Trademark, copyright and patent registration insights & best practices [with Devin Miller]

Join Andrei and our guest on today’s episode, Devin Miller, as they will be discussing trademarks, copyrights, patents, and how to protect your intellectual property as a business.

Devin is an entrepreneur, patent and trademark attorney, and an Intellectual Property expert. He specializes in protecting startup and entrepreneurial companies with IP Legal Advice, setting them up for success in their business!

In addition to founding and running Miller IP Law, he is the co-founder of several startups including a multi-million dollar startup for wearable glucose monitoring. Devin has worked with the likes of Amazon, Intel, Redhat and Ford.

 

He is passionate about helping businesses and has the drive to educate and entertain listeners with years of experience as a calm speaker, and veteran podcaster.

 

Connect with Devin:

His podcast; https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-inventive-journey/id1499417283 

Info: https://podcastconnection.org/devinmiller/ 

IP Law: https://milleripl.com/ 

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/milleripl/ 

 

Connect with Andrei:

Marketiu: https://marketiu.com / https://marketiu.ro  

Andrei on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreitiu/ 

Marketiu on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/marketiu 

Marketiu on Twitter: https://twitter.com/marketiuagency 

Marketiu on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marketiuagency/ 

Email at hello@marketiu.ro

 

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Episode transcript:

Andrei Tiu  

 

Welcome to another episode of the Marketing Innovation Podcast Show. This is Andrei. And our special guest for today is Devin Miller, entrepreneur, patent and trademark attorney and intellectual property expert. He specialises in protecting companies without legal advice. And in today's episode, we discuss trademarks, copyrights, patents, and how to protect your intellectual property as a business. Devin, it's a pleasure to have you on the show. How are you? How's the energy? How do they go in?

Devin Miller  

  

It's going well, so busy as always, that's the way I like it. So life is good. And I'm happy. So no complaints.

 

Andrei Tiu 

  

Awesome. Awesome. So where are you tuning in from today?

 

Devin Miller 

  

So yeah, I'm in the US in Utah, just north of Salt Lake City.

 

Andrei Tiu  

  

Nice. So in the middle of the day for you, as we, as we record now, really excited. So a lot of interesting stuff that we want to discuss today's, it's the first time that we dig into this subject on the show, and I know it will be very relevant for a lot of people. And everybody I'm sure is going to, you know, leave with some important nuggets of knowledge. And before going straight into the trademarks, and intellectual property subject, let's help people get to know you a bit better because you've done some pretty impressive things in your life. You've also been a serial entrepreneur funding and being involved with a lot of businesses, including the one that you're running at the moment. So tell us a bit about your journey, how you got to where you are today, what got you into this niche?

 

Devin Miller 

  

Yeah, and that's a long question or a short question to a long answer. But I'll try and keep it reasonably concise. So a bit about myself. I graduated, I got four degrees, which my wife always jokes is three degrees too many. So I got an undergraduate, I got an electrical engineering degree as well as a Mandarin Chinese degree. And then when I was kind of getting towards the end of engineering school, I kind of had two passions when I thought law and intellectual property was fairly interesting. I also loved entrepreneurship and startups in my own business. And so rather than do one, I went off to graduate school and got both a law degree and an MBA degree or Masters of Business Business Administration at the same time. So I grabbed both of those. And then since then, or even while I was in school, and we can happy to dive into a bit of the business I've run but started my first real startup while I was doing the dual degree. And that's still going and still, an active company that which I actively participate in but knowing have done several startups is kind of side hustles and just second-time jobs, as well as pursuing my legal career. So I did work for some of the biggest law firms in the US, Top 100 law firms for some time. And then about three years ago, I kind of had an itch to want to focus on startups and small businesses with my law firm. So started Miller IP law about three years ago, really with a focus: hey, I'd like to provide the same level of quality, the same level of service I did with the big clients when I was at the big firm, but for startups and small businesses, so about three years ago, I leapt started my firm. And then I also take a lot of what was I guess, you know, side hustles. And I always look at side hustles, it's just a second full-time job because I was working as many hours on my side hustles as I was my full-time jobs. I kind of combine all of those and started to integrate into a lot of the different businesses, my pursuits, my time to kind of have those all meshed together. And it's worked out well. And it's been a fun journey. A couple of other fun notes. So I've been married for 13 years, to college sweetheart, I have four kids that are between the ages of five and 10, that sign and then three daughters. And so I've done several, I have my family, I have my religion and my church. And then I have my business. And I've done three or four startups that have a couple of those have been seven and eight figures as well as now Miller IP law. So lots of fun things a lot. It's the things that keep me busy.

 

Andrei Tiu 

  

Exciting! So at the moment you still run some of the startups, I mean, you know, businesses that started as startups, and then a lot of your focus goes into the IP law. So how is your like, what's your standard, let's say, I mean, I know, two of them will never be the same. 

 

Devin Miller 

 

I'm gonna say every day is if I mean one week, I'll focus a lot more on the IP law, that'll be my predominant focus. Other weeks are on the startups. And so it's every bit is a bit different. I mean, I usually work on any given week, anywhere from on a low week, 50 or 60 hours on highway 80 or 90 hours. So you know, I tend to work plenty of hours and I also try and put a lot of time aside so if I'm not working and with my family and spending time with them, that's kind of my two competing interests. Or you know, two places I spend my time but really, any given week, probably half of my time is on the IP side of the law firm side so about 30-40 hours a week and then half of my time is going to be on the all my startups and kind of running and managing those. And really to be able to juggle all those manage the multiple businesses and that have some great team members, a lot of great people that support me, that allow me to kind of explore and go after all my various endeavours all at the same time.

 

Andrei Tiu 

  

So, tell us a bit about your work with startups and with businesses with the Miller IP law. How do you help them? What are the most encountered things that come with you when they are looking for this type of advice? 

 

Devin Miller 

 

Yeah, so maybe I'll answer I think one of the questions was just kind of how do we focus or what do we do with startups? One thing is backing up a little bit, and I mentioned a bit as in, you know, I work for a big law firm and they had clients, including I worked with amazon.com, and Intel, and Ford and Red Hat, and other companies. And so those were always wanted. But I always found that I loved working for startups and small businesses because they're the fun ones. They're the ones that have one idea, they don't have the multi-billion or million-dollar, trillion-dollar budgets, or whatever it is, they have a small budget there, they got one thing and they're making go off, and you can have a lot more impact, you can talk with them, strategize with them, work with them. And so that was really what I found is a passion. So then when I started Miller IP law, I said: Okay, when I start a law firm, I want to work with the clients, I find fun and exciting, which are the startups and small businesses, and I want to figure out how to focus my firm so that we can work with those and then help them and so everything that I kind of set up from that point forward is really how to help startups and small businesses to compete at the same level as big businesses. One of the things that we kind of looked at and did one them was, we set it all up on flat fees. It makes it easy to understand the costs. Because one of the biggest gripes with most you know, almost every attorneys, including intellectual property, when people go into them, it feels like it's always a never-ending check. I go in, and from the time I walk in the door, they start the clock going, and every time I asked a question, shoot an email, it can be a five-minute question, and they billed me for half an hour and I always don't know what is going to cost me. And it's always more expensive than what they estimated. So I said: Let's, let's help them figure out, let's do a flat fee. So you know how much our fees including governmental fees, how much all in is going to cost me to do an application or trademark. And that's where we started. And then one of the other things that we looked at was the legal industry. It has is up there with some of the worst customer services or customer service, in the sense that you know, you reach out to an attorney, it takes on average three to five days to hear back. So let's say you reach out on Monday, you send him an email, give him a call, shoot him a text, whatever, you may not hear back till Friday or the following Monday. And that's got to be aggravating as on the client side of: Hey, 'm just trying to get to you, this is important to me, this is an investment, I paid your 1000s of dollars, and I can't even get a hold of you. And so we also took a look at that and said: Okay, what can we do differently? Some 80% of the time, we pick up the phone where you respond to calls right away, or an email right away, we 90% of the time within about 30 minutes. And we have a rule that by end of the day, you have to have responded to all the clients’ emails. And so we kind of took that and a lot of different things. But those are just a couple of examples. And we said okay, how can we make it so a startup and focus on startups and small businesses and make that a better law firm? Now, one of the other questions you hit on is a little bit of you know, if you're now getting into a startup or small business, and you're looking at intellectual property, kind of what are you thinking about? What are the important things? Intellectual property is kind of an umbrella term, and it kind of has three different things in that umbrella which are patents, trademarks, copyrights. So patents go towards an invention something that does something it's a widget, it can be software, hardware, a wearable, anything that has functionality. trademarks are gonna be brands and something that's a brand name. So the name of a company name of a product, a catchphrase, a logo, something of that nature, anything with your brand falls under trademarks and copyrights are going to be on the creative side. So more of: Did you made a book a painting, a sculpture, a movie, a TV show, music, any of those are kind of on the creative side, that's how you protect them. Usually, when they come to my office, the first conversation is, it's kind of what do you need is a business? Are you in the brand? Are you building the world brand new and the next Pepsi? Or coke or Disney or whatever it might be? Are you really building the world's next great widget? You're gonna make the world's best smartphone and make it you know, awesome and better than anything else out there? Or are you gonna write the next you know, Harry Potter or Tom Clancy, or whatever the book is that you like, and you got to figure out what is your value? And then how do you go about protecting it and creating an asset around that?

Andrei Tiu 

  

Okay, so one question that popped into my mind, and I know it was I mean, it can be forming an assumption and maybe we can shine some clarity over this. So you know, it's many times in the startup space when you are all in a rush and you just want a large MVP, and you just want to have something out there to test with. And you have a brand name, you probably have a logo and a website and some social media pages, and whatever it is, depending on the business. But I know in some cases, there can be an assumption that once you launch something that is, you know, you are the first ones to launch it, it can be assumed as implicit that you would hold some sort of right upon it, if somebody came and copied it, and launch it as another brand or new technology, for example, or even if it's like a catchphrase or something like that. So what would you say is important and it's not so important for a startup to do before, for example, launching their brand and their website and dispersed assets, that would be like an MVP?

 

Devin Miller  

 

Yeah, so and I'll probably primarily hit more on patents and trademarks, copyrights are a bit different. But one of the assumptions that are generally wrong is: hey, if I'm the first one to create a brand or create an invention, I'll automatically get it, I'm automatically covered. I don't need to do anything, I'm fine'', right? And the problem is you get in this. So taking trademarks, as a first example, generally, whoever files on a trademark application federally, and is usually the same in most countries, is the first one to acquire those rights. So a lot of times what you'll have is somebody will start a business and say: Okay, we've got the perfect name, and we're going to go spend all these marketing dollars, and we're going to brand it and sometime down the road, we'll get a trademark, but they don't worry about that on the front end. And they go and build a brand. And two, or three or four years later, they say okay, we finally started to build a brand start to get some traction, now let's go and get a trademark. And they'll run into a couple of different things. One is, is that somebody else saw their brand liked it or just happened to be coincidental, came up with the same or similar brand filed on it. And now somebody else owns your brand. So even if you started later, you have some very limited rights and know in your specific geographic location, but they're very limited. And so you're going to be boxed out of balance, you use your brand in most states or most locations because somebody else filed on it first. The other problem you'll get into on brands, is sometimes you think: Oh, I did a quick Google search and I didn't see anybody using this brand, or somebody else was using it, but they're using it a bit differently than how we intend to do. So you start to do that. And then you get a year or two into it, or however long and you find out wait, no they own this brand. Or even worse, as you never even searched out, they're brand new to say: Hey, I'm going to start using this brand, then you come to find out, somebody else owns it. And now you're having to look to rebrand, you're having to go and try and figure out a new brand, let all your customers know which is expensive, or you're trying to go and acquire the other brand if they're even willing to sell it or get a licence from them or any number of things, all of which is much more time costly and expensive, and often is much more difficult. So think of when you look to brands when you want to get started and same with patents is really earlier, the better. Once you know you're going to be building a brand around it, your company is going to be building the next best widget, is going to be building the next best brand, that's what its value is going to be, then you need to invest in protecting that because if the worst-case scenario is somebody else comes along afterwards and grabs that and now you're not even able to use your brand. The other one on the patents side is even more or more difficult. With patents, there's a rule and it's the same in the US and there are different variations in other countries, but generally, is once you put something out in the public, you have a year from which you can go after a patent. So if you put an offer for sale, you put it up on a website, you go to trade shows, you do conferences, webinars, you go and start selling it, whatever it is, you put it out in the public, of you have a year from that time you put out in the public, within which you can file patent you miss that year, open to the public, anybody can do it, it now becomes public domain. And so a lot of times the problem is, is we'll have clients that come in and wait a couple years. They get their MVP, they sell for a couple of years, they say okay, we finally got some traction, we've got some income, we want a patent what we've been doing, and they come in my office and say I just had a curiosity, so how long you've been selling? Oh, I’ve been selling for two or three years and say, you know, that's great, you have a great product business is growing, unfortunately, you're not able to patent it, because you missed that one-year timeframe. The other thing and I'll take a break, but they'll also things you got the one-year timeframe. Another thing with patents is the first file system. The first person to file on a patent, they're going to be the presumptive inventor. So really if, unless you can prove that you're the first inventor, they copied you, they ripped you off, they became aware of your invention, and they mimicked it, that's hard to prove one evolve, even if you can, that's going to be expensive. Unless you can prove that, generally the first person to file is that. Let's say you're in a very competitive market, you are in the and I'll make it up augmented reality virtual reality arena, and there's a whole bunch of things. I'll give you a better one that's competitive as golf clubs. Golf clubs are one of the most patented things in the world. And the reason is, is because you have a lot of rich doctors, you have a lot of rich lawyers that all won’t all think that they can create the next best golf club, they have some expendable income, and they all go and try and get a patent on it just so nothing else. They have bragging rights to tell their friends: Hey, I got my own patented Golf Club. And so you go and try and start a golf club. And let's say there's a whole bunch of people innovating and doing different things with golf clubs. And you happen to come up with an idea that somebody else does. They find you never file on somebody else files on and six months later because it's very competitive. Now you just lost out, now you're not able to pursue, you've just lost your investment. Yeah, I'll do it. So there's a lot of intricacies. The short answer is early as possible, the better. And if you have questions, I'd go and talk to an attorney. So you can get a more specific timeline and strategize.

 

Andrei Tiu 

  

A question here would be, so this I guess the pattern thing applies mostly to software, as you said, and products. But once you have, or does it apply to service businesses? like can you have a patent on a service type of business? Like I don't know, a web agency or a training agency or something like that?

 

Devin Miller 

 

So the short answer is, generally no. Going back 10 years ago, they used to kind of have what's called a business method patent, a method of doing business. And they were, they weren't very good patents. And basically, after they went through enough court cases, the pendulum swung, you can technically still get them, they're incredibly difficult to get. So really, for service based businesses, you're not able to, that's where you'd be branded because you're able to get something branding, you know, you do better customer service, you build a reputation. But as far as a patent goes, now, there are a few exceptions as far as service based businesses. Let's say you have web services and part of your services as you're doing: hey, we got we're gonna take some information, we're gonna have AI, we're gonna do data analytics, we're going to figure something out, we're going to do some different weighting of different types of inputs and information. And we're gonna give you the world's best notification. Well, you know, such as a soft SAS company or software service, some of those, they're doing a lot of back end, innovating, creating things that are new, you can capture that software side, or there's other things that make your business innovative, but has to be more on the functional side. So when you're looking at it, basically the standards for patentability, and maybe that's another good way to answer it. When you're thinking: Can I patent something? If it's functional, that has a utility nature to it, if it does something, then the basic three standards are what's called novelty, obviousness and abstraction. So novelty is basically as anybody else ever invented this. If somebody else has already invented it, you can't get a patent on something that's already been invented. Second thing is obvious instances. Well, not one person's not invented this. But if you're gonna take two or more things that are already out there, you're putting them together in an obvious way, you're really not adding anything new. And people in the industry says, Yeah, you could have put those together, you're not really creating anything new. And so, again, if you're just putting a couple of things together in an obvious way, you're not going to be able to get a patent on it. The last thing is the abstraction where, hey, what you can't do is just take something that's been done in people's head pen and paper and put it on a computer, put it on technology, and call it patentable. And that's kind of where you get into a lot of times with the service space industries. And they want to say, hey, well, there's used to be this process that was on pen and paper, I used to do in my head, and I made this quick, you know, software programme that does the exact same thing that I did for me. Then you're gonna say: Well, you can't do that, because other people have been doing it with pen and paper in their hand, it's not really innovative. On the other hand, you're saying: Hey, I used to take this process, it used to take me 10 hours to do and I made a software programme that does all this analytics on this data processing. Now, it takes five minutes to do the same thing and it does it a lot better and more efficient. Those things you can start to patent. So kind of when you're looking at it novelty or exam and invented, obviousness is putting something together in an obvious combination abstraction, are you just simply taking a something that's people done in their head or pen and paper and putting it on a device? Those are things you're looking at as far as patentability.

 

Andrei Tiu  

  

Okay. And I have just one more question here on patents that I think it's relevant for many of the listeners here, that are probably just funding their business or are in their early days with their startups. How much can a patent contributes to the value of a startup when it gets valued?

 

Devin Miller

  

It really depends on where how the startup uses it. It can be very valuable. In some of the seven and eight-figure businesses I mentioned that I've grown, they have a large part of the valuation has been the intellectual property that we've built around our ideas and have grown it in inventions and whatnot. Because we'll go out, we've got licencing deals, we'll sell that. Now, what I don't want people to get is a false sense of security that: Hey, I got a great idea. All I got to do is go get a patent and then people will be knocking down my doors to get a licence, they'll just want to pay me money and money will fall from the sky, which 99% of the time, that's not going to happen. So I don't want people to say all I got to do is get a patent. What you really have to do is kind of do something in the middle where patents can be valuable, but you still have to do the other parts of the business as well. You still have to show market viability, that there's a demand for, the people who are willing to pay for it. You have to actually go out in the marketplace and sell it, you get a small customer base, and then that's when the patents really gain a lot of value. If you can go out and get a startup you get a minimally viable product or MVP or whatever you want to call it, a prototype and you start to go out and sell it. You show that hey, there's a lot of people that will buy this. It works in the marketplace, you can start to build that out. Then your patents become a lot more valuable because when the company comes to acquire you or take a licence or otherwise do an acquisition or a merger, they're gonna say: Okay, we can do a lot of the same things. A lot of times when you have a business that coming to take a licence required and say: Hey, we can do what you're doing, we can do it faster, we can do it cheaper, we can do better. So they're gonna say: Now what's proprietary about you? And you say, well, we have a customer base. Okay, well, that can have some value, you can see some companies you have a huge customer base or a huge client base that gets you value. The other thing they're going to look at is what's proprietary, what do you have protected? What do you have patented and they can't go and people can just come along and copy us because we have patented technology, or we have a brand, that's a very strong brand. And we have very loyal followers, and now we have trademarks on those, so people can just go and simply mimic our branding. And so those are the things. You can get anywhere from it can be worth virtually nothing, if all you do is you think you're gonna go get a patent or a trademark does nothing with it, and people are gonna pay. Not gonna be worth much. On the other hand, you build a company, show market viability, do some of the legwork, then it can be a great asset to the company, they can increase your valuation quite a bit.

 

Andrei Tiu 

 

There. Okay, and now go into the copyright, like the copyright direction. So I guess this question would apply also to patents. Are businesses or would you recommend businesses to typically register for, for example, in this case, copyright only in the geography they act within? Even if they could, at some point, expand internationally? Or how should they go about it? Let's take a perfect scenario where they are doing this before deciding on the brand. And after, you know, doing the checks and everything?

 

Devin Miller  

 

You say, if I rephrase your question, it's kind of if you're looking at and kind of wherever you're located, whatever country versus going international, how do you bank that balances to which countries to invest in? If you're saying, well, there's a patent trademark, copyright or whatnot? How do you decide what countries are protected? And is that a fair summary of your question?

 

Andrei Tiu

  

Yeah, like, for example, let's say you plan to launch your business in the UK, or somewhere in the US, would you do and you know, you want to expand at some point maybe three, five years down the line in another geography. Would you look at taking the copyright and just securing that from the very beginning or not necessarily, and just doing locally and then expanding. What would be the best approach?

 

Devin Miller  

 

Copyrights are one of those that are typically easier. You could probably wait until you actually expand into those countries because copyrights have a lot more inherent rights. So if you're the first one to create it, and as long as you can show that you can create it, you have more ownership rights to it. And so with copyrights, you could probably, certainly if you have the budget earlier, the better and copyrights are always the least expensive to file on, so they're usually the easiest to go for. But you could probably hold off until you actually expand to those countries. The opposite is not necessarily true for trademarks or patents. So copyrights, I'd say, yeah, let's say you're waiting to expand into three till three to five years, I'd probably wait till you hit that three to the five-year mark until you actually go in there, file your copyrights and get them. Alternatively on the patent and trademarks, just the opposite. Let's say, and the way I a lot of times on patent and trademarks, we'll approach it is where do you see, where is your biggest marketplace going to be for your company?  Or where's the biggest, where's your clientele? So give me an example. I work with some medical companies or medical product companies, and they look and say: US is our biggest market, US by far spends the most on medical devices, medical services, medical products, and you look at per-capita spending the US is number one, Europe or EU is probably number two, and then a probably whittles down to Asia, maybe Japan. But really, if you're in the medical device company, you're probably saying: If I only have enough money, I'm gonna focus on the US. Give you an example of some of the medical companies are saying 90% of our markets really going to be in the US. Let's focus on the US. Yes, Europe has 10% and we may get there at some point, but if we have to decide where our budget goes, let's go with the US because that's where the bulk of our market is. So when I'm looking at the country, because the problem I get into with a lot of clients, as I say, we're going to go worldwide, we're going to go sell in every place, we're going to be International. And then we say we want to get patents and trademarks in every country out there. And they say, okay, we can do that. But each country is different, it gets expensive, and you have to file in these countries and most of the time, you're not going to get the return on the value you want. So usually you're going to say is taking the medical example, let's say 60% of the US as your population, you're a maybe another 30% and everything else is less than 5% then you're probably gonna say: Our market is 10% Europe and US we'll probably get a patent or trademark there because it makes sense, we're gonna have the bulk of our market there and for that other 10% we're just gonna have to go and compete without a trademark. We'll go and compete without a patent because it doesn't make sense, we're not going to get the return on it. So a lot of the times when you look at whether you should file in your country versus internationally, or which countries you file into, look and see where you project your marketplace to be, who your customers are going to be, where they're going to be located, and then go about protecting it in that area.

 

Andrei Tiu  

 

Okay. And in terms of the trademarks, again, maybe this would be like a tricky question, at least, it seems tricky to me now thinking about it. And actually, this was something that I had an internal debate with myself when we launched the BCC initially, as well. And I had to, you know, to submit the trademark registration and everything else. In terms of trademarks. So for example, let's take the case of the UK because it's a bit smaller than the US. Let's say you have a business starting out there, and then you have the brand and everything else, you checked everything fine. You can register it as a trademark. Why don't you start selling in other countries as well, let's say you start selling in the US as well. But then somebody, maybe one year down the line, things: hey this is like a very good name and very nice branding. Let's replicate that here. Can they steal your brand if you don't have a trademark in that country? Or how does it go?

 

Devin Miller  

 

Yeah, the short answer is typical: Yes, they can. That's a problem that you'll have and there are some ways to deal with it, but they’re usually expensive and they usually protracted and it may or may not be a good avenue. But the short answer is Yeah, typically if you are, let's say you start a business and you take all over the UK by storm, you're the number one, we'll say a restaurant, I don't know, a restaurant, you make the world's best hamburgers, you come out with a way that is just better than everyone, you make McDonald's and Burger King looked like nothing. And you've taken over the UK. And then somebody else in the US says: Oh, that's a really good and upcoming name, I'm gonna go and file a trademark on it. They are within their rights to go file it on it, they can typically squat on it, yes, there are some avenues, you may be able to go do it. But generally, it's gonna be hard, and it's gonna be difficult and you're low likelihood of success. So, unfortunately, and that's the same thing. That's what usually a lot of times used to happen with China, if you'd have a lot of companies, they'll say: Hey, we see a lot of companies in the US that are in that are outside the US that are having brands, they are in go file in the US because the US is a huge market. And then when those brands come into the US and want to start expanding their brand, they bump into these Chinese companies. And then all these Chinese companies are getting all the money for filing in the US first. And so generally, that's what I said earlier on, the better because if you get in there and you want to expand into other countries, somebody else owns the rights or the brand to it, they can or they can stop you from using that. Give you another example that is kind of the flip side. You remember the Apple Watch. Pretty well known and a lot of people have Apple watches, and I think they may have overcome now, but when they first launched, everybody thought it was weird. Why didn't they call it the iWatch? Because you have the iPhone, you have those types of things, iTunes, why didn't you call it the iWatch? Well, the problem they ran into is that somebody else trademarks the iWatch in China. And China was a big market for them and so they went into China, and they couldn't negotiate, they couldn't get the rights to it. So they ended up calling it the branding of the Apple Watch for a long period of time. And I don't know if they find eventually acquired and otherwise, it's all done. For the first several years, they call it the Apple Watch, because they didn't have the rights to the iWatch. And so even a big company like apple, because they didn't have the rights in China when they wanted to go release, had run into that same problem. So, unfortunately, as part of the business game, and you have to try and anticipate that and do the best you can. But yeah, if you have somebody else that gets those rights first, generally they're the owners of the rights.

 

Andrei Tiu  

 

That was insightful. Thanks a lot. And another question that I think it's so on everybody's minds, as they looked into this, is regarding costing. So obviously, there's going to be a difference between national versus international. But typically, what would be an average or some budget for this? 

 

Devin Miller  

 

I'll give you kind of, this is generally and it's, it varies in that and it also varies on your attorney. If you're looking in the US to prepare and file a trademark application, our fees would be flat fees would be about $6,000. If you were to take kind of a range on the very low end, if you were to go with a law firm or attorney do yourself as a different thing, but go with the law for an attorney, you're probably at least $5,000. Most expensive firms can be upwards of 10 or $11,000. And that's to prepare and file it. To get all the way through the process of a patent application probably looking at between 12 to $18,000. All the way through the process is usually spread out over two to three years. On a trademark, you're probably looking, in the US... Ah, sorry, going back to patents, here to say the EU you're probably similar on that cost time or cost. Probably in China, it's a little bit they have a different system so it's gonna be less expensive. You're probably more like 6 to $7,000 for the whole process. Japan is going to be a little more expensive, but they're similar to the US. So generally, if you're to here, kind of the US, the EU or Europe and in Japan, those are going to be similar costs and other countries are going to be or can be a little bit more or less expensive. When you get to trademarks, you're going to look so our flat fees are going to look at about 850 to prepare and file it. To get all the way through the process, you're probably around $1,500 and upwards of $2,000. If you go to other firms that range anywhere from about 1000, to get all the way through the process up to 3 or 4000. So that one's a bit less expensive. Europe's a bit more expensive, I'd usually say about one and a half that Japan is going to be similar to the US, China is going to be similar to the US. So that kind of gives you an idea of trading or copyrights. If you were to file copyright in the US, you're looking at 3- $400 similar throughout most of the rest of the world.

 

Andrei Tiu

  

Okay, that's good. Thank you. So do you have any hidden secrets for us or things that probably are not so well known, but you think are relevant for somebody that has not looked at this in-depth?

 

Devin Miller

 

I'll dispel one of the biggest myths which drive me nuts, and so I don't know if it's a secret or not. But one of the biggest things, and I hear its variations and it can sometimes its variation with patents, sometimes is with copyrights, sometimes it's with trademarks, and this it goes something like this, I'll use patents as an example. Really, there's a secret way to get a patent. And all you have to do is you write down your invention, all the details, you get some drawings, you put it in a stamped envelope, and you get the date on it, and never open it. And then if anybody wants to come along, you can just go show him the sealed envelope, with the date stamp and you're fine. That drives me nuts because there's no truth to it, you can if you send yourself an envelope as a postmark. And you know and unseal it, guess what, it doesn't help you at all. I mean, I guess it's better than absolutely nothing but only weighs about this much. So really don't plan on that. So that's one of the biggest myths, what I would really tell people, and it's probably not a secret, I don't know, there's a tonne of secrets. But what your best thing is, if you're a startup, your small business or your any size company, really everything for an entrepreneur to be the company is your best thing is to go in, find a good attorney, and then go in and sit down and get a strategy in place. figure out what the timing is what budgets, you're going to looking at what you're going to need, and when you're gonna need it because even for a lot of startups or work with: hey, I get it, I've done it myself, there's always more things to spend money on than money to spend. And so you always you're trying to figure out your budgets and what costs and so you may not be able to afford it all today. But at least sit-down, figure out what your budgets are looking at what the timeframe is you're looking at what you should be doing and get a strategy or a plan in place such that as you go along, as you grow, that you don't miss those opportunities, you don't create issues down the road, or you don't have other drawbacks to that, and then start from there. So that's probably it's not necessarily a secret, because there isn't a whole lot of secrets in the patent world. But those are probably things to consider.

 

Andrei Tiu   

 

And I have another question that appears in my mind that I think is relevant. So you know, there are companies that launch sub-brands that might not be exactly like the brand, but it's like a small company of the company. Would you say it's better for the trademark to be registered as the entrepreneur to register the trademark? Or is it better for the company to register the trademark?

 

Devin Miller 

 

I'll give you the general answer. And there's I'm sure there are always exceptions. Generally, I tell people, one of the first things I would do and I always do when I started a company is to get a better form of business to an LLC, an S Corp, a C Corp, and variations in other countries, they call them slightly different names, but form a corporation. And then whenever you do something, do it through the corporation. And the main reason being and for most countries, including the US is, let's say you went and filed a trademark on your own personal name, you started a business on your own personal name, you just did it as your own, you know, as an individual. And you started to let's say, one, you infringe somebody's trademark or their patent, or you had product safety and somebody gets hurt with your product, or they have an allergic reaction. If it's under your personal name, they can come and sue you directly, they can come and go after your house and go after your car your life savings. Whereas if you get a business and you know, an LLC and S Corp, C Corp, whatever, then you have a buffer then let's say the trademark, you get a trademark you didn't know is infringing someone else, you start to use it, you find out you're infringing somebody else, the worst, and it's so can be bad, but the worst they can do is come after the business. They can't come after you personally, they can't come after your life savings or your house or other things. And so I would always put it under the business as a general rule of thumb because that way it gives you the added layer of protection at least for you personally, and then there's the business owns it. The other thing that's nice is when the business owner, the files that they own it is that way if somebody wants to come and acquire the business, they want to invest in it or anything else is a lot less complicated. You know, it's a lot more difficult to sell: Hey, I want to come and acquire the business.  Okay, well, just to let you know all the intellectual property, all the patents and trademarks, I own personally in the business doesn't own it. And so you're gonna have to make, I'm either gonna have to sell it to the business, or that's gonna be having to be part of the deal, you're gonna have to buy those from me separately. And it makes it more complicated. And so usually, it's always easier to put it under the business, both to protect you personally, as well as to allow for making it a cleaner transaction. If somebody wants to get a licence or acquired or otherwise, do something.

 

Andrei Tiu 

 

What if the business has to close down at some point, don't you lose it or do you transfer it to yourself until you transfer it back to another business? Or?

 

Devin Miller

  

It depends on how you shut down the business. Generally, if you go bankrupt, they're going to come after you either way. I mean, and shield all the assets by putting him in all reality, you have a placeholder business and you're running everything with you personally, then you're really personally liable. You can't just go in: Oh, I'll start an LLC. We'll have it all salving, but I'll keep all these things in my personal name. It's going to likely cause it that they're going to come after you personally anyway. And so if you're shutting it down, and you're not bankrupt, you just decide not to do it anymore, you can still transfer those all to you as a person, as an individual. So if it's a matter of shutting it down, you don't want to keep the doors open, you get lose interest, or he's saying, hey, it's not working anymore. If you're not in debt, you're not going bankrupt, it's pretty easy to transfer that to you personally before he shut it down. If you're going bankrupt, and you tried to hide all the assets in your name, personally, instead of the business, they're gonna come after you either way. So really, in that sense, when you say shut down bankrupt, they're gonna come after you, not bankrupt you can transfer to personally. 

 

Andrei Tiu 

 

Okay, super, this was very insightful. So Devin, tell all our listeners here, where can they find you? If they want to have a personal discussion with you maybe for some of their issues or businesses? In which way can you help them? And what would be the best channels for them to reach out to you?

 

Devin Miller 

  

Yeah, so there are two ways to connect up, if they want to reach out to me directly, they want to grab a schedule, some time to chat, they want to strategize, they want to go through what they're doing. I do a free strategy meeting where they can come we can spend a few minutes, check on what they're going through, and at least devise a bit of a strategy. To do that, just go to strategymeeting.com, then that link that has a calendar links right to my schedule, they can go grab some time. So strategymeeting.com is the easiest way to connect up with me. If they're lucky more just to find out about my law firm in general, more kind of the flat fees, learn a bit about patents and trademarks, and all the other information and kind of go through all that, then they can just go to law with Miller. So Miller's my last name but lawwithMiller.com, and they can find out a lot about the firm and go to the general website. So scratch some time with me specifically - strategymeeting.com, learn about the firm in general, go to lawwithMiller.com.

 

Andrei Tiu  

 

Super. So guys will have the links to these platforms as well in the description of the episode, as well as in the transcript. So you can find them there as well. Devin, are you up to anything fun or interesting that like our listeners to find out about from you over the next couple of months or this year?

 

Devin Miller 

 

Oh, lots of things I at least find fun and interesting. I'll give you kind of a semi-personal note. So we just acquired me and my wife have always wanted to kind of life on a farm. So I'm always a small-town person. So I like to live in small towns, I like to be more spread out. And my wife and I have always wanted to live on a bit of a farm and be kind of out in the country. So we just recently acquired 20 acres. And I'm just now planning my orchard, I'm planting 100 trees in the orchard and getting that going. So on a personal note, that's fun and exciting to me over the next probably a year to 18 months I'll be getting my orchard started and planting a whole bunch of fruit trees. Business-wise, I've got a couple of businesses that I'll probably keep to myself for now that haven't launched or aren't publicly available yet. I have a couple of additional businesses that are going to be launching within the next few months that I think you'll find it as exciting as well. So personally and business, I have plenty of fun things like at least things that I find finding sunny or exciting coming up.

 

Andrei Tiu 

 

Very cool. Man, wishing you the best of luck. It seems like you have everything going on this year. So I'm very happy actually to get a chance to meet, you know, people like you that we can connect and also, you know, that wasn’t so impacted by the pandemic in the way that they were running their lives and managed to get through and be successful while doing it. Regarding today's episode, I think it was great. Thanks so much for the insights. I really found it insightful personally, as well. I think there were a lot of lessons for many of our listeners here. So guys, if you haven't looked at trademarks and copyrights and patents, make sure to have a deeper look into them because they are indeed important. So many of you are looking at the Nexus at some point. You might find these valuable later down the line but also just to protect yourself and be able to sell and expand and scale up. As I mentioned that you'll have the links to Devin’s platforms in the description of this episode. And Devin, thank you so much for your time today this was very fun.

 

Devin Miller

 

It’s been fun, it’s been a pleasure thank you for having me on. It was a great conversation.

 

Andrei Tiu

 

Thank you for being here. Let’s keep in touch, and meanwhile, wish you an amazing day ahead!

 

Devin Miller

Thank you!