Your Transformation Station - 48. "Talk to Me like I am 3" "Copyright, Patent, and Trademark" Law Devin Miller w/ Favazza

Episode Date: July 31, 2021

"How can you create a transformation in others if there's no transformation in yourself?" Greg Favazza podcast host and creator interviews (Devin Miller) of "Miller Law". Devin explains the distinctions between patent, copyright, and trademark law and how they influence company owners, with an emphasis on deciding whether or not to use them. There are some DIY tips for all of the laws, if you are interested in using them yourself.   Support the showPODCAST INFO:Podcast website: https://ytspod.comApple Podcasts: https://ytspod.com/appleSpotify: https://ytspod.com/spotifyRSS: https://ytspod.com/rssYouTube: https://ytspod.com/youtubeSUPPORT & CONNECT:- Check out the sponsors below, it's the best way to support this podcast- Outgrow: https://www.ytspod.com/outgrow- Quillbot Flow: https://ytspod.com/quilbot - LearnWorlds: https://ytspod.com/learnworlds- Facebook: https://ytspod.com/facebook- Instagram: https://ytspod.com/instagram- TikTok: https://ytspod.com/tiktok- Twitter: https://ytspod.com/x Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Coming up on your transformation station. Are you familiar with the copyright aspects of hyperlinking and framing? Yeah. Okay, so linking copyrighted material, how do the courts address two different, like, web technologies with solicitating somebody's copyrighted content? Yeah, I mean, that's a simple question. It's not a simple answer because there's a lot of intricacies to it. Welcome to your transformation station. This is your transformation station.

We're tapping in to surpassing expectations from the most successful people in the modern day and honing in on new foresight, methodologies, and clairvoyance you never knew. This is your transformation station with your host, Greg Favaza. Definition of success. If I could go back, there's not many things that I would go. Go back for him, but purpose. It's okay to struggle. It's okay that you're not okay.

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If you can leave our viewers with some good advice to follow, what would you let them know? These things that you're afraid to do? Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to your transformation station with your one and only, of course, Greg Favaza. Suppose you're someone aspiring to learn how to connect to the world. How can you create a transformation in others

if there's no transformation in yourself? This question is often what I think about. Your transformation station focuses on 30-day challenges, three-hour refinement, connecting clarity, the idealic life, interviews, investing your time. This is your transformation on how to decode ourselves through the realization of others, a transformative experience,

and establish our own transformation. Now, let's get into this. We're tapping in to surpassing expectations from the most successful people in the modern day and honing in a new foresight, methodologies, and clairvoyance you never knew. This is your transformation station with your host, Greg Favaza. Evan, welcome to your transformation station. I appreciate you.

Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate you reaching out. I looked through your profile. you have an interesting, you have an interesting background that our listeners can benefit, just from business folks to anybody that is seeking a change in their career towards the entrepreneur side. You focus on small businesses and startups, and that's from your company called Miller IP law. Is that correct?

Yep. can can you give us a little snapshot of how you started and why you started up your law firm? So both are short questions. Short questions seem to give the longest answers. But, you know, as far as kind of how I started, I mean, that one's longer, but to kind of give the shorter version. So I am getting four degrees, which is pretty good. or my wife always jokes is three degrees too many, but I got electrical engineering degree.

I got a Mandarin Chinese degree, a MBA as well as a law degree. So with that, I was always kind of from undergraduate, I had liked engineering, like understanding how things worked and working on things, but I came to the end and decided I didn't want to be an engineer. In the sense,

I didn't want to be on a project for multiple years, being a very small cog and a big will, and, you know, working your way up for 20 years before you, really have any impact on business. So that wasn't as appealing to me. So with that, I kind of was looking to see how I could incorporate my enjoyment of engineering with a career path. And I kind of had two different things that I love and enjoyed. One was more on the business and the entrepreneurial side and kind of chasing down that side. And I also find the legal side more interesting,

more in particular with patents and trademarks and be able to help businesses to protect and grow what they're working on. So kind of making those decisions. And rather than decide one or the other, I ended up doing both. So that's where I got the law degree as well as the MBA degree, kind of understand the business side as well as the legal side. And then I've been kind of chasing those paths ever since. So I've done, started first business while I was doing MBA school and law school.

Started at a business competition. That one's still going. And it's now either eight or nine figure business. I'd have to add it up as well as I was always kind of. and doing that. I always say a side hustle, but I always look at the side hustle is really a second or a second full-time job, but I was doing that alongside of chasing our legal career. So I've been doing, I've been a patent and trademark attorney for about nine years. And six years, I worked at some of the largest law firms, some in California and Palo Alto and others that were 100 law firms,

work with some of the bigger clients, the Amazon, the intels, the Red Hatts, and boards and others. But what I always found is I always kind of going back to, I love starting a small business myself. I always like working with the startups and the small businesses. So I kind of got to a period in my career where I'm saying, one is I want to work with the clients I enjoy working with. And two, I also want to kind of start to fold in the entrepreneur side of what I love to do along the legal side to kind of with that, jumped out on my own, decided to start Miller IP law, where I focus a lot on startups and small businesses and also to start to fold in a lot of business stuff on top of that. So I don't know if that's a short run or short for,

short version or the long version, but that kind of gets me to where I'm at today and a little bit of how I got here. First off, wow, that is quite a resume. For me, personally, how did you balance your professional side and your personal side? Better now than when I started.

You know, I would have said early on in my career, and I don't know that I'm, I always say like early on like feels to be like I've lived, a full career and I'm still in the middle of it, but earlier on, maybe it's a better way to put it, I was, I worked too many hours. I ended up probably not spending enough time on the family. I had a great wife, great kids. She was supportive, but I ended up working a ton of hours to try and accomplish everything I do. And I still work a lot of hours, but I didn't have any sort of that balance. And so I kind of got to the point of saying, you know, because I always had more

things to do than time to do it. I was always trying to catch up and I was always trying to build my career, make a good impression, do everything else. And I kind of, you know, I don't know what at some point kind of came to the realization that I, I don't, I, there's always more fires to put out in the day and I can't, if I'm always folks, I'm putting out the fires, then I'm going to lose that balance. And so really it was more of, I'm going to put out as many fires as I can while I'm working, why I'm in the office, and when I go home, I'm not going to worry about now. The building's burning down and it's a big fire. I'll deal with that. But most of them, you know, the fires will wait until tomorrow. And so for me, it was kind of finding that, okay, at some point I've just got to set a limit of when I'm at home,

I'm with the family, I'm doing those things. When I'm at work, I work as much as I can to get as much done, try and get as much accomplished and build things. But I've got to have some of that separation with the acknowledgement that there's always going to be more fires to put out than I have time to. So I'm going to do as much as I can and then wait, or let the rest of them wait till the next day. So that is a normal thing to expect for people starting up business who are entrepreneurs or thinking about it that when you're going into it, you have to expect that it's not a nine to five. It is all about what you put into it, how you make it and have the ability to separate yourself from work to. Yeah, and especially with the impact, as much as life is

intertwined. I mean, you have your phone. That's where you get your emails. Yes. You are, you know, you can always have to time you're, if you're working for a long job, you can pick up a laptop, you can always do it. And there's always that in placement to work on the weekends, work on the, you know, the afternoon, work late and tonight. And I'm guilty of it. I'm not perfect. So I'm not trying to pay the picture. But it's always so interconnected that it's so easy to, as hard to ever have that separation. It's easy to just let one dominate the other. And so I think you have to figure out those rules as to how, or where you want to draw those lines. So I was reviewing your website and you offer free strategy sessions. I would love to use that

opportunity to paint a picture for our audience, our listeners, for me to kind of get that strategy session so they can see in real time what that looks like and that would be more of a competitive advantage for you that they're willing to reach out after seeing this in real time. Absolutely. Let's do it. Excellent. So what do you need for me first? So I mean, typically when you're doing any sort of a strategy session, maybe this is the kind of the set of the groundwork or the framework. Those are really set up for people that are having questions whether it can be anywhere along the process. It can be anywhere from, hey, I have a business or something I want to get started or I have an idea.

And I just want to understand kind of what I'm getting into to people that have got something. started, they've actually started to build it, all the way to this small business or is going along. But a lot of times this started or strategy meeting was set up because people don't want to go into an attorney because they're worried it's going to cost a lot of money and they're going to get an answer to where you don't need this or we're not going to be able to help you. Now all you've done is spent a whole bunch of money that you really didn't have at the startup. So the strategy meeting is really, and then we'll get to your question and kind of diving into it, is set up to be a bit of a, let's learn a little bit about your business, what you have going on, any questions you might

have and then strategize a little bit as to what things you should be considering, whether it's now or six months in the future or anything, but kind of get that roadmap. So with that in mind, maybe tell me, you know, acting out a little bit of what a strategy meeting would be, tell me a little bit about what your business and what you have going on. Okay. So I started a podcast called Your Transformation Station, which we are recording right now. I have about 50 episodes, someone not released. I started some merchandise. I started a, a membership program for super fans to get information products that I create through my interviews that give them a great insight and it's more in-depth that they can purchase

along with also buying my own copyright per se through created graphics as the logo and any any other digital content that I produce. along with I did a self-publishing. I did one book. I released that. So now let me follow up to, and that's a great explanation. What is the intent of the business? In other words, is it something where it's going to be kind of a fun,

side hobby, hustle, kind of as much of, you know, personal enjoyment, or just something you're saying, hey, no, I'm going to build this to where we have a large following. We're going to monetize it, or it's going to leverage it to, you know, build up, client tell her kind of what is the intention and what's the direction is that will flavor kind of you know what what you may be considering is based on where you're kind of headed so give me a little bit of insight there okay so it started out with the intent just to uh carry out the the military inside of me to help others as a sergeant in the army i had a team subordinates that i looked after i was their parent i was their guardian i was their doctor their dietitian i was everything

And after I left, I felt unfulfilled and I missed that feeling. So I started this podcast just to satisfy that itch to inform people, to guide them in the right direction because there's too much damn content out there. And people just want to just take advantage of them because they're willing to do anything to make their life better. And I want to just cut through all the bullshit and give them direct answers on what they need to do. why they need to do it. And I promise it's for the best and go into the details. And then from there, I started to do advertisement. I started to monetize and now it's addicting.

I want to do everything. I want to establish a filing. I want to create as many books as I can. One, it's satisfying for me because I got deep sociological or psychological issues that is a way for me to cope as well as establish. a big following just so I can step it so so I can impact as many people as I can so I mean and that's a great explanation I think that's for a lot of you know podcasts and and kind of providing information to people a lot of time to start out with hey there's a lot of bad

information out there there's a lot of things that people are you know sifting through a lot of information online it's going to be hard so you know finding a good source is always beneficial I mean, if I were to break it down and say, okay, you know, looking at a bit of your business, you have a few things that you're trying to do, and then we'll talk a little bit about maybe what you should do. You're building a brand. So if you're building a brand, you know, and that can be the name of the podcast. You can have the kind of the complimentary where you have informational products. You can have services.

You provide the, you know, hey, basically, you know, hey, we provide these services. You know, you'll find that a little bit on the podcast. And if you want to do more of a one-on-one, those type of things, all that is kind of establishing a brand. If you're looking at kind of now how do you protect a brand, it's going to be with a trademark. Trademark, or if you're to think of kind of three areas of intellectual property, patents are going to be for inventions. You create something, you invent something, whether it's software, it's a device, it's a hardware or anything that, you're going to do a patent. Trademark are going to be on the brand side. We're going to look more at, you know, name of the company,

name of a product, a logo, a cashphrase, something of that nature. And then copyrights are going to be on the creative side. So if you're to think of movies, videos, books, you can think of paintings, sculptures, anything that's on the creative side, that's what you're going to be protecting a copyright. So if I had to look now kind of, you know, acting out the strategy meeting or in reality, you know, what you want to look at is, one is whether or not it makes sense to invest anything. And that's why I kind of ask, you know, what is the intent of your business? Because if you're looking and saying, hey, this is just going to be kind of a fun side hustle, it's going to be a hobby. I think I'd like to, you know, just kind of giving back to the community.

I don't expect any monetization. I don't really want to have any income from it. Then I'd probably say, I wouldn't do anything because you're probably, it's not worthwhile to invest the brand or to protect the brand if it's really just for an interest. Now, if on the other hand you're saying, hey, right now we're just growing, we're building, but our intent is to really get bigger. We're going to have a following. We're going to monetize it.

It's going to be a brand that is worth something that we want to protect. Then you're going to look and say, okay, we want a trademark it. I'm all in 100%. I am committed. I tried to stay away from it. I tried to shut it down and just live a normal nine to five life. I can't do that. This is what I want. I am 100% game in and I need to know how to protect myself and protect my content and continue to scale and not worry about anybody stealing my property. Yeah, I think to that note, I mean, what you're going to, what you want to typically do is step back and say, what is the value of the. business, right? What do I want to protect? Because you can say, because I could say, well, every podcast episode, you could technically copyright. Every logo you have, every, you know, cashphrase you have, you can get a trademark for, but which ones are going to be valuable to

the business? In other words, hey, unless you have a viral episode where it just takes off and everybody listens to, you know, millions of you or listeners type of thing, probably to protect any given episode you're not going to necessarily want to cooperate because it doesn't have that value. But if you're saying what really is going to be important is my brand, people are going to start recognizing the name of the podcast, the associated goods and services with it, and that's what it is. Say, that's where I'm investing in. Then you're going to say, let's get the copyright. The copyright is basically where you're going to be able to box out for types of goods and services, you know, podcasting or consulting services or other business services. You can box out for those types

of goods and services. They use of either the word for the company or the product. and or the logo. So that's kind of what you're to start out. You're looking at saying that's where I would suggest is it sounds like it would be your greatest value is more than it is on any given episode because it's going to be the accumulation of those episodes to build a brand as opposed to one specific episode. Does that make sense? Yes.

And I wanted to touch on something with the copyrightable subject matter. When we produce content and we put it out, is it automatically copyrighted or do do I need to come see you to get it copyright in? Kind of both. And let me break that down. So inherently, when you create anything that's a creative one, and that can be whether it's a book, podcast, video, TV show, whatever, you inherently have a copyright to that material leave created.

Now, the reason that most of it, so you don't have to do anything to get that copy. Now, the reason you're going to go register it is typically for twofold. one is you're going to want to more easily establish the date by which you created the or you know created whatever the creative work. So let's say you wrote a book, but you never really keep track of when you wrote the book and it takes you two years to publish and then somebody else comes along and copies the book. Well, there's going to be a company, you know, if you ever have to go into enforcement, you're going to have to show, hey, I created this.

This is when I created it. And a copyright is an easy way to define at least by this date, I am the creator of this work. The second reason is that if you ever go to enforce a copyright to get a copyright to get, much damages, in other words, to get return on because they copied it and they ripped it off, you typically are going to want to register the copy. So if you're to start out and you're making a lot of content, you're doing a lot of things, content creation, creating videos, creating different things, you probably wouldn't want to register it at that point. But when you get to the point of saying, here is the valuable content that if somebody were to knock off, if they were to copy,

this would hurt my business, then you're going to say, okay, then I want to register that copyright so I can show I've created, I'm the creator, this is why I created it, and I can also pursue damages to somebody to knock. Does that make sense or answer your question? It does, and it brings up a couple more questions as far as with the cheaper or poor man's way of copywriting. I'm familiar with, I'm not sure if a lot of people are, but does this still apply if I were to write out my intent with my podcast or the book, and I mail it to my

or I email it, is that considered copyrighted? It's better than nothing. I'll give, if that's all you're going to do, then sure, that's a, that's better than nothing, but not by much. And so you're not going to, I mean, to email it or mail it to yourself and there are variations and you get that on the patent site too. I mean, there's a lot of miss. Hey, if you just write down your name or write down your invention, you mail it to yourself,

you leave it in an envelope that self-addressed and you never open it, then you can take it into court and you can wave it in the air and they're going to say, CEI created this. That is not how it works in reality. So if all you, if you have a very limited budget, sure, that wouldn't be a bad way to at least get going. If you have anything that's of real value,

I would get an actual trademark or sorry, I'd get an actual copyright for work to protect it. In other words, if you have a YouTube video that is monetizing, you're making thousands of dollars off it or thousands or tens of thousands or whatever it is off of the video, go get a copyright on it. because it's valuable enough to do it right.

Now, if you're saying, hey, if I'm, you know, I don't know what's valuable, I think I've got some content that might be. Then, yeah, go do the, you know, the DIY, kind of mail it to yourself. Better than nothing. If it starts to catch on or if it starts to have any real traction, then do the real job. So better than nothing, but only by slight, by there slightly. Okay. Do I need a lawyer or anybody that specializes in copyright slash trademark slash

that's the other one. Patents, thank you. Do I need a specialist in that, or do they need to be officially registered with the United States patent and trademark organization? So it depends on which one. So patents, you have to, in order to be a patent attorney, you have to take a separate bar with the patent.

So you have to, in addition to a state bar, so everybody goes to law school, you have to take estate bar. Wherever you're going to be practicing, that's what you do. To go into your patents, first of all, there's a requirement that you have to have a technical undergraduate that qualified you to sit for the bar. So that means engineering, it can be physics, it can be some math and some of the other ones, but it has to be a hard science. And so, and then you have to go take a bar exam just specifically for patents. And so generally,

you can do it yourself as an individual inventor. If you want to do it yourself, you can file yourself. I wouldn't recommend it most of the time you do more harm than good because you don't write you don't get the coverage to give you a false sense of security. You think you have something in place. You really don't. And then you get the ball clicking. In other words, with patent, you have, once you put down the public, you have a year from which you can file a patent on it. If you don't file within that year, it becomes public domain. So a lot of times the problem is is people go, think I can do it as myself, I'll figure it out or watch a YouTube video. And then they go do it. They think they have something in place covering them.

They go tell the world, they come back a few years later or a year later and say, okay, now I want to do something. You're already too late and you've done. So I would highly recommend patents are going to be difficult if you don't go get an attorney. So if you, again, if you don't have any funds and you need to get something in place, do yourself, pilot. But if it's going to be anything that's a real consequential value, attorney is going to add a lot of value and certainly give you a much better return.

Great marks are kind of that same thing. trademarks, you don't have to be an attorney to file a trademark. I highly recommend it because they have a lot more experience, but you can have others file a trademarks or isn't that same requirement like the patent are. The problem with trademark is if you don't know what you're doing, oftentimes you're not going to get the, again, the coverage you want. So trademarks work, you have to indicate the types of goods and services you're going to do.

So think of Nike, they have trademarks for athletic, where sports gear and apparel. They don't have one for automobiles because they don't do anything. in automobiles. Well, if you were to file a trademark and you say, okay, I'm going to go get, you know, the trademark for my new company that just came up, XYZ, whatever company, and then I just go, you know, you file it the wrong way. You don't get the right classes. You don't get the right categories. And you're going to be not getting any coverage and it's not really going to provide any value. So you can do that. Copyrights are one where they're not as

difficult. They're more straightforward. But the biggest issue or barrier is that the system within in which you file them is not very well done. It was made in the 1990s, and they haven't updated the system sent. And so it's more of, it's kind of like if you've ever gone out and filled out, like, you know, you fill out a thing for a mortgage, or you do a contract and you need an employment agreement.

And he kind of read you and he says, I think I filled it outright. I don't feel it outright, but I'm really not sure. You kind of get that same filling. And, you know, the way I always look at it is, I'd almost kind of do it as you have one option is you just do it yourself. You have no idea what you're doing, but you just kind of winging a prayer.

You have the second option is you kind of do more of the DIY option where you have a course or you have a video that you follow, and then you have the last one, which is an attorney. And I would almost relate that to kind of real estate. If I would think of, okay, you can, if you need to have a roof over your head, you have to have some sort of shelters to survive. If you do it yourself, it's kind of like going and setting up a tent. If you have no experience, you can set up a tent.

It is technically a roof over your head. Now you don't have a lot of amenities, but you do have a roof over your tent. you go do kind of more of the DIY option, whether it's a, you know, legal Zoom or YouTube video or something else. It's kind of like, you know, if you're to think of, if I can watch a YouTube video and it tells me how to build a house, I can build a house and you want to have a shelter over your head now. It may not be a very glamorous house or nice house, but it's probably better than a 10. And so that's kind of when you get to the DIY options. And then an attorney is more of here to go and, you know, hire a builder, has experience, knows how to build a home, make it nice, get the heating and air conditioning, make sure the roof doesn't link in all those. that's kind of the gradients of the same thing as when you whether or not you get an attorney.

All you have the budget for is set up the tent yourself. It's better than not having any shelter over your head. If you have a little bit more budget and you can build the kind of the DIY house, better than having a tent. And if you want to actually have something of value in the real return, then that's where you go or an attorney. So with the, you mentioned legal Zoom.

I've had a friend that has experienced a rip off in that situation. What is your thought? towards a legal zoom. I think legal zoom, first of all, I know a lot of attorneys, most attorneys hate legal zoom. There are some reasons for it. I think that there's kind of two trains of thought, and they're a bit conflicting, but I'll give you.

On the one hand, I think that legal Zoom fills a gap in the marketplace for people that need some don't have a lot of funds, a lot of money. They need some sort of assistance to get something in place, kind of like building your own house. I need a roof over my head. I'm a startup, I'm a small business, I don't have any funds. I'd like to get something in place. And so at least have some form of protection. That's kind of where legal doom comes in. So there is a marketplace for that. The problem is that people don't realize that there is a difference

between legal doom versus an attorney that, you know, they're kind of saying, well, like, it's probably about the same. And I'm a smart guy. And that's usually especially the startups and small businesses, everybody thinks they're the smartest person in the room. Otherwise, you would have never started your own business. You're like, I can go do legal doom. I can figure. out and you're negating, you know, it's the same thing. Well, you can technically legal file your own taxes. You can set up your own business. You can start or go be a doctor. If you learn, you know, you can go try and get a doctor and operate on yourself. See how all those turns out. But that's kind of where legal zoom, where people think they've gotten used to doing

DIY on so many other things that they think all to do with legal zoom. So I think there's a place for it, but I think that people need to realize the limitations of you're getting what you're paying for and you need to balance that with what is the motivations. If really you just want to have stamp patent pending on something, you know, on your product to scare off the chat, you know, other people that are, you know, knockoffs, they're going to be a small business. That's fine. If you're wanting to go get investor dollars and an angel investor venture capital, you're wanting to grow this business to something that has real value into it, legal doom isn't going

to provide that level of protection. So you kind of got to look and see what are my motivations, what are my goals, what, why do I need protection? Why am I going after for this? And then balance that with what, you know, which, which option you're going to pursue. With the process of filing for a patent trademark or copyright, what is that process like? And once I've completed it, how long does it last? So three and or the each of those three things are different. So patent trademarks, copyright. So I'll start with the easiest one,

which is copyright. Copyright, you, you gather the information of what the material you're trying to copyright, whether it's the book or you get the audio recording or the video. And or whatever, then you're going to either do yourself or preferably having an attorney do it. You're going to basically fill some paperwork. You're going to get it filed. You'll pay a fee, you know, a couple hundred dollar fee. It'll get registered with the Library of Congress. They'll put it in that basically becomes a digital part of the Library of Congress.

And then the, that's about it. Most of the time, unless you mess something up with the filing or you do something or do something incorrect, then it then you'll get processed. It usually takes about two or three months and then you'll have a registered payment. last 90 years plus the life of the author. So as far as, you know, if you're to think of, as long as you live, plus, you know, the generation that comes after you, probably your kids can also benefit off of it. So usually your life plus, you know, your kid's life.

It's kind of the length of a trade, or of a copyright. Okay. Trademarks are going to be one. So trademarks, first of all, kind of answering the last question. They last as long as you keep using them. So Pepsi, Coke, all those that have been around for Disney, been around for a long period of time. As long as they continue to do the trademarks and pay some annual or some recurring maintenance fees every few years, trademarks stay active.

They don't expire. You can keep using them. As far as preparing and filing it, the question is, what you have to do is you will, either, again, yourself or an attorney will file or prepare the information needed for the trademark application. You get it all pulled together and you would file it. Now, you can file it either as an intent to youth or as a youth and Combers. Tent to use basically means I haven't started using this yet, but I intend to use it in this near-term future.

I'd like to get the rights to it so somebody doesn't come along as I'm preparing to launch my business. And so you can actually kind of pull that ahead and give that protection before you've actually started using it. Or I'm already using it. Now I'd like to protect it. Once you file it, it will get put in a queue for examination. The trademark office will have a queue. Usually takes about six months after the time you file it before it gets at the top of the queue. they're going to look at that and they're going to say, okay, is this trademarkable? There are a few standards, the main standard they're going to look at

is whether it's confusingly similar with what's already out there. In other words, they're going to say, if we were to allow this trademark, would there be trademarks are already out there that if consumers were to see that trademark and your trademark, they would be confused as to who is offering those goods and services, who is the source of those goods and services. If you are going to be confusingly similar with somebody that's already out there, you're going to get a rejection. If you're not, then you'll get an allowance.

You can go back and forth, them, argue and try and convince them as to why you should be different, why you're not confusingly similar, and that's part of the process. So you can either, they'll do that examination, you'll correspond back with them, and then you'll either get a registered trademark, or they'll say, no, this is not allowable, and you'll eventually give up. Patents are the last ones. Patents are going to be the lengthiest process, and they're going to have the shortest window. So patents are from the time you file it, you get 20 years.

So you file it today, you get 20 years from today that you can have that exclusivity. As far as the process, you know, again, whether it's attorney yourself, you're going to pull all the information of your regarding your patent together. You're going to put it in the format that's wanted. So you're going to get some drawings, you can get some written or written description of it, and you're going to outline what are the features of your invention. You're going to submit it. It takes about 12 to 18 months from the time you submit it to get into a queue for examination. Once a examiner starts to examine it, they're going to look at it basically for two standards,

which are called novelty and obviousness. Novelty basically means, has anybody else previously invented it. Somebody else has already invented it. You can't get a patent on something that's already invented. Obviousness is, okay, well, not one person has invented it, but if you're going to take two or more things already out in the marketplace, you're really just putting those together.

You're not adding anything. You're just kind of combining them together. And they're going to say, well, if it's an obvious combination, what's already out there, again, it's not patent. So you'll go back and forth, usually anticipate about another three to six months of back and forth to get them to convince them a patent or what's unique about your invention, what's different, and then they'll either at some point be convinced and allow it as a patent or as a patent or eventually you'll abandon and say it's not worth arguing anymore.

So it usually takes about 18 to 24 months to get through that process and you have a total of 20 years. So that was probably a longer answer to the anticipating, but that's kind of the outline of if you look at the very brief overview of the process and how long each of them lasts, that's what you'd be looking at. Wow, that's a lot of information. And I'll be sure to input this in the show notes. So if everybody doesn't, if they miss something, they can retort to that. Where do I want to take this? So back to me, I have one more question with my strategy session, and we can close it out to a few other questions. And then I'll be the end of the episode. But with mine is, are you familiar with the copyright aspects of hyperlinking and framing?

Yeah. Okay, so linking copyrighted material, how do the courts address two different, like, web technologies with solicitating somebody's copyrighted content to illustrate the source? because I feel like there could be some negative backplay with the power to, or what do they call it, the individual. Yes. Yeah, I mean, that, that's a simple question. It's not a simple answer because there's a lot of intricacies to it. Yes.

Short answer is dispelling one myth. If you go and grab somebody's, whether it's a picture or a blog post or anything else, and all you do is at the end you attribute, this is why, whoever, it doesn't remove any or copyright infringement. Nice to put it down there. Maybe they'll be less likely to come after you. But just because you give attribution, most of the time it doesn't give you any more legal standards to use it.

Now, you mentioned hyperlinks. Hyperlinks are just as a kind of explanation to the audience. If you're to see those links that are generally underlined, they're in blue, you can click on them and it takes you somewhere else. That's a hyperlink. Hyperlinks are generally okay because you're not taking any of the copyrighted

material yourself and using it. you're just linking to somebody else's information. And assuming your link to the original source, you're just simply saying, hey, you want, you know, find out more about intellectual property. Here's a link, click on here and you can go to Miller IP Logg, whatever it is.

And that would be kind of that nature. And so hyper links are generally fine. Now, a lot of time you'll see, which gets more to a gray area, somebody will get a part of a, you know, they'll get the first paragraph or two of an article. They'll start to write it and they'll see, or the full information, go to this.

Well, technically, you, just broken copyrights because you've copied their information, their copyrighted material that they own and they have rights over to it and you put down your website. A lot of times they may not come after you because they're saying, hey, thanks for the link and they'll come get more traction on their website. But technically you're violating copyrights if you grab that information. So the best thing is if you're going to use somebody else's written material, you're better just to get permission from them.

Or reach out to them and say, hey, I'd like to provide a link on you. your information. I'd like to give a little bit of introduction or something of that nature and let them or get their permission before you use that. So hyperlinks are okay. Grabbing the actual material, putting it on your website, not okay. The last one that you hit on is if you're going to now get video, and a lot of times, everybody's guilty of it, you know, there's a lot of great things on YouTube. You want to go and you want to embed it in your website, you want to be able to share it. It's a great clip. It's just what you want. If you are embedding a link, So it's like an I-frame or you do an embedding that links to the actual original content.

You're within your rights. This is general information. So just as a disclaimer for your audience, if I say this, you should still go talk with an attorney to get a specific answer in yours. There's my legal disclaimer. Just so that nobody takes it since it's gospel, goes out and does it and then thinks that I gave your specific legal advice of them. But generally, if you were to get that embed code or that eye frame, put it on your site. What it is doing is still linking to that original material. It's not that you are downloading it, taking as your own original material, putting it on your site.

You're linking to it. So it pulls that in. So a lot of times you think YouTube, you see somebody, you know, has a YouTube link. And then afterwards, it shows here are related videos or it has a commercial device or at the end of it. That's because it is actually getting that content from YouTube, not from your site. So that one's generally okay. And the interesting thing is there's actually a poor case on it. And with a lot of copyrights is, odd as it sounds, a lot of copyright law has been pushed forward.

by the pornography industry because there's a lot of fighting within the pornography industry as to who owns all this copyrighted material that they're very or very dominating over. And so basically what they, with that court case, what they found is not only if you embed or you have an eye frame or something of that nature, whether or not that material is legal, you don't have a legal liability. So if you go and link to an illegal video on YouTube that is an uploaded that is copyright infringing, you embed that on your website, you generally, general advice, don't have. any liability because you're just linking to that material and you're not doing it.

Opposite is if you download that video, if you go in, you actually download the video and then you re-upload it to your site, then you are infringing copy. So you're not any, don't put any of the original material. You can link to it. You can embed it. Embed it. You can do an eye frame. But if you download the material or you get the original written material and you put it up on your website indicating representing that it's your own, you're going to get to trouble. So what about with people who overdo the hyperlinks? Could you get, could you get, it's almost like directing the, the, the, your audience or

whoever's viewing your blog towards a direction that they shouldn't be directing, be directed to. So you're saying, I would go do a hyperlink and I misdirect them or try and misrepresent where the hyperlink is going? Is that the question? Yes, because I read something into it because with my book that I've written, I included dozens and dozens of links to sources. And that could be perceived as almost like directing the consumer to a dangerous place if they're not familiar with it. It's a good question.

It's not one that I have, that I've looked at before. I mean, if you're to look at generally, if you're just directing someone to a hyperlink, you know, saying go to this place. where it would be interesting, and I don't know, I'm not aware of any court cases, let's say you were to direct to somewhere where they steal your personal information or they hide, you know, they put a virus on your computer that. Do you have any legal liability to where you're just directing them to a site that is not good that's giving them a virus or stealing their information or, you know, hacking them or anything of that?

I don't know. I don't know that it's been decided by the course. My guess is it probably depends a little bit on intent. If you knew at the time that you were directing them to somewhere that is malicious or is harmful to them and you have that knowledge and then you did it anyway, you probably had some liability. If on the other hand, you were saying, no, when I looked at it, put it in my book, it was a legitimate site. It looked like it was a reasonable material. My guess is, and again, I don't know, I haven't looked at it from the legal standings if there's been a case on it, but probably you're going to be in a better ground to saying it wasn't with any malicious intent. It was trying to just provide a link to it. So that's probably where you're going to look at.

The other one that would be interesting that you didn't raise would be is if you're linking to somewhere, but you are derogatory to that site. In other words, you're saying, here is the worst, you know, whatever. They sell the worst products and go check them out and see how terrible they are.

If you get to a place where you're being derogatory and you're being, you know, you're misrepresenting them or you're negatively representing them, you do get into some waters that may, or murky waters where you may then start to, that line from this. If all you're doing is linking to content, you're saying, hey, go check out. Here are my sources. Here's where I pulled some of my information from. If you want to learn more, generally unfairly safe ground. But if you're either one, you knew you're directing him

to somewhere this malicious or two, you're being derogatory to them. Then you're going to, you're going to want to make sure you talk to an attorney before you do that. Okay. Yeah, that was a gray area that really had me going. And after tons and tons of research, I found out that it was safe to do at the moment. So everything is good with that. But that's pretty much the end with my strategy session. So for individuals that are interested, curious, and would like to set up a strategy session, they can get in contact with you.

I just have a few more closing questions and then the floor will be yours. Yeah. Just to follow up really quick, if they do want to do a strategy session, they can just go to strategy meeting.com. links right to my calendar and grab some time. So the easiest way to grab a strategy meeting is go strategy meeting.com. And I'll be sure to link that into the show notes. Weird.

Okay, what is the number one action to avoid taking when beginning a business? Number one action to avoid. I'll give you a couple. One is kind of an action you should do and then one is one that you should avoid. First thing I would do if you're founding a business, go form an LLC or go do a business formation typically in LLC. Reason you do that is because it protects your personal assets. Then you're not putting, it puts a barrier so that people, if your business gets sued,

there's product liability, you infringe someone's patent or trademark or anything else, or if someone else is mad and they say you broke your contracts, they can come after the business as a business, but they can't come after your life savings or your house or your cars or anything else. So the thing that people often do that is off or also to do that is, oh, I'm just starting that as a side business or is a kind of a side hustle or a hawk. It gets bigger. It expands, but then they always kind of forget to actually go and do that.

So that was one that you should do. One that you should avoid is if you're going to build a business that's going to have any sort of, if you're intending it to be more than just a mom and pop shop, more than just serving the local community, nothing wrong with those. But if your intent is to have a bigger presence, be online, sell or sell across the U.S. or international, anything else, have a plan or get a plan in place for. of what you're going to, first of all, how you're going to grow the business, where your market is, and then also how you're going to protect it? Because the worst thing is people tend to avoid

delaying that too long and it creates more issues. And so the biggest thing is to get that plan in place and to avoid just simply delaying or waiting so long that it creates issues. Because delaying and waiting while it's easy to do because you always have more things to do than time to do them, it can create a lot of issues. With the LLC, through my research, I came across, like, there's almost like a specific formula that you should follow. And it kind of looks like one LLC and then inside that LLC, you're looking at four to six. And then you will, within specific LLCs will be your possessions. Another one would be your self-directed account. And the other one will be, properties. It's something of that nature. You can do that. It kind of depends on what you're,

so there's a couple ways you can set it up. What you're almost describing is you can have a holding company. It's kind of a parent company on top that has ownership to each of these individuals. Yes. The is a good way to manage things and to leave them individually. The only issue that can arise is if there's cause for them to come after the parent company, then they can dive into each of those individual subsidiary. So it can be a good one. You just need to be careful in how you set it up and how you structure such that you keep each of those individual LLC separate so they only they kind of are self-contained within themselves as opposed to opening it up that they can come after all of the agencies as far as kind of your individual

you know earnings if you have real estate or you have savings or anything else typically you'll put that more in a trust and so it's not necessarily an LLC but it's more of a trust that as a is an entity that has ownership or it has direction to all of your assets and that can be a trust so that if you die, your wife has ownership to it. It can be so you can set it up that each of your kids get so much over your money. You can actually stipulate how they can use the money. And so a lot of times for personal assets is going to be more of a trust than necessarily in LLC, if it's for the personal side.

If it's for real estate and you're doing investing or you're flipping houses or that, then yeah, you would set it up probably as a step in LLC. So in general, yes, I would set it up. Each business could have its own LLC so that it kind of separates out or confine or confines the liability to each of those companies for what they're doing. They just have to know what you're doing when to set it up that way. That's very, very interesting. We've got to keep it moving.

What's some good advice to follow and some bad advice to avoid when establishing a business from the ground up? Good advice to follow is get a plan in place. Now, plans are going to change. I've hardly ever met a business that the plan that they originally came up with is how it turned out in three or four. five years. So plans are always going to change, but you're going to, it's better to take the time up front to at least convince yourself that this is a good business. And because the reason it is if anybody's like me, I have five ideas before I get into the office. I'll have another 10 ideas throughout the day and then I'll probably have another five when I get home. And 90% of those

ideas are bad ideas. But you're always excited about them. You always think that they're great ideas at the time. And so if you slow it down, actually take the time. First of all, what I do, I write it all my ideas I think are good ideas on a sticky note. I stick them on my desk. Leave it there for a week. If I still excited about that idea in a week as I am today, then at least indicates that there's lots of potential for a better idea. Most of the time I get back then a week and think, that's a stupid idea. And I go Trump off the way and move on. But get, take that, slow it down, take a few days, see if it's still like, if you're still as excited as you are in a few days as you are now, and then get a plan in place that you can least convince yourself,

hey, there's a market here. This is how I've reached the market. This is the pricing. Here's my competitive advantage and do that homework up front so that you know you can convince yourself that it's worthwhile. So that would be kind of what I would do is get that plan in place, be willing to pivot and adjust and understand that it's not going to be a hard plan or hard set and stone plan, but get it in place. As far as things to avoid, I think that the biggest drawback that a lot of, and I'm as guilty as anybody, but a drawback with a lot of entrepreneurs, start up, small businesses is you think you know everything going into things. You think you have to be an expert. You know everything. You can do everything. And you have to

to get it all done because you don't, anybody else won't get it done right. And while you can be good at a lot of things, you're not going to be an expert on everything. And even if you were an expert on everything, you don't have time to do everything yourself. And so identify the areas that you can be good at things and avoid just trying to take everything on directly or do it yourself, because you should surround yourself with here are the areas I can enclose the most expertise. I can drive the most value into the business. And then everybody else that I, then I'm going to have other people that are experts in those other areas do those jobs for it. So avoid being or trying to be the expert on everything, do everything yourself because one

year are they going to get burned out. Two, you're probably not the expert on everything. You're going to at least some of the areas up. And three, you're going to not be able to grow the business or let it expand because you're not going to have enough of that people behind you and to build that you're going to never have enough hours in the day. So those would be kind of getting a strategy in place would be what I would do. Avoiding trying to do it all yourself would be the thing.

out of way. That is a fantastic glow of information right there. I can link episode 19 from season one with working on the business, rather in the business. People get stuck in that mindset where they can do it themselves, then realizing that they're only going to get so far that they need to scale back and hire the professionals. Absolutely. And just one last question. If I were to ask you this following question, how do you create a transformation in others, if there's no transformation in yourself, what comes to mind? I don't think you can't. I mean, if you're not, I think you first have to be the individual,

be the leader, be the entrepreneur that you need to be before you're going to get people that are willing to follow you and to go behind. So I think that first you have to, now, I think you have to identify what type of leader, what type of business and what you want to focus on first before you're able to transform whether. So I don't think that you can. But once you identify, here's the core principles, I want. And for me, it was when I did my own business.

It was I want to be in charge. I want to be able to direct the, or have the ability to direct where the business is going. I want to focus on startups and small businesses. I want to do it differently than how the other legal field is. I want to build a team around me that is going. And if you can identify those and then put yourself or transform yourself so that you can be that type of individual that can do those things, then you're going to have to be able to transform others and build it around because they're going to see the vision and the core

in the direction and those core principles that you set out, and then they're much willing to follow, because if you never get that in place yourself, they're not going to be able to transform because they're not even going to know what they're following. That spot on. I love it. Now, Devin, do you have anything else that you would like to add? We hit on it, get a strategy in place, figure it out before you charge ahead, figure out why you're getting in the business, why you're doing it. And if it's just for money, that's not a good reason, because there's a lot of better way. If all you're going to do is a startup, small business, be an entrepreneur, and it's for the money, you're in the wrong business. It's not the place you're going to do. You can do it a lot of

better ways than doing that. So find out why you want to do it and then get a game plan in place. If people want to reach out to me, they want to chat more. We already mentioned, they can get grab a strategy meeting. Just go to strategy meeting.com. That's all I got. Thank you, Devin. I really appreciate you coming on the show today. Absolutely. Thank you for having me off. All right. You take care. Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. Subscribe if you have not already done so.

But leave us a review. Let us know how we can continue to improve your transformation station. I appreciate every one of you for tuning in. And I look forward to the next episode on your transformation station. You've been listening to Your Transformation Station, Rediscovering your true identity and purpose on this planet. We hope you enjoyed the show, and we hope you've gotten some useful and practical information. In the meantime, connect with us on Facebook and Instagram at YTS The Podcast.

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