A single-episode podcast (host Tracy Hazzard) explaining intellectual property for product creators: differences between trademarks, patents (design vs. utility), and copyrights; when and why to file; and practical tactics to protect ideas while conserving capital. Emphasizes that IP should be relevant and valuable to the business, that filing should be timed (often as late as practical) to avoid wasted costs, and recommends provisional patents over NDAs when disclosure is necessary. Also notes that trademarks protect branding not functional products and that international filings depend on target markets.
Protect your brand, product or invention from the hazards of consumer product launching and go from idea to product to big brand. With guidance from retail product design and development experts Tracy and Tom Hazard get the insider secrets to put the right things in the right order with the right resources so you can out design, outsource and out profit your way to retail success.
Hey there, it's Tracy Hazard with product launch hazards. And we're really going to talk about patents and trademarks and copyrights today. And I want to start by first defining that intellectual property is really for evaluation in your business. Any good business planner would tell you that having assets, having intellectual property as an asset is good for your value, good for your business overall. But having relevant intellectual property and having good patents are just as important and probably more so. And so we always look at that as is this relevant to our business and is this making sense for our long term plan before we spend money on patents and trademarks? And so I'm going to talk a little bit about timing of those things. But first I want to define the different things because people are very confused. A trademark is not a patent. A trademark doesn't stop anyone from making your product. A trademark is simply a brand mark. Coca Cola has the brand mark. Coca Cola's recipe is not even patented, it's proprietary. But assuming that they did patent it at one time, that would have been a different asset. So I need you to understand that when you make just a logo, a mark, that's trademarkable. And there are lots of rules about this, trademark violations under the digital rules, the digital marketing rules. So really have to think about, there's a lot of takedown and other things. So that's why trademark is so in your mind as an E commerce seller. But it is really not stopping anyone from making your product. It's just stopping someone from putting the same mark you already have on that product. Patents instead do that. So you have design patents and utility patents are two different things. Design patents are the look of the product. So is my look original and am I able to file a design patent for it? Do I have an original shape, an original stitch pattern? If you've got a backpack or an office chair. Utility patents have to do with functional changes, things that are functionally different than anything else on the market or anything else in your category. And so those things advising you on whether or not design patent or utility patent, you do need an attorney involved. And I'm going to say right out here, I am not an attorney. I'm not giving you advice on what you should do with your product. I'm just trying to give you some information and some examples of what we've done and how we operate. So you have a sense of the value of protecting it and ways by which you might do that and preserve capital at the same time. So these are our goals here. The last thing of those types of things are copyrights. And copyrights are on text, on information, on all of those things. And copyrights are valuable when you're doing books and information products and other things like that. But copyrights are not applied to products, to useful products. You must file a patent on useful products. So we really have to think about that in terms of its cost because copyrights are inexpensive, trademarks are relatively inexpensive, but design patents and then utility patents are the most expensive. And then above that, you're filing a US Patent initially if you're here in the US and then you may need to file international patents. And here's where costs start to really explode. The more countries you file in all over the world that you decide that you may want to sell to, you don't want to file international patents for places you're not going to sell or you're not going to enforce it. It doesn't matter for that. Making it in a country you don't need to file unless you're going to sell into that country. It's about marketing and selling it, not where you make it. So even if you make it in Asia, you don't necessarily have to file an Asian patent. It may make sense for or it may not. The most important thing that we do is we wait as long as possible before filing a patent. And I know this goes counter to the attorneys out there cringing and whatever because we're in a first to file market. So they change the rules and the first to file has the rights. But the reality is, if you're never going to make it, we want to wait as long as possible in the process and make sure we're actually going to make it so that we don't waste money on a patent that we're not going to use. We also don't want to waste money on a patent that isn't going to be made or have the same features as we intend to market. So that's why we wait until after some of the early prototyping stages and the prototype and protect it actually overlap each other in terms of it. Because we may prototype and protect it right away. We may do the file the patents right away because we know exactly what we're going to make. We've already dialed it in through our prove it phase and we really know where we're going here. But we really don't want to refile patents. We don't want to go back and have to file expenses, extensions, or crash a patent that we've already paid for all the search and all of the filing fees, but then not get it to issue because it's not what we're making at all. So the cost implications of doing it too soon means refiles, extensions and maybe filing international patents in countries that we have no intention of selling it or don't really want what we have to sell. So we really need to think about this in terms of preserving our capital and preserving our budget. We really want to make sure it's the right product. We're absolutely going to go to market with it. We're sure it's the right thing. We aren't just filing a patent just to file a patent. Having a patent and an asset for your business, it needs to be useful to your business, not just having a patent number and saying, hey, that's an asset to our company. It's not an asset if it doesn't add to the bottom line of your company at the end of the day. So you want to make sure your assets are in use, your patents are in use. So that's why we wait as long as possible. But there's also the protection side of things. So this is where a lot of inventors and a lot of original product people get really caught up in is how do you keep others, especially the manufacturers, from stealing your idea? How do you keep other Amazon sellers from stealing your idea? Well, first off, your patent needs to be filed before it ever goes up on Amazon. So no one should have ever seen it before. But also very frequently we file the patent just as we're going to manufacturing process for our final prototyping or other things. So a lot of times if we have really specialized features, we either split it up between different manufacturers so each one doesn't know what the other ones are if there's multiple features. So we do that and then we consolidate it in the US and make the final prototype and or we use 3D printing and other processes to make sure that we're not exposing the invention too soon. As soon as we're ready and we have to get a manufacturer involved to make the tooling or to make the final samples, make the final prototypes, we file the patent right before that time happens. So we've extended it as long as possible. I want to make a quick word to non disclosures. So while non disclosures are great with factories and other things, they're also really not enforceable if you don't have the budget or the money. And sometimes they can make it really difficult to do business with. So Tom and I do not just randomly go with non disclosures. We prefer to keep our information as private, possible not talk about too much and or file a provisional patent which is very low cost. If you file it yourself, it's $130 for the filing fee. You probably shouldn't do that, but it means a relatively low cost, a few thousand dollars for the search and the filing fees with an attorney. So if you feel that you need it to disclose to a potential licensing partner, a potential manufacturer and or distributor, and you really need that, we highly recommend the provisional patent as opposed to a non disclosure. So that being said, in our group there's non disclosures and there's a bunch of other information and there's a bunch of access to different attorneys that we appreciate and use that specialize in copyrights and trademarks and patents, ones that we've used that we refer our clients to, they're available to you in the membership group. So you want to really make sure you go out there. The last word I want to say on this is that the best way to protect your product idea is to get it out there as fast as possible, get it getting traction, get it selling. That is your best protection is to stay ahead of the trolls and the competitors and the manufacturers. While you want to do all of your protection and filings and all of those things, your speed and being ahead of the curve and learning what's next and what you're going to do, being ahead of that means that they're always following you and that's your best protection plan.
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