Legal Q & A for Creative Entrepreneurs - Brittany Ratelle - Live IG replay

Hi, this is Brittany Ratelle, and I'm sorry I'm a few minutes late today. I had a little incident in getting my kids out of the car. I had a, I had a vomit incident, so I'm sure you really needed to know all the nitty-gritty details. So that set my timeline back a little bit for jumping on here, but I'm gonna give it a few minutes and see if there's anyone else who's still available to come on and answer some questions. Hi Melissa, happy to be here. If you want to put in the comments where you're from, or if you don't want to say where you're from, I know sometimes that It seems like weird, like stalkerish, what your business is. I'm always interested to find out more about who's interested here. Jason, happy to have you, Jason. Hannah, thanks for being here. Sorry for being delayed. Idaho, awesome. Hi, Brittany. So I was apologizing. I had a little vomit incident in the car with my baby, so that delayed me in hopping on. So thanks for your patience, and really glad that you guys can join me today. So I didn't get any questions beforehand, so whoever wants to jump on in, if you have something you'd like me to talk about, go ahead and shoot. If not, then, um, I have something that I actually was just reading up on today that I can share with you that I think is interesting. But, um, but if you have something that concerns your business at all, um, like, uh, like I've kind of introduced myself before, I'm Brittany Ratelle. I'm a licensed attorney here in Utah, and my specialty is helping, um, small businesses. So especially people who are maybe working online or who are working in the creative field, um, influencers, content creators, graphic designers, people who are makers, um, but even just traditional small businesses, either service-based or product-based, a lot of them have very similar legal needs in terms of what they need to set up their business, to protect their business as it's ongoing, and there's relationships, um, as it's dealing with employees and then working with others, whether that be working with clients or working with other people that they may be connecting with, collaborating with. Doing joint ventures with. So those are all subjects that I can speak about. So if you have any questions about that, about your website, about advertising and marketing, um, some employment law, you know, if it gets really nitty-gritty, I might pass you off and say you need to talk to an employment law specialist, someone who does more advanced just employment law or HR. But I can usually find that most questions people ask, especially when they're in their beginning stage, I can, I can answer. So So if you have any questions, go ahead and put them in here, guys. Don't be shy. Don't be shy. Otherwise, I'm just a weird girl here talking to her phone. So there you go. I was going to share one cool thing that I saw, a news update today was— well, I mean, not cool, not if you're Zazzle. But anyway, there was a big lawsuit that just got finished in federal court against Zazzle, you know, the print-on-demand shop, where they were fined $350,000 for copyright infringement. Um, and what's, what's hard about that, if in your guys's business, especially if you deal with any kind of graphic design or print-on-demand services, is that, um, they had copyright infringement policies in place. They had people on their staff whose whole job it was, was to look to see if any of the designs that they were printing were copyrighted. Um, and still the, the court said that they didn't do enough, basically. So anyway, um, I— hopefully they're gonna appeal it, and hopefully they get a more favorable decision at the next level. But anyway, that's where that came out. Okay, you're a beginning influencer marketer and artist selling art prints and collection with my resource library of mental health self-love practices. Oh, awesome! Okay, very cool, Melissa. So I'm guessing that you probably do all of your business online, um, and then probably have a gallery. So, um, yeah, what the— probably the, the number one question I see with people online is "how do I know what I can use, what images I can use online, and how do I keep other people from using my stuff?" I get that question a lot from lots of different people. And the overarching idea for online, your mantra should be, um, "only with permission." Basically, for any images you find online, if you aren't very sure that they are royalty-free images, and that means that even if they say that they're royalty-free or free stock photos, if it's if it's any kind of a sketchy website where you haven't heard of it before, or it doesn't, you know, um, you know what I mean, the kind of website that has like hokey ads in it, if it looks like it's being hosted in another country, you know, anything like that, um, those, those are sometimes infamous, those websites, for scraping pictures off of, off of places and putting it up, um, and then saying, oh, these are free stock photos you can have, um, and yet they're not stock photos, they're someone else's photos that are protected, that have the rights reserved for them. And when you're using them, you could be at risk of copyright infringement. In fact, there are some practices like Getty Images, which obviously is a huge photo database that has been famous for seeding photos out there, like trying to actually release those in the marketplace in the hope that people would use them so that they can go after them for copyright infringement. So it's super sketchy. It's a total mafia shakedown in the photography world, but it happens. So it's something to be aware of. Um, so like a Creative Market standard license, if you're familiar with that website. So I'm pretty sure I've been to that one before. Let me pull that up and I can see. Um, so like Creative Commons is probably— yeah, is very similar. So, um, and the thing on there that you want to be careful of is, um, that just what the terms are. So, um, because a lot of those, it, it depends on if you're using it just for digital on digital issues or projects, or if you're going to actually put it into print. And, um, and personal use versus commercial use. So that's how Creative Market looks like they're separating it. So for, yeah, for example, for personal use you get unlimited, a limited standard and extended license. That's awesome. But commercial use is either one project and then end product. Um, and obviously that's if you're actually putting it into a product, a physical product, or a digital product that you're giving to someone. So if that makes sense. Um, So you just really want to make sure that you are purchasing the right license for what your project is. Um, and what's hard sometimes is I know sometimes these projects kind of morph. They start out as a small thing and maybe this becomes your best-selling item. You know, some people are selling something on Etsy and then it's like, oh, holy cow, everyone loves this mug. Um, and it's only down the line that they start to realize, I wonder if I'm even allowed to put that slogan on there. You know, that's from a movie or, You know, it's on Wednesdays we wear pink. That's a really famous one because there's obviously lots of pop culture references to Mean Girls. Everyone loves that movie. And typically phrases like that and slogans can't be protected by copyright if they're short like that unless they're trademarked. So if it were me and if it started becoming like your flagship product that you're selling a lot of, I would look into doing a trademark search just to make sure that everything, all your ducks are in a row, and you're, you're not going to be surprised by, uh, by an infringement lawsuit. Um, and none of the marketplaces that you're selling are also going to come back and say, hey, look, we got a copyright complaint. So, okay. Um, and then how about using a photo on Instagram? On Instagram, you can only use a photo if you have permission, even if someone has tagged or hashtagged and you think, oh, sharing is caring, of course they're going to love it. Really? No. So, um, on Instagram, to be safe, if you want to use someone else's picture, they have the copyright until they've given you permission to share. So I would direct message them or email them and look for written permission to share their photo on Instagram. So, um, that goes back to that question. Okay, Jason's asking, how would I go about franchising my pest control business? Is that something you can help with? Um, I have some experience with franchising. So, um, what you basically are going to want to be looking at in franchising your business is looking at everything that's going into your business, all your assets, whether that's, um, your intellectual property that you might have, like your trademark name. And that's probably going to be your strongest kind of branding that you have there, whatever is built into your commercial brand, and then kind of the way you do business, whatever your secret sauce is. And then you can decide with franchising if you want to just do it geographically, how close you want to have people set up. That's usually a main consideration, is you want franchise owners to feel like they don't have too many people in the same area, otherwise they start to poach on each other, and that's hard for people who feel like they've invested a lot in capital. So Jason, yeah, that's something we could talk about. I have some experience in there, and if not, I have some other references depending on what your vision is for franchising. But, um, but that's— it's a really cool thing in terms of thinking down the road. So the first step I would say in looking at franchising is look on the Federal Trademark Registry. So if you just Google Trademark Registry, you're going to come up with a database and look to see if your business names are even available on a national level. So, um, because you can have state trademarks, but they're only available in your state. And if you're going to franchise, I would say you want to have something that you can federally trademark and register, and you want to make sure that there's nothing similar in that same field of business. So if someone has your name and sells, you know, electronics, that's going to be fine because you're in pest control. But if someone is anything close to pest control or residential services or something— that's my toddler trying to come in— then, then you might be prevented from using that particular brand name in that field. So Yeah, Trademark Registry. So that'd be your first thing I would look at. So, okay, so Melissa says, just using those photos on my Instagram, would that be considered personal use? So if it's your personal Instagram, yes, but if you use it for commercial purposes— so hey bud, yeah, I know, babysat. So, um, so if it's, uh, if it's like an Instagram site, if it's an account that you use that you promote both personal and business stuff on there— hey, just a second, um then I would maybe go and opt for the commercial license. So, um, because it could be argued that, you know, you're using this for business, you promote yourself on this. If you're using this for other things in marketing, like if this is your blogger account and you are hoping to get sponsored collaborations out of this deal, then, um, it really should be treated as kind of a business account and for business use. So if there's any kind of money changing hands, or you hope there's any kind of money changing hands from this account, It's a business account, so, and it should be turned commercial use. So I'll help you in just a second. So, okay, open up, Mom. I know, right? So, oh, can I be with you just a second? So it's real life, guys, real life. Naptime attorney trying to work at home. So, all right, um, unless there's any other questions, I probably got to go take care of this situation. But I, uh, I wanted to be here, um, and, and show up for you guys and be consistent because I know that that's important and I really appreciate you taking time out of your busy day. So I want to tell you about a couple things. If you're not already on my newsletter list— yeah, you gotta get back to work. I do need Nana. I need Nana here in my life. If you're not on my newsletter list, BrittanyRatelle.com/newsletter. It goes out every Wednesday. It has tips in it. I also just launched a podcast last week, Law and Wit. So it's on wherever podcasts are, and it's all kinds of tips for small businesses, creative entrepreneurs. It's a little mix of legal advice and tips and tricks, and then also advice from people in the field, people who own their own businesses who are successful in different ventures and different industries. So go ahead and listen to that, subscribe if you're interested, leave a review is what I really need. I would really love a review, and I'm going to be reading some reviews on air. So if you leave a review, then I might give a shout out to you and your business. So podcast is amazing. Everyone go see podcast is amazing. So thanks so much for being here. I'm going to, I'm going to finish up and have a great Monday, guys. Keep on slaying and working hard and really appreciate it. Thanks.