Know Your Rights; Randi Leath

Randi Leath wants your budding entrepreneurship idea to be safe; and that starts with having copyright law on your side. She knows that young business leaders might see their idea as 'too small' to warrant registration, and she wants you to avoid that pitfall. Randi shares how to properly document the generation of your entrepreneurial idea at each phase, when it's time to get an intellectual property lawyer involved, and why any business (from money-generating-hobby to start-up company with hopes of acquisition) should keep track of their creations. She draws on a background in complex litigation and her practical, business-minded approach to IP to her work with the Chartwell Law Firm, and from her experience she speaks on the importance of copyright and licensing to the burgeoning field of content creation, and she warns listeners about the authorship problems associated with attempting to copyright work that is fundamentally derived from AI as the law adapts to understand it.

Transcript

Narrator:

Welcome to the Harbert College of Business Podcast with your hosts, Sarah Gascon and Currie Dyess. Randy Leath is a founding member and attorney for the Intellectual Property Practice Group at Chartwell Law Firm. She represents clients before the patent office for trademark registration, enforcement, and intellectual property strategy. You can learn more about her practical approach to IP through her blog, First Use.

Sarah Gascon:

Randy, War Eagle, and welcome to the show. It's so great to have you today. War Eagle.

Randi Leath:

War Eagle. Happy to be here.

Sarah:

Most entrepreneurs focus on building a business, but not necessarily owning what they built. Where do you see founders getting this wrong the most?

Randi Leath:

I think the area that I see founders getting it wrong the most is that they don't think of themselves as founders. A lot of times founders will just think of themselves as someone who has a cool idea that they want to share with their friends, a concept that they think could be interesting or unique that they're tinkering with as a hobby, but they never really fully take the steps as a business owner. They don't think as a business owner and they don't think about ownership at all. Down the road, as things start to develop and they find that their idea has legs, things start becoming more difficult for them to own those ideas because they weren't treating it as a business from the outset.

Currie Dyess:

So let's talk about cost. What does it cost them down the road versus just taking care of it right at the beginning?

Randi Leath:

A great question. It's funny you asked that because literally just yesterday I had a consultation with a prospective client about what the worst outcome could be, and that was that they lost their idea entirely. So they had been developing an AI software platform that was, that sounds very unique, sounds like a great concept, but they were just kind of tinkering with it, talking with all their friends about it, had different people in their ear and they were bouncing ideas off. And one of those people who they thought was a friend ended up taking that entire idea and running it with on their own and launching it without telling them about it. And now they're trying to claw back their ownership and their rights and figuring out what they can do now to protect the idea that they've poured, I think, almost half a decade at this point into developing.

And so that's what the outcome can be is that when you don't treat things from the beginning with a lens towards ownership and a lend towards the business itself, you set yourself up, unfortunately, for a lot of both costs, heartbreak costs, because you're investing into this idea of your time, your energy, your passion, but also financial costs because ultimately in order for you to be able to get that stuff back, it's likely going to require a lot of legal fees. It's going to require an attorney to come in, might be involving lawsuits or litigation, or at the very least, some very serious negotiations in terms of how to navigate those rights later on.

Currie:

So how did the Winkle Boss twins pull it off?

Randi Leath:

In which direction? Because they kind of got screwed a little bit on theirs. And so that's exactly what ended up happening though is where you had a creator, the Winkle Boss twins who had a really great idea who then shared that idea with someone else. And as we all know, the rest is kind of history in terms of how that happened. And so a lot of times when you do see people succeed in that, it's because they end up having a really good legal team. And when it happens, it's not necessarily that you're lost and that there's nothing you can do, it's just that it's going to cost money and sometimes a lot of it for you to be able to get that idea back or to get your rights back on it.

Currie:

So what you're saying as an attorney is, I'm very expensive, but I'm cheaper upfront.

Randi Leath:

Yes, that is exactly what I'm saying as an attorney. A good example of this, right? So a lot of what I do, I practice a lot of trademark law. And so I work with a lot of businesses who are ... Well, ideally, I would work a lot of businesses at the very beginning stages of their business to help them register their trademarks and to clear their names, which means to search the market, see what's available, and make sure that they have an available right to use the name that they want to use. And then I would help them trademark it. Unfortunately, what mostly happens is that I get contacted by clients who did not do all that stuff at the beginning and then down the road get hit with a cease and desist and have invested time, money, and everything else into trying to figure out this, build a beautiful brand and it's great and they're super happy with it.

And then 10 years down the road, they got hit with a cease and desist from someone else who claims that they have superior right to that name. And now we're in litigation. And so what could have been a couple thousand dollars for the clearance and the trademark now turns into tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars just to litigate that whole issue. And so definitely getting the attorney involved early on saved you so much more money than if you wait until things go left.

Sarah:

So what happens when, and we have several students at Auburn that are starting businesses or want to start businesses. What happens if it's just too much for them right now? It's financially too much of a burden for them. What do you recommend they do?

Randi Leath:

First of all, there are, and I'm not really sure what's available in the Auburn area, but just in general, there are a lot of pro bono resources available to entrepreneurs. You would want to look at your small business association that's local. You would want to look at just Google whether or not there are any pro bono attorneys who offer services for entrepreneurs and startups. There are a lot of attorneys who are happy to help people who don't necessarily have the financial means, but want to take the first steps towards getting that done, myself included. So I work with a lot of pro bono clients, especially in the creative arts spaces to help them be able to either receive legal services for free or at a reduced cost. Additionally, you can look at ways that you can limit how much your attorney actually has to do.

So some things that people that I've had clients do, so you could, for instance, you have a contract to be written. Instead of having the attorney write the entire contract for you, you could prepare a contract or use one of those form agreements or whatnot, do your due diligence, look up, make sure that things make sense for your business, but then you could provide that attorney with your draft form agreement and ask them to make revisions to it, which would be a lot cheaper than if they were writing it from scratch on their own. For a trademark, for instance, if you have come up with a name rather than waiting for the attorney to do the whole clearance process for you, you could do a knockout search on some of your names to make sure that the name is generally available and then have that attorney brought in later on to clear the name formally versus having them do what you could essentially do and say, okay, if I did a quick Google search, I could see that there's five other businesses using this name.

Before I just checked the USPTO, I would've seen that there was already a business registered for this. And so that can help you reduce some of your legal fees. And in addition to that, you could look at incubators. So sometimes you can look at ways that you can bring money in or generate money. So you could look at grants and things like that. And so there are options available for sure for people who don't have the money right now. You just have to be a little bit more creative than those who do.

Currie:

So Randy, most people think of trademarks and copyrights as protection, which they are, but how can they actually be used as a competitive advantage?

Randi Leath:

Great question because that's how I think about it. So trademarks and copyrights, patents as well, a lot of your IP, intellectual property are really good forms of protection, but one of the ways that they really shine for a business owner is as a asset that you could leverage. And a lot of times where that happens is through licensing. So when you create a creative work, for instance, that you copyright, you are able to leverage that as an asset by licensing it out, legally allowing somebody else to use that creative work that then generates income for you. So say for instance, I am a T-shirt company and I create really cool graphic designs and I put those on my T-shirts and then I see a student who has really, really cool drawings and I'm like, I want those drawings so I can use them on my T-shirts as well.

And I think that my audience would love those. I could work out a licensing agreement with that person, the artist, so that artist has their copyright, and I could get permission from that artist to then use those drawings on my T-shirts. And now that artist is generating income, but I'm also generating more income because my clients love those drawings and I'm building out more, I'm selling more and more T-shirts, I'm selling sweatshirts. Now I can add, say for instance, I didn't have the money before to hire an attorney, but I'm generating so much income now from these T-shirts because that artist really, because people really love that artist's work on the things that I'm putting them. Now I have money that's going back into the business that I can invest more into the business. So it becomes something that you're leveraging on both sides. So both the person who is licensing out their work as well as the person who is licensing that work because there's a symbiotic relationship there.

For trademarks, you would be looking at things like how a client that I was working with who was using licensing to help expand their business outside of the city that they were at. They had started a really cool business locally. It was starting to attract attention to people who were out of state and they just didn't have the bandwidth to be able to build this out in other regions, but they wanted to expand their business to those places anyways. So we developed a trademark licensing program for them to be able to allow other individuals to use their trademark so that that brand would extend other places where it wasn't currently at without having to ... So that person who was licensing out the trademark didn't have to go through the process of developing a brand, building that brand reputation in the space because it's already connected to my clients and my client was able to expand their business into other places with someone who was passionate about the brand, understood the brand and wanted to maintain the same kind of values and ethos that the brand was bringing.

And so that's kind of one of those ways where you can look at your intellectual property as an app, other ways that it can be used as an asset. You have the licensing, but you also just have the fact that you're just holding onto it. So for instance, trade secrets, there's something that you're not going to necessarily ... You can license a trade secret out, but the trade secret most often gives you a competitive advantage because you're not letting anyone else know about it. So a trade secret is pretty much any information, and it's very broadly defined, but it's any information that gives you a competitive advantage over someone else in your space that is not generally known or readily attainable. And so what that allows you to do is say, for instance, you're developing a new cake recipe and everyone loves this recipe. It's eco recipe that your mom has shared with you and you've tweaked it and it's become even better.

That recipe is what's bringing people to your doorstep. And so how it's an asset for you in that space is that there's really no protection from the fact that it's a secret recipe. What's allowing you to leverage that though is that you're not telling anyone what is the secret sauce, what's the secret thing that's really making your cake set itself apart from RBLs. And so that becomes an asset for your business, one that you want to make sure you're protecting.

Currie:

The way I'm trying to make this make sense to me, it sounds like what you want to do is have a moat around your business, and the more IP you have legally solid, the bigger that moat is. Is that kind of what I'm hearing?

Randi Leath:

Yes and no. You want to have a moat. So I would think of your IP as your castle.

Moat, there are certain intellectual property that have protections afforded to them that allow you to keep other people out. So those would be your moat. So that would be things like your copyright, that'd be things like your trademark and things like your patent. So you have a affirmative right to keep other people from using those things. The moat is protecting your trade secrets because technically anyone is allowed to use your trade secret if they figure it out, but they would have to figure it out in a way that didn't involve them using improper means. So they couldn't seed your castle and go, or for instance, if you're treating your trade secret as Princess Peach, you couldn't just go and raid the castle to go save Princess Peach. You would have to be invited in. Then you could get it, right?

Currie:

That makes sense. So the other follow-up I had was I know that when somebody's starting a business with the intent of I want to take the right steps to be acquired versus, hey, I'm just trying to make a couple bucks. Would you recommend if the idea is acquisition or merger, I got to get this legal stuff taken care of right away versus somebody that just needs a side gig, not spending the time or money to go that route?

Randi Leath:

Ideally, I'd say everyone should go that route.

Currie:

Sure, sure.

Randi Leath:

It just depends on how far you would with what type of steps you would take. So there are certain steps I think every business owner should take regardless of how seriously you're taking it. The very least you could do is just document your process. So document your ideas, document, say you're a software developer making ... And software developers tend to be pretty good about this, but making sure that you're keeping each iteration of your code and having it documented when it was created, who was involved in that process of development, what changes were tweaked between version one, version two, having that whole thing documented. If you're talking about someone who is talking about trademark protection, you want to make sure that every single time that you use your trademark in a new way, you are documenting that first use. So say you've launched your name and you're super happy and you're like, okay, we've launched a business and this is your side hustle.

The very least you could do, so say you don't have the money yet to register, you're not even thinking about registering, so you're not even sure if this is going to be something you're doing long-term, at the very least, screenshot that webpage and have that somewhere saved in an archive so that I'm making sure ... And I would have that screenshot timestamped. I would make sure that I'm also doing a brief description as to what that trademark was being used for. Roll out a new logo. If I roll out a new slogan, if I roll out a new product name, every single time I'm rolling something new out, I'm documenting that use. And then I'd also be documenting continued use every year. So I've used it this year, it's still being used, it's still being used. For copyrights, you want to make sure you're documenting, especially who was involved in the process of creating something and having just your contracts and whether it's assignment agreements, licensing agreements and that.

And then if you're looking at, and that's just like it says, that's just baseline for any business owner, in my opinion. So at least if you have a record of what happened, if something that was just a hobby before turns into something bigger later, at least you have a good understanding as to all the background stuff that you can then provide a lawyer you could then use to help formalize a lot of the other parts of your business later on. If you know from the beginning that you want to go through the acquisition/merger process, then absolutely you should be doing all that, plus you should be engaging an attorney to help you through that process. And so some of the things that you would be looking at, you want to make sure that you have a full and complete understanding as to what your intellectual property is at that point.

So are you someone who you're literally just focused on developing a software and you have zero desire to actually have a business, you're just like, I'm just going to develop this code. It's going to be great and I'm going to sell it. And that's the goal. At that point, you're most likely just looking at copyrights, but you want to make sure that you have all your copyrights secured. You want to make sure that you have any ownership, any authorship from other people or input and whatnot documented so that someone who is looking to buy that code from you is able to do their due diligence pretty efficiently. You're not getting lost in the weeds on it and it makes that process go a lot smoother. If you're looking at someone acquiring an existing business that you've had and you know that you want to build a business and have to acquire it, you want to make sure that you have your entity, the business entity itself want to be structured.

So are you an LLC? Are you a corporation? Are you a limited partnership? You have to have that and you have to have it be sorted out. And then make sure that you have any type of ownership owner agreements already documented and laid out. All the terms about how much is these person supposed to be contributing? How much does this person own of this company? What happens if somebody leaves? Who owns intellectual property? Usually it's the business, but not always. And then you want to make sure that you have all your intellectual property sorted and really take that this is where an attorney could be really helpful in helping you spot the intellectual property that you might not be aware of. So people think of trademarks, for instance, it's just the brand name, but trademarks are a wide range of things. So it could be if you're developing an app, it could be the symbol that pops up on the screen as the app opens.

That could be a trademarkible asset. It could be a ping that you have anytime that a notification happens and it's a ping that is just specific and unique to your app. That's something that's trademarkable. If you have the business name, the slogan, your logos, certain terms that you're using for the products, the features that you have, all those different things might be trademarkable assets that you would want to have documented and ideally registered if you're looking at being acquired. Your copyrights you want to have documented and ideally registered as well. If you have anything that's patentable, you absolutely want those to be registered. And if you're looking to be acquired down the road, one of the big things is making sure you have NDAs and confidentiality agreements in place. For instance, the person I was talking about that I spoke with yesterday was being stolen, they were sharing information all over the place and had not a single agreement in place to protect any of their ideas.

And this was something that they knew that they wanted to develop into a business down the road, but they were just like, "All my friends are great and then we're all coders and we'll code together and this will be fantastic." But they didn't have an NDA. And so without the NDA, then they're not able to tell someone, "Hey, you weren't allowed to tell anyone else this. " So if you're building something that you think will be great and will be something that's worth acquiring on the road, at the very least, so sometimes it's more difficult to have people who are looking to acquire a company sign an NDA, a lot of times they won't, and that just is what it is. But the people that you're building with, they could. And so it's important to have all those different agreements and all your IP sorted out from the outset if you have that kind of lens in mind.

But at the very least, like I said, no matter what stage you're at, document everything. I

Currie:

Was just curious about how it works with creators. What if you are your business and your business is to be a social media creator? How do you protect your videos, your ideas?

Sarah:

I hope they can now. Right? Because it's all- You can. Oh, you can't?

They're like influencers, they can?

Randi Leath:

Absolutely. Influencers have a ton of IP. That's actually what makes being an influencer a worthwhile job. It is a career that you can generate and income from because your IP as an influencer is your name, image and likeness. So I mean, the NIL is really big out there for athletes, but outside of just being a student athlete with NIL, anyone who is utilizing their name, image, and likeness in a commercial space has intellectual property in that. So if that's your voice, if that's literally the way that you look, if that is the way that you, just your general being and presence, those things are all marketable and commercial assets that you can use as an intellectual property. And a lot of times what ends up happening is that taking your creator, for instance, I have both my name, image and likeness. I also have copyright protection for the content that I'm creating.

So anytime I'm making a video, that video itself is something that is the copywriterable asset. My social media handle can become a trademark. If I have a catchphrase or a slogan that I'm always using, say I'm a Twitch streamer and I always have the same sign-off, then that sign-off could be something that becomes trademarkable. And then what ends up happening is that brands see the value of your audience. So you're generating an audit, you're building an audience, say you have 50,000, well, 60,000, 100,000, millions of followers, whatever. Brands see that and they decide that that would be something valuable to have their product in front of your audience because you align with their values, your audience likely aligns with those same values, and they think that it would be helpful for them to be able to leverage that. And then they will license with you.

They'll enter into agreements, and those agreements will certainly include terms that involve your intellectual property. So how they're allowed to use your name, image, and likeness, what you are allowed to do with your name, likeness while you're associated with them. So where you get into these moral clauses, you can't be seen doing certain things or saying certain things, otherwise you'd be in breach of the contract because it would look poorly on them. That's where you have terms around who owns the content that's created. So are you creating content specifically for their brand or are you creating content and then just plugging their brand into a later? Is it just going to be an ad? Those things are negotiated and those are things where you have copyright issues coming into play. Sometimes you might have trademark issues coming into play because the brand has to license to you the ability to use their trademark.

And then you're also licensing to the brand if you have a trademark, their right to use your trademark. And you're negotiating the terms around, is it exclusive? How long can they use it? Do you have any ownership over in the content that's created or do they have full ownership? Are you sharing ownership? There's plenty of intellectual property that's out there for content creators.

Sarah:

Wow.

Currie:

Wow.

Sarah:

Yeah, we have several influencers that we know. I don't know any of them that have talked about this. Ever. Yeah.

Randi Leath:

Yeah, I mean, it can be a lot. It can certainly be a lot. And the thing is, sometimes people just don't really think about it. I mean, a lot of times you'll have had people where they'll just hop into your DM and they'll be like, "Hey, do you want to do X, Y, and Z?" And we're like, "Yeah, sure, whatever. Why not? " Especially when they're at a smaller stage as an influencer and they're just like, "Oh yeah, someone offered to pay me a few hundred dollars to wear something or to do something." But as those opportunities become bigger, there are certainly a lot of intellectual property topics that can come up, especially when you start working with some of the bigger brands and as you grow. So it's not always looking at it from what someone else is asking of you, but also what are you asking from other people?

So as you build your brand as an influencer,

Do you want to own all of your content that you're generating? Are you simply licensing out that content to a brand to use? Do you want to make sure that the brand has to follow certain moral obligations on their end and not just on you? Do you want to be able to negotiate if this is an exclusive deal or if it's going to be something that's non-exclusive? There are things that you can start thinking about as the influencer in terms of how, because at the end of the day, the value you're bringing is your name, image, likeness, and sometimes it's the way that you edit your videos, the type of tone that you use in your videos or your content, all those things are things that the brands value. And so you have valuable assets of your own that you can learn how to leverage.

Sarah:

Wow, this is really fascinating and I think super helpful because we don't even talk about this on our show, so this is really great and helpful.

Currie:

Yeah. And I just read recently that when we were kids, they would be like, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" And we're like, "A firefighter." But now when you ask kids what they want to be, they want to be influencers.

Randi Leath:

Yeah, I can see why. It looks great. But one thing I have heard a lot is that, I mean, it looks like a lot of fun, but it really is a business. As you become a content creator, it does start shifting towards a business and you have to start thinking like a business in that regard. So I know people who have created business entities that purely are what they operated out of for their content creation. Like I said, you have trademarks that you're registering, you have your copyrights that you're owning and registering, the license agreements and whatnot, there's a lot of moving pieces there. And even for instance, do you have people who I know there are YouTubers and whatnot, and I think maybe some in the short form stuff, but not as much, but people who hire out people to edit their content. And so those people are also generating copyrights.

There should be license agreements there. There's a whole network of intellectual property rights that are being formed and being protected and being leveraged. And so it really is, it's a career, but also it's a business. And from my perspective, you should be running it like one.

Sarah:

Yeah, that's really great advice. So as we're shifting into this, talking about influencers and creators, what about AI? How are people leveraging AI from legal advice standpoint, but also how do you copyright or trademark some of the logos or content or information that you are leveraging from AI tools?

Randi Leath:

I will never tell people not to use AI. A reluctant adopter of it. I think that it's a tool that's available and that people will be using, and so you should be aware of how to use it. I use it well, but there are a lot of risk at this point that are associated with using an AI, especially when it comes to your business. And so you just have to be really, really smart and really detail oriented when you're using it. Some of the big things to be aware of when you're using AI, any type of creative content that you're generating, it's going to be really difficult to be able to get a copyright for that content. You're trying to create a logo for your business. Most likely that logo will not be a copyrightable asset because copyrights, both copyrights and patents require a human to ... And the key point there, human to have created the output, who created the work.

And a lot of courts at this point are considering AI to not meet that requirement. And the level of input from the person generating the AI output isn't fully understood. So it's not something that's set in stone. There isn't really a clear bright line as to what amounts of input from a person using it would be enough for it to be copyrightable, but there is some sort of element of it. So say for instance, you're using AI to create a logo and you tell the AI, create a logo for this company name and spin something out and then you run with it. Very unlikely you would have a copyright protection for that. Now, say for instance, you say, "Create a logo for this business. I want this theme, these colors, this idea, this image." That one, debatable. We still don't know if that's something that the copyright office would allow.

Now, say for instance, it outputs something and then you're tweaking it and you're telling it, "Okay, well, change this piece." And then you're saying, "Okay, well do this. " And then it sends you out the final product and you still don't quite like it because it's not really capturing what you think. So then you would take that image and you put it into Canva and you start tweaking it in Canva and you change the colors and you're tweaking the outlines and you're making changes until finally it matches your vision. That might be enough, but there is really no guarantee there. And so it becomes very risky in that regard, but then you can still claim trademark protection over it. With patents, same thing. So you have to have a human developing patentable ideas, and if an AI is doing that, then it doesn't count. Some of the things that you can probably use AI for would be just general ideas, helping you just think through your business, but when you're doing that, you want to be really careful about what information you're putting in.

Currie:

Okay. I have a specific example to ask about, and I don't mind sharing it with the audience because it's something I'm not going to do. I just wanted to do it a few years ago. So I had an idea to create a foam roller that rolls out into a yoga mat, and I was going to call it the Armadillo, but I'm not an engineer. And so I did play around with AI a little bit trying to figure out what materials to use and how to make it lock together to be rigid enough to use. I know we're not talking about patents, but it's adjacent. Am I able to patent it if AI can help me figure it out or is that too AI dependent?

Randi Leath:

I can't be for sure because it's an evolving area right now, but it's leaning towards no. So if you're using the AI to generate ... If you just ask the AI for a little quick thing, you're like, okay, I have this idea and I'm working through this. And then as you're working through it, you just need help on this one little problem of this larger thing, but it's not the part that's really making it the patentable idea, then maybe. But if you're literally using the AI to help you figure out the patentable system, then it's possible that the patent office would say it's a no-go. But still, it's a very new space. It's a very evolving field, so it's not really clear what will be enough in terms of how much do I have to be involved for it to count as a patentable idea.

It's still big question mark.

Currie:

Wow, that's scary.

Randi Leath:

It is. It is. Because a lot of people are using it and it's a tool that's available and a lot of people are using it as what it's put out there to be because it helps a lot. It provides a lot of people with opportunities and access to spaces that they wouldn't necessarily have based off of their own knowledge and skills. So for instance, I do a lot of coding for a variety of things because I dabble in a lot of things. And so I am not a computer science major. I have no computer science background. I do not know much about coding. And so I will occasionally ask AI for help to figure out a problem with a code that I might be working on. But I also do that knowing that I wouldn't really be able to claim rewrite protection over a code that's generated by that AI.

But the AI allows me to do the things that I don't have the skillset independently to do and allows me to work through things in a different way. So it definitely can be a tool. You just have to be aware of where the boundaries are for protection over things that are generated from it. And something that I haven't pointed out just yet, but what's almost an even bigger thing to be aware of is what protections you have over the information you're putting into the AI because there are some huge confidentiality concerns when you're talking about publicly accessible artificial intelligence systems. And so you want to be really, really aware of what the terms of the platform that you're using. So who owns the information that's put into it? Is it training off of the information that you're putting into it? Who are they allowed to disclose that information to afterwards?

Because that can be a big deal for things like your trade secrets. It could be a big deal for things like your copyrights for your patents, because if the AI is training off of your ideas, then it can spit that idea out to somebody else later. And so now it's making it more difficult for you to be able to protect the things that you're creating.

Currie:

And if they have a bigger wallet, they can just get to your office before I do.

Randi Leath:

And unfortunately, that's sometimes what ends up happening is that sometimes the person with the bigger wallet is the one who wins out over someone with the better claim just because they're able to stick it out.

Sarah:

Randy, what advice do you have for our listeners out there about steps they could take right away, whether they're starting their business or they've gone on a few years and they've really developed this great idea? What steps can they take or what advice do you have for them?

Randi Leath:

The very first step you can take is what we talked about at the beginning, but just getting a really good understanding as to what your business is and what intellectual property your business has. So the very first step I would take would be identifying where I'm at and what all the different elements of my business are currently in play. If I'm starting off fresh and I have no idea where to start, then I would say develop your idea. That's the part you want to have. You want to document your journey of developing that idea. And then depending on how you want to play it, you may look at forming your entity. So registering as either an LLC or a corporation or a partnership, I tend to steer away from partnerships because they're not super helpful. So typically I'd be looking at either an LLC or corporation and figuring out which one makes the most sense for you.

And Google is a really good resource. So you can certainly look things up and just get a general understanding for where things are at. There are a ton of really good resources on Reddit where you have people who will ask, and that's also somewhere for someone who doesn't have a ton of money. Reddit is a great resource because you have places where you can ask an attorney or just throw out questions and people will give you resources, answers and whatnot. And then once you have that idea formed, just identify what are my trademarks? What are my patents ideas? What are my copyrights? What agreements should I be having here? Who am I sharing information with? And have I protected myself about this information that I'm sharing? And once you have a good understanding as to what the layout of your business is and what your intellectual property portfolio is, what we like to call it is, I would then, depending on how serious you are about this, I would seek a consultation with an attorney for them to tell you based off of where you're at, what your next steps should be.

Because once you have everything laid out, the attorney doesn't necessarily have to do everything for you, but they can give you, at the very least, a good idea of where you can be going, help you develop a roadmap. Alternatively, you can also look at, and there are so many really great resources for small business owners. Look at your small business association because they have so many fantastic resources for it. Incubators have some great resources. There are some great resources just generally online for small businesses. Look at those things and see where you're at and then look at the resources that are being pushed towards people in that same space and you can get a good idea of where to go from there.

Currie:

Amazing. Randy, as we wrap up the show, how can our listeners keep up with you, your journey, and maybe reach out to you if they have a few more questions?

Randi Leath:

So they can certainly reach out to me on LinkedIn. Name is Randy, R-E-N-D-I, Leath, L-E-A-T-H. I also run a blog called theFirstUuse.com. So you can also follow some of my intellectual property writings there, as well as contact me through Air as well.

Currie:

Wow. Awesome.

Sarah:

Randy, it's been a pleasure speaking with you today. War Eagle.

Currie:

Thank you so much. War Eagle.

Randi Leath:

War Eagle.

Narrator:

Harbert. Inspiring business.