Protecting your intellectual property as a content creator, with Devin Miller
Episode 8, Season 2 – Devin Miller

 

Welcome to the eighth episode of the second season of The Micro Niche Mastery Podcast. 

Our guest for today is Devin Miller, a podcast host and the founder and CEO of Miller IP Law who helps startups and small businesses with their patent needs.  

If you need help protecting your business ideas, you’ll learn more about how to do it in this episode. 

• Copyright, trademark and patent are three concepts that you need to know and be able to tell them apart. They are explained at 1:52
  
• How can online content creators protect their intellectual property? Find out at 4:39
  
• The different things a course creator need to consider before applying for copyright is in the first part of the interview
  
• Learn about the cost and the process of applying for copyright at 6:55
  
• Can business coaches protect their methods and strategies? Answers are at 12:55
  
• Find out if your brand is worth protecting? Check 13:41
  
• Are copywriters covered with the IP Law? Listen to 16:06
  
• Wondering what IP law can do for you? Schedule a strategy meeting with Devin Miller here
  
• Listen to The Inventive Journey to learn more about transforming startups to success.
  

  Such an informative episode! Share it with your friends.

  
  

   

  
  
  
• 
  
  

Important Links:

 

strategymeeting.com

milleripl.com

The Inventive Journey

dailycookie. co

Transcript:

Click Below to see the full transcript of this episode





Open Transcript

Welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast, where we help you establish yourself in the perfect micro niche. So you will get noticed and grow your business faster. And now your host. He hired us first, all time, virtual assistant as soon as he reached the six bigger milestone, Ziv Raviv.

Ziv:

Hello, and welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast. Hi today, our interviewee is Devin Miller, the founder and CEO of Miller IP law, where you can get help as a small business owner with all your patents and trademarks all the way from Utah USA. Hello, Devin Miller. Hi.

Devin:

Hey, how’s it going? Thanks for having me on.

Ziv:

It’s always a pleasure to have a fellow podcaster here on the show, you run the podcast at the inventive journey podcast, where you interview people, small startup owners, small business owners about all the, these things related to patents and trademarks. And I want to damage it down first just because, you know, some people don’t even know what’s the difference between a trademark and I don’t know some other things, what do we do? What do people really need at the beginning? If you had to give like the introductory explanation of what do you do and explain it to someone in the eighth grade as we copywriters, like to look at, like the sixth grade seventh grade, eighth grade is like the level of understanding that it’s really easy to understand. How would you describe the differences between patents and trademarks and what do you actually need to do as a business owner to protect yourself?

Devin:

Yeah, and I, I’d probably just take one step back because depending on what your business is and what you’re doing, it’s the answer’s going to vary. So maybe just say baseline, we can establish what is a patent and what is a trademark, what is a copyright? And then talk a little bit about kind of when you would consider them or what their, how that might line up. So with that, if I were to break it down, patents are basically for inventions. If you invented something, you created something, whether it’s software or hardware electronic, or, you know, anything of that nature. But if you’re creating something that has utility a functionality does something that was what a patent protects, a trademark is gonna be on the branding site. So if you were to think of a name of a company, a logo, a name of a product, a cash phrase, any of those are gonna all be associated with branding and they’re gonna be protected via trademarks.

Devin:

The last one is gonna be for copyrights and copyrights are going to be for something that’s more on the creative nature. So if you’re to think of a book, a painting, a sculpture, a movie, any of those type of things are all on the creative nature and they’re gonna be protected by a copyright. So kind of when you’re at, you know, as far as what you need for a business, a large part depends on what the type of business you’re doing or where the value of the business is. So you’re thinking of, as an example, if you are a service based business and your real value of your business is going to be on the brand and the reputation and the establishment of quality, then you’re gonna wanna really protect the, the brand. You’re gonna wanna get a trademark. But on the other hand, you’re saying, no, we are really a innovation company.

Devin:

We create really cool technology. That’s really valuable and that people are gonna want, and that’s the core of our business. Then you’re gonna go from, go toward more for patents for the inventions. On the other hand, you’re say, no, I’m a aspiring writer I’m gonna create or write the next Tom Clancy or Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings or whichever genre you’re in. And that’s where the core of business is. Then you’re gonna wanna copyright the book you’re writing. And so that’s kind of where I would start is when you’re looking first, understand the different options you have for protection, but then also look at where’s the value, where’s the core of your business. And that’s where you’re gonna start to look to protect.

Ziv:

I want to narrow it down to like two specific industries and see where you help in those cases and what people need to, to know. And we’ll start with the niche of online course creators. So we’re talking about situation where people can learn from you and improve their lives in all sorts of ways. But those also the risk of someone going into your online course, maybe even getting someone to buy it and looking at it, and then potentially like being very inspired by what you teach and teaching that same thing elsewhere. So what type of protection an online course creator can, can take?

Devin:

Yeah. I mean, if you’re an online course creator, that’s typically, unless your course is so innovative and out of the box and you do a new way of presenting the material and you had to have a software platform and you had to have different backend, which generally isn’t the case. I’ll assume that isn’t the case. If it was the case, you’d maybe go down the patent route, but generally as a course, creator, it’s much more of the, the content you’ve create. So you’re, you’re basically looking as a course creator for kind of two values of your business. One is the actual content. So the videos or the written material, or, you know, or however you’re conveying the information, all of that information is gonna fall under a copy grade. So if you really come up with a good system that explains it, well, you have some great video courses and you’re providing the it that way.

Devin:

You’ll want to protect that actual content via copyright. So that way all that material you created, you can establish ownership of it. The other thing you’d look at is also as a course provider, a lot of times you’re gonna look and say, we are also creating a brand. In other words, there are a lot of different courses out there for a lot of topics. And a lot of people are doing different variation of courses and overall they have some of the same content material, but it’s how they convey the information, whether they’re trusted brand and everything else. And so that one, you know, as you’re establishing the name of the company, the product line or the core, you know, name of the course and those type of things, you’re gonna be looking at a trademark to do it. So, you know, gimme an example. Let’s say you were going to create a financial or financial course of how to manage your money, how to get out of debt and how to do it.

Devin:

You know, you’re gonna do something similar to like a Dave Ramsey or someone else that has a, a large following of how to you manage your finance answers on how to, you know, set yourself up for success on the financial front, then all the content you created, go get a copyright on it, on the brand, you know, the Dave Ramsey brand or whatever that might be. You’re going to get a trademark in order to be able to maintain this or the, the brand or the brand that you’re using such that other people don’t come along and use it. So in that case, that kind of how you’d start to tackle it.

Ziv:

Can you give us like this rough estimation? And I know it might be very different from one client to another, but what type of cost are we looking at to get copyrights into maybe take a name of an online course or a name of your brand, a trademark?

Devin:

Yeah. So if you were to take a copyright and they said, all kind of quote, our fees is a baseline because different firms or different law firms or attorneys can, will charge different amounts based on how, what their, what their service offering is typically a copyright you’re gonna look at is gonna be around three to $400. You can, with most copyrights, you can include, you know, different videos or know a good amount of the course. And so if you’re having a course, you can typically include it under one copyright, and you’re gonna be looking about three or 400. If you were to go to a trademark trademarks, work a bit differently in the sense that when you’re filing a trademark, one of the things you’re doing is you’re identifying the goods or services offering and associated with the trademark. So give you an example.

Devin:

Nike has a trademark for the word Nike, they use Nike for athletic wear sports gear and apparel. They don’t do anything with automobiles. And so when you’re looking at it, they have a trademark for the use of the word, Nike, for athletic wear sports gear and apparel. They don’t have it for auto because nothing with the brand associated with automobile. So as you’re building a brand, you have to include the categories or what we call classes of saying, here are the different types of products or the types of services we’re going to be using our mark for. And so there is the government, basically, there’s a governmental fee for each category or each class, and you’re gonna be using the, the, a trademark for, and you have to pay for each one separately. So, you know, if you’re gonna take a standard trademark, you’re usually looking, you’ll have a fee to prepare the trademark and file it, and then you’ll have the, a fee for each category or class that you’re gonna be doing it for.

Devin:

So if you’re gonna take ours for one or one trademark that has one category or one class about 850 flat fee, if you’re to add on a second category, it’s an additional 450 or so 450. So then you’d be at 1300 and kind of, so on that, you’re going to add kind of four 50 for each of those additional categories or classes. So that kind of gives you at least an idea of the cost a little bit you were looking at. And like I said, varies a bit firm to firm and a bit different, but it kinda gives you a baseline as to what to reasonably expect.

Ziv:

What about like, okay, so I ha I’m an online course creator and let’s say I have four different online courses, all of them with a very fancy punchy name that I really want trademarks, or that no one will go and say, oh yeah, I teach you the, I dunno, skyscraper, SEO technique or whatever. So sure. And I want my business name probably to be trademarked. And maybe even my motto, my tagline that I think is unique. So if I come to you and have all these six things my course names, my company name, my tagline will that mean I will probably pay 850 plus 450 for each class, or do I, will I probably pay more than that?

Devin:

No. So you would be 850 or that class is per application. So if you had six different things, let’s say you had the name of the company, you had the name of four courses, you had a couple logos or a cash free in a logo for each one of those applications. You would then be paying that 850 if you had one class. And so you’d basically say 850 times six, and then you would file six applications because each application has to be prepared separate or prepared separately. And you also have to, I guess, examine separately. In other words, once a trademark receives the application, they have to do an examination as to whether it’s trademarkable or not. And they have to do that for each application. So they charge the fee on a per application basis.

Ziv:

How long does it take?

Devin:

Yeah, I mean, varies in the sense that the backing up, I would say what it varies on is whether or not you’re how trademarkable the term you’re wanting to get is the biggest standard. There’s a few, but the primary standard they’re looking at is whether it’s confusingly similar with what other trademarks are already out there. And confusingly similar basically means is, Hey, if somebody to see your brand, they to see somebody else’s brand, would that look like it? You know, would people think it’s the same brand or the same company or the two are associated, or they readily understand that there are different companies or providers of that service or that good. And so when you file it, they’re going to do an examination of that. So usually after you file a trademark application, it takes about six months before they start to examine it.

Devin:

Once they start to examine it, they look at that trademarkable standard. Is it confusingly similar with anybody else? If not, then they’re going to there’s about another or one to two months of the process for them to get an issue. If on the other hand, you are confusing. Similar, somebody else is using the exact same brand or the exact same trademark for their business or something that’s similar. Then you’re going to have to, or go back and forth, argue with them and determine whether, or try and work to convince them that how you’re different, how you would be confusingly similar. So if you add that on you’re, you’re looking at another, around three months or so. So typically to get through the full process from filing a trademark where you have a, a registered or an issue trademark, you’re usually looking at about nine to 12 months overall.

Ziv:

Definitely a significant time that you need to be aware of. So next I wanna talk about coaches online business coaches. And this is really, really cool that you like, just tell us the bottom line, cause that’s the type of value we wanna share here. And I’m really thankful for that. A business coach sometimes will have a method of how to take someone and from point A to point B and help with some sort of transformation in their life, in their business. And they might think, Hey, my method is unique. I do certain things. I have certain briefs that I send to the client. I don’t teach it anywhere. So I don’t have videos that I can copyright. And it’s not ne it’s not really a pattern that I can put out there, but how can, what type of remedy can a coach choose to protect something like his method of coaching people?

Devin:

Yeah, the shorter, the honest answer is you’re gonna have a difficult time with protecting the method within which you coach, because there are a lot of coaches out there to stop someone else from teaching material. And I’ll go back to the same thing. Let’s say you were a coach helping people get out of debt just as to kind of follow on the previous conversation. And that’s what you’re coaching on. Well, people have been coaching people on how to get out of debt for a very long period of time. And so there isn’t necessarily anything within that core of idea of what you’re teaching, probably also the material. You know, there’s some people that you reduce, you know, you reduce your amount of debt, you pay off loans, you do other things. And so the content again is not necessarily gonna be that protectable because a lot of coaches are probably already used that type of material.

Devin:

So you’re usually typically gonna be looking primarily just the brand. In other words, you’re going to get out there, how are you going to market? How are you gonna sell? How are you going to show good customer reviews? How are you going to let others know? You provide a better level of service or better content. It’s really a lot tied up in your brand. So that’s where you would still look to as a trademark. Now, the other question, a lot of times you’re gonna have to look at is, is it worth protecting your brand? In other words, yes, you can get a trademark on your brand, but Hey, really, if you’re serving this a local community and I always kind of say, mom in pop shop where, Hey, really my geographic location is in this 10 block radius. And that’s usually who I’m working with and talking with, and that’s the only place I’m ever gonna do my business.

Devin:

It probably doesn’t make sense for you to get a copyright or a trademark or anything else because you’re in a very small geographic location that you can, you just be worthwhile just to continue on in the best, your money elsewhere. Typically when you get into a copywriter and mark or any of those, it’s when you have aspirations that, Hey, you know, I’m building a brand, we’re gonna be online and we’re gonna reach a much larger clientele or we’re going to start to franchise and we’re going to teach other people how to be a coach. And we’re going to actually have a system set up or we’re going to do, you know, I’m going to go around and do speaking tours all across the country, around the world. All of that is such that no, you have a much bigger presence and you’re wanting to protect that brand because it’s not just in a small geographic location. It’s not just in your city or your town, but it’s all over the place. And then you’re gonna look for brands. So one is I would look and what is my aspirations? How am I gonna build this business? Who’s my clientele and where am I gonna be at? And then two is based on how you answer that question, then you’d look to protect it or protect it as makes sense.

Ziv:

Great. One last question before we wrap up is about copy. Like the works that we write in an email. So let’s say we write something and we spend off time in making sure that it’s really nicely put, and maybe even there’s like these sketch phrases that we always use that represent who we are in essence, we call it the voice. Like we, we created some voice that is our own, and yet anyone can subscribe to an email list and just be inspired in a way that even looks like someone else might even steal our ideas, still have a copy and whatnot. So what in the world of even communication can be actually protected.

Devin:

So I would probably flip around or flip the question around slightly in the sense of why would you want to protect that? You know, in other words, okay, let’s say you have some really catchy emails. If it’s just, you’re sending it to your clients and somebody else use the same emails and it doesn’t hurt you, you don’t really care if other people use it. I probably wouldn’t worry about it in the sense that it doesn’t have enough value to go after and protect it. Because even if somebody else were to knock it off and completely copy you, it doesn’t hurt your business. It doesn’t impede it doesn’t or create any issues. Then while you could go probably get a copyright on some of that material. It probably doesn’t make sense. Now, on the other hand, you know, what you’ve got sometimes is, you know, what’s called a click funnel or you have a, you know, a structure of, or, or very templated emails that try and get people to convert or otherwise use or buy your service or your product.

Devin:

And they’re saying, okay, no, we spent a lot of time crafting these, you know, these templates. We spent a lot of time actually going back and forth and, and figuring that out. And so with that, then you’d probably be copyrighting those emails, but it’s not because you necessarily care if any one given individual uses them, but more selling this as a package of how you’re going to actually use that information or, or, or you’re going to sell it as a product or as a service to others. So that’s kinda where I would step back is if it’s really just, Hey, I got some, I think, cool email templates. So I’m gonna use ’em internally. I don’t really care if anybody else uses ’em because as long as I can use ’em, that’s what I care about to correspond the clients. It probably doesn’t make sense to protect them. You’re using it as a, Hey, we’re going to sell this as a package or we’ve spent a lot of time and crafting and making it beautiful, then you’d want to do it as a copy. Right. Great.

Ziv:

I wanna thank you for being on the show and some important questions. If people have additional questions and just want to an advice that is more specifically tailored to their needs where can people find you and get some supports? Yeah.

Devin:

If people wanna reach out to me, you know, as you mentioned, they’re more than welcome to find out more about us on the, our, or my podcast, the inventive journey run all the major podcast platforms. If you just go and search, the inventive journey, you’ll worship to pop up you know, if they wanna reach out to me, they wanna chat more about their business, patents, trademarks, copyrights, how they protect it and how they can grow it and what they should be doing there. They can reach out to me. They can go to strategymeeting.com that links right to my calendar. They can schedule a one-on-one strategy meeting or consultation where we can chat for a few minutes about what they have going on and what they should be looking for. So if they wanna grab some time with me, they can just go to strategymeeting.com

Ziv:

And I’m taking my hat off for securing such wonderful link strategymeeting.com. You can’t make any mistake on that one. And if you go there, you will get to Miller IP law website, where you can actually schedule the free strategy session. But just in case, we will put a link to the strategy session option and to the podcast which is really important podcast. You should check it out. We’ll put all the links in the show notes of Micro Niche Mastery Podcast, all the way in daily cookie.co, Devin Miller. It’s been a pleasure to discuss with you, connect with you, and I hope that’ll meet again soon in positive circumstances.

Devin:

Absolutely. I appreciate you having me on, I had a great time and definitely look for, to hopefully meet me again as well. Thanks.

Voice Over:

This show was brought to you by daily cookie.co, where you can finally feel supported daily email love. Now delegatable visit daily cookie.co for a collection of free resources on how to use copywriting at daily emails to grow your, our micro niche business today.

 

Download the E-BOOK Recreate 141 ideas for daily emails