Harnessing Trademarks: Strategies for Building and Protecting Your Brand with Andrei Mincov

Uncover the transformative power of trademarks in branding with Andrei Mincov, founder of Trademark Factory. Learn how owning a trademark can reduce CPC bid rates, protect your brand, and uphold authenticity in today’s crowded digital marketplace. This episode is packed with insights for digital marketers and business owners, highlighting why a strong, protected brand is essential to stand out amidst AI-driven ad content and fierce competition.

Explore the evolution of trademark laws and their impact on modern businesses. Hear the story of Sean Merriman’s “Lights Out” brand triumph against industry giants, demonstrating the power of trademarks in defending brand identity. Andrei offers practical advice for small businesses facing brand disputes, emphasizing the importance of common law and first-use principles in protecting your brand.

We also dive into the future of AI and intellectual property, discussing the impact of AI-generated content on existing IP laws. Andrei shares tips on prioritizing trademark strategies to maximize brand potential and safeguard against scams.

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Guest Contact Information: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreimincov/
https://trademarkfactory.com/

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The Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing podcast is a podcast hosted by Internet marketing expert Matthew Bertram. The show provides insights and advice on digital marketing, SEO, and online business. 

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Chapters

• 0:17 The Power of Trademarks in Branding
• 11:02 The Importance of Trademarking Your Brand
• 26:53 The Value of Branding in Business
• 34:19 The Future of Intellectual Property Rights
• 40:52 Maximizing Brand Potential Through Trademarks

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:17

Howdy, welcome back to the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. I am your host, matthew Bertram. Today we are going to be going to the unexplored with the unknown secrets of internet marketing. And as we've been talking about branding, I thought that it would be good and I had some great, really referrals from just some industry leaders to bring on Andre Markoff. Andre Markoff.

Speaker 2: 0:43

You almost got it right. You almost got it right, you almost got it right.

Speaker 1: 0:50

He is the founder and owner of Trademark Factory, and so we're going to be digging into how trademarks can help protect your brand, what you can do with them. I know from a CPC standpoint. If you own your name, you can get the bid rates down pretty low. We've done some different strategies with a few clients to develop markets or to own names and protect that. But the big thing I know about trademarks too is if you have a trademark, you have to defend it right If people start to infringe on it. And I don't know much about it I'm not sure if you're listening if you know much about it but this would be a special podcast to cue in to find out how you could leverage this to help grow your brand. I know that there's a lot of great e-commerce brands out there that I think could utilize some of these skills, so welcome to the show.

Speaker 2: 1:49

Thanks for having me. I see why you gave me the wrong name, because trademarks Markov makes sense, right. And let's see how we can break this down and explain the benefits of using brands and owning brands to build the business and grow the business.

Speaker 1: 2:14

Yeah. So I mean, I really think that there's a resurgence of creativity and branding that are on the horizon. I think that AI is really disruptive in DA, but a lot of people are using the same large language models, the ads are starting to look very similar and there's a lot of noise out there that's being created. So, really cutting through the clutter, you need to have a brand and Google loves brands. Google gives you a nice lift when they start to see people searching for you on different platforms and you want to be able to protect your brand and own your brand. And I can tell you I have to be a guardian roofing. And there's other industries as well that um, like for protection, like so, alarm systems, guardian um, alarm systems. There's some of the strategies that we have to do.

Speaker 1: 3:16

On an SEO standpoint is okay. There's four other people that have a very similar name to you, that has a very similar keyword than you, and we need to rank for your name first and be at the top of the pile before we can even go after unbranded keywords. And it becomes really crowded today, with so many more people starting companies, so many more brands, so much more noise out there. Also, really competitive advertising where people are bidding on people's name or using their likeness. We've seen, actually, even in the crypto industry, there's a lot of scams going on. People are putting their money into something that's not even real, right, and they're using somebody else's name. There's a lot of people promoting at that and you really have to protect your brand.

Speaker 1: 4:02

So I just thought it'd be great to kind of come on and give the foundation of it how to view it, how to look at it. If you're a e-commerce business, if you're a growing business in the space, if you're expanding outside your state right. So I have another client. It's a garage door doctor, okay, and there's a garage door doctor in almost every state, right. So how do you protect your brand If, if other people have your name, it goes back, I think, to you know who, who, who started using it first? I don't know the details, so I would love to turn it over to you to just give us kind of a one on one class. I think it'd be really helpful.

Speaker 2: 4:43

Well, with all the topics you brought up, it's probably going to be like a six-hour podcast. But look, in all seriousness, let's start with this. Trademarks is really the only type of intellectual property that has a dual purpose. The dual purpose of number one helping brand owners get the most out of their brands. But the second part, which is equally important, is to protect the public, so that the public knows that when they're buying a product, they're buying the authentic product, not a copycat product, not a copycat product. And the only way to accomplish this is by giving the brand owners a legal right, basically a legal monopoly, to go and stop everyone else from calling their products or services the way that's going to confuse the marketplace.

Speaker 2: 5:38

And when you mentioned, you know Google and all those other platforms, they have pretty much the same purpose, because they want to make sure that people who get to landing pages and websites through Google they end up on somewhere else. They end up giving them their money and who they're going to blame when they realize that they were taken. They're going to go back to Google and say you showed me the wrong link. And Google is not stupid. Whether they're evil or not is a different issue, but they're definitely not stupid. So what they want to do is they want to add their own mechanisms that ensure that there's not a lot of this bait and switch happening.

Speaker 2: 6:33

And so Google and Facebook and all those other platforms they give priority to advertisers who can prove that there's actually their brand, advertisers who can prove that there's actually their, their brand, it's actually their stuff, that the thing is legitimate, because they want to make sure that people who click those links they end up, uh, having good experience with what they pay for, uh, and the brand is what allows you to have that monopoly and stop others from doing this, right. So that's why all those platforms, they actually look very seriously as to whether you have a brand, whether you have a trademark, and TikTok, actually, TikTok advertising requires you to have a trademark for that same very reason, because they don't want to end up in a situation when you're promoting something that ain't yours Right? So that's like yeah, so who enforces that? The beginning of this, so who?

Speaker 1: 7:33

I have some questions from that, okay, so I will have some questions. I'm learning, I'm learning everyone. So who enforces trademarks Like? Is it like like FTC, like like who, like who? What's the regulatory body that that helps enforce it? Or do you have to personally enforce it if someone's infringing upon it? Like you have an you, you, you have a trademark, but if you don't enforce it I've heard that, um, you kind of if you don't enforce it, you lose it, or they kind of just run over you. How do you view that? I don't know how to look at that, okay.

Speaker 2: 8:09

So you enforce it Like you're the owner of the trademark. It's your responsibility to enforce it. Nobody's going to be light years easier and tons cheaper than doing that without a registered trademark, because here's what happens. So let's say you're building a brand, you're a company, you put a product out there, a service. People start liking you, you've established some sort of a brand and you start seeing someone else I don't know in a different state or maybe across the street from you, doesn't really matter and you see that they're doing something very similar under something that looks very much like your brand or what you thought was your brand. So you send them a demand letter saying hey guys, this is my brand, stop doing this. The first thing they're going to do those other guys in the other state or across the street they're going to show this letter to a lawyer, right. And the first thing the lawyer is going to do the lawyer is going to check did you bother to trademark that brand? And if the answer is no, you didn't file a trademark, you didn't get a trademark registered. The lawyer is going to tell them look, these guys are clowns because they haven't bothered to spend a little bit of money to protect their brand. What's the likelihood that they're going to spend $150,000 taking you to court over this Zero right? So the lawyer is going to tell them ignore this. If they're actually serious about this, if they actually have the budget to fight over this, let's wait for a lawsuit and then we'll figure out what to do about it. But the likelihood of that, the risk of that, is very small.

Speaker 2: 10:00

Now, the opposite, the other side of that coin, is if you do have a trademark registered, right, you send that letter. They take this letter to the to the lawyer. Lawyer opens up the database to see if that brand is trademarked. And he's like you you own this trademark. So what he's going to tell his clients is that, guys, uh, I suggest that you very quietly change this brand, remove this from everywhere. Like, take this site down to take the sign down, you know, go to a different domain name and hope that these guys don't take this any further and basically, you taking it down is enough for them to go away, because this is a dispute you won't be able to win, right, and this is the big difference. Right, the purpose of a trademark is not to go and sue everybody. The purpose of a trademark is to avoid avoidable disputes, because litigation is really really, really expensive, right, and that's what the trademark does. So if you, if you think about it, like, let's go back to when the trademark laws were even invented, right, we didn't have AI there, we didn't have like lots of things that we have now, nobody had.

Speaker 2: 11:14

But here's, here's what happened before, like in the, in the very early days, they didn't have trademark laws. They didn't have trademark laws, right, they had what was called common law, that if someone started a business and made a name for that and someone else was trying to copycat that, it was called passing off. Right, they were passing off their products as products of someone else. Judge and explain all of this and try to prove to the judge. Bring all the evidence that showed the judge how much of a name you've made for yourself and how bad of a person the other guy was. Right, it was very difficult, it was very long and it worked on a small scale, right, yeah.

Speaker 2: 12:04

And then industrialization came right, the factories came, it became a lot easier to build new products, it was a lot easier to reach bigger markets, and so they realized that you couldn't just have those disputes done in such a one-off manner. And so they said why don't we give those brand owners who actually care about their brands an easy mechanism where they can tell the government that, hey, I care about my brand, I want this protected so that if someone infringes on it, I have an easy path to go after them? Right, and that's how trademarking laws were born. Basically, that allowed people to take the, the, whatever brand, whether it's a name or a logo or a tagline to a government registry and have them recorded there and, uh, just sit there as proof that what's called like the legal term here is rebuttable presumption. Basically, the, the, it, you get the presumption that your trademark is a valid brand and that you are the owner of it. Right, that's what this piece of paper means. Now I'm almost there to defense.

Speaker 1: 13:25

No, no, I want to hear it. I want to hear it. I'm getting like all these questions now that I have Right.

Speaker 2: 13:30

So you get this piece of paper that says that's your brand and you own it, and now it's up to you to take this thing to court. But and really it acts this, this registration, acts as a litmus test of whether you care about the brand or not, because when courts see this right, when you take something to court, it's never really about law. It's always about who's got a better story Right and the judge who listens to someone who's like hey, you know, I've been building this for 27 years and you know, and these guys are stealing from me. But the first thing the judge is going to look at did you protect it? Right? We gave you, the government, gave you a really simple way to protect this. Why didn't you? Why didn't you Right? And so the judge will be listening hard to what the other party has to say in terms of these guys don't care about their brands. Why should the government protect it? Right? And so that's really how this works. And so, with the trademarking, it's a much simpler.

Speaker 2: 14:38

Basically a trademark registration process, right, give or take. And we can talk about how Trademark Factory does this, but give or take, you're going to spend a couple of thousand dollars, right? Two, three, five, whatever, right. There are some cheaper ways to get started, which may or may not be successful. But let's say, anywhere from one to $5,000, right, it's going to cost you to get a trademark done. A litigation over an unprotected brand is going to cost you, like I said, around $150,000, right, these are just completely uncomparable numbers. So it's a lot easier to do the easy way and avoid all this. And I mean, look, are there big trademark litigation disputes? Of course there are, right.

Speaker 2: 15:26

And a lot of people say, hey, you know, trademarks and intellectual property is just for the big guys. I said you couldn't be more wrong about this, because big guys don't need trademarks as much as little guys do. Big guys have all the money in the world that they can drown you in litigation motions and all the paperwork, and they can drown you in marketing money. They can drown you, like, in all of that. They can out-compete you on anything, pretty much on any level. The brand, owning the brand, is really the only asset you've got as as a little guy. That's the only one you got to fight.

Speaker 2: 16:08

And so, uh, one of the good examples that I have is, uh, what's his name? Sean Merriman. Uh, the the lights out uh, football player, right. So he came up with a brand lights out. He trademarked that and he successfully went against Nike and Under Armour Both of them try to get the brand and he won both times right. The only way he was able to win in this David and Goliath fight is because he had something that he could show to the judge this one stupid piece of paper, right. Without it, there's, there's, there's really no fight, there's just a super interesting.

Speaker 1: 16:52

So I have like four kind of independent questions that came out of like what you were talking about. So we can, we can kind of go down the list. Let's start with, like the small guys first, because, based on what we were talking about and I brought that up at the beginning and hopefully my clients won't be mad at me mentioning their names but if you're in the situation that you have a small business and there's somebody else either in your area or in the country that has your name, right, and the only thing that I knew it always kind of goes back to who was maybe using it first I guess the common law of what you were talking about, of what to do in this situation. But if you have the same name and you've been operating under this business and a lot of these businesses have hundreds of Google business reviews, they have Facebook pages with this name. Maybe it's this name plus a location or something like that.

Speaker 1: 17:48

Um, you know, there is some confusion, like is this part of a franchise? Like you know what, what, what's going on here? But if, if you find yourself and you're operating in that space today and you have a name that somebody else has, or somebody started a name, not intentionally trying to go after you that's actually my next question. But, um, if, if they have a name and you've been operating as it, they've been operating as, what's the best way to do that? Like cause, they're already using it, you're already using it, so is there value in going to register it? Or, like, what's their approach? Approach?

Speaker 2: 18:24

look, sometimes there is no good answer to this. Sometimes the only good answer is go back to the drawing board and come up with a new brand. Uh and uh, it it freaking hurts. Uh, and we've had, you know, dozens and dozens of these conversations. When we, when they're finally ready to go and trademark their brand, we do the search because that's the first thing we do with our process to ensure that your brand is even trademarkable. And when we tell them that it's really not, there's always the shock and, like, I've been doing this for four years, what do I do now?

Speaker 2: 19:04

And uh, one of our clients said it best. Uh, he says if, if you, if you marry to a brand, but it's a brand that you can't have, get a divorce right, because there's really no good reason for you to spend a dollar out of your pocket or a minute out of your life trying to promote a brand that you don't own. Right? Basically, you're building someone else's brand that can be always taken away from you and the problem there again, like I said, there's really no good answer here. The only kind of semi answer is you know, get a time machine, go back to when you started and actually find a name that you can own, because it's not really about the name that you pick. Nobody cares about it. The value of the name at the time when you come up with it is zero. Nobody knows about it, right? It's not about coming up with a cute name, uh, it's about an, a name that you can own.

Speaker 2: 20:10

And then you build that by providing to the market great products, great services that people fall in love with, and that's what gives the value to the brand, right? What? What a trademark does really. A trademark is investment in the future of your brand, and it's never too early to protect it, but it's often too late and kind of. Another question that people always ask is when should I trademark my brand? I said, well, look, you can do it really any time, as long as it's one day before somebody else does. Right? It's kind of a little bit tongue in cheek maybe, but you know you would know 11 labs, right?

Speaker 1: 20:56

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 20:57

Love the guys, amazing products Like I use them all the time. So what happened to them is they filed their trademark, they, they, they thought they were doing everything right. Problem is they trademark. They filed their trademark on the same day, just a couple of hours after someone else did Some guy did same day, right, and now their application is being denied by the USPTO.

Speaker 2: 21:21

So they're going to go into big fight. They're going to probably they're going to have to figure out a way to pay him off, but on the books he is the first in line and now they've got a completely avoidable problem that they need to solve Right, same day, same day, go check it out. The USPTO check for 11 left. And that's kind of the the big problem, right, when I say you know, as long as you do it a day before someone else does, you're good. Problem is you don't know when someone else does, uh, and like, imagine, like any, any good brand, like any, any, any brand you look up to, imagine it's not trademarked and you can have it today. Like there'd be a lot of people who are going to be trying, trying to, you know, monopolize some someone else's goodwill, and that's what happens in real life.

Speaker 1: 22:14

Do people like just like with domains, do they sit on brands? Do they like is there people out there that it's very lictitious or like tissue I can't say it but essentially like very legalistic as far as like their business model? Or even like you got we talked about at the beginning what I thought of like counterfeiters, right, so like people selling counterfeit merchandise and they're changing the name a little bit. Or there's a lot of like phishing scams, where people change like one letter and they're sending you stuff to try to get you to be associated with the brand. When people are doing that, is that viewed differently, legally? And also a lot of times, if people are doing this, they're maybe outside the United States. If you're operating in the United States, and how do you deal with international law?

Speaker 2: 23:09

You are a big fan of asking seven different questions in one. It's really hard to answer that kind of stuff. But look, trademarks are very different from domain names In a few material aspects. One is that getting a domain name takes five minutes. Getting a trademark takes about a year and a half in the US and about four years in Canada. It's a much longer process. Second big difference is that with domain names you know right away whether it's available or not. Well, with trademarks in US you're going to find out about nine months in whether the government is okay with that, and Canada is going to take again again about three years. Um, the third big difference is that domain names you, as you said, you can add a typo, change an eye into a one or O into a zero, and you're good to go. Or you just add my in front of it and again it's, it's yours.

Speaker 2: 24:09

With trademarks not so much trademarks are built on the idea of similarity, likelihood of confusion.

Speaker 2: 24:17

So the idea with trademarks is that by getting one trademark, you are essentially protecting yourself from all the lookalikes, all the soundalikes, from mean alikes, if, like if someone comes up with a synonym or even translation to a different language, like for example, in the US you can't get something in Spanish, that means the same thing as something that was registered in English, or the other way around text you against lots of them or which also means that even you came up with what you think is a unique domain name.

Speaker 2: 24:57

Unique name because you search for identical name and it's not trademarked doesn't mean that it's registerable, because there may be something similar that someone else had already done. Right, so that's kind of the big difference with domain name. So are there brands, quarters like this? Yes, but the scale of that is significantly lower because again costs what Eight bucks to get a domain name. It takes much more with trademarks and it takes longer, but in some cases when you see someone whose brand is going like hockey stick and you see that they haven't trademarked their brand, it gives you, if you're a bad person, you can see that as a great opportunity to make easy money pretty quickly, because you know they're going to get up there and you know they're going to take care of this and you know that, um, you know if, if you did take them to court, they'll probably just want to pay you off for you to get, for you to go away yeah, so.

Speaker 1: 26:04

So I mean definitely startups and uh, sas products and e-commerce products out there. I I like to hear that it protects you from all the things that are just have an affinity or similar to what you're doing out there. It's kind of broad reaching and you don't have to protect every little thing. So if you are like a company and you're like we're gonna become a unicorn or we're growing at a rapid pace, we're gonna get venture capital, we're gonna get private equity, we're going to become a unicorn, or, um, we're we're growing at a rapid place, we're going to get venture capital, we're going to get private equity, we're going to keep growing. And you, how are trademarks looked on the books when you're trying to sell like from a value standpoint? Because you you mentioned that a few times I'm just curious, how is it typically looked at, um, if you do have a trademark versus not if you're selling like multiple wise?

Speaker 2: 26:52

yeah, let me, let me. Let me give you an example of an actual unicorn, true story.

Speaker 2: 26:59

Um, you know the scooter rental company bird right yeah uh, they were the fastest to get to a billion dollar valuation. Like it took them the the least amount of time. I, I think it was 21 or something, 22, something like that. I don't remember the exact year, but they had this honor of being recognized as the fastest ones to get to unicorn status and it took them 13 days between them starting the company and filing their first trademark. Right, it was before they had any scooters. It was before they had any agreements with the cities. It was before they had any announcements, before they had the website.

Speaker 2: 27:45

Someone realized that, hey, if this business model is to work, we need to own this brand, because if anyone can have a scooter and put a bird on it, like, the whole model collapses. Right, uh, because how? How would people know if they're renting the real one or not? Right and so. But when they were starting, they weren't a unicorn company. They were nothing. Burger with an idea, uh, and the good understanding that the only way it works is if they own the brand. Now that they are everywhere and they've got the network and they've got the app and they've got the brand recognition, obviously, if someone were to buy this off of them, the brand will be a very significant part of the value them. The brand will be a very significant part of the value.

Speaker 2: 28:39

Nike the whole. The valuation of the entire company is $97 billion. The brand is 47 out of that, 97. It's more than half right. Not the sneakers, not the shirts, not the factories, not the employees like the brand. And here's why Because they take a white T-shirt that has nothing on it. It costs them what 50 cents? They slap a swoosh on it and they sell it for 50 bucks.

Speaker 2: 29:07

That's what the value of the brand is, and you can look at companies like this and you can just list them all day long, because Alex Hermosi talks about it all the time.

Speaker 2: 29:21

Really, the value of the brand is the degree to which you can charge more for the same thing with the brand as opposed to without right, and and uh, the more you grow, uh, the the the higher chunk of the valuation the brand is going to take. So if you're starting out right, you're just starting out a company and you're starting up and you're building something, really the big question to ask is if someone acquires you will, will they keep the brand? Uh, if the answer is, they won't keep the brand. We just want investors to buy us out and merge us into something else, probably then the brand isn't that important. But if you expect the brand to be retained, then you got to bring something to the table to the investor and say, hey, this is not just a cute name, this is not just a cute logo that my sister put together. It's something that we own and we can defend, and you will be able to defend it if we sell it to you.

Speaker 1: 30:23

Okay, and what's like the rule of thumb when you're looking at a company of like, okay, how did they come up with? Like my Nike is a great example and it's probably pretty easy to do it. But is there like a rule of thumb when you have smaller brands on? I guess it's what someone will pay for, of course, but like how, how do you like look at businesses and you you can probably eyeball. You know the brand's probably worth X, y, z or something like that. Is there any kind of metrics you use or thoughts, or is it just really difficult?

Speaker 2: 30:52

It's really difficult. Metrics you use or thoughts, or is it just really difficult? It's really difficult. There are people who pretend to be experts but I mean, look, it's an intangible asset, right, it's very hard to value that kind of stuff, but it's really a function of how many people know about you, how many people buy this because of the brand. Like, if you think about phones right, people buy iPhones not because they expect the miracle of technology, but because they're fans of Apple. Right, and they line up at five in the morning, not even knowing what is in the phone. Right, but they're there to buy.

Speaker 2: 31:43

Like, if you think about, you know sales conversion metrics and brand helping you with that, you know how much selling does McDonald's need to do? When you're up there, you know telling, hey, I want a burger. Or when you go to to Apple store on the day of the, you know when they first start selling the phone, right, they're like how many do you want? Right, that that's really all it takes. Or when you go to your favorite supermarket to buy your toothpaste and you notice I said your toothpaste because you, as you, you, you associate with a brand.

Speaker 2: 32:27

Uh, it's a certain identity. Yeah, it's the same glop in different tubes. It's just some tubes have one name and the other tubes have different name, but you are accustomed to keep buying that one all the time. Right? That's the power of the brand. So, and and and. That's what these guys who say we're, you know, we do ip valuation, that's what they look at, that's what they uh take into account when they write their you know long reports and say we think that, based on that and based on how much a company makes, we think that this part of that is due to the brand value.

Speaker 1: 32:59

Awesome, andre, I'm going to switch gears on you really quick. I wanted to get your input on from an IP standpoint, from a trademark standpoint, what's going on with the big large language models and AI using all the pictures or content on the internet right and other people's IP and brands to come and build their language models? How do you think that's going to all shake out at the end of it?

Speaker 2: 33:30

My crystal ball is not really working today uh but I mean, look, uh, who could have predicted that the growth will be so fast even 35 years ago? Nobody, right. And I, I mean, I use ai all the time and, uh, lots of people do, and they should, uh and uh. I think the the way things are going to be looked at from the legal perspective five to 10 years from now are going to be very different from what they are today, and how, I've no idea. But I use a lot of those AI models that do music, like Sudo and Udio, and I freaking love them, right. Sometimes they generate music that's much better than the new music that comes out, even from the artists that I used to love, right? And is that the same thing? No, is it new? Well? Well, that's not trademark, that's copyright. And the question is, is training the model the same as using the song? And I actually got into IEP because of unauthorized use of music, right, because of my dad, who was a composer in russia, who had one of his songs taken to to turn that into an ad for samsung without his permission. So I actually am very pro author kind of person because, again, that that's how I got into this whole whole thing, but I, I don't think that uh, as that training the model uh is necessarily copyright infringement. I don't think that. It's kind of my personal opinion. The question is whether the output is going to be so close to the original that it's indistinguishable.

Speaker 2: 35:31

There were talks before AI from people who wanted to prove their point and abolish copyright because they were like, let's free up copyright for the masses, the public should be able to use the creative works of others without any restrictions, without paying any licensing fees, and that was a horrible, horrible approach. But what these guys were trying to do is they were looking at music as math. Basically, there's only so many combinations a 10-note melody can have, right, and they were basically going out there and trying to register them all and say, hey, we now own all the melodies. But that's not really what copyright is or what creativity is. Or like same thing with books, right, you can in theory just take a dictionary and generate an unlimited number of combinations a paragraph can have. But again, that's not creativity.

Speaker 2: 36:45

And I think what the Sunos of the world do is significantly more than just random sounds right, and they, they, there's actually, there's there, there's a. There's actually lots to say to that um, to to actually answer a question. I don't know what's going to happen. I think that nobody really knows and, um, I think there's lots of. There's more good stuff coming from AI today than bad stuff. I also think that in near future I don't know how near intellectual property laws will need to be revised, not just because of AI, but because of the world.

Speaker 2: 37:27

Today is very different from the world that existed in mid 19th century century, right, or 20th century, even, because the speed at which you build products and make them available to the whole world today is vastly different. Right, you can have an idea and have the product available for purchase in Africa, in Asia and North America at the same time is like ours, right? Whereas the whole system was built on the idea that, yeah, you can start in one country, which is why intellectual property protection is done by country by country basis. Right, because their assumption was and it's also with trademarks, when we're talking about trademarks basis. Right, because their assumption was uh, and it's also with with trademarks, when we're talking about trademarks, it's also done by industry, right, on a per industry basis. So the idea behind that was it's going to take a long time for someone to expand to a different country or expand to a different industry, and now this assumption doesn't work anymore. Right, people come up with an idea like and and tomorrow they're doing something completely different under the same brand and they're doing something completely different in a different country. So they will have to figure out a way how to do that, and probably a lot of it will have to do with private brand registry, something similar to what Amazon is trying to do, but now Amazon is running off of the government registries. So basically they're saying, hey, file a trademark, bring it to us and we'll protect you on our marketplace.

Speaker 2: 39:11

And at some point I think they'll have to come up with something similar that's more global, that's faster and that might actually be AI-driven.

Speaker 2: 39:20

Because if you look at how long it takes them to examine patents, it takes years and years, and years and years. And the big reason behind that is you've got a dude who looks at the application very smart, and then he opens up a bunch of books and he goes through those books and the databases and it takes a long, long, long time, whereas if you feed all this data to AI, if it's properly trained I don't know if it's ready for this today, but I'm definitely sure it's going to be ready for that a year from now and just say, hey, is this invention actually new? Ready for that, you know, a year from now, and just say, hey, is this invention actually new? Non-obvious, uh, and all those other properties that that are required for a patent, or not? Um, so that that's that that will force the change eventually. But when it's going to happen, I don't know, because governments and, um, uh, bureaucrat, bureaucrats they're not known for being open to big change right, they're going to try to preserve the status quo for as long as humanly possible.

Speaker 1: 40:28

Awesome, andre. So I wanted to tell you I just went to the opening night of the Houston Symphony. So really, you know, to hear that I didn't know that about your father and music I think is just amazing, Like there's just something magical about it that it does to you and I think that that's really awesome. We are getting kind of close to the time to wrap up here. I wanted to ask you we've talked about a lot of things, we've covered a lot of stuff. I think it's been super enlightening. Is there anything out there that digital marketers or small business owners or e-commerce brands should really be thinking about a unleveraged opportunity with their brand? I really like the aspect of you really want to build on something that's yours right, like until you have the trademark, it's not really yours. So what are you doing Right and what are you building on? But I think if there's anything beyond that that might be a little bit of a secret that people don't think about from a trademark standpoint, would love for you to share it.

Speaker 2: 41:38

Yeah, well, I kind of touched on this, but let's actually focus on this for a second. From the marketing perspective, especially paid traffic situation. Right, it's all about your cost per click, right? Your lead cost, your CAC and your conversions. So, with with an unknown brand, if you just start a company, come up with a new brand and you try to run google ads, google is going to give you a much higher cpc compared to a well-known brand. Because remember, like when we started with, nobody wants confusion on the marketplace. So when nike goes to sell shoes through their Google ads if they did that or if they do that, I don't know right their CPC is going to be significantly lower than the, the, the, the cost that Google is going to give to a new, new player on the market that has a name that nobody's ever heard of. And the reason behind that is that Google knows that when Nike advertises Nike shoes and people click to buy Nike shoes from a Google ad, they're going to get a Nike shoe and they're going to be happy and they have no idea about you.

Speaker 2: 42:51

So owning that brand, building up that brand, and owning that brand reduces the CPC. It increases the conversion rates because, again, when people know the brand, they're more likely to give you the money. You don't have to do as much convincing, as much proof compared to someone who's new and who's never been heard of. You don't need a long VSL to explain hey, this is a great shoe, it's called Nike, we've been building it in the garage, it's a Nike, that's it. That's all you need to know. And so there's a lot less work and so the cost is lower.

Speaker 2: 43:30

With a brand that's known, the conversion is higher, and that's really all that marketing is all about. Right? You want leads for as little as possible and you want to convert as many of them into buyers as humanly possible. And last thing, actually your AOV. Nike can sell their shoes for more money than someone who has shoes that no one's ever heard of before, right? So you three uh parts of the of of of the marketing equation, right. Lower cost per lead, higher conversion into sales and you get a higher aov. That's what the brand does, but only if you own that brand, and the only way to own that brand is to get that trademarked right. Nothing else works. Copyright doesn't do it. Copyright doesn't do it. Registering your company doesn't do it. Getting a domain name doesn't do it. If it did, why would Google and Facebook trademark Google and Facebook right, if all they needed to do is just register a domain name? Just think about it. And these guys own hundreds and thousands of trademarks because they want to protect the brand.

Speaker 1: 44:36

So that's how it works of trademarks because they want to protect the brand. So that's how it works.

Speaker 2: 44:49

Trademark Factory. Check it out, andre. How do people get in touch with you? Well, you just said at trademarkfactorycom, you get on that website and you request a free call with one of our strategy advisors. And I wanted to say this Well, obviously we're in the business of helping you trademark your brand. That's what we do. That's the only thing we do. We do nothing else.

Speaker 2: 45:06

But when I say, get on a free call with a strategy advisor, it's not just going to be someone who's going to hard sell you into buying our stuff.

Speaker 2: 45:15

Their job is to help you figure out how to prioritize, what to start with, because the biggest question is that I mean, everyone's got a limited budget. I get that, and I've done work for nine figure companies, I've done work for eight figure companies, I've done work for seven figure companies, six figure companies-figure companies, but they all have budgets right, and the idea is that what we can help you with is figure out where to start with. Do you start in the US? Do you start in Canada? Do you start with a logo, with a name, with a tagline? How to prioritize, because if you only have the money for two trademarks, which ones do you pick? And so that's their job to understand your business, to understand your plans for the brand, how you're going to grow that brand, and they'll be able to help you figure out how to start with which of the packages and things like that. So, trademarkfactorycom, get on that free call, we're going to help you out.

Speaker 1: 46:11

I love that. I love the strategy component of it. I love the advisory component of it. I think a lot of times when people go to lawyers, the lawyer looks at you and says, well, what do you want to do?

Speaker 1: 46:24

Right, and they're, and you're kind of like, well, I want you to help me figure out what I should do, right, and then, and and not all, not all organizations are like that, right, and so I think it's really important at least I've found a ton of value in it personally to find an organization that will work with you and that will give you the strategy, and those are the type of lawyers that I keep in the Rolodex, right, so I would encourage everybody to go check out Trademark Factory. Andre, it's so great to have you on. Until the next time, everyone. Bye-bye for now.

Speaker 2: 47:03

Thanks for having me.