 47 out of that, 97.
(28:46):
It's more than half right.
Not the sneakers, not theshirts, not the factories, not
the employees like the brand.
And here's why Because theytake a white T-shirt that has
nothing on it.
It costs them what 50 cents?
They slap a swoosh on it andthey sell it for 50 bucks.
(29:07):
That's what the value of thebrand is, and you can look at
companies like this and you canjust list them all day long,
because Alex Hermosi talks aboutit all the time.
Really, the value of the brandis the degree to which you can
charge more for the same thingwith the brand as opposed to
(29:29):
without right, and and uh, themore you grow, uh, the the the
higher chunk of the valuationthe brand is going to take.
So if you're starting out right, you're just starting out a
company and you're starting upand you're building something,
really the big question to askis if someone acquires you will,
will they keep the brand?
(29:50):
Uh, if the answer is, theywon't keep the brand.
We just want investors to buyus out and merge us into
something else, probably thenthe brand isn't that important.
But if you expect the brand tobe retained, then you got to
bring something to the table tothe investor and say, hey, this
(30:10):
is not just a cute name, this isnot just a cute logo that my
sister put together.
It's something that we own andwe can defend, and you will be
able to defend it if we sell itto you.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Okay, and what's like the rule of thumb when you're
looking at a company of like,okay, how did they come up with?
Like my Nike is a great exampleand it's probably pretty easy
to do it.
But is there like a rule ofthumb when you have smaller
brands on?
I guess it's what someone willpay for, of course, but like how
, how do you like look atbusinesses and you you can
(30:43):
probably eyeball.
You know the brand's probablyworth X, y, z or something like
that.
Is there any kind of metricsyou use or thoughts, or is it
just really difficult?
Speaker 2 (30:52):
It's really difficult .
Metrics you use or thoughts, oris it just really difficult?
It's really difficult.
There are people who pretend tobe experts but I mean, look,
it's an intangible asset, right,it's very hard to value that
kind of stuff, but it's really afunction of how many people
(31:17):
know about you, how many peoplebuy this because of the brand.
Like, if you think about phonesright, people buy iPhones not
because they expect the miracleof technology, but because
they're fans of Apple.
Right, and they line up at fivein the morning, not even
knowing what is in the phone.
(31:39):
Right, but they're there to buy.
Like, if you think about, youknow sales conversion metrics
and brand helping you with that,you know how much selling does
McDonald's need to do?
When you're up there, you knowtelling, hey, I want a burger.
Or when you go to to Applestore on the day of the, you
(32:01):
know when they first startselling the phone, right,
they're like how many do youwant?
Right, that that's really allit takes.
Or when you go to your favoritesupermarket to buy your
toothpaste and you notice I saidyour toothpaste because you, as
you, you, you associate with abrand.
(32:27):
Uh, it's a certain identity.
Yeah, it's the same glop indifferent tubes.
It's just some tubes have onename and the other tubes have
different name, but you areaccustomed to keep buying that
one all the time.
Right?
That's the power of the brand.
So, and and and.
That's what these guys who saywe're, you know, we do ip
valuation, that's what they lookat, that's what they uh take
into account when they writetheir you know long reports and
(32:49):
say we think that, based on thatand based on how much a company
makes, we think that this partof that is due to the brand
value.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Awesome, andre, I'm going to switch gears on you
really quick.
I wanted to get your input onfrom an IP standpoint, from a
trademark standpoint, what'sgoing on with the big large
language models and AI using allthe pictures or content on the
internet right and otherpeople's IP and brands to come
(33:22):
and build their language models?
How do you think that's goingto all shake out at the end of
it?
Speaker 2 (33:30):
My crystal ball is not really working today uh but
I mean, look, uh, who could havepredicted that the growth will
be so fast even 35 years ago?
Nobody, right.
And I, I mean, I use ai all thetime and, uh, lots of people do
, and they should, uh and uh.
I think the the way things aregoing to be looked at from the
(33:56):
legal perspective five to 10years from now are going to be
very different from what theyare today, and how, I've no idea
.
But I use a lot of those AImodels that do music, like Sudo
and Udio, and I freaking lovethem, right.
(34:19):
Sometimes they generate musicthat's much better than the new
music that comes out, even fromthe artists that I used to love,
right?
And is that the same thing?
No, is it new?
Well?
Well, that's not trademark,that's copyright.
And the question is, istraining the model the same as
(34:41):
using the song?
And I actually got into IEPbecause of unauthorized use of
music, right, because of my dad,who was a composer in russia,
who had one of his songs takento to turn that into an ad for
samsung without his permission.
So I actually am very proauthor kind of person because,
(35:02):
again, that that's how I gotinto this whole whole thing, but
I, I don't think that uh, asthat training the model uh is
necessarily copyrightinfringement.
I don't think that.
It's kind of my personalopinion.
The question is whether theoutput is going to be so close
(35:28):
to the original that it'sindistinguishable.
There were talks before AI frompeople who wanted to prove their
point and abolish copyrightbecause they were like, let's
free up copyright for the masses, the public should be able to
(35:48):
use the creative works of otherswithout any restrictions,
without paying any licensingfees, and that was a horrible,
horrible approach.
But what these guys were tryingto do is they were looking at
music as math.
Basically, there's only so manycombinations a 10-note melody
(36:12):
can have, right, and they werebasically going out there and
trying to register them all andsay, hey, we now own all the
melodies.
But that's not really whatcopyright is or what creativity
is.
Or like same thing with books,right, you can in theory just
(36:35):
take a dictionary and generatean unlimited number of
combinations a paragraph canhave.
But again, that's notcreativity.
And I think what the Sunos ofthe world do is significantly
more than just random soundsright, and they, they, there's
actually, there's there, there'sa.
(36:57):
There's actually lots to say tothat um, to to actually answer
a question.
I don't know what's going tohappen.
I think that nobody reallyknows and, um, I think there's
lots of.
There's more good stuff comingfrom AI today than bad stuff.
I also think that in nearfuture I don't know how near
(37:20):
intellectual property laws willneed to be revised, not just
because of AI, but because ofthe world.
Today is very different from theworld that existed in mid 19th
century century, right, or 20thcentury, even, because the speed
(37:41):
at which you build products andmake them available to the
whole world today is vastlydifferent.
Right, you can have an idea andhave the product available for
purchase in Africa, in Asia andNorth America at the same time
is like ours, right?
(38:02):
Whereas the whole system wasbuilt on the idea that, yeah,
you can start in one country,which is why intellectual
property protection is done bycountry by country basis.
Right, because their assumptionwas and it's also with
trademarks, when we're talkingabout trademarks basis.
Right, because their assumptionwas uh, and it's also with with
trademarks, when we're talkingabout trademarks, it's also done
by industry, right, on a perindustry basis.
(38:23):
So the idea behind that wasit's going to take a long time
for someone to expand to adifferent country or expand to a
different industry, and nowthis assumption doesn't work
anymore.
Right, people come up with anidea like and and tomorrow
they're doing somethingcompletely different under the
same brand and they're doingsomething completely different
in a different country.
(38:44):
So they will have to figure outa way how to do that, and
probably a lot of it will haveto do with private brand
registry, something similar towhat Amazon is trying to do, but
now Amazon is running off ofthe government registries.
So basically they're saying,hey, file a trademark, bring it
to us and we'll protect you onour marketplace.
(39:11):
And at some point I thinkthey'll have to come up with
something similar that's moreglobal, that's faster and that
might actually be AI-driven.
Because if you look at how longit takes them to examine patents
, it takes years and years, andyears and years.
And the big reason behind thatis you've got a dude who looks
(39:33):
at the application very smart,and then he opens up a bunch of
books and he goes through thosebooks and the databases and it
takes a long, long, long time,whereas if you feed all this
data to AI, if it's properlytrained I don't know if it's
ready for this today, but I'mdefinitely sure it's going to be
ready for that a year from nowand just say, hey, is this
(39:57):
invention actually new?
Ready for that, you know, ayear from now, and just say, hey
, is this invention actually new?
Non-obvious, uh, and all thoseother properties that that are
required for a patent, or not?
Um, so that that's that thatwill force the change eventually
.
But when it's going to happen,I don't know, because
governments and, um, uh,bureaucrat, bureaucrats they're
not known for being open to bigchange right, they're going to
(40:23):
try to preserve the status quofor as long as humanly possible.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
Awesome, andre.
So I wanted to tell you I justwent to the opening night of the
Houston Symphony.
So really, you know, to hearthat I didn't know that about
your father and music I think isjust amazing, Like there's just
something magical about it thatit does to you and I think that
(40:51):
that's really awesome.
We are getting kind of close tothe time to wrap up here.
I wanted to ask you we'vetalked about a lot of things,
we've covered a lot of stuff.
I think it's been superenlightening.
Is there anything out therethat digital marketers or small
business owners or e-commercebrands should really be thinking
(41:11):
about a unleveraged opportunitywith their brand?
I really like the aspect of youreally want to build on
something that's yours right,like until you have the
trademark, it's not really yours.
So what are you doing Right andwhat are you building on?
But I think if there's anythingbeyond that that might be a
(41:32):
little bit of a secret thatpeople don't think about from a
trademark standpoint, would lovefor you to share it.
Speaker 2 (41:38):
Yeah, well, I kind of touched on this, but let's
actually focus on this for asecond.
From the marketing perspective,especially paid traffic
situation.
Right, it's all about your costper click, right?
Your lead cost, your CAC andyour conversions.
So, with with an unknown brand,if you just start a company,
(42:02):
come up with a new brand and youtry to run google ads, google
is going to give you a muchhigher cpc compared to a
well-known brand.
Because remember, like when westarted with, nobody wants
confusion on the marketplace.
So when nike goes to sell shoesthrough their Google ads if
they did that or if they do that, I don't know right their CPC
(42:25):
is going to be significantlylower than the, the, the, the
cost that Google is going togive to a new, new player on the
market that has a name thatnobody's ever heard of.
And the reason behind that isthat Google knows that when Nike
advertises Nike shoes andpeople click to buy Nike shoes
from a Google ad, they're goingto get a Nike shoe and they're
(42:48):
going to be happy and they haveno idea about you.
So owning that brand, buildingup that brand, and owning that
brand reduces the CPC.
It increases the conversionrates because, again, when
people know the brand, they'remore likely to give you the
money.
You don't have to do as muchconvincing, as much proof
(43:09):
compared to someone who's newand who's never been heard of.
You don't need a long VSL toexplain hey, this is a great
shoe, it's called Nike, we'vebeen building it in the garage,
it's a Nike, that's it.
That's all you need to know.
And so there's a lot less workand so the cost is lower.
(43:30):
With a brand that's known, theconversion is higher, and that's
really all that marketing isall about.
Right?
You want leads for as little aspossible and you want to
convert as many of them intobuyers as humanly possible.
And last thing, actually yourAOV.
Nike can sell their shoes formore money than someone who has
(43:52):
shoes that no one's ever heardof before, right?
So you three uh parts of the ofof of the marketing equation,
right.
Lower cost per lead, higherconversion into sales and you
get a higher aov.
That's what the brand does, butonly if you own that brand, and
(44:12):
the only way to own that brandis to get that trademarked right
.
Nothing else works.
Copyright doesn't do it.
Copyright doesn't do it.
Registering your companydoesn't do it.
Getting a domain name doesn'tdo it.
If it did, why would Google andFacebook trademark Google and
Facebook right, if all theyneeded to do is just register a
domain name?
Just think about it.
And these guys own hundreds andthousands of trademarks because
(44:33):
they want to protect the brand.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
So that's how it works of trademarks because they
want to protect the brand.
So that's how it works.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
Trademark Factory.
Check it out, andre.
How do people get in touch withyou?
Well, you just said attrademarkfactorycom, you get on
that website and you request afree call with one of our
strategy advisors.
And I wanted to say this Well,obviously we're in the business
of helping you trademark yourbrand.
That's what we do.
That's the only thing we do.
We do nothing else.
But when I say, get on a freecall with a strategy advisor,
(45:09):
it's not just going to besomeone who's going to hard sell
you into buying our stuff.
Their job is to help you figureout how to prioritize, what to
start with, because the biggestquestion is that I mean,
everyone's got a limited budget.
I get that, and I've done workfor nine figure companies, I've
(45:29):
done work for eight figurecompanies, I've done work for
seven figure companies, sixfigure companies-figure
companies, but they all havebudgets right, and the idea is
that what we can help you withis figure out where to start
with.
Do you start in the US?
Do you start in Canada?
Do you start with a logo, witha name, with a tagline?
How to prioritize, because ifyou only have the money for two
(45:52):
trademarks, which ones do youpick?
And so that's their job tounderstand your business, to
understand your plans for thebrand, how you're going to grow
that brand, and they'll be ableto help you figure out how to
start with which of the packagesand things like that.
So, trademarkfactorycom, get onthat free call, we're going to
help you out.
Speaker 1 (46:11):
I love that.
I love the strategy componentof it.
I love the advisory componentof it.
I think a lot of times whenpeople go to lawyers, the lawyer
looks at you and says, well,what do you want to do?
Right, and they're, and you'rekind of like, well, I want you
to help me figure out what Ishould do, right, and then, and
and not all, not allorganizations are like that,
(46:34):
right, and so I think it'sreally important at least I've
found a ton of value in itpersonally to find an
organization that will work withyou and that will give you the
strategy, and those are the typeof lawyers that I keep in the
Rolodex, right, so I wouldencourage everybody to go check
out Trademark Factory.
(46:55):
Andre, it's so great to haveyou on.
Until the next time, everyone.
Bye-bye for now.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
Thanks for having me.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com