177 – Legal Guidance Specifically for Makers Like You with Joey Vitale of Indie Law

Gift biz unwrapped episode 177 but you have to be careful

because very easily that can turn a hobby that you really

enjoy into a business that you hate.

Running Attention gifters,

bakers, crafters and makers pursuing your dream can be fun.

Whether you have an established business or looking to start one

now you are in the right place.

This is gift to biz unwrapped,

helping you turn your skill into a flourishing business.

Join us for an episode packed full of invaluable guidance,

resources, and the support you need to grow your gift biz.

Here is your host gift biz gal,

Sue moon Heights.

Hi there,

it's Sue and thank you.

Thank you so much for joining me today.

We are going to be talking about trademarks,

copyrights, and patents and hold tight everybody.

I know these are not topics that are super fun,

but wait till you hear what Joey has to say.

It doesn't need to be that bad.

Those of you who have been around with me for a

while, no.

I often talk about a unique special power and one of

you unique special powers is you the personality you bring to

your business,

how you make yourself different from everybody else.

Because let's face it,

nobody can be you.

Joey is a great demonstration of a unique special power.

Yes, he's an attorney.

Yes, he deals with all this stuff that we would actually

as makers prefer not to talk about,

but it's so refreshing because he just brings it all back

to a level that we can really understand and the thing

that makes him so different,

which I really love.

So not only is his personality a unique special power,

but it's the way he manages business.

He really feels that you have to balance the legal aspects

of your business with what your comfortable with that spans from

the outlay of money to the things that you feel you

need to have in place for your business.

And guess what?

He doesn't always say you have to have all these things.

So listen in and you'll find out when you need trademarks

and when you don't.

Do you need a patent?

Probably not all very refreshing things for us to hear about

today and stay to the end because hot off the presses

is a freebie that he's giving us.

That helps us wrap this all up.

So without further ado,

I would like to introduce you to my guest today,

Joey Vitaly in his law firm,

indie law.

Joey works with creative small business owners to protect their passions

and give them the legal foundation they need to thrive with

these services.

Joey focuses on the legal issues that matter most to creatives.

That would be trademarks,

business formation,

copyrights and contracts.

I knew Joey was someone I wanted to have on the

show when I visited his website and I saw this phrase,

quote, we strive to keep things simple,

positive, honest,

and human.

Oh my gosh,

don't we all need more of that?

Joey, welcome to the gift biz unwrapped podcast.

Sue, thank you so much.

It's an absolute pleasure to be here.

I like to start off things.

I warned you in our pre chat by having you describe

yourself in a little bit of a different way and that

is through a motivational candle.

So for all our creative listeners out there,

what color really resonates with you and what quote would you

put on a motivational candle that speaks all Joey?

Great. So I will explain after I say it,

but it would be an all white candle and then in

a very kind of minimal font.

Say I love myself more than I love my business.

Oh man,

I'm so curious to know what you're going to say next.

So the brand of my firm is black and white and

I'm a huge minimalist.

So I like keeping things clean and simple.

A lot of people ask me why I went in the

direction of black and white and I've come up with some

pretty good reasons like trying to take the gray out of

the law.

But honestly I got a tip from a social media friend

that if you just make your photos black and white on

Instagram, it makes editing a lot easier.

Oh there you go.

Does that get to the part about the simplicity?

Striving to keep things simple?

Yeah. But I really do kind of love a black and

white aesthetic.

And that quote is something that I've had in my head

for a while.

And finally I was talking to somebody about this concept of

needing to put yourself before your business as a business owner

to make sure that you stay happy and your business stays

thriving. And they repeated it back to me that way.

They said,

are you trying to say that you love yourself more than

your business?

And I said,

yeah, can I take that from you?

So that's become really the slogan of our firm.

We work with a lot of solo preneurs or creatives where

either it's just them or they have a team,

but they're the clear and obvious owner and as their attorney

and really kind of counselor at law.

It's kind of my mission and my passion for really caring

about the human behind the business.

And sometimes as you probably know,

Sue, there's a difference between what's good for the business and

what might look good on paper and what gives you the

most peace of mind as the owner of the business.

As an a human being.

So we try and let our clients know what their options

are, but at the end of the day we try and

do what we can to give them the most peace of

mind. So I'm sitting in the seats of our listeners and

I think they just took a big sigh of relief because

the topic can be so weighty.

I'm sure there are people who are listening who know they

haven't possibly done some of the things that you might be

suggesting and we're talking about here today and just you it

down to the level of really bringing the personality and what's

good for a person I think is very relieving,

if you will.

So the other thing that I thought about when you said

this, I love myself more than I love my business is

I think so many people equate their self worth to how

well their business is going.

Yes, absolutely and it can feel so tempting sometimes to think

that when the business isn't doing well that that somehow means

something about you personally or vice versa.

It's easy to,

I think,

get a big head when your business starts to do well

and it's helpful to check yourself.

One of the reasons why I really liked that saying I

love myself more than I love my business is that I

love my business and I think that that's a lot of

the reason why Sue,

our people do what they do is that they really lean

into their passion and so it's really cool to work with

people who are business owners because they love what they do

and they don't just think it's a good idea.

It's going to make them money,

right? It can be difficult to keep in mind the fact

that you're doing what you love,

but you have to be careful because very easily that can

turn a hobby that you really enjoy into a business that

you hate running.

Very true.

So we'll have to get into that a little bit just

as a theme as we continue on.

But let's start Joey with,

okay, so you're obviously educated in law.

Why did you gravitate over to the creator side?

It's been a very interesting journey.

You mean to go to law school?

They don't really tell you that there's a lot you can

do with a law degree.

They basically make it seem like the only thing you can

do is be a courtroom attorney at a big law firm

and so you have all of these law students really getting

a scarcity mindset,

really trying to be the top of their class so that

they can get picked to go to these big law firms.

So super competitive.

It's sounding like Very competitive and I was fortunate enough to

find a great law firm that I could work for.

When I got right out of law school,

there were great people at the firm,

but it was courtroom litigation focused.

And for about two years I was wrestling with this idea

of I had worked so hard at school and I had

really, really tried to be good at this thing that I

said I was going to do for a living.

And I just felt like I wasn't good at it.

And slowly I realized that the problem wasn't that I was

a bad lawyer,

but it was that I hated conflict.

And so as soon as I kind of put those dots

together, I figured out an exit plan,

shifted away from the courtroom and started working with businesses,

spent the first couple of months in that phase working with

more tech startups and slowly gravitated towards the more kind of

creative bunch of business owners because I think that it's a

lot more fulfilling to work with people who just have a

really big heart and passion for what they're doing instead of,

there are a lot of people in the tech startup space

that are just very,

they're really obsessed with good ideas and making money,

which is,

but it was Difficult for me to identify with them as

much as with these more creative types and it's so awesome

to feel like I've found my people.

And so what types of businesses are you normally working with

then? One of the first blog posts that are wrote was

titled, your business needs to break up with that C,

Love that.

I would read that in a second.

That was great.

That's great.

And it really summarized conversations that I was seeing a lot

in the Etsy crafter community where people were complaining about the

difficulties of being on Etsy.

One of the legal issues with a platform like Etsy is

that people can claim that you're infringing on people's rights and

the way that the platform operates is that even if you're

not doing anything wrong,

you can get dings or strikes against your account and so

a lot of good businesses are on the verge of getting

shut down just because enough people have accused them of infringement

when they're not infringing and so for a lot of reasons,

I actually think that I don't think anybody has to rush

off with platforms.

I actually,

I was just showing Sue earlier our new place,

and we've got a lot of this stuff from Etsy,

but I think as a business owner it can be hard

to put your eggs in a basket that you don't own.

Interesting that you say this because just a few episodes ago

we were interviewing and talking with someone about Etsy and one

of the things that we were discussing in that episode is

Etsy is still a platform that you don't own,

just like social media sites.

So it's a nice compliment to your own website,

but it shouldn't be the only site that you have For

the reasons you just described.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

And so going back to your question,

that initial blog post out at sea got me pretty well

recognized in the crafter space.

We also work quite a bit with wedding industry professionals,

like event planners that then use,

we work with a lot of business coaches and really I've

learned that that descriptor of a creative business owner is a

lot broader than I thought when I started.

And really anybody who is entrepreneurial and it grows out of

a place of passion,

whether that's a hobby or just something that they want to

do really good in the world.

We've had a couple of clients with just really neat businesses

that might not literally be what we would think of as

creatives, but they're putting together really,

really cool services that allow people to travel in cool ways

or platform owners or people that are trying to build their

own subscription boxes for whatever.

So there's a wide gamut of what we do.

But it's been helpful because it's allowed me to see a

lot of common denominators that regardless of the industry that you're

in, there tends to be an order of what you should

be focusing on on the legal side.

Oh, that's interesting.

So I want to talk about that.

When you say order,

that makes me,

and for our conversation,

I think most of the people who are listening here are

creators in more of the traditional sense.

They're a maker.

So they might be baking cakes or they might be creating

favors for parties,

which does get into like the event planner.

Cause sometimes event planners also actually do the making of whatever

it is or they make jewelry or something.

So it's more of a tangible product.

So I think that a good way to direct the conversation

to those types of folks because that's pretty much who's listening

here. So I'm curious now when you say order,

what does that mean?

Yeah, well I've learned to really think of it as,

you know how there's that hierarchy of needs that you learn

in psych class.

I feel like there's a very similar type of hierarchy on

the legal side of things.

Now, before I get into what I've learned as the order,

I will say for any of your listeners that are viewing

themselves more as hobbyists than business owners,

honestly I don't think there's that much you need to worry

about legally because your business isn't really worth protecting until it's

successful. And I say that to hopefully give you a lot

of peace of mind.

A lot of business owners that I run with,

they freak out about the legal side and it prevents them

from focusing on sales or doing other things to grow their

business. And I don't think that it's wrong to kind of

jump in as a hobbyist and do these things,

but at the end of the day,

if you're not selling to a lot of strangers,

you're not exposing yourself to a lot of risks.

Practically speaking,

the likelihood of something going wrong in your business is pretty

low and I just don't want you to worry that much

if you are really awaring that hobby hat pretty strongly.

Okay. But we're talking about that in terms of protecting your

intellectual property while business formation too though.

But I think maybe we could agree that the line in

the sand would be if you're selling to people other than

people that you know.

Yeah. Once you've exhausted that warm market,

I think it's,

well, I'm glad that you checked me on that.

I think that some people,

they need to realize that they are business owners and they

don't like the term.

Ah, okay.

Yeah, because I'm thinking of like at such point that someone

let's say starts going to a craft show.

Yes. Specially if you have something edible,

you want to be covered.

Oh yes.

Or if you have,

you know,

like in your product,

if there's things that are sharp,

I'm thinking from business formation,

tax purposes,

registering a company and insurance purposes,

which I link under business formation.

That may be is one separate bucket versus trademarks.

Copyrights. Yeah,

that's very correct.

So I like to think of this legal hierarchy as what

is most likely something that is bad that can happen to

your business.

And the most common legal problem that I see having right

now is they're waiting to protect their copyrights and trademarks until

it's too late.

Oh, interesting.

Okay. Keep going with that because I'm kind of under the

thinking that even if you protect it,

you really can't protect it without throwing a lot of money

at it.

Yeah. So I really question like at what point or how

much money should you,

where should you really go to protect?

I'm super interested in you continuing to talk about this.

So, so you say one of the most common things then

is that people wait until it's too late.

Yeah. I'm sure you can't share us a real story about

a client,

but can you kind of mask it a little bit and

tell us a story about something that happened to someone so

we can get a feel for what you're talking about?

For sure.

So there was a maker who came to us and was

like, Hey,

I'm interested in a trademark.

And we kind of explained what it was and we explained

what our packages were and they said,

I don't think our business is quite ready to make that

investment yet.

And we said,

okay. And they came back to us months later and a

different company,

a different maker,

had filed for a trademark application for the same name.

Now the way that trademarks work is that you don't get

exclusive rights to your name unless you have a federal registration

in place.

And technically speaking,

the first person to use a trademark and interstate commerce has

the strongest rights when it comes to a registration that's recognized

by the U S trademark office.

But practically speaking,

the first person to file for a registration has the easiest

and least expensive time showing the trademark office that they are

the true owner with the strongest rights.

I know there's a thing called usage,

right? So if someone is using a name,

they could claim it,

but it's harder to prove and it's much better to be

on the side of having all the paperwork submitted.

Yes. Because what's happening,

and just to paint a picture,

it's especially interesting with trademark.

This shouldn't surprise you or any of your listeners too.

There are just more small business owners that than there ever

have been before.

trademarks that were applications that were filed that year.

That's a hundred thousand last year there were over 400,000

applications that were filed.

Oh my.

And so the amount of available names are shrinking.

So it's important to make sure that you're not infringing on

anybody else's trademarks.

And then it's also important when you come up with something

unique to put your stake in the ground as quickly as

possible. Okay.

So to finish up the story,

what did your client have to do?

Did they have to change their name?

Cause now they're infringing on somebody else?

Yeah. Well whether or not they were infringing was questionable because

they were thinking that they were using at first,

but they didn't file it.

So we did the math and they said,

you know what,

it would be cheaper for us to just rebrand right now

than it would for us to fight this trademark.

Got it.

But it was still unfortunate cause they had to get a

new domain name,

build new social media.

And either way it takes you off your game.

It takes you away from any momentum that you have because

you have to stop,

reposition and all of that.

Absolutely. So at what point,

so we're talking trademarks right now,

so let's stick with that.

So somebody starting a business,

they have a name,

they have been selling a little bit to family and friends.

So they're getting a feel for creating the product.

A little bit of money starting to be traded,

but it's right at that line that we just defined that

now they're going to do a craft show.

So is that the point then when they should start looking

at trademarking or should they have done it earlier?

I mean there's no right answer.

Although the general rule of thumb that I like to give

is if you think that you will be using this name

and that you will be in business three years from now,

Go ahead and invest in that trademark protection.

And how hard is it?

Like where do you have to do to get a trademark?

So first of all,

you don't need an attorney,

but it is highly advised that you have one helped you

because it is a complicated process.

But the first thing that you will want to do is

run a very strong search of existing trademarks to make sure

that your application won't get refused because it's too confusingly similar

to an existing application or registration.

And I think if your application gets refused,

you don't get reimbursed the money.

Right? Correct.

Which is why it's good to do a search first.

Yep. So you run the search first,

make sure that it's worth pursuing and submitting that application and

then you submit the application.

There are several stages to the trademark office is review process

and I won't get into it but it usually takes between

six and 12 months.

Again, they get at this point over 400,000

filings a year and then once you get the registration,

that is awesome.

That's just the beginning because at that point you have to

make sure that you are using and maintaining and enforcing your

rights or else you risk losing them.

Right. Because if you are not actively using that name and

prove that you are,

so what would that be like putting it on a website,

putting it on your product,

like anything like that?

Yeah, so there are five and then 10 year increments with

the trademark office where they require a proof that you're still

using it and the point of a trademark is for there

to be a clear source identification.

What I mean by that is if a new coffee shop

opened up tomorrow and it called itself Starbucks,

that would be awful because you wouldn't know which Starbucks you

were actually ordering coffee from.

And so that's the point of trademarks is to make sure

that the customers know which businesses they're getting business from.

And so if you are not using your trademark but also

preventing others from using similar trademarks,

then there becomes an issue of what's called dilution,

where if so many people start calling your business that name,

then it hinders your rights.

This is something that we're seeing in especially like the merchandise

space when it comes to crafting and making.

There are a lot of people who are applying for trademarks

that are not really trademarks,

and I could go on to this for days.

It's a huge issue,

especially on Etsy,

but people are filing for trademark applications for phrases that they're

putting on their shirts or their mugs.

Oh my gosh.

And those phrases are not trademarks.

It's not the business name,

it's not the logo of the company or the slogan.

It's just a cute saying.

And people have actually tried to get a trademark registration for

the phrase,

me too.

And you can't register just commonly used groups of words together.

Correct. If it is commonly used and it's used in a

descriptive way,

then that's not a trademark.

Now common words can be trademarked.

Like Apple is a great example.

No one thinks of computers automatically when they think of Apple,

but they do now because of the brand that has grown

around it.

Okay. And trademarks are by country,

right? Correct.

So if you're international,

you need to have trademarks in different countries to protect your

name. Yes.

What's unfortunate about that is that there's no international relationship that

allows you to just get black and white global protections.

There is a treaty that makes it easier,

but you still have to go country by country getting your

trademark accepted.

Okay. All right,

so let's stick with trademarks a little bit again for the

new person.

So if there comes a point when then you,

if you really love your name,

if you're using your name,

if your name is super unique,

go ahead and invest in a trademark and it makes sense

to go through versus legal zoom or whatever it is to

go through someone and you know,

almost someone that's local or maybe online because it's so easy

to communicate,

but someone who specializes in that,

not because of the expense or anything,

but just to make sure you're doing it properly.

Would that be right?

Yeah. So what's unfortunate about either doing it yourself or going

through legal zoom?

The way that legal zoom currently does trademark services is that

it's purely a form filling procedure.

So they won't actually analyze things for you.

They'll just ask you for information,

take your answers,

and put that into the application,

submit it.

And so again,

because of the number of trademark applications that are being filed,

the trademark office is getting increasingly strict about what applications they'll

accept. Like you said,

Sue, you don't get that money back if they reject it.

So you want to make sure if you're going to invest

it, that you do it the right way.

And so I know another question that people are thinking about

right now is what type of an investment,

and maybe it's a range you can give me,

I don't know what your services are,

but like what is the range if you're looking to hire

somebody to help you with this?

Yeah, so I would say typically you were right to say

that some people really do appreciate local attorneys and it can

be great to have that face to face interaction depending on

where you are in the country.

Attorney rates differ.

I've seen trademark application packages range from a thousand dollars to

upwards of $3,000

have discounted packages for our clients that want repeated are they're

second or third or 10th trademark with us.

But there's a lot that goes into it that people don't

realize it is shifting quite a bit right now.

And the other huge benefit of working with an attorney,

and this is kind of a hidden benefit,

is that unfortunately whoever sends the trademark application is starts receiving

a lot of spam.

Ooh, Oh,

that's worth the money right there.

And some of that spam is they've gotten really good.

I've had clients call me with a letter that they think

is from the trademark office saying that they owe the office

another thousand dollars I've seen those.

Yeah, and so if you work with an attorney,

they will keep those at Bay or at least let you

know which letters you need to keep track of or throw

away. Unfortunately,

one of our first clients told us a really unfortunate story

that she had and she was pretty business savvy.

She filed for her own trademark.

She knew that she would be receiving some spam,

but because of the amount of spam she received,

she accidentally threw out a letter that was from the trademark

office that had a hard deadline on it and because she

missed it,

the application was rejected and she had to start the whole

application again.

So I went through,

I'll just say this because this was my experience and it'll

warn people too.

I went through a legal person.

My brother is a trademark attorney.

Okay. Oh nice.

So he helped me out with that.

He's a big time God,

like not too creative.

So I'm loving talking to you about all of this,

but he did a lot of my stuff.

But I guess because the company got registered,

I started getting all that spam just like you were saying,

but from all these foreign countries,

not from the state.

So I guess a heads up to everybody about that.

I want to keep moving on with this.

Have we only been talking about a trademark that is the

TM and what's the difference with the register Mark?

Great question.

So yeah,

there are different symbols associated with trademarks.

Your crafters,

your makers,

your gifters,

your bakers will probably,

if you don't have a registered trademark,

you want to use the TM symbol.

If what you sell is technically a service and not a

product, then you'll want to use an SM symbol instead of

a TM symbol.

Oh, I don't even know about SM.

Ask them is short for service Mark.

It's a little archaic.

No one really uses the phrase anymore,

but technically if you're selling a service and you want to

show that it's a Mark,

you would use the SM symbol and not the TM symbol

and then you use the circle our registration symbol until you

get a registered trademark.

So just by filing it,

that doesn't mean you get to change the logo or anything.

It is helpful when you are going through that process,

especially once you start getting towards the end of it.

I always enjoy telling my clients it's time for them to

start talking with their graphic designer,

whoever it is that's putting together their graphics and preparing the

logos with the circle R so that as soon as they

get it they can start using it.

Yeah, that was really fun when I got it,

I felt really super important.

Yeah, it is important.

Yeah. Okay,

so another thing that I think our audience gets confused with

is the difference between a trademark and a copyright.

Yeah, and it can be confusing.

Joey's going to clear all this up for us.

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So a trademark,

like I said,

is a source identifier for the business.

So that could be the business name,

a logo,

a slogan,

a copyright is a work of art that is in fixed

form that because of the fact that you put in work

to create it,

you get these copyright protections.

The way that I like to think about them is a

copyright is valuable because of the work that you put into

it. Whereas a trademark is valuable because of the business you

built around it.

So as an example,

the Batman logo,

I think it was Batman begins or no,

that doesn't make sense.

One of the newer Batman movies,

it opened up with a scene where somebody who wasn't Batman

was wearing a fake costume and like tried to save the

day and then the real Batman came and like helped things

out. And the Batman costume itself is a copyright in the

sense of like you can create it.

But the trademark to that comes from when people see that

Batman logo,

they trust that Batman's coming.

I love this example in the same way,

and this is something that I think a lot of branding

experts agree with me on this,

is that there's a lot of value that can go into

a knock up logo,

like a really top notch looking logo.

But the Nike symbol isn't amazing because it's just an intrinsically

beautiful looking thing.

It's amazing because of what the company is done around the

logo. Right?

So it's all part of the brand.

Yeah. And so now when you see Nike,

you're not just thinking,

Oh that's a pretty shape.

It's everything that Nike stands for.

Exactly. So the unfortunate thing about copyrights in the maker and

crafter space is that not everything that we create is protectable

by copyrights.

And you mentioned bakers,

so if you're making food,

one of the requirements have a copyright is that it has

to be in a fixed form.

And so because somebody can eat the cake,

you don't have copyright protections to your cake.

Oh, interesting to that specific cake you made.

But what about the recipe?

The recipe,

you can have protections and photos of it.

You can,

the thing that's super interesting about copyrights is that it's very,

very layered.

So I was speaking at a local coffee shop recently and

it's a nonprofit coffee shop owned by state farm here in

Chicago. And they were telling me that they recently conducted a

series of interviews about business owners in the area and they

put together all of these different pieces of footage from the

different people that they interviewed.

And then before they sent it out to put it up

on YouTube,

they send it to the legal team and the legal team

has said,

everything looks great except there's this five seconds where this guy

with a big tattoo is talking and we need to get

permission from all of them,

all of the actual people in the videos to waive their

rights and to allow us to use their images and these

videos. But especially this guy with the tattoo,

that tattoo it could potentially be protected by copyright by the

tattoo artist.

So we have to track down this tattoo artist and get

his permission to use the tattoo in the video.

Oh my gosh.

And not only that,

but that tattoo artist might not have created the original tattoo.

So we have to see from that tattoo artist whether he

created it or he took the design from somebody else and

then we have to go to that other person and get

their permission and what they ended up just taking the guy

out of the video.

But it was a really interesting example of how layered copyrights

can be,

especially when it comes to taking photos of works or putting

certain designs on things.

Yeah. Okay.

So that's something that we need to be sensitive to when

we are taking photos.

Lifestyle photos are so valuable and are so great now having

somebody using a product of yours wearing a product of yours

versus just showing pictures of your product.

So I think you're sharing with us that we have to

be careful about that.

What else in the scene and if it's copyrighted,

you've got to be a little bit careful about that.

Which leads me to a different question.

A lot of times photography gets stolen when the gift basket

industry, that happens a lot.

Someone recreate someone else's design,

uses their photos and so people have started doing a lot

of watermarking of their products.

What do you think about that?

It's such an interesting blend of issues like legal and business

and does the watermark hurt the fact that you have an

image there?

I will say first of all,

when it comes to copyright,

just so that we can circle back to this,

you can register copyrighted works the same way you can register

trademarks and it's much easier to do.

I'm a huge proponent of people going out there looking at

the copyright application process and doing what you can to protect

your own copyrights.

The cool thing about technology these days is that there are

some really great services that you can buy for relatively cheap

that will put meta-tags on your photos so that if anybody

takes it,

you'll get alerted and they could even send cease and desist

letters on your behalf.

Oh no kidding.

And so,

yeah, so I'm a fan of watermarking.

I understand that there might be a balance that you would

want to take to make sure that you're not making that

watermark. So obtrusive of the value of the photo that it

takes away from your photos.

I know some,

going back to my wedding planner buddies,

I have some wedding planners.

They only work with photographers who don't use watermarks because they

don't want that to tarnish the look of their websites.

And their photo galleries.

And so did I hear you correctly,

you said that there are companies out there that will do

that meta tagging of your photos.

It's pretty neat.

Do you know any of the names or in case someone's

curious about those?

I don't have the names of them at the top of

my tongue,

but I can get a couple of the ones that I

know of,

I can share them with you Sue.

And I'm pretty sure that if you Google copyright photo you

should be able to find some service that does that for

you or something.

So yes,

it's a great option for people.

Okay. So Joey,

if you find any of those gift biz listeners out,

check the show notes page cause I'll put them in there

if we're able to get some names.

But I had no idea that that even existed.

So that's really interesting.

No clue.

I had no idea about that.

Yeah. Oh here's one of them.

It's mot.

If you can think of the word Meow like a cat,

but instead of the letter E it's the letter Y don't

know how they pronounce it.

So how do you spell it?

Am Y O w s.com.

Okay, perfect.

I haven't used the product before,

but it's been recommended to me and I've heard great things

about it.

Okay. Yeah.

Well that's just interesting.

Like I said,

I had never heard about that before at all.

All right,

so now let's move on to something else that I'm curious

about and that is patents.

When is that important?

Oh geez,

sorry. Patents I think are very important and let's step back

a little bit.

So far we're talking about all these intellectual property issues.

I like to think that intellectual property issues contracts,

whether that's legitimate agreements or terms of use that exist on

your website and forming an LLC.

Those are all three very basic things to understand as a

business owner that I think that you should be aware about

and take action on relatively quickly as a business owner.

But zooming back down into patents,

patents are an area of intellectual property that are probably like

the sexiest area of intellectual property.

I can't speak to it unfortunately that much because in order

to practice patent law,

you have to sit for the patent bar and you can't

sit for that exam unless you have a hard science background.

So my English major really screwed me over,

but I do know that patents are very expensive,

But patents are for when you have made something different.

Special, unique unto itself.

Yes, like it's more of a formulation versus a creative work,

if you will.

Right. It's like a new product.

Maybe it's the way to say.

Yup, It's more good.

Yeah. Think of it more as an invention than a product.

Oh, there you go.

And invention.

Okay. They're very,

very expensive.

Although I don't practice it.

I do have quite a few patent attorneys that I work

with that offer free or pretty affordable consultation calls.

I think 90% of the time when they talk to creatives,

they figure out that it's probably,

they don't need to worry about patents just yet.

But like you said,

if you're working on something that you think is more inventive

or something that's kind of really just different in the marketplace.

I think it's worth at least reaching out to a patent

attorney just to confirm whether or not it's something you should

be spending more time and money on.

Okay. And we talked just very briefly about some of the

documents or contracts,

if you will,

however you want to say it,

that you should have on your website.

What are the bare minimum things that you should be putting

on your site?

Yeah, so the first thing that you want to make absolutely

sure that you put on your website is a privacy policy.

A privacy policy is required throughout the United States because of

the state of California.

And now because of the European union,

Oh, don't even get me started there.

Don't even,

cause I had to do it for both my businesses.

Oh my gosh,

It's a headache.

Here's the deal about privacy policies.

We actually give,

we have standard versions of them that we give away for

free to our clients.

Privacy policies are pretty standard legal documents.

The reason why you need it is because there are laws

that exist that require for every time a visitor comes to

your website,

you have to disclose to that person how you're using,

storing, collecting,

and securing their private information and even if your website is

just having a contact me page,

even if you're not selling anything directly through the site,

the fact that you might be collecting people's email address is

personal information.

Okay, so privacy policy.

What else?

The second big one is the terms of use also called

terms and conditions or terms of service.

It all means the same thing.

The deal with those terms,

nothing requires you to have it other than the fact that

without it you don't have a contract in place.

So Sue,

if I were to buy one of your products in person

and it was a big order,

you'd probably have me sign some type of a contract.

But because people are buying and selling online,

this terms of use is what is acting as the contract

and it has language like what happens if you want to

return this or cancel the order before it ships or what

if you get the item and it looks slightly different than

what you saw on the computer screen.

So is that different than store or could that be one

in the same?

They could be one in the same.

So if you have both an online store and a brick

and mortar,

you can point both online orders and orders from the store

to the online terms of use and say all orders done

from this company are done through here.

Okay. So we've got these two,

the privacy policy terms of use.

Anything else mandatory for your website?

It depends.

If you're doing any wholesale,

you want to make sure that you're having wholesale terms.

Now, some people will put all of these documents and no

one huge page on their website,

which is okay.

I think as a customer it's helpful to have them separate

it out.

But you can have wholesale agreements,

you can have licensed terms,

so if you sell digital products and maybe you sell them

to people to use for personal use only,

but you don't want them reselling your digital products and opening

up their own store that competes with yours.

You would want a set of license terms that says here's

what you can do with those graphics,

those online products.

Here's what you can do,

or here's if you pay more here to ours as a

more things that you can do with it than if you

buy it under the cheaper smaller license.

Okay, got it.

Then also affiliate agreements.

If you Philly,

it's Perfect.

Okay, so now remember that thing you said,

keep it simple,

positive, honest,

inhuman. Let's go back to that now.

Right. Okay,

so somebody brand new who's mind is like spinning now cause

I don't want to paralyze people and have them be,

Oh my gosh,

this is way too much.

Let's go back to the newbie and talk again and remind

them really what they need to do to get started.

Once again,

they've crossed the line,

they're going to go into a craft show.

They're no longer just selling to friends and family.

Yeah. I think the first big thing is awareness,

so you don't need to go to law school or spend

hours and weeks looking all of this up online and please

don't feel like you have to go into Facebook groups and

learn about all of this stuff,

but at a high level,

understand the difference between patents,

trademarks and copyrights just so you can be aware of what

they mean and what you may be more interested in protecting

first. Then especially if you are getting off of Etsy and

you have your own online store or you are selling things

directly, you wouldn't have a contract in place.

Whether that's an actual thing that you have people sign or

that's the privacy policy terms of use,

everything else that sits at the footer of your website.

The third big thing is forming an LLC or some type

of illegal entity to protect your personal assets.

Perfect and we haven't talked about that a lot,

but I'm a huge advocate of an LLC versus a sole

proprietorship. Do you want to comment at all about that?

Or I can talk about this all day.

Talk about it in a minute and a half.

My three reasons for forming an LLC,

number one,

it gives you that important fence between what the owns and

his assets and what you could potentially be appliable for,

which is important.

The second reason why it's important is it's a lot easier

to get it done earlier than get it done later down

the road because as soon as you form an LLC,

you're technically creating an entirely new business.

And if you have gone through the trouble of let's say

getting a trademark copyrights,

you've started working with other people,

you've got partners,

you've got contractors.

If you then form an LLC,

you have to go back to all of those things and

say, we're actually,

we need a transfer.

All of that paperwork from the sole proprietor to the LLC.

And so it's important to get it done as quickly as

you can get it over with.

The third reason why I love it,

going back to my saying of I love myself more than

I love my business.

If you're a sole proprietor,

you are your business and it's really hard as a newbie

to mentally distinguish yourself from the business.

And so actually creating that separation is huge in terms of

jump-starting your momentum,

your activity,

you executing and treating the business like a business and not

just an extension of you.

That's really good.

I've never heard it said that way and you're really right.

I mean you're really saying,

okay now this is a business,

especially for people who are makers who have been involved in

what they're now trying to sell.

Having that distinct transition I think is a mindset.

It puts you in a different state and I think that

affects your activity and how you go through your day as

you're now a business.

Absolutely. So really good.

Really good.

Joey, Did I get that done in under a minute and

a half?

I don't know.

But it was good.

So you get a passing grade on everything here today cause

this has been really helpful.

And having you again,

because your area of specialty is creators and makers,

you really brought it down.

Just even the way you're talking to us,

you really bring it down to a level where everyone can

relate. So I really appreciate that.

And to show my appreciation.

Joey, I'd like to present you with a virtual gift.

It's a magical box containing unlimited possibilities for your future.

So this is your dream or your goal of almost unreachable

Heights that you would wish to obtain.

Please accept this gift and open it in our presence.

What is inside your magical box?

Man, I love that question.

And this might not be the best answer you've received and

maybe it's corny,

but for me it's your answer.

Whatever it is,

it's yours.

It's just a lot of people and relationships.

So you're a people person.

Yeah. I have learned that while money is very important,

it doesn't buy you happiness.

And the relationships that I have personally and also the relationships

that I formed because of my business have been invaluable.

I mean,

yeah, they've helped my business grow,

but they've added a completely new level of meaning to my

life that I'm so grateful for and I never thought that

I would run A business if you would've asked me five

years ago,

I've ended the night.

You are going to be a partner in a law firm.

Exactly, yeah.

Maybe not even ever a partner,

But thinking now about myself as a business owner and the

people that I will get to meet and hopefully contribute value

in their lives through.

It's so freaking cool.

That's awesome.

So that moves me perfectly into what I want to say

next. So if anybody who's listening may want to become one

of those people to you,

how can people learn more about what you're doing and hear

about the services you offer,

et cetera.

You can go to Indy law.com

which is my website and you are actually the first podcast

that I'm telling people about this to see.

But Oh,

I feel so special.

I have a free trademark crash course.

Ooh. Like you said,

I try and keep things simple and human and positive.

It's just three videos each around five minutes long.

That dive,

especially through trademarks at a deeper level just because I really

want business owners to understand what trademarks are and what they

aren't so that when they're ready to invest they are making

that educated decision.

And as an added bonus,

and this is a spoiler alert just by walking through this

course, I am automatically giving you my discounted rate that I

give my existing clients on the trademark packages.

So you can access that just by going to indie law.com

and then slash TM crash course.

So trademark and then crash course all spelled out.

Yeah, it's indie law.com

and then just the letters T M and then crash course.

Perfect. And I will have this also in the show notes

page you guys,

cause this town's like an awesome deal going through learning more

about trademarks through your videos and then having an opportunity if

you're in a place where you see,

Oh my gosh,

I need something,

I need some help,

I need some work on this.

Getting a little bit of a discount is fabulous.

So Joey,

thank you.

We get to be the first ones.

I get to share it with my listeners first.

Right? Yeah,

so I mean it really is an honor to be here

and I'm really glad that I was able to get this

done in time to share with you guys because trademarks are

confusing and if all that I can do is give you

peace of mind and understanding about it,

I'd love to.

Perfect. I'm going to end on that.

Thank you so much for your time today.

Thank you for your knowledge,

your expertise,

having this crash course ready to go for us.

That's so fabulous and continued success to you and I wish

that you meet many,

many, many,

many more people in your life just like you would wish.

Thanks again.

Take care.

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