EP 69| The IP Playbook Every Founder Needs to Learn Now!

Welcome to the Exit Engine Podcast, episode 69. Welcome to the Exit Engine Podcast, where we help founders, owners, and entrepreneurs turn their businesses into assets buyers fight for. If you're looking to grow smarter, reduce risk, and ultimately exit stronger, This is the show for you. I'm your host, Joe Stapleton, and with me as always is my partner in value and salability, Mr. John Kniff. Good morning, John.

Good morning, Joe.

John, today we're going to talk, uh, about property, but not the kind of property that you're used to. We're going to talk about not real estate, we're going to talk about intellect, the intellectual kind, right? IP, patents, all this actual property that a company or a founder can own That's going to make the— obviously make a major contribution to the value of the overall business, right?

It's so important because obviously, you know, property and real estate is things you can see and you can touch, right? Intangible property and intellectual property is key to so many businesses, especially these days. It's just a critical asset that— not that it gets forgotten, but I think people It's sort of underthought of, let's put it that way.

And there are things around the thing about this today, because we're gonna talk to somebody who is an expert in intellectual property, and we're gonna talk about specifically the ways in which there are ways you can handle and treat that property so that you can maximize its value. But first, John, let's talk about the new Exit Engine ecosystem. It's everything and everyone you'll need to plan and execute a successful exit on your own terms and timeline.

ExitEngine helps founders grow smarter and exit stronger by providing diagnostics, roadmaps, coaching, community, and advisory support that reduce risk, increase value, and make their businesses buyer-ready. It's the first exit planning ecosystem in the world, and you can start for free right now. Just go to www.myexitengine.com.

So today's guest is Brennan Lagarde, and, uh, Brenna, thank you so much for being here on the Exit Onion podcast.

Thank you so much for having me. I have so much respect for what you guys are doing, and I'm so happy to be part of it.

Oh, thank you so much. That's really, really kind of you to say, because, you know, what we are— we are all aligned. And when we first spoke, you know, the thing that really stuck out to me was how there is so much around IP that people don't know, right? And similar to the exit planning space in general, right, we are constantly kind of facing You know, the challenge of education around this stuff. And I think IP is really the same way for you, right?

Yeah, yeah, it very much is. You know, I talk to people who envision exits a lot and, and, you know, people have a very— they have a very narrow idea of who an innovator could be, what an innovative company looks like, what their innovations are or aren't. And what they really need help with is understanding how to frame what they have, how to best protect what they have, but mostly honestly how to articulate it to a potential buyer or business partner or anybody else, especially if they fall outside that kind of relatively narrow framing of what an innovator should look like. Right.

Well, let's step back for a second and just talk a little bit about what is intellectual property, right? So what are— there are different categories or different kinds of intellectual property and that kind of stuff. Can you give us kind of like a little bit of a overview of what IP really is and what are the elements?

Yeah, absolutely. So, so you start from the premise that everything in the world is completely fair game to copy. Copy, copy, copy all you want. It's not a crime. Go ahead, copy whatever the hell you want, right? Unless that subject matter falls within a few defined categories. And that's, that's intellectual property, right? So the first one is copyright. Copyright protects the creative— protects creative expression. It protects creative expression.

Yeah.

So the tangible expression of an idea, and it was originally kind of envisioned for artwork. It often protects software and other sort of more, you know, industrial or technical things. It doesn't protect the underlying ideas. It only protects their tangible expression. The second category is trademarks. So trademarks are, you know, any kind of word or phrase or anything else that's used to identify source to a customer, right? So trademark has kind of a dual, you know, public interest, public protection, and brand owner protection, right? So use trademark law to make sure that the brand equity you've built, right, all the positive those positive associations with you, right? You make sure that when, you know, somebody is looking at a podcast and it's called ExitEngine, it's you guys, not someone else offering an inferior product, right? Yeah, so it protects you as the builders of this brand, right? And then it protects your customers as people who are looking for you.

Got it.

Yeah, and then you've got trade secrets, right? And then, and so trade secrets are, it's commercially valuable information, economically valuable information that you manage to keep secret. It's pretty straightforward, right? And then, and then patents is the last one.

The trade secrets, like the formula for Coca-Cola, right?

Formula for Coca-Cola. But even beyond, we can talk about this more, right? But, but, you know, I'd argue for a pretty expansive view of trade secrets. And, and if, if there's one thing that companies out there have and don't recognize, it's absolutely trade secrets.

Interesting.

Okay. Yeah, it's a, it's a, I mean, you know, we, when, when I, when I kind of dig into a company, right, like, you know, usually there's copyright, there's valuable copyrights that they haven't really, you know, protected or considered or thought about. And so we do something with that and then we take a look at their branding strategy and how well it aligns with trademark law. And then we do a lot usually with trade secrets because that's, there's usually a lot of value there that they don't even recognize. And then the patent, patents are the last thing.

And the patents are especially specifically around the design, right? The technical development of something that is, and it has to be kind of profoundly new, right? Somehow.

Yeah, so patents protect inventions, right? And so invention can be a, you know, new way of doing something technical. It could be like a composition of matter, right? So there's a lot of overlap usually between trademarks and, or I'm sorry, trade secrets and patents, right? So, you know, you could probably get a patent at one point. You could have gotten a patent potentially on the formula for Coke, right? You know, but also, you know, the software is frequently patented and then, you know, any kind of mechanical device, you know, is potentially patentable subject matter. But the thing about patents is that you have a window to file and if you miss your window, you're done.

Gotcha.

And yeah, and then, and then you've got to go through the process, right? Like you can have a trade secret by recognizing and protecting your trade secret, but to have a patent, you have to apply for a patent and you have to be granted a patent. And yeah, like the requirements are something kind of fit within those buckets of patentable subject matter, right? Like a, you know, it can't be an abstract idea or a natural phenomenon, right? It's got to be something you made or invented, right? And it's got to be new and it's got to be non-obvious and it's got to be useful.

Interesting. It's got to be useful.

It's got to be useful.

And the patent, interesting between the patent and we can, well, we can get into this too, but like You know, I think one of the reasons why Coca-Cola didn't patent its formula is because wouldn't it have to be released to the public at some point?

Yep, yep, immediately. I mean, within 18 months, right? So, so the quintessential bargain at the heart of the patent system is you tell me your thing and I give you a limited period of exclusivity, right? So the first patent statute, or the first patent law, was, was promulgated by the city-state of Vienna in 1474. And so, yeah, so, so, so at that point, Vienna's primary industry was stained glass, right? So exporting amazing, beautiful stained glass. And they had all these, these, you know, the glass masters had these formulas for amazing colors of stained glass, right? And probably crazy toxic, right? You can only imagine. But, but yeah, but they lived in beautiful—

Mercury and stuff and lead and yeah.

Yeah. So when something happened to that head, right, it left the city-state of Vienna or got hit by a carriage or whatever. that knowledge was gone. And so Vienna identified this as a problem. And so they said, all right, like you inventors of novel contrivances, if you come into the state judicial office and you tell me what it is, tell us what it is, and they write it down and then they get a 10-year period of exclusivity. And so, yeah, and you know, and so Vienna did this in order to create a catalog of this intellectual property. Right? And the, and the glass artists took advantage of it because they wanted the exclusivity. And that is the essential bargain in the US and now all over the world. Like, I, I would say the patent system is one of our most successful cultural exports, right, in the United States. Like, everybody's got a patent system that's, you know, a lot like the one that was framed in the Constitution and by the founders in the first patent statutes in this country. And the essential bargain is you disclose your thing And you get a limited period of exclusivity. But as you point out, John, trade secrets last forever as long as you manage to keep them secret.

Yeah, and the interesting thing about the bargain that you talked about, right, it's, it's, there requires a lot more in society and in business culture that, that would make that work, right? So in other words, you're going to use the patent system if you're confident that the government or the authority that's enforcing that will actually enforce the patent law. Because the last thing you want to do is I disclose my Coca-Cola formula and then you don't have a government entity or an authority to enforce your exclusivity period. Again, bad example because it's a trade secret. But what I'm saying is a patent, like if no one enforces that patent and you're— and honors that exclusivity, then what's the point?

Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, that's exactly right. And this, this can get a little bit, you know, I don't know if you guys want to run with this, but we'll just all say it and you could decide, right?

Yeah.

So, so, you know, I started practicing in 2001, right? And in the kind of mid-aughts, right, 2005 to 2010, you had a lot of patents that covered, you know, standard business methods only done with computers.

Right.

Or standard business methods only done with the internet.

Deliver flowers over the web, something like that.

Yeah, things like that. And people patented those, like the famous eBay one-click, you know, patent, right? Or the— I think it was Amazon anyway.

Amazon.

Yeah, like a lot of business methods, like honestly business methods only done with a computer. And the Patent Office was underfunded at that point and it didn't do a great job through the late '90s of, you know, examining those patents. So you had a lot of like kind of patents out there. And then the Eastern District of Texas promulgated like local patent rules. And I think that was actually a really important contribution to the legal system. But what it did was create a perception of a very favorable patent forum. And so you had a lot of patent suits that people didn't regard as super legitimate. And then you also have these gigantic tech companies like Google, right, and Microsoft and the others, right, with, you know, they don't need— they have a lot of patents, but they don't need them, right? Like they succeed succeed via sheer market dominance, you know. And so, yeah, and so, so you have— you've got this sort of perception, and then in some ways a reality, but lots of perception of a patent troll. And you have, you know, the tech industry feeling like maybe they shouldn't be enforcing patents, maybe patents aren't for suing people, maybe that's not a moral thing to do, right? Which is kind of crazy because again—

And the open source, hence the open source—

Open source people. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's a period of time when I get on an airplane and like if I tell somebody in the airport that I'm a patent lawyer, I got lectured about open source. Like it was a little crazy, right?

I bet.

Yeah, yeah, no, it was a big thing. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

I sat next to a dude one time who sold title insurance, you know, and he asked me what I did. I told him I'm a patent lawyer. He's like, isn't the patent lawyer patent system messed up? And I'm like, dude, you sell title insurance. Like, come on, right?

Talk about messed up, right?

I know way too much about title insurance. We're not going to go there on this suckers.

And it was fascinating. But, but anyway, so, so the problem is, again, like, if you're a small company, you know, I mean, everything that you create is up for grabs but for the IP system. And so if you're Google, you do not need it. But if you're not Google, you need it. Well, right.

Yeah, let's stick on that for a second. So like when you, when you, when you're counseling, someone comes to you, right? You get a Someone throws something over the transom and they come to your firm, they get in touch with you, you have a call with them at 10:30, right?

Yeah.

And what is your guidance for someone who said, I have this novel way of doing XYZ using software? How do you sort of— what's the positioning or what are the questions you ask that entrepreneur about that idea, software, That type of thing.

Okay, so it's software. Yeah, um, we start— so for software, and don't generalize this beyond software, right? But for software, we talk about like, who's the audience? Like, is this, is this a B2B play or is this consumer?

Yep.

Um, you know, like, how novel is the space? Um, how abstract is the space? Like, is there a— is there— is this basically a business method or is there a more kind of technical output? So by way of illustration, right, like I'm in Portland, Oregon, the home of Nike, and there are— the city is, I don't want to say awash with, but like there are a lot of kind of advertising method tech companies.

Sure.

Right, like novel and sometimes really genius ways of scraping, analyzing, crunching data in order to enable other companies to maximize their prices or something like that. The output is behavior. Right? And so that, that's dicey subject matter for patenting, right? Like you can kind of get— there's a rule that you can't patent abstract, an abstract idea. And so something that causes a human behavior as its only output, like, you know. And then the other thing is the patent system is long and arduous and slow. And so inexpensive. Right, so if you're not really sure that the output— you're not— I don't know if I can get you a patent or not, you know, like we can throw together a provisional. And often it's a good idea for fundraising because often the fundraising, the earliest, the tech fundraising community expects patents even on stuff that, you know, isn't necessarily great.

They like to reduce the risk by having the patents or whatever, so they want to make sure that everything they can patent is patented so that they're protected from an investment standpoint.

Yeah, yeah. But if, if you're the company and you've got to choose between hiring a sales guy and drafting a patent, like a sales guy, you know, if you're in that space.

Totally. No, absolutely. Absolutely. And this brings up again, this is actually a great, great point because what we see all the time in the exit planning thing, right, is that you are taking the short-term win over the, over the potential long-term effect of what you're doing. Right.

And it's easy for it.

happens to all of us, right? All business owners, all founders, anybody who's running any kind of organization at some point is looking and constantly balancing this kind of short-term effort versus this long-term gain and that kind of stuff. And how do you look at this? And of course, we're talking about exit planning, which might be the ultimate long-term play, right? John always talks about how it's like, you know, what we're selling here is diet and exercise, you know, which is difficult, right? It's like, yeah, yeah, I get it. And if I can stick to that, Right. Um, but it is, but, but I think the patent game is the same, is similar, right? It's like, it's a matter of you don't want to spend, you have the choice of, I can buy it, I can get a sales guy right now and get this top line revenue up, right?

Mm-hmm.

And hopefully then my profitability as a result or whatever, or I can spend, you know, thousands of dollars on a patent getting this together. That will be, again, will be, and the question is balancing that value. Right. Because what is the long-term value of having that patent to my organization overall? And one more sales guy and getting revenue up right now would be, again, difficult call because it might be that you were in a situation where I need that top-line revenue right now.

Yeah.

And the thing about it is, right, like, it's, it's, and that's, again, like, we're talking about a, you know, kind of a, you know, a fairly data-oriented or like a consumer behavior data-oriented software application, right? Where, you know, again, like, It's, it's, that's difficult terrain. It's not impossible, but it's a little difficult. But if you're in deep tech, you have to have patents. If you're in any kind of regulated industry, you have to have patents, you know. And again, like anything in the world, like it's up for grabs copying-wise, unless, unless it's a form of intellectual property. And it's almost always easier to copy, copy than invent. And in certain industries, it's It's, it's, it's orders of magnitude easier to copy than invent.

Hey, I'm Jo Stapleton.

And I'm John Kneff.

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Don't let your life's work get discounted. Control your business destiny today. Start preparing now while you still have time to engineer the exit you Visit myexitengine.com to learn more. And Brenna, just can you go into like why you— when you said you— why you have to have patents, can you just expand upon that? Why do you— why do companies have to have patents? What's the benefit?

So In any kind of regulated space, right? Like, you know, pharma, med device, and I see a lot of med device, right? Like, you've got an FDA clearance process ahead of you, right? And that's expensive and difficult. But then once you've proven that a certain technology, you know, works for— is safe and effective, right? Like, it's, you know, like that finding endures to the benefit of your competitors as well, right? So if you hope to recoup your investment in all of that R&D and that, that, that, you know, clearance process, like, you have to be able to fight off your competitors. Or as soon as you put a little head up into the market, they're going to eat you alive. Nobody in their right mind would invest in you.

Yeah. So I didn't mean to interrupt. Sorry.

Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, so deep tech, so that's a regulated industry, right? You know, deep tech, you know, which, which is a, you know, sort of more fundamental science, right? Like, that just takes a really long time to, to get to market. And there's a lot of, you know, a lot of times, you know, the, the hard part with deep tech is proving that it works, you know, and proving it works like well. And so, so once you've proven that it works and proven that it works well, again, like, you've spent a lot of time and effort and money to get there. And once you've done that, it's— you're pretty easy to copy, especially by larger companies, right? You know, if you're a smaller entity, right, you're trying to prove up something like the minute you prove it, it's super easy for a multinational to knock you off unless you have a patent.

Right.

So it's one of those things where like if you've got to really invest heavily in the creation and you don't have a period of exclusivity, then you know, why wouldn't someone just copy you if it's such a great idea?

Right.

If it's software and you're flipping it out to the public, you know, I mean, speed and branding is where you're gonna live or die. Yeah, right. But if you're doing science, that's hard, you know. I mean, software is hard too, but science is hard.

But the landscape, the landscape in science and biotech and the pharma industry and the whole thing is such that there's so much time that, that goes by where this stuff, if it was out there, could be, could be reverse engineered relatively quickly and the whole thing. And someone could potentially beat you to market if they were, if they had the right resources. and stuff. And I think that's obviously what the, the whole, you know, discussion around China has been for so long too, right? Which is that their whole— you know, there's a— depending on who you believe, there's potentially a, you know, they've got a purposeful method out there, right, of being a— of reverse engineering everything they possibly can to redo it and to be able to do it cheaper and faster, you know, whatever, if, if not at a higher quality necessarily, but maybe at a— right, at a faster You know, production pace and things like that, right? So, but that's exactly the— there are things like that, like you said, and I love the phrase because I think this is an important thing for all of us to know really, is just to say that the notion that assume everything will be copied, right?

Yeah, everything worth copying. The critical bit of information that people need to copy your thing is not your thing. They can pretty much figure that out. It's knowing that it's worth it economically.

That's it, right? So they got to know whether or not, from a— right, from a— from a— from an economic standpoint, does it make sense for me to do this? And should I be building it, or should I be doing my own thing? Or— and again, and, and then even the process of like, let's go back to the Coke example, right, where Pepsi one day comes along. I don't know how far after Coke it was, but— right, but it was probably a good distance just because it was a— but There was something about the way Coke did it that made Pepsi say, hey, we could do this too, and maybe we could do this better.

Yeah, yeah. And that something was, wow, look at all those people drinking that stuff.

Yeah, right, right, right. There's plenty of market share here. We could take this away if we made it a little bit sweeter or whatever.

Or, well, the random story about— the random story about Pepsi is they actually got the Coke formula and let Coke know, like, back in the day. Like, they— someone, one of the employees of Coke, tried to sell The formula to Pepsi. Yeah, it's a crazy story.

We're not going to do industrial espionage there.

Yeah. Yeah.

But those are real things, right? That corporate espionage, the way of undoing this stuff. And again, maybe today it feels like everything's more open in general. There are more people building in public. There are more people out there kind of sharing ideas. And like you said, so much of it is software related. It makes it— that makes it so much of it makes it difficult to actually patent.

Yeah, you know, in margins, the world wide are slim, right? And so the other kind of, you know, so, so when I say like the, the thing, the piece of information that, that leads to copying is not usually how the thing works, it's that it makes money, you know.

Right.

You know, and so, so yeah, so, but, but like there's, there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of value in the kind of little edge implementations that create efficiencies, right? Those are That's when I say that companies have trade secrets and don't know it. It's those little edge efficiencies, you know, it's the little things that, you know, that usually are the difference between something that's profitable and something that isn't.

Right.

You know, but it's kind of back to that information, right? Like those, so those things are a little more difficult to copy because they're often manufacturing processes that aren't really evident from the thing. But with that caveat, anything can be copied now. Like anything.

It's, it's like, I think of like, and this may be a bad example, but like cloud computing, right? Like everyone's doing cloud computing now, but like, I'm assuming that like that Microsoft and Amazon and other cloud providers— was it Oracle? Yeah.

Oracle was the one. They were the ones.

They're the one, they're doing it differently in the sense of whatever. And I'm not a technician, but like storing the materials and recalling the stuff. Like, is that something, Brenna, that could be patented by Google to say the way that— not the cloud computing we can't patent, but the way that we recall or the way we store the information on our servers is patentable?

Yep. Yep. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that kind of like technical subject matter, you know, when I say deep tech, like deep tech is on computers too, right? Like, you know, improved ways in which how they— yeah. Yeah. How they process data, how they exchange data, how they send data. You know, cybersecurity. There are a lot of patents in cybersecurity. You know, I think all of that is fair game. Yeah.

And right now, I mean, in particular, obviously the cybersecurity space is a big one. AI obviously has got to be huge, right? I mean, there's so much of that going on right now. Have you, are you, you know, have you been following? I mean, is there any insight you can give us in terms of like what's happening from an IP standpoint in the AI space? You see all these things like, again, we all use ChatGPT now the way that we use Google, probably. It's become that quickly kind of ingrained in what everybody's doing that's been given away practically, right? Like the tech is used to consumers, but what's the IP behind that like?

So Anthropic, OpenAI, absolutely patenting innovations.

Right.

Yeah, they're absolutely building patent portfolios. You know, and I mean, they're sort of, you know, AI-assisted ways of doing things. You know, that's subject matter that is absolutely being patented. You know, and then, and the legal system is very much struggling with, you know, like how much AI is too much AI for there to be human inventorship. You know, like how much AI is too much AI for there to be, you know, copyright eligibility, you know, things like that. And those questions are kind of in the process of being, you know, worked through.

Right.

Yeah, the new patent commissioner has a strong opinion about, you know, the need for there to be eligible patent subject matter in AI creations. You know, he's not a judge, so we'll see where that goes. But You know, I think it's important if you're, you know, I mean, if the idea is that, you know, patents should serve the important technologists, the important technologies, the important innovations in a society, then, you know, you got to think about the value of carving out, you know, chunks of subject matter. And so I think it's really important to think hard about, you know, where the lines are in AI. But that's in the process. I mean, you know, it's in the process of evolving. Like the legal system doesn't have a better idea of what to do with this than anybody else does.

Yeah, because these things have to be protected, right? To your point, like, you know, we want, you know, the government wants to foster innovation and wants to foster new businesses. And to the extent that they, that the guardrails are there and that people know that their inventions will be protected, I mean, again, they must be novel and fit all the criteria. But yeah, wrestling with what is patentable in this AI world, I'm glad I'm not doing that.

Let's put it that way.

Yeah. Yeah, and it's, it's also, you know, I mean, China's a huge filer. Chinese entities are huge filers of US patents, you know, and so, so there are sort of different ideas about, about what that means and what the law should be and how the law should work. And so not to get, not to get deep into the inside baseball aspect of that, you know, like that means that there are Chinese, you know, invention disclosures. So, you know, for example, you know, China's been trying not to export battery technologies, but it's still filing battery patents. You know, so, so yeah, so that, that information exchange aspect, you know, continues abreast, right? You know, even as trade barriers otherwise create limitations in markets.

When they file those patents though, are they filing patents? I mean, there, there is a, there is a certainly a, a, I'm going to use the word state. Just as a government thing, right? Or as a place like there is patents and the whole thing also have a geography to them.

Yes, yes, right. Yeah, patent rights are national. Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. So U.S. patent gives you the right to enforce it in the U.S. The Chinese patent gives you the right to enforce in China, right?

Right.

And so the reason China China wants patents in the U.S. is so that they can enforce the they can use the U.S. patent law to enforce those patents in the United States, right?

That is their purpose.

That's a great point, Joe, because I didn't know that. That's— yeah, okay.

Well, we had, we had a client we were talking to that had a lot of this IP, and that was, that was where this came up. So the idea that, that the state— I'm just using that, that was the term they used because I think this is just to show the difference between the state versus the corporation versus the, versus the audience or the market, right? So, but they— but that though, those file— those filings have to be done in every country in which you want this to be enforced, right? And Even though, like you said, it was— our system is the one that's been basically exported to just about everywhere else. So the system is probably similar, or at least, you know, whatever, to the US. But you've got to file a patent in every country in which you expect to be able to want to be protected.

And that's right.

Right. So I mean, that's a big deal because, I mean, think about a corporation, you know, small business that comes up with this stuff, you know. And again, it depends on where your market is and things like that. But there are people— we talked about the corporate espionage thing, you touched on it just a little bit, but I mean, this is a real thing, and there are people out there that are actually out there looking for these technologies to be able to exploit them in other places because it is such a process. It is an expense for these people to be able to get this stuff done. So how do you counsel people? You know, and again, I know that you have the same— we talked about this already. Sometimes you got to go to people and say, hey, look, you don't know what you have here, and you've got to protect this stuff.

Absolutely.

What's your advice around that when it comes to, look, where are you doing business, and how are you making decisions about where to put where to, where to, you know, to get patents and where to get that protection.

It's, it's, yeah, it's where the company is and where its market is, right? And so, you know, as a practical matter, you know, like you can get a patent in, you know, Azerbaijan, but I don't know anybody who has, you know. Yeah, you know, you want that.

Obviously you're going to, if you're a US company, you're obviously going to patent that first because that's where your market is. It's probably the largest market you have, single market that you have. There's no question about it. But what is the, what is the case when, when you, when that's not your only market, right? And I mean, what happens if I want to do business in, you know, EMEA and Latin America and stuff like that right now?

The major markets. I mean, usually the short answer is you hit the major markets, right? Like, you know, I mean, you know, Europe's a tough one, right? Because every European country, right, unless you do a unitary European patent, which is its own kind of So usually you hit the major markets, you know, like you hit the UK and Germany and, you know, maybe France, right? And you figure that nobody of any consequence is going to knock you off without hitting one of those jurisdictions, right?

Got it.

But you don't get damages in the countries that you haven't patented in, right? So in Latin America, right, you go for Mexico, you go for Brazil. In Europe, you do, you know, China and, you know, and Japan and Korea. I'm seeing definitely more Indian patents patents. For sure.

Yeah, you know, a lot of software, you know, a lot of technology development.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, yeah. And a lot of times it comes down to confidence in the judicial system, right? You know, because you got to sue them in India, you know. So, right.

That's what I was saying earlier, right? It's like you have to have confidence that you're— if you're going to file it there, you have to have confidence that the system that's going to enforce the patent is there. present and active, right?

Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, for the first, especially 10 years of my career, you know, as China became ascendant, right, like there was a big question about, you know, like, is the Chinese judicial system, you know, a reasonable means of recourse, especially to a Western country or a company? You know, so, you know, I mean, if you, if you're going to get a— if you're going to file in China, are you really just giving them a Chinese language dissertation about your attack that you're never going to be able to enforce Right.

And that 10 years is going to go by. And by the way, what are they going to do with that technology that you've now basically— or that patent, that information that you've now basically given them?

Yeah.

And they're willing to play a long game, right?

Yeah.

So they'll take— sure, oh, you file any patent you want here, we'll take it, right? And by the way, you invented the system, uh, that, that we use that gives everybody a 10-year window. And so we'll just wait it out, and then we'll— and in the meantime, we can reverse engineer anything we want to reverse engineer. We just can't technically put it out into the marketplace yet. But you know that that day, you know, whatever, 3,600 and, you know, whatever the 10th, right? 10 years in one day and bam, this stuff is out there.

Yep. Now there are mechanisms to kind of put off those international, those foreign filing decisions for a while. We don't need to get into the procedural details, right? But like there's a, there's a World Intellectual Property Organization and there's kind of a structure to file and then And then kind of put off the nationalization phase, which is a really expensive part, until after you have a better sense of whether this is going to go or not. Yeah, so there are ways of making it a little bit more feasible, but it is a lot of expense. And it's, again, decisions you've got to make well in advance of having all the data that you would like to have to make them.

And Brenna, let me ask you a question. So switch gears a little bit, but let's say that you're counseling somebody and they have They have a patent, right? And they suspect that a company has copied them or they've borrowed some ideas. They've borrowed the sort of essence of the patent. And there's a couple of different scenarios that you counsel them on. Like, what are the options that a company has in that specific scenario where they've bothered to get a patent and then, okay, this has happened or something's happened where they need to make a decision. What are those decision points?

Yeah, so it's funny you mentioned that actually, because this is why I moved to Inveneo. You know, so, you know, I mean, Inveneo is like the intellectual property offering in Inveneo is very much directed to figuring out what to do with those patent applications or those patent portfolios that people have built, right? Because it is a whole different step, right? There's a whole— there's a lot of, you know, decision-making processes and expense and thinking that goes into getting the patent. Then once you have the portfolio, you know, I think people kind of think that like, you know, others will beat their way to their door and demand a license or something like that. And that isn't really how it works. Like the Patent Office, your patent portfolio just sort of sits there and absorbs maintenance fees, which could be quite expensive until you figure out what to do with it, right? And so I joined NVIDIA to do that for companies to figure out, okay, you've got that portfolio, like what can you be doing with it?

It's a strategic decision.

Yeah, yeah. A lot of it is kind of like, where does it fit in the technological ecosystem, right? Including, is anybody infringing it? Can anybody use it? You know, like, can we put a couple things together and make something that's bigger than the, you know, that's bigger than the parts, right? Um, yeah, because these are all, these are all completely— I mean, every situation is different. Like, there are some kind of ground rules and certainly things I've learned the last 25 years, right? But everything is different. And so, yeah, so I'll start with the portfolio. You know, like often they'll have a— they'll know who their competitors are, right? And they'll know what their competitor technologies basically are.

Yeah.

You know, I'll use some patent analytics studies and data to figure out, you know, if there's activity around their sort of technological ecosystem that maybe they don't know about, you know, like the same technology being used for a purpose that isn't really competitive, for example, so it's not necessarily on their radar. Other people who are in their space, who else is trying to solve the same problems, maybe using different technologies, you know, all that kind of thing. Stuff we can tell from kind of patent analytics data, you know, and then we figure out like, is there infringement, you know, and is there, are there like kind of obvious licensing opportunities or co-development opportunities, or is there somebody out there that they could join forces resources with it maybe they don't know about, you know, combine technologies and create something that's got even more value. Those are really exciting.

That must be really interesting because you're, again, you're taking a problem— not a problem, but you're turning a, oh, this company is infringing upon my patent into, hey, here's a licensing opportunity. Yeah, here's a business development opportunity to turn it again on the problem versus a challenge issue, right? Or opportunity. Problem. So it's interesting.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, I got to tell you, like, being an IP lawyer is the absolute best job ever.

Like, it's cool.

I'm sure you guys have fun too. But yeah, I mean, really getting in there, like, understanding, you know, what's special about this, right? And how else does it fit in?

But I love the strategic look that you're taking. And I think that's, again, that's a real important thing for our audience to know too, right? Which is that, again, this isn't just about, okay, I want a patent. Great. So your patent lawyer is going to come in and give you a bunch of forms. You could do this yourself, right? That's not something— I mean, you technically could fill out the darn paperwork if you wanted to.

Sorry, I've done it, Joe. I tried to do it by myself. It is the patent that I— I'm actually a patent holder, you know, humble brag right there. We can get— we're not going to get into that, but the forms and the figures, and I'm using the wrong terminology and Brenna can correct me. But the format of those patent applications, in order to get it processed quickly and to be— was— I'll never get the time back in my life. It was, it was the worst. It was, it took—

It's an involved process and there's a lot of art to it, right? I mean, you know, this is something that I learned from my first mentor, right? Like someone will bring you their invention, you know, but the thing that you should be patenting is not that thing. Usually it's an abstraction of that thing. Right, right. You know, and then which layer of abstraction you run with in your claim strategy. Like, there's a lot. And then how is it going to work in other countries? US, what does infringement potentially look like? There's a lot of—

it's a very— The work that you've got to do up front, right, to be able to— that you— where you need the expertise really is to say, hey, look, this is patentable, this will get passed. Because what you don't want to do is to take all that work and do all that effort To have it not accepted, right?

That's right. That's right.

That's the thing. So the idea is to know what Brenna's bringing to the table is, again, like I was, I was, I understand that I overspoke when I talked about how, you know, filling out the form yourself, but it was just to, just to bring the point was that no, you need the help. You need people like Brenna to not only not to fill out the forms necessarily, but to fill out the forms in the right way. Right. And in the, with the right tone and the right, you know, the things that they know will work. Right.

Yeah, the search before— sorry to interrupt, but the search before was so much of the work that, like, that I didn't have anything to do with other than describing what we wanted to patent. And then the attorneys went off and did a search and came back with really pointed, like, 5 or 6 things, if I recall. 5 or 6 patents are already out there that were doing the same thing and already had been filed. And it's like, there's no point in patenting this app, this part of the application. You need to file for X, Y, and Z. And the lawyer that worked with us was— she was awesome. And she pointed us to say, like, forget these 7 things, focus on these 2 or 3. And I think it was 3. And it was like, oh, great, that's way easier in scope and we can really go into detail.

So, I mean, to give you an example, right? Like, you know, so, so I've got to change the names to protect the innocent. Right. But I had a company that was making a med device. It was an ultrasound probe, and it was lighter and useful for certain things that, you know, it had distinct advantages, right? And so the shape was different, and the angles of the transducers were different, you know, and it was lighter overall. And they'd been pursuing this sort of, you know, plain strategy, right, of patenting light probes or slim probes, things like that, right? And they were running into a lot of problems because if you've just got— if you're patenting something that's a question of degree, right? It's the same. It's a thing that already exists. It's just a little lighter. Like, that's a hard patent to get because everybody, you know, obviously it's good to make something lighter, so why wouldn't you just make it lighter, right? And so, so, but the, the way that they were running the electric Through like the way they were configuring the wiring harness, to be perfectly honest. Like, that was novel and it was what made everything else possible, right? And there was— there's nothing else like it, right? So, so when I came in, we switched strategies from an incrementally lighter probe to a wiring harness and a probe that was configured in a certain way, right? And that led to 3 new funding rounds.

But Brenna, the figuring out of Yeah. So I'm the I'm the inventor of the thing, right? And I am thinking, and I'm looking at the wrong end.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Patent the wrong end. How does that come up? Like, right? I mean, you you're brilliant, right? But I mean, you don't have a med device, right? Probe background. What was it that was able for you guys to be able to? What was the mechanism that you guys the lever you guys pulled that allowed you to understand and make that recommendation?

I mean, yeah, so, so, I mean, it's, it's the hard thing about it, right, is when, when clients come in, they're, they're used to talking to customers and, and, you know, and funding sources, right? And so they're like, you know, these are the advantages of my thing, these are the advantages of my thing, right? And they're not They're not talking about the technologies that make those advantages possible because everyone's taught them not to when they're talking to customers and funders, right?

They're talking about benefits with customers and they need to talk about features with you.

Yeah.

And then, and I don't, I like the sure benefits, whatever, right? Like, and those are important. Obviously those are important. But what I really want to know about is how they achieve those benefits. And that's the same conversation, whether it's an ultrasound probe or a chunk of software or Or a novel molecule or whatever it is, right? Like, you know, how are you doing the thing that everyone wants? You know, because if you're not— yeah.

And you're understanding and breaking that down, right? So then when they give you this information, say, here's the whole thing, you guys are looking at the whole thing and going, let's look at this piece and this piece and this piece individually as if they were, right? And let's look and go do a search. And see if there's things like that out there or whatever, or does it meet the requirements legally, which is really what you're doing, right?

Yeah.

You can say, does it meet the— what, which of these pieces of this thing meets the legal requirement of being able to be patentable?

Yeah. And it's a communication exercise, right? I mean, I, you know, there are like 2 people, there are 2 types of people in the world, right? The people who think that nothing that they create is all that special and the people who think that everything they create is very special.

They all listen to this podcast.

People present their own challenges, right? And digging out like, why is this hard? And the thing about the patent system is it's not supposed— it's not supposed to reward the ordinary march of technology, right? Like it's supposed to reward the leaps or the swerves or the things that wouldn't exist but for the incentive of a patent. And so what I'm really trying to draw out when I'm doing inventor interview is you know, what— why didn't anybody else come up with this? Like, what problem did you solve, right? Another example, another med device, you know, there's a doctor who came up with a way of fixing nasal cartilage, right? So what was conventionally this big rhinoplasty procedure, you know, was instead this, like, little splinting procedure, right, which was way easier, less expensive, less traumatic, all that, all that, right? And the device looked like an 18th century sewing implement, right? Like it wasn't anything special.

Right.

You know, like he made the first prototype with like bits of a dental floss container, right? But, you know, but like when he really got in there, like his key innovation was realizing that while the cartilage in like your you know, your joints won't heal together if it's torn. You have to fix it. Your nasal cartilage is thin and vascular. So if you kind of rough it up and splint it in a new configuration, it will heal in that configuration, right? So like, that's the thing. That was his invention. It wasn't the little hooky dealy, right? It was the realization about how nasal cartilage behaves. And so then we have to figure out how to put that, like how to articulate that as a patent claim. You know, and that's like, that's what, that's, that's why you need a good patent lawyer. Like, that's, you know, that's what we do.

Well, yeah. And so, so building upon that, like the sort of the future, right? What do you see in the future for IP and innovation economy and in the innovation economy? Like, what is coming down the road? What do we, what can we expect or what should we guard against? What can we guide our client, our listeners about?

I mean, it's, it's I think that like assertion is going to become a lot more possible, right? So you can now get third-party litigation funding for, to, you know, to assert a patent. And, you know, if there's enough money in the assertion, if a bunch of other things are true, right? Like you can, you can defray your costs to assert in a way that you couldn't otherwise do it. You know, and I also think that, so I think that's going to be important. I think it's going to be more and more important for people to not just sort of set their patent patents on a shelf, right? But really think about what they could be doing with them. You know, I think that, I honestly, I think that foreign competition, particularly technological competition, is only going to accelerate.

OK.

You know, and so getting more strategic about using the IP, like using the, you know, the creative genius that we have here, protecting it, understanding what it's good for, figuring out what to do with it is going to be all the more important. I mean, the thing honestly that worries me, you know, sort of the most from a person who's in this industry is the massive changes in foreign or in federal funding of science.

I was just gonna go— yeah, I was gonna ask.

Yeah, I don't know if you want me to go there or not, but, you know, no, that's a terrible, terrible thing. I mean, the intellectual property system has, you know, it's a stool with 3 legs, right? Like, one is, you know, rigorous, competent examination by the U.S. Patent Office. You know, and there are reasons to be helpful there and also reasons to be, you know, a little discouraged there because those are federal workers like every— all the other federal workers, right? You know, and then, and then defensible, like strong patent rights. And the one thing about the Trump administration I'll definitely say is that, you know, like they're, they're, they're people who understand that there should be value in a patent, right?

Yeah.

And they're people who are, who are, who are ensuring that especially for smaller entities that there is value in a patent. patent. And I think a lot of what has happened in the Patent Office under Trump has been really great. But the other sort of, the other leg is innovation. And a lot of the hard, a lot of the innovative heavy lifting is done by universities pursuant to government grant. And that's a big change.

Yeah. What happens, speaking of that stuff, what happens when When a university like that does do this research and, and, and itself comes up with the patentable thing, right, then, then it becomes what, a licensing situation, right, where the, where the, where the university is not going to be able to do anything with it commercially, right, but this, except for to sell the license to use the technology, right?

So frequently what happens is the, the prof— if the professors who invented it, like the researchers who invented it, if they want to spin out a company Then they get a license from their universities, they spin out the company, and then they pay royalties back to the universities as they're successful. Universities also license and sell their patents to private industry all the time. So yeah, universities tend to have large patent portfolios. They tend to be good assets. They're often really innovative, you know, and yeah, and they're licensed. They're available for private industry to take them and leverage them.

Right. That's, and that's the whole point of why they do this, right? I mean, that's literally why they exist is to be able to make sure that they, they're making these innovations and then those innovations can get rolled out to the people, the corporations and all that stuff that can use them and, you know, and all that stuff. And obviously it's a major part of the way that they also, I'm sure, uh, the universities themselves fill their coffers and pay for research in the future and stuff like that too, right? Yeah.

And create opportunities for their faculty and their students, right? Sure. I mean, that's, I work with universities a fair amount, right? And one of the things that I'm doing is, you know, finding places where, again, like, where does that technology fit in the technological ecosystem, right? Like, who could take that and run with it, you know, and who wants to work with university, you know, again, students and faculty to kind of form those public-private partnerships that make that happen, right?

Let's talk a little bit, just bringing it back to the kind of smaller business owner, right? Let's just, you know, most of our audience is, you know, somewhere in the, you know, $3 to $15 million range. Okay. They, they may be, and again, in various states of their journey too. So we're not necessarily talking about people who are ready to go tomorrow.

Yeah.

But what we are talking about is, you know, again, what, what are the things from an IP standpoint that you would counsel, you know, in general businesses, you know, who have any kind of intellectual property? What, what should they be doing? What should they be looking at? What are the things that they have to be aware of that are going to, again, in terms of the way that this creates value for them, right? Overall, right? Not about value necessarily today, which it could be, but really about their long-term value.

Yeah. So, so the first place to look at, the first place to look is trademark, right? Like everybody's got a brand on some level to somebody, right? So So are you protecting your brand, which is, you know, it starts from the very basics, right? Like, have you federally registered your trademark? Because you've got to do that for heaven's sake, right? You know, and then beyond that kind of basic step, like what, how are you communicating with your customers about what you're doing? You know, like what words are you using to describe your product offerings? How are you telling them that this is something that they need? You know, and when you come up with innovations, how are you, how are you, how are you describing or talking about those innovations?

Right.

You know, because, you know, anytime you innovate something like you have to talk people into deciding that they want it, right? And you've got to use words and communication language around that. And, and, and it's, it's, it's possible to do that in a way that blows your trademark rights, right? You can attach that learning to words that you can't protect, and then you've just opened up a bunch of brand value for your competitors to capture, right? Or you can be smart about it and think about how to attach that, that learning, that education to something that you can call a trademark, right? So, so we talk about when I go into the company, we talk about that. Like, what are, what's, how do people identify you? Why do they identify you? What are they using? Are they using things that are trademarks? Are we treating them as those as trademarks? Can we start treating those as trademarks, right? Because, you know, you can blow trademark rights by sleeping on them over time, but it's not as stark as it is in the patent realm. And then, and then we go into, you know, so if it's, if it's technology, if it's innovation, you know, where is that innovation? And again, like, there are— I've talked to so many companies over the years, they're like, we're not innovative, we're not a tech company, we're not doing anything, right? But they're usually doing Something to be profitable.

To beat their competition, right?

Yeah, yeah. You know, something's different in there that they're doing so that they can make something, that they can make a margin on something, you know. And so we just— and so we figured— we figure that out, you know. We figure out like, what are you doing, you know, that— and often they don't really have a great sense of how what they're doing compares to their competitors beyond what you'd find in, you know, basic sales collateral, right? But they know what they've done to be profitable. You know, like they know what they're doing to be efficient enough to be profitable. Like they know, you know, and so we talk about that and we recognize that those are trade secrets, right? But, and you can call it like you can go into an M&A transaction with trade secrets among your assets if you've identified them.

Right.

But you have to know what they are, and better be you that identifies them as opposed to the buyer identifying them, because that's going to change the nature of the arrangement.

And also, you can give away— you could be giving away things, right? If you have a novel way of identifying customers and potential customers from whatever, some sort of formula or scoring or something like that, and you're giving that away or you're not documenting that for the buyer, then you're not getting appropriate value for That's right, that's right.

And you're not— and odds are you're not protecting it like you need to be as well, right? Yeah. Because once you understand that something's a trade secret, you know that you've got to, you've got to protect it. And that is a statutory requirement for a trade secret. Like, you have to take reasonable measures to protect it. So we got to talk about that, you know. And then the other thing is, like, we talk about their customer relationships and their supplier relationships, right? Because, you know, again, like, the piece of information that makes the biggest difference between whether you're going to get knocked off or not is knowing that it's economically worthwhile to knock you off, right? So who are you teaching about your economic value? Well, probably your suppliers, possibly your customers, right? And those are all people you have contracts with. So we look at those contracts to figure out, you know, if you're properly protected, right? And we make sure that you're not giving away information that you don't need to give away.

In order to— the supplier stuff, just give us an example of that. That's in my brain of not being able to under— like, just give us an example of when you counsel the company after looking at their contracts that they're giving too much information to their suppliers or vendors.

So suppliers and vendors, you know, they don't need to know about other suppliers and vendors usually, right? Unless there's a real reason to know, they don't need to know, you know, and they don't need to know what you're doing to their thing necessarily. necessarily in order to make it into your product, right? Like, you know, I mean, if they're a major— if they're a major supplier, not just a bit supplier, right? But if they're supplying the central, you know, core of your thing, right?

The aluminum to the boat you make. Yeah, right, right.

Yeah, like, you know, I mean, and if they're your secret sauce particularly, right?

You don't want to let them know that. And B, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

It's gonna be like, if I don't— if I don't buy your aluminum, I have I have no business.

The potatoes for French fries, right? You know, whatever it is.

Let's renegotiate the cost of that aluminum, right?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, you know, um, yeah. And, and key customers also, right? Especially if you're white labeling your tech, you know, I mean, and you're charging a lot for it. You know, what I see a lot is, you know, companies that they launch, they have their first big customer relationships, you know, they're, they're still a little wobbly on their feet. You know, as they kind of sort through some stuff, they have some, you know, some supply interruptions or something like that, and they piss their customers off, you know, having business hiccups like happen, right? And the customer is like, why do we need to deal with these clowns? We can just knock them off, right? Because we know everything that we need to know about how to do it because we've learned it in this relationship, right?

Interesting.

You know, so you've got to kind of see that coming and sort of think about, you know, how much information are you giving to people and what are your contracts say. You can't restrain trade generally because that's an antitrust problem, but you can, you can assert your intellectual property rights, right? You know, and so you gotta, you gotta think about them. We gotta talk about them. You know, we gotta figure out, you know, whether to make you as, as you know, how to avoid all the vulnerabilities that we can avoid.

Right.

And mitigate all the vulnerabilities we can mitigate. So we do that. We talk about, you talk about, you know, your, your sort of sales ecosystem and how much you're telling people. And who you have contracts with and what those contracts say, you know. And then we talk about, you know, if there's like copyrightable subject matter, you know, and sometimes that doesn't feel like a big thing. But, you know, I mean, I represented a company at some point that like they were like they created, they were sort of a trade education company, right? And so they prepared people to take, you know, trade, professional trade tests, right? And so they had this library of materials in all 50 states that they developed, you know, forever. And they hadn't registered copyrights in any of that.

Oh no.

And they didn't really recognize its value. And so, you know, like we, they, they found themselves a summer intern and I trained her how to register copyrights, which is not, that's not that, that really is a form you just fill out, right? You know, and so she registered, you know, God, I don't know, 500 copyrights or something like that, you know, for them. And, and they had a very successful exit. They went from being a company that didn't have any IP to being a company that had a lock on some extremely valuable IP.

You know, this is exactly right. This is— I mean, that's the perfect example, right? Is to say, like, that there are oftentimes, guys, where you don't even know what you're sitting on, right? And so having a conversation with someone like Brenna— yeah, conversation, okay? Yeah, just to open up the door to say, hey, what do I have here? And what are the things that I've been doing? Especially if you've been a relatively successful business for, uh, you know, a period of time, right? And to know that you've been making a profit and that you are doing something— there are likely things there that are actually patentable, or at least trade secrets or things like that, that is IP that can be protected, that is then going to make you more valuable overall as a company. Not just because you can use this thing in creating revenue, but because having it in itself is an asset.

And that's the thing that I want to just emphasize to the audience is like, you know, these patents are, and this, these things that you have of value are assets that are going on your balance sheet, right? They're, they're, they're components of value. And if you're not using them appropriately, it's like a machine that's not running or a plant that's idle or, you know, a person that's not being used properly.

It turns out you have a whole factory and it's not on your balance sheet.

Right. Or not producing revenue. Right. If you, if you have— imagine, like, no one would let a factory sit idle because that's something that's in the news. But a lot of these companies have these assets that are being maybe being used, but they're being underutilized to such a criminal degree in the sense of if all these investors knew how much intellectual property was at these companies, there would probably be an uproar of why aren't— you know, I'm not going to single out companies, but Pharma Company X or Technology Company Y, why aren't you using all this stuff you've created to create more value for your shareholders?

Yeah, yeah. And the answer usually is like nobody's really looked at it. Nobody really knows why or what. And then with small businesses, you know, the issue is like it's usually some people who just kind of saw a need and they figured out a solution and they're working away at the solution and they're thinking about, you know, customers and orders and things like that. Their, their, you know, noses are to the grindstone. And to look at the intellectual property, figure out what it is and what it's good for, you have to kind of step back a little bit, right? You know, and ask yourself some really basic questions about like, what, what do you, what are you doing? Like, what do you got? You know, what else could it be good for?

Wow.

You know, I mean, when a buyer comes in and they're not, they're, they're, there's something more than enterprise value, right? Like they're, they're, they're planning on doing something bigger with your thing than what you're doing with it.

Yeah.

Right? Like you often, often the thing that makes sale, right, is when you can articulate the intangible assets and how they relate to a bigger thing, you know. And, and that's such a good point. That's something people have trouble doing on their own, honestly.

Yeah, absolutely. Look, like any of this stuff, okay, and, and I think it's worth repeating here, guys, that, you know, what we're all— we're trying to do always, right, is to be able to open— just open everybody's eyes a little bit to, to the stuff that they are— they are— it's easy to miss.

Yeah.

It's not your fault. You're head down. You're a busy person right now, right? You are growing something. You've been, as Brenna said, your nose has been to the grindstone maybe for the last 5, 10, 15, 20 years, right? You have done, but you have, but it is absolutely worth stepping back, getting someone like Brenna to be able to just take a look at what you have and what you've been doing and the way you've been doing it and seeing what is there well in advance of you getting to a point where you're ready to sell, right?

Yes.

Because the other thing is protecting it. The other thing is being able to grow it, right? And so one of the things you may want to do when you find out that you've got this stuff that you didn't realize you have is figure out ways to license it, to do other things with it that are gonna, gonna, gonna make that value again, uh, you know, exponentially more than just having an IP. Having this IP that an asset would have a price tag on it from some buyer. It's about what you do with that IP and how you promulgate that IP, right?

Monetize it, frankly.

Yeah, monetize it. Exactly right.

Yeah, yeah. And it's, um, what else? I mean, there are people who are ready to sell their companies because, you know, their markets kind of hit what it is, right? Like, you know, there are people, you know, there are people whose businesses are Like they've sort of exhausted their technological niche, you know, like there's now ChatGPT, the world has moved on, right? And, you know, and so, so this thing that they think is their competitive advantage may not really be a competitive advantage anymore, right? But they have brand equity, you know, they have know-how, they have relationships, you know, like they still have, like they have valuable, even protectable things. You know, and we can talk about how to articulate that in a way that isn't aimed at the kind of, you know, vanishing market. So especially now in this time of, you know, huge technological changes, certain industries, it's all the more important to really have a strategic, thoughtful discussion. And yeah, I mean, as far in advance as the exit is possible is for all of this stuff is better, right? Because you pull me in at, you know, in the diligence phase, right? Like I can do some trademark registrations for you and we can talk about that. stuff. But there isn't really an opportunity to, you know, there's a lot of, there isn't a lot of opportunity there at that point.

Yeah.

And that's the point, right, is to do this just like, just like we talked about exit planning, right? You want to do it early and often, right? This notion of getting in now, wherever you are on the journey right now, and getting someone like Brenna in to take a look at, at, you know, at where you are. And again, what the thing that I've learned today, and the big thing that I'll take away is the fact that, you know, we, none of us really know what we're sitting on. Yeah, right. Because again, it's not our, it's not our expertise. It's not where our head's at. We're concerned about, you know, top-line revenue and profitability and stuff like that. And we're not even, we don't even know sometimes that we've done something that really is truly innovative, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, um, there are tech companies that, you know, they have patent processes, right? But like everybody brings especially into the patent discussion. You know, people, first of all, people conflate, especially technical people, conflate patents with all of IP. And so they miss the trade secret thing entirely and they don't understand the value in their brand or how to leverage the value of the brand or not scrub the value in their brand, right? And so, so, you know, like that IP discussion is all kind of subsumed into what do I think patents are, right? So what I encourage, you know, innovative companies to do is to just start recognizing like problem solving, you know, like, yeah, like just anytime somebody solves a problem, you know, just note it, recognize it. It may be patentable. It may be a new way to load the dishwasher that makes the kitchen cleaner, right? But like, you know, you build a culture of recognizing problem solving and recognizing contributions, you know, and then you can kind of— the patent, like a healthier, more productive patent program grows from there. Because you're focused on the impact, and then we kind of unpack the why after we sort of flag it for impact.

Such a great, such a great point. Brenna, thank you so much for joining us today. Where's the, where's the best place that someone can reach out to you, or how do people find you to get in touch with you?

Yeah, so my law firm is inveniolaw.com, you know, I-N-V-E-N-I-O-L-A-W.com. I'm on the website. I'm also on LinkedIn. And yeah, reach out. I love this stuff and I'm happy to talk about it and see what you got.

That's so awesome. Awesome. Well, Brenna Lagarde, a partner at Inveneo LLP, thank you so much for being here today. It was all of this discussion about— important discussion about intellectual property and the ways to be able to, A, recognize it, right, that you have it. B, understand how to actually get it protected, right? And then be able to actually— and then know how to What do I do with it moving forward, right? Which is to be able to— how do I monetize it? How do I make it more valuable than it is? And all these things obviously are directly contributing, right, to your total exit value, right? So the other thing you don't want to do, guys, is again wait too late, right? We don't want to be sitting there— again, as Brenna mentioned, she could be there with you at, you know, during due diligence, and, and she might be able to do a couple of things that help protect some things, or, or in fact things that maybe the buyer even wants to have done before they take over the company. to make sure everything's buttoned up. But she's not going to help you at that point— she's not going to be able to help you do much more than that. So the idea is to understand what IP you have, examine, learn that you may— there may be IP you have that you don't know you have, right?

Yeah.

Understand what that is, be able to actually identify it, get it protected, and then be able to figure out strategically what to do with it so that you can actually make it worth more and make your company worth more as a result. Brenna Lagarde, thank you so much for being here today. We really appreciate it. You guys, you're going to see more, a lot more of Brenna around, hopefully moving forward here, because this discussion is obviously an important one. These are direct contributors to total exit value. And when you go through our— and take a look at our framework at ExitEngine, at the new ExitEngine community, you'll find at myexitengine.com, you're going to come in contact with this stuff. This is some of the stuff that we're going to, you know, part of our framework is to have you taking a look at your IP and then be getting some help from people like Brenna. All right, so understand that your IP is one of the biggest underlying kind of, you know, pillars of your value. And it's not just about value now and about protecting the value, it's about raising that value and being able to do something with that and creating more value from that as we move forward, right? As usual, man, thank you so much for being my partner. I really appreciate it. Brenna Lagarde, thank you so much. From it's Invenio, I-N-V-E-N-I-O-L-A-W dot com, correct?

Yep, that's right. Thanks so much.

Law IP and and this is this is the Invenio becoming one of the country's leading leading you know firms here that deal with this IP stuff. So reach out to Brenna whenever you can. You'll see her hopefully. Hopefully down the road we'll be doing some work, some, some collabs together as well. So you'll see that coming down the pike. All right, um, guys, what we want you to do right now, right now, okay, is make sure first of all you are subscribing to this podcast, okay? It's easy to do. You can do it at podcast.myexitengine.com. You can go to Apple, you can go to Spotify, anywhere you can get podcasts. You can go to our YouTube channel, which is youtube.com/exitenginecommunity. subscribe there, subscribe somewhere so that you get this every week, right? And it's going to be automatically downloaded right to your phone. You're going to have that. We also want to hear comments from you. You can reach out and hit me and Jon at any time you like. We are very open about this, right, Jon?

Yeah.

You can hit us at— just send us an email if you like, jo@myexitengine.com or jon@myexitengine.com. And find us on LinkedIn. We're all over the place on LinkedIn. But most importantly, please, right now, after you subscribe to the podcast, then we want you to go to myexitengine.com. You're going to go there, you're going to see, you're going to take it, we're going to walk you through exactly what Exit Engine is, what it can do for you, how it works. And it's the place you're going to get to meet people like Brenna, like in person, like for real, and be able to have conversations with them and ask questions and really understand everything you need to know about how to set an exit trajectory, And how to, how to hopefully one day exit on your own terms. Thank you so much again, everybody. John, thank you. Brenda, thank you. I'm Joe Stapleton. That's John Kniff. This is the Exit Engine Podcast. We'll talk to you next week. Thanks.