108: How to Legally Protect Your Online Course From Copycats

Hi there. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to ask you an important question. Are you wondering why your hard work isn't reflecting in your bank account? If so, I've got something that could change the game for you. With my digital product accelerator one on one coaching program, I'm on a mission to help entrepreneurs like you be bank consistent revenue without sacrificing your time or sanity. Imagine shifting from 90% client facing work to enjoying consistent revenue from your digital products, all while reclaiming your time. You already know that you don't need another course and a one size fits all approach isn't going to cut it. What you need is a strategic long term plan that tailored just for you. So if you're ready to build the profitable freedom giving business you dreamed of, apply to work with me by going to destinycop.com apply. I cannot wait to learn more about you and your business. Welcome to the Course Creators MBA podcast. I'm your host Dr. Destiny Kopp and I help business owners increase the revenue with digital products and automated sales funnels. In this podcast, we go deep into product and marketing strategies for digital product creators. We cover everything from digital product creation, how to market and sell your digital products, and just as important, how how to find your ideal customer. Before I begin our show today, I want to let you know that this episode is sponsored by our flagship Course in a Box program which helps you create your revenue generating course in less than a week. Course in a Box is available on AppSumo at a special deal and you can learn more about Course in a Box by visiting the link in the show notes. Let's jump right into our show.

And today my special guest is Amy Nessheim. Amy is a corporate lawyer turned online entrepreneur and founder of Artful Contracts. She started Artful Contracts because she believes that all business owners, no matter the size of the business or how successful, should have access to high quality legal resources without going into debt over massive legal fees. She is on a mission to make the legal aspects of online business accessible to everyone so entrepreneurs can grow their businesses faster and with more confidence. Amy, thank you so much for joining me. I am so super excited to jump into this topic with you today.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm happy to be here.

Yeah.

And what we're going to be talking about is how to legally protect your online course. And I know that a lot of the online course creators and entrepreneurs who are listening to this podcast episode, we all, and I've been here too, right? We all have fears that some somebody is going to copy our course name or our course content and we won't be able to do anything about it. And it's actually happened to me, so I know, I know how this feels. So can you walk us through what we can do to protect these digital assets in our company?

Yes, this is such an important topic that I get questions about all the time.

So.

So the first thing to know is we are talking about intellectual property. So as a creator, you are creating things. As a course creator, you are producing things out of your brain and they are your brainchild. You love them, you want to protect them, right? So just by the fact of having created it and having it put down on paper, or, you know, digital paper, as it were, by recording something, you are the owner of it and you have legal rights to protect it. So there's two categories that we're talking about here, and that is copyright and trademark. And I'm sure you've heard those words before, but you might not know what they mean or the difference. So copyrights protect the creative works, things that you create of your imagination and then put into a fixed format, like videos and workbooks and your courses and anything you write that goes along with it. Blog content, social media content, all of that, your content is copyrighted. And just by creating it, you automatically have copyright protections in it. Now the other side of it is your course name, your business name, all of your branding is protected by trademarks. So that's the difference. Copyrights protect your content, trademarks protect your branding. And again, you also have automatic trademark protections in your course name and your business name just by the fact of using it in, you know, in your market, by selling things, you automatically have some rights. But of course, what do you, what does that even mean? What do you do with it? And how does that actually help you for your copyrights to protect your courses and your products, your content, all of that? You, there's a few actions that you can take and the first one is to just put the copyright symbol on all your stuff, which is not legally required to protect your stuff, but it helps other people know and like, puts everyone else on notice that you are the one who owns that and you're not giving everyone permission just by publishing it to use it themselves, right? So first step, let everyone else know that you own your stuff by using the copyright symbol. Second step is if you do get into that situation, you can write a letter. And I know that sounds super basic, but you write a letter just again, it's telling that other person that you have rights and that you're going to enforce them if they don't do what you say, which is take down your content. So you write a letter. And then the second step would be if that doesn't work, have a lawyer write a letter. And there's also ways that you can let the domain host know or let Google know that someone else has copied your stuff and they'll take it down for you. And that's called a DMCA takedown notice. So, Destiny, I know I just said a lot of things. So did that bring up any questions for you?

No, that's. That is great information. And as you were going through here, I always like to refresh my memory and making sure that I'm doing everything I'm supposed to be doing too, in my business. So from what I understood from what you were saying. So for copywriting would be like putting that copyright symbol on any workbooks or cheat sheets or any, anything that we've created in our course. And this apply to our website too, right? Any blog content and, and so on and so forth. And then if we found somebody who's actually copied that content is sending that letter, and I'm sure you have a template for us. And then the second step would be having a lawyer send out a letter and then we can also contact the domain host to have that taken down. So that's the copyright. What about the trademark? Can we go into that process a little bit?

Yes. So for trademarks, I do recommend that if you are serious about your business, serious about building your brand, and you want to have a national brand with recognition across state lines, which as online course creators, online business owners, of course we want that because our market is not limited to our local area. Right. Then the way that you, the best way to protect your branding is to actually register a trademark with the US Patent and Trademark Office. And this is a long process. I do recommend that you get help from a lawyer who actually knows the process because it is complicated and it has some nuances that can trip you up if you don't know what you're doing. So get some guidance on it. But that's the best way to protect your branding because then you have ownership of your brand in the, in your market, in the area that you sell things. So in the online course space, you have ownership of that name and of your logo. If you decide to register your logo as well across the US and not just in your local geographic area. So with copyright protection, it's across the US Automatically, you have Some protection there. But with trademarks, the automatic protection is fairly limited because the law is stuck back in the days of local pizza shops and local businesses, brick and mortar, where people would, you know, people would recognize a business based and go to a business based off of the local area and not this online national market that we have now. So there is a bit of a lag in the protections and that you do need to get it registered in order to have that national protection.

So that's some great information. And Amy, would that apply to our business name plus any name that we're using for any of the courses that we have?

Yes. So it's any branding item and what trademarks are. The definition is basically the. The thing that people use to associate your goods with the business itself. So the thing that ties together the fact that you're selling something that identifies the source of the thing that you're selling. So the source of the thing that you're selling is anything, is any branding item, basically. So that can be your business name because that identifies the source of all your goods. It could be your course name because that identifies the source of the course content. Right. And it could be your logo. So big brands, to give you an idea is like the Nike Swoosh logo that we all think of. We know automatically we associate that with Nike. That is a trademark. Just the Swoosh itself, the word Nike is also a trademark because it identifies the business. But then you also can have trademarks that are sub product lines. And really it can go a lot beyond that. Like some hotels have trademarked their signature scent that is sprayed in the lobby. So you walk into a lobby, you smell it and it makes you think of that brand. It's that brand association that makes it a trademarkable thing. So I don't know, I find that interesting. It's probably not super relevant for a course creator, but it's to give you an idea. It's any branding item you can trademark.

I do think find that fascinating. My husband works for Intercontinental Hotels Group, so I will definitely have to ask him about that, about the special sense that they may have trademarked. So the folks listening to this, in addition to the online courses, they might be providing services either as a freelancer or an agency or just a service provider. So. And they have websites too. So what other aspects of our business should we worry about protecting from a legal standpoint?

Well, of course I could not be an online lawyer without talking about contracts. Right. And especially for service providers, we need to be making sure, I mean, and course Creators, we need to be making sure that we have contracts in place for every relationship that we're entering into. So I like to think of contracts as the rules of the road for every relationship that you enter into. And as a business owner, there are lots of relationships of different types that we need contracts for each type of relationship. So to break that down a little bit, your website visitor, you have a relationship with them, they don't pay you. So that's a different relationship than the relationship that you have with someone who purchases your course. And that's a different relationship than you have with someone who purchases your one on one coaching package or your service. And so each of those relationships needs to have rules that both people agree to abide by. And that's what contracts are for. And so you have different contracts for each type of relationship.

So let's kind of delve into this a little bit more. So you mentioned that we need to have contracts for people who are visiting our website, and then we need to have contracts for people who also maybe purchase our online course. What are those called and what are they? Give us a little bit more context around that.

Yes. So for a website visitor, you don't, you might not think of it as a contract, but your terms of use or your terms of service on your website, sometimes they're called terms and conditions. The thing that's posted on the site and there's just a link in the footer and that. So that's your contract with your website visitor. And so a lot of times you'll have a terms and conditions, you'll have a privacy policy, and you might also have disclaimers. And so those three things together outline the expectations that the visitor can have, the types of the rights that you have as the website host and the rights that they have as the visitor. So they can, and that helps protect your content because you can say right in there, they can download a freebie from you, but they can't sell it themselves or they can't use it outside of internal business use. That type of thing is what's in your website terms and conditions. And that's different from the contract you have with someone who purchases from something from you. So if it's a course, then that would be your terms of purchase. And that's when you need to have that check mark box on your checkout page with a link to your terms of purchase. And there's that little phrase that says, I agree to the terms of purchase or I agree to the terms and conditions of this page. And you make sure you link to that. Again, it can just be a posted like a posted wall of text on your on page, on your site, but they're agreeing to it by interacting with your site or by making that purchase.

Okay, so that's great information. I have so many questions for you. But I just, you know, another, another question that I get a lot because, you know, we help freelancers get up and running with one of our other brands and they always want to know, and this would apply to, I think everybody listening here, you know, should I set up an llc? You know, what are the benefits of setting up an LLC versus just running your business as a sole proprietorship?

Yep, this is a great question. I recommend LLCs. I think they're great. It's so for anyone who doesn't know, an LLC is a simple business entity. And so what it does is it creates a separate legal person from you. So the business is a legal person and you are a legal person and there's a legal wall in between you and your business. So if you don't have an llc, the default is sole proprietorship and that means that you are the business. There is no legal separation between you and the business or your money and the business's money. But when you create the llc, it puts a legal wall in between your personal money and your business money. So if, for example, you got sued or a client wanted a refund you and you didn't have the money in your business to pay for whatever that obligation is, a debt or a lawsuit, then that money, the person who you owe is basically out of luck. They can't go to your personal money, they can't access your personal savings account, they can't put a lien against your house because there's this legal wall in between your business and your personal money. So, so if you basically I tell people, if you have either high assets in your personal life, like you own a house, you have a retirement account, you have a savings account, or if you have high risk in your business, like you sell high ticket programs or you sell products that are risky, or you are in the health industry and people might have a reason to sue you. So if you either have high assets or high risk, then that is the reason to have an llc.

So I would say the majority of the people out there would need an LLC to protect them. Protect their personal assets.

Yes.

So one last question I have from you for you. Let's just say that people are starting from scratch and they know that they need to build all of this protection into their business, but they don't have anything yet. Where would you suggest they get started? And that might be a loaded question.

It really is. All right, so if you're, if it's, let's see, if you don't have a website yet and you are just getting started by doing one on one services, then the first thing would be to get your services contract in place. You can, that's the absolute first thing. If you do have a website that you're using to advertise your services, then you should get your website policies in place because that's going to be. If that's going to be available before you even start selling services, then do that first and then immediately get your services contract in place.

Okay, I like that. That's a great, great tip. So let me ask you this. For the terms and condition privacy policy, even the contract that you just mentioned that somebody would need to have before they provided services to somebody else, where can people use template legal contracts? Or do they need to go to a lawyer to have them custom drafted for them? How does that work?

One of the biggest mistakes that I see online business owners make is grabbing templates from just anywhere that they can find them. So on a blog, or from their own coach, or from someone else's website, just copying and pasting. And I have to say, don't do that. Templates are fine if you know the source and if you know that they are built for your industry. When you're just grabbing, copying and pasting a template from someone who is not a lawyer, or from someone who has not given you permission to copy that template, then number one, if you're just copying and pasting a policy from someone else's website, it is copyright infringement just the same as if you were copying and pasting a blog post. And number two, you don't know if where that template came from or who wrote it. You don't know if the source is someone who actually knows laws. You don't know if it's written for your industry, you don't know if it's written for your state and country. So, so templates are fine, but get them from someone you trust. Get them from someone who actually knows the laws. So get them from a lawyer. Basically, I would say for most people starting out, you don't need the custom contracts. You definitely can make do with a contract that is drafted for your industry and then just tailor it yourself to your specific business. Once you get more established, then I think it is a good idea to pay for a lawyer to draft a custom contract. But if you can't afford it yet, don't just not have contracts. Get the middle ground, get the templates because they really are that important.

Great advice, Amy. Is there any last minute comments or anything else you can think of that you would want our online course creators to know about related to protecting themselves and their business and their courses?

I know that the legal stuff can be really seem really overwhelming if you don't know anything about it, but it is possible to do it. And I guess I just want to leave you with this. Your business is, is the source of your livelihood. It's the source of your inspiration and your freedom and it is worth protecting. If you're working so hard to build it then and just for it to all be taken away because you put off getting contracts or because you didn't have the right policies in place on your website, like those things are avoidable. And so if you're putting all of your time and energy into building your business, you should be protecting it at the same time and it's totally worth it.

So Amy, thank you so much for joining us today. Before we end here, can you let people know where they can find you?

Yes, I am. My website is artfulcontracts.com my handle across social media, Instagram, Facebook is @artfulcontracts just to keep it simple. And I also have a free training that goes over the my the top mistakes that freelancers make when starting their business and the three steps to get all of your bases covered. And you can find that@programs.artfulcontracts.com.

And we will make sure that those links are in the show notes so everybody can check out Amy's training. Amy, thank you so much.

Thank you for having me. It's great chatting with you.

Thanks for listening all the way to the end. If you found value in this episode, I'd love a quick review on whatever podcast platform you're listening on. If you don't know what to say in the review, just say Destiny. I loved your episode on whatever topic you're listening to. This will help us get our content out to more people just like you. Have a great rest of your day and bye for now.