Is Your Podcast Show Name Secure? Mastering Copyrights & Trademarks To Safeguard Podcast's Success

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Hey there. Welcome to Feed you'd brand. I'm Tom Hazard along with my co host Tracy, and today we're going to talk about your podcast show name. More specifically, is your podcast show name secure. Mastering copyrights and trademarks to safeguard podcast Success. I tell you, Tracy, this is an often an inquiry subject by new podcasters, especially, do I need to trademark my name? Do I need to copyright this or that? And there's a lot of concern around it, I think. Well, there's a lot of uncertainty, but there's also, I think some things people need to understand so they can make some good decisions.

Well, yeah, because if you ask a lawyer, they're going to say, yes, you need to copyright it, you need to trademark it. So it depends on who you ask as to what kind of answer you're going to get. What's their driver? And here's the thing, Tom and I have, I don't know, I can't even count how many copyrights do you have? Because you don't have to actually file them to have copyright protection. So if I've written 3000 blogs of which I have, and they all have a copyright line on the bottom, they're valid. So copyrights are their own animal in and of itself. And everything in the digital realm has its own copyright rules and laws about takedown and other things. So that's a can of worms that we're really not going to talk about here. But I do want you to understand that that's inherent in publishing. You put a copyright in your feed, make sure you fill out that line. I think it's mandatory, isn't it, Tom?

It is mandatory. Not everybody does it the same way or maybe does it. Well, but the point is you're just claiming that your podcast is your copyright as the author. And so basically you say copyright 2023, or if you've been doing it for five years, 2018 to 2023, and then you're covered, right?

And you should put your personal name and your company name.

You should do both if you have a company.

If you have a company. So you should do Both. Always do both. It's for your protection as an individual and for value if you ever want to sell your podcast as a company. So you want both to be in place. If your company is not really paying for it, then it really should belong to you. So that's something. But your copyright line is inherently a part of setting up your show for the first time. It is a required field as it sends out to it. So you have to put something there. And so definitely do that. Put that in. Because you're claiming your copyright, it doesn't actually mean your copyright's valid. You're just claiming that because you could be infringing on somebody else's copyright, they could have the same name as you. Apple lets it happen. So you could have the same show name. And so that's possible that that can happen in the system, but. But they would have to have a registered copyright to come back after you ask you to take it down.

Let's step back a second because you're talking about podcast name there, Tracy, and that's not as easy. It doesn't really fall under copyright. The name of the show. It's your content that you're recording is copyrighted copyright. And it's inherently copyrighted when you publish it. And you do have some rights, some people actually file to register copyrights. That usually happens more with a book that you write. Certainly in the music music world, if you have your sheet music for a song you wrote, you would file a copyright for that so that it's more formal. Because in order to enforce it, you have to have a actual registered, filed copyright. But the other part of this is copyright is one thing.

I do want to say something right there though. You do not have to register at the time that you published it. They don't have to be one in the same. You can claim copyright at the time you publish it and register it year later. Like it doesn't matter on that that is allowed in this. I have attempted to use the copyright system to copyright podcast episodes and to copyright podcast in general. It's actually really complicated and it doesn't work very well. It's not as easy as a book or an album or anything like that. You would have to have a season and do an entire season for it actually to function. It can't be something that's continually running. It just doesn't work in the registration system. You can register only something like in its entirety.

So it's not the most practical thing to do. But the copyright laws are there to protect your original work from being copied without your permission. You actually give a lot of copyright permissions away to the listening apps. When you register your show, you're giving them the authority to republish, to distribute your stuff.

And many of them, you're giving them a right to cut up your episode and add ads in it too. So you're giving them right to alter your copyright. So you do need to recognize that just by publishing publicly and then submitting to Spotify or Apple or any of those places, you're giving away a lot of distribution rights. In this kind of case, you're not giving away the copyright to it, it's ownership, but you're giving an allowable use.

Right. And that's for most podcasters, that's a good trade off. You want your show to be distributed and available on Apple or Spotify, where people are going to be able to find it and listen. And so there is an exchange of value there that I think makes sense. What I think more people are probably concerned about and interested in regarding your podcast show name and is it secure is when it comes to trademarks. Because that's really what applies there to the name, right?

Copyright doesn't really apply to the name itself. I mean, there's lots of similar phrases, similar words. It's too short. You have to look at it from the trademark perspective. The problem is, Tom, that, and we know this well, is that Apple allows.

Duplicate names, every listening app allows duplicate names. There is no gatekeeper, to use an old phrase from the turn of the century. There's no legal controlling authority of podcast names, very much unlike website URLs, where it's either available and you can buy it or it's not available and you can't. Podcast names do not work that way. So yes, very often, even if, let's say you did trademark your podcast name, which is something you can do or you can attempt to do, and we know people that have done it. Even if you do that, the listening apps don't keep any record of that and somebody can publish another show with your exact same show name if they want to. Now, if you have a trademark that's registered for that, then you can get in touch with the listening apps and force them to take down that show or make that show change its name. That gives you the power to, to kick someone out of your territory on name. Most people don't do that though, right.

And it's actually more complicated because it doesn't follow under what they call the DCMA rules, the Digital Copyright Act. And so it doesn't follow under those rules because it's trademark and not copyright. And so because of that, you can send it to the app, but they don't have to act on it. So what you actually have to do is go to the other host and their company and send a cease and desist, basically. And so you have to insist that they take it down because the app is passive. Remember, the app is playing what's in a feed somewhere. Now, we've never had it happen that someone sent it to us as potatoes. The host of the show, like not hosting a show, but being the actual distribution arm for that show, the author. We're not the author, we're the distribution army because we put out the feed for you. But in that no one's ever asked us to take down a show because of trademark. It's not happened. We have had a trademark dispute, though, for a show with the name Entrepreneur, and we've seen it happen multiple times. It's not the first time. So Entrepreneur Magazine doesn't support entrepreneurship in general with the way that they enforce their trademark. So they have the trademark for the.

Word entrepreneur, which is amazing in and of itself, but okay, they got it.

Somebody with some deep pockets ought to take them down. Like that really ought to happen. They ought to dispute it because it's a common name and they should have never been granted in general, but they were. And so once it's granted, you're done. Like, you don't have any choices in the process. It's granted. But it's not just Entrepreneur that is. They've also gone and done blanket trademarks on Entrepreneur combined with other words. And so most people put a tm, a trademark, a TM line before they've actually done any filing.

And you're allowed to do that, and.

You'Re allowed to do that. Right. But you also haven't searched. And this is the problem. Until you do the search, you don't know if something's going to infringe. And so we have had a podcaster who has had to completely change the show, name their show Graphic, completely rebrand every single episode. And not just that, but Entrepreneur magazine made them force them to change their intro, outro and edit their episode for everywhere they said the name of their show.

Let's go into again, sort of the why here? Entrepreneur, right or wrong, has a registered trademark on the word entrepreneur. And they don't want brand confusion or what they believe might be brand confusion. And they try to kick everybody out of using the word entrepreneur in a podcast. Title name of a show and or titles of episodes and things like that. They actually have people looking for this and finding shows. And obviously, like Tracy explained, we have a customer that had to deal with the pain in the neck of after launching and publishing, I don't know how many 15, 20 episodes had to change and rebrand everything or face entrepreneur and deal with the threat of being sued. And of course, they have pretty deep pockets compared to an independent podcaster.

Right. And unfortunately for you as the host, if you're using a name like this, they also arbitrarily applied it. So like EO Fire, Entrepreneur On Fire, John Lee Dumas show, they didn't take him down. They made selective choices not to do that. And that's unfortunate to you. They basically can bully a small person and who doesn't have the deep pockets, or they're taking down what they see as early shows that aren't popular yet and taking them down when the popular established ones they're not going after because I think they're afraid of the publicity or too costly.

Who knows? I mean, the reality is they're making their own judgment as to who they're going to threaten and who they're not.

But it's not an excuse in the court. It's not an excuse that they didn't apply and force this other company out, but they forced you. It's not an excuse. And so if you're violating, you're at risk that you'd have to win in court to make that, to change that.

Yeah, that's true. I do know from experience and other trademark lawsuits, especially Jeep had one for the seven sort of racetrack holes in the radiator of their grills. And they used to keep any other car company from having that kind of pattern. And it was pretty broad. They had it for many, many years and until General Motors came out with the Hummer. And the Hummer also did it. But Jeep didn't go after GM for the Hummer with that pattern. And then eventually when Jeep was challenged on this, when Jeep tried to enforce their trademarks, they said, well, you haven't enforced it for more than a decade and Hummer's had this. So therefore yours is no longer valid. So it can be challenge, but it takes awfully deep pockets. I mean, two auto companies going after each other is one thing, right?

And you have to eventually invalidate them for not enforcing it. And that would be very difficult. It's not practical. It's faster, just not to do it. But here's the problem. Most of you Name your show, you fall in love with the name, and then you never checked it. And that's what creates a security problem, if you want to call it that. That's what creates a liability issue for you, that you want to trademark it, but you never checked it. So you don't even have a right to trademark it because others exist out there or names that are too similar, or a lawyer will come back and tell you when the search came up and popped up. And you really can't trademark this.

So let's explain what that little TM means on the end of a name. You basically, by putting that there and anybody can do it, you're telling the world, I intend to register this name as a trademark. That's my intention. I'm in the process. And if you who see this, anybody has a problem with it, you need to make yourself known, you need to complain. You need to voice your opposition to it while it's in this TM state before it gets registered. Because once it's registered, then the person who has the registration has all the power. So anybody can just put TM on a name and you're claiming, hey, I'm intending to trademark this. That's what that really means. When you have an R, you've got the trademark and the power. Okay.

Yeah. So right over Tom's shoulder, if you're watching this video, you can see the R on our potatized. And we put the TM and we also filed right away on it because it's the name of our company, it's the name of our URL. We had already done the search before. We named the company this because we didn't want to get into having a problem and the expense of having printing things and planning on this and building everything around a name, you wouldn't do that. But a show is experimental sometimes, so you don't really know if you're going to deep dive into it, if it's going to be worth it, if it's going to be the name you're going to keep. It's not necessarily worth trademarking yet.

Yet is a good word there. I mean, here's the thing. When it comes to podcast names, I do think there's. Well, in some ways, it's a little bit of the wild west, where you can do anything you want to, even if someone else has the same name. The reality is there is kind of this natural selection that happens where you're launching a new show. You search on the name you want, see what other shows you find that have the same name or if they don't have related names, similar names sort of view the landscape. You think to yourself, well, it doesn't make sense for me to have the same name as this other show most of the time. So I'm going to choose a different name. It doesn't make sense.

Of course, we covered that in a previous coaching call and episode. So like, if you want to hear about what happens when a similar name or you choose a similar name, we've got a whole show on that that was last week.

And there may be a good reason why you want to draft off someone else's success and have not the identical name but a similar name. Yes. So you want to look at that other episode for that. But most of the time this is a self correcting situation and people generally don't want to have the same name because it causes confusion and it makes a difference. If you want to have a domain name for your podcast website that's the same as your show and that's also not a requirement. It is a strategic choice. Sometimes it makes sense, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes doesn't matter at all.

Right, so let me tell you a little bit about what I did with the Binge Factor. So the Binge Factor is. And I'm going to turn my microphone so you can see the logo. That's the Binge Factor logo right there. It's pretty unique. It's pretty clear as to what it is and it stands out and it's unique in its look. You can trademark that logo in the way that it is. I chose not to do it. I actually put, because I was able to, because audio is considered like an album. So I put together a grouping of episodes and I copyrighted it and I decided to copyright the Binge Factor because everything that I do is digital here. Nothing's going to be printed. I'm not going to go out and make swag. I don't care about those kinds of things. It's not the name of our company. I didn't want to spend the expense, but 50 bucks seemed worth it. So I decided to copyright it. And I copyrighted it like it was an album cover. And I copyrighted it with also episodes that went in and under it in like a selection, if you want to think of it like that. So like as if it was a selected album of it. And I was able to get that. It's a registered copyright. It is easier for me to take down someone with the Binge Factor name because of that. Because all I have to do is say, I have a registered copyright. Here it is. It says the Binge Factor. Take it down in the copyright. It actually shows it without the logo. It also does have it with the logo too, which is kind of interesting. Like, it has it both ways. But it's basically like I was able to copyright the Binge Factor. And so as a name, as a title, because it's an album, because it's an audio program, it's a radio show, if you want to think of it, that's the way they treated it. So I was able to do that for it because it was unique enough. We were unable to and did not do that with Feature Brand, but we chose to put our potatoes bug in the middle of our logo so that you couldn't use brand confusion from the visual would be unable to do because that's right in our logo and that is a registered trademark. So we chose not to do it for Feature Brand as is, which is the show that you're listening to right now in a different way because the name was so generic that they weren't going to allow the Binge Factor was actually unusual and they did allow it because of that. So it's just thinking about what you're going to do with it, how you're going to use it, what it is in the scope of things, and is it worth the amount of money. 50 bucks was like no brainer. Felt like it was worth it for the Binge Factor, for what we're using it for, which is really a training program for all of you. Like, so that I do what you all do and you learn from how I handle this and what I do with it. It's in a sense a learning program and not necessarily something that I'm selling. I'm never going to put ads on it. It's never going to be commercial in that sense. So it wasn't worth trademarking for me. Does a choice that was made by.

Us now, just because you don't file to register a copyright or file to register a trademark doesn't mean you can't take steps to protect your podcast name and make it more secure. I mentioned before, do you have a domain name that is the same? What other things do you get that are tangent to your podcast name? And if you get more of those things, like, oh, you do buy the URL and you don't just buy the.com, you buy the.net, you buy the.org, you buy the dot, IO, whatever.

But I do think it's More valuable if you've bought the dot com, right?

Yes.

So like the bingefactor.com, we own that. And so it makes it easier to defend because someone's not going to swoop in on top of it.

And honestly, it becomes less valuable for the potential competitor who starts a show called the binge factor. When people say, oh, let's go to the bingefactor.com, they're just going to go to your website and not their website. And maybe that helps you more than it helps them. So there's this concept of building kind of a bigger moat around your name. How big a moat can you build around your podcast name? Your podcast brand with other pieces and parts that will be a deterrent to other people?

And this is what we want to say. Look, we've been using feed your brand as a podcast for long time.

I was just going over an episode that. Five years now, more than five years, because I actually was doing this test recently about the SEO power of a blog post. And if you type in a certain keyword phrase that's very popular, it brings up an episode of ours from exactly five years ago. So we were already publishing.

So we've been doing it more than five years. Which means if somebody tried to trademark that name, we would show up as existing art and existing in their legal search and actually prevent them from making a trademark on top of ours. So that's going to happen in that way, just by you going out there and producing week after week after week, you're putting effort into your name that has become a value which prevents someone from trying to basically swoop underneath you. But if you've abandoned it. Whole nother problem.

If you've abandoned it, Yeah. I mean, we need to be very clear. We're not attorneys. We're not intellectual property attorneys. We just happen to have a lot of experience with a lot of these things and have some beliefs and opinions about it. If you really need to confirm something regarding that, you need to seek the advice of a intellectual property attorney. Copyrights, trademarks, patents usually fall together under as a legal specialty, and there are lots of good ones and people that really focus on how these things apply to podcasts.

And I just interviewed Gordon Firemark, who's known as the podcast attorney. He's like a podcast law. He's a specialist in it. I just interviewed him on the binge factor and we talked a lot about copywriting, safeguarding things, and he's a big fan of that because it's easier to enforce Less expensive and other things. But he does recommend trademarks as well and he has a whole bunch of free tools and things on his website about that. So we'll link to the binge factor episode in this episode on potatoes.com in the feed your brand section in the blog post and you'll be able to connect up and check out Gordon as well. Get some good advice from someone who's been practicing law in the podcasting arena for quite some time.

That sounds like sound advice, Tracy. And I think it's a good resource and we always have good resources@podtast.com I don't know that I have a whole lot more to say on this topic. Do you?

Yeah, I think I just want to sum up and just say is like, look, patenting, trademarking, copywriting, like all of those types of things can get expensive. Copywriting is the cheapest thing you can do. Trademarks, the next cheap design patents, then utility patents. Right? Like it cascades in cost. So we always need to think of the return on investment. Is it worth it for me to do this? Is this valuable enough? Have I put enough work in to make it valuable enough? Like, I think that's a real question. Are you serious about this podcasting thing or not? Are you going to put in more than 10 episodes? Are you really going to go for a hundred? Is this going to become the crux and value in your business in terms of a deliverable? Then it's really worth investing in and thinking about whether or not you're doing something. That cost becomes spread out over hundreds of episodes. Now it's really valuable. So be thinking about that. When Tom and I think about whether we should patent a product, whether we think about whether we should trademark a name, we're thinking about the value at the core of what we're going to do with it.

The long term.

Is it the essential long term value? Potatoes is truly a long term value for us way more than feed your brand. But we put the work in on feed your brand and we do have rights there and we prevented other people from trademarking it because we put in the work. So those things become value over time. So that's also something. It's like whether you want to preserve your rights by putting a TM on it and make sure that you have an ability in the future, think about doing that. That's truly something you can do. But we never decide whether or not we're going to trademark or patent something until we're absolutely sure we're going to do something with it. And it's not a waste. I'd rather preserve my time, my energy, my capital for something really important in my business.

Right. And you build in long term, though, you want to think about if you're going to commit to a show for years, you're going to build a lot of equity in that name, in brand value. You're going to build equity in keyword rankings on your website. If you are publishing a blog for every episode the way we do, and there's a lot of value there that may be worth protecting.

The one thing that I do want to add to that is, though, if you think you're going to sell your show someday or your company and the show with it, which we've seen it happen in the real estate industry and the entrepreneur industry, they sold their company and their podcast along with it. You can raise the value of that describable value on the line item on your sale of it by adding a trademark, by adding copyrights, by making sure that you note your intellectual property value there. So if you think that that's the path you're on, go ahead and go do a trademark in it, because you're going to have the value.

Yeah, it'll add value to the sale value. It'll be an asset.

Okay, well, I think that's it for right now. Like, not attorneys, don't forget that. Consult one. But think about the value that you've built into everything that you've done. So thanks everyone for listening. I'm Tracy Hazard along with Tom Hazzard here on Feed you'd brand and we'll be back next week with some more podcasting tips and advice to take you to the next level in podcasting.

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