485: Copy-Proof Your Products! How To Prevent Evil Sellers From Stealing Your IP With Steve Weigler

00:00
You’re listening to the My Wife, Could Her Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and delve deeply into what strategies are working and what strategies are not with their businesses. Today, I’m thrilled to have my friend Steve Weigler back on the show. And Steve is the owner of Emerge Council, where he helps e-commerce entrepreneurs protect their intellectual property. And last time when he was on, the Chinese copycat problem on Amazon was out of control. And while there still is rampant piracy and IP theft on the platform,

00:28
Steve now has a pretty cool strategy for taking down the pirates, which we’ll talk about in this episode. But before we begin, I wanted to give a quick shout out to Chase Diamond for sponsoring this episode. Now Chase is my go-to guy when it comes to email marketing, and he runs a successful email marketing agency over at Structured Agency, which caters to many eight and nine figure e-commerce brands. Now for those of you who can’t afford to hire an agency, Chase offers a pretty good email marketing course if you want to learn how to do email yourself.

00:57
And this course can be found over at mywifequitterjob.com slash chase. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash chase. I also want to thank Emerge Council for sponsoring this episode. Now, if you sell on Amazon or run any online business for that matter, the most important aspect of your long-term success will be your brand. And this is why I work with Steven Weigler and his team from Emerge Council to protect my brand over at Bumble Bee Linens. Now, what’s unique about Emerge Council,

01:25
is that Steve focuses his legal practice on e-commerce and provides strategic and legal representation to entrepreneurs to protect their IP. For example, if you’ve ever been ripped off or knocked off on Amazon, then Steve can help you fight back and protect yourself. And then students in my class have used Steve for copywriting their designs, policing against counterfeits and knockoffs, vendor agreements, brand registry, you name it. So if you need IP protection services, go to emergecouncil.com and get a free consult.

01:54
And if you tell Steve that I sent you, you’ll get a $100 discount. That’s Emerge Council, E-M-E-R-G-E-C-O-U-N-S-E-L.com. Now onto the show.

02:10
Welcome to the My Wife Quitter Job podcast. Today I’m thrilled to have Stephen Weigler back on the show for the second time. Steve is someone who I met back in 2016 through an attendee of Seller Summit, and I’ve used his legal services ever since. He’s actually spoken on my event several times, and he’s basically the go-to guy that I use when it comes to intellectual property protection, copyrights, trademarks, you name it. And he’s helped a number of the students in my class as well.

02:37
Steve is the founder of EmergeCouncil.com where he helps e-commerce entrepreneurs protect their IP. And the reason why I brought him on the pod today is because I’ve been getting a lot of questions regarding the different levels of IP protection that are necessary to run an e-commerce business. I’m not a lawyer. I’m not qualified to answer those questions, but Steve is. So what we’re going to talk about today is just kind of like the different levels of prevention and protection.

03:03
depending on what your budget is, how much things cost and what you can do to prevent IP theft. And with that, welcome to show, Steve, how you doing, man? Everything’s good. It’s always good to see you, Steve. Always good to see you too. So I know you do this for a living. What’s the latest in IP litigation on Amazon right now that just based on your experiences? Well, the coolest thing that’s happening on it’s kind of cool is and it’s kind of changed my opinion a little bit is Amazon started

03:33
a patent mediation process. And so I used to be really very not bullish about getting a patent because it’s so expensive to enforce. But if you believe someone’s violating your patent on Amazon, there’s actually, they built in an arbitration process that not if you file a complaint with Amazon, they’ll assign an arbitrator to it, resolve it relatively quickly and inexpensively and award you fees and potentially

04:02
the amount of monies that are sitting in that the infringers account. So that’s a big deal. And a change of my position on the importance of a patent. Interesting. So how much does it cost for this mediation to take place? Well, first, and we’re going to talk about this a little bit. Yeah, that’s everyone. And I preach this all the time is everyone has to have a strategy, everyone has to have a plan. And if you’re if you can include in your plan, and it’s worthwhile to patent something, you have to

04:32
first patent it before you get out of the gate, before you issue the product or offer the product on Amazon or another platform or your own platform. And if you have that patent in hand, it’s a very inexpensive process. It’s the cost of a patent litigator and the cost of the, I believe the Amazon fee is relatively low. believe that this is all a work in progress for Amazon, but I believe it’s about a thousand dollars.

05:00
Oh, that’s really, you know, a patent litigator, just call me and I’ll find you. And then we’ll get a quote on how much, know, obviously, if you’re talking about the next cure for cancer and a chemical patent dispute, you’re talking about multi thousand dollars, you know, into the hundreds of thousands. If you’re talking about a clipboard design, we’re talking about a lot less money. So it’s obvious. And we can go through the strategy a little bit, but chances are

05:30
you’re not going to have much opposition on the other side. It’s not like you’re gonna, an infringer, if it’s so obvious, they’re probably not going to show up. Right. Well, I don’t want to get into the weeds. What I want to get out of today’s episode really, is like just different choices that an eCommerce entrepreneur has when just deciding what level of IP protection that they want, depending on like how much they’re willing to pay. So what I’m hoping to do today is

05:56
just for you to assign different packages. let’s just start with like the basics. Like what is like the bare minimum that you would recommend a serious e-commerce entrepreneur get for a product that they’re launching on Amazon, for example? Sure. So let’s, I’m going to answer that in a little long answer. Okay. The number one thing is what’s your strategy? What’s your plan? And so Steve and I usually don’t talk about this, but I’ve been doing a lot of business transactional work where at the exit side,

06:26
And so I have about seven deals right now stacked up where entrepreneurs are exiting. And if you’re exiting, well, you need to show that you have to an aggregator or whatever. You need to show that you have an IP plan, that you have protected trademark copyright, whatever it is. So you start at the beginning. It’s like, are you thinking about selling five items and giving it a code?

06:51
and you’re not sure about your brand, you’re not sure about the experience, and you might move on to another product, then the answer is like, well, maybe spend some business time figuring that out. But we talked about a serious entrepreneur, meaning one that really has a business plan, at least in their head, and really wants to bring it to market. so it’s very, at the beginning, at least, it’s relatively inexpensive to protect the basics of IP.

07:20
So to protect the basics of IP, you have to understand what the IP is. So trademarks protect brands. So my brand is Emerge Console. It’s a legal services firm. I’m looking at a box of Cheerios right now. That brand is Cheerios. And you can close your eyes, picture it. You know what Cheerios look like. And you know what the box looks like. It’s yellow. And it has a Cheerio on the back. So that’s all brand. That’s all.

07:50
how the customer perceives a good in service. That’s a really important piece of protection. Copyright protects a rich- Hold on, wait, before we move on from there, I think most people are familiar with trademarks because it’s required for Amazon brand registry. However, a question I do commonly get asked is, do I need the word brand as well as the logo trade, the word trademark as well as the logo trademark? What are your opinions on that? I am not a big advocate of getting a logo trademark.

08:19
And so when we’re talking about, let’s pause a trademark because I think it’s the most important type of protection. And I’ve been working a lot of times with, well, IP litigators and they think when it comes time to do a takedown or we do take down too, or file a lawsuit, they, the way the trademark statutes are written and the broad protection you get, it’s a very powerful form of protection to get.

08:48
to effectuate a goal. So a trademark protects a good or a service and the protection is so broad. So if I tell you Cheerios and it’s just the word, that protection includes any element of Cheerios. It includes Cheerios in a logo. It includes Cheerios on a commercial. includes visual, any type. So the broadest form of protection is just getting the literal element of the mark, the words.

09:17
costs. So we have a total TM package and that entire thing costs about $1,000 including a thorough search to see if you’re breaching someone’s common law rights and $350 of USPTO fees. So that whole entire brand protection experience can cost as low as $1,300. Another question real quick, and I’ve been just asked this recently. If someone wants to have a brand but the trademark is already taken,

09:47
for a different product type, do you recommend that they just choose another name? I was gonna say, let’s say my brand is selling clipboards, but there’s another person who has the trademark selling like dog supplies. No, I think, listen, to preface, I don’t charge for calls to get to know my clients and also to answer types of questions like that. So for example, if you had a,

10:16
a brand called Pure and you were a water sales in water sales and Pure was up and I was thinking about dental services. Those marks aren’t going to conflict in commerce. And if you look up here on the USPTO, there’s plenty of peers, even in the same category of international registration. it’s kind of the question is, do you think those goods and services are going to cross in commerce? And the answer is

10:45
Probably not. And how common is the word that you’re talking about? So if it were like Cheerios, yes, Cheerios would have a lot of protection. It’s been around a long time and it’s a unique product. Everyone closes their eyes and they know exactly what that is. When it comes to most brands, that’s not the case. And so it kind of requires a little bit of a fine hair distinction. But it’s something that somebody just should call me and I’ll answer in five minutes. Okay. All right.

11:15
Are you just bailing? That’s not a good idea. By the way, are you going in order of priority here? So trademark is probably your top priority. I think yes, I think if you put together all the tea leaves, and it always depends on what what your goals are, but trademark is the number one strategy. Yes. yes. To answer that initial question, like this goal right now for what we’re talking about, it’s just like someone who just is selling online and

11:44
just wants like the minimum amount of protection. They haven’t thought it through. Like the plan is to provide some level of protection but not go crazy with it because they’re not 100 % sure that this product is going to completely take off just yet. Yes. And so there’s two levels. So the process starts with, call me. We run free knockouts. So we have software that we pay a gazillion dollars for through Thomson Reuters. And we can do a basic determination if anyone

12:14
is registered that mark. Okay. And so you know, that’s called brand clearance. You want to make sure even if you’re just testing the waters dipping your toe in and you even if you don’t feel like registering on the brand registry, do do a brand clearance because the next thing you know, you could get a cease and desist letter. And some of these big companies especially aren’t very nice. Like they might tell you cease and desist and pay them

12:42
5,000 bucks or something and then you cease and desist and you don’t pay him the 5,000 and you still keep on hearing from him. Then you got to hire an attorney to negotiate him. That’s where the price goes up. I see. Okay. Even people like me don’t want to do that. the bare minimum is to actually do a search, right? To see if you’re Yeah, a search which is free at least any merge console. It’s not free everywhere. But um, yeah, so let’s do your own search, but it’s not as good as our search.

13:11
Let’s use this clipboard example that we were talking about before we hit record. Like, let’s say we design a novel new way of designing a clipboard. Maybe like it’s got some extra clips or whatever. It’s an unusual type of clipboard that isn’t really being sold. How would you go about protecting that? Let’s say I was worried about like the Chinese manufacturer taking the design and selling it as their own on Amazon or someone else just taking it, creating it and selling it. What would be your?

13:41
Yeah, yeah, I get it. Well, the number one thing is to dissect what the unique elements of your brand or product that are under the brand are. And so if it’s something like you have a unique clip that’s designed uniquely, I’ll give me an example, not in a clipboard, but in like Apple iPods. They don’t it’s not that the functions unique. It’s not like the the sound is

14:10
you’re hearing some like ultra high frequency or something. It’s their ear pods. But the way they’re designed is very unique. And so they have a design, many design patents on that, packaging for the Apple iPods. So the same thing holds true for if you have a unique clipboard that has a really unique design, that’s functional. Then a design patent would be appropriate before you get out the gate. That cost is about

14:39
You know, again, it’s like, me, I look at it, I tell you if it’s viable for nothing. And then if it is, pursuing a design patent is a process between two and $3,000 because you have to get technical drawings. It’s a pain in the So you would go the patent. I mean, most people, they design like a clipboard, for example, when would you think it’s worth it to fork over the two or three K for a patent?

15:07
versus the copyrights, which I kind of interrupted you earlier. Yeah. So most people do not, it’s interesting. see usually the people that call me that have that unique clipboard with unique clip are engineers. So they’re inventors. Most people have unique color schemes, unique pricing structures.

15:35
something else that’s unique about their value proposition as opposed to another. So looking at clipboards, right before the show, I looked at seven names. I just looked up clipboards. There’s Sunny, Herdkey, Hungria, TradeQuest, and of course, Amazon Basics, and then Office Depot. Sorry, it’s actually Office

16:05
a brand of Office Depot that’s an off brand. So what would make you want to buy one over the other? So some had unique color schemes, some had the brand imprinted into the clipboard, some did have clips, but nothing overly unique. It just was a better way to organize a clipboard maybe. And then some had like a recognizable brand name, like Amazon based. So the question is like,

16:35
what do you need to distinguish your brand? the dogs, meaning the consumers, will eat the dog food. And a lot of times that’s just going to be a better brand experience. So it might be a color scheme. It might be a design in it, a logo, and that logo could be copyrighted. And so that’s also a very low cost approach. you know, the brand is obviously people are going to buy

17:03
If I saw these, I’d probably buy something, I’d probably eyeball the Office Depot one, because I know that brand, if all prices were the same. I’ve never heard of Sun-E-S-U-N-E, and I don’t know, I don’t know what, unless the prices were substantially different, I would probably go for the look and feel. And so the look and feel can be protected a lot of times through copyright. Through copyright. Yeah.

17:30
To copyright this clipboard that you’re looking at right now, how much are we talking about? So, and we’re talking, Steve, only about the United States right now. It’s about $350. Okay. And what does that protection get you? Like if someone sells something that looks similar to it, but not an exact copy, is that protected or does it have to be like an exact copy?

17:55
There’s a seven factor test that the courts use, but because it protects original works of art, you would want to look to see if anything that looks original has even been modified from that originality and you have a good case. Looking at the practical element of that, why would you get a copyright application? None of this is to run to court. This is about effectuating takedowns, effectuating…

18:25
good strategies for infringement because it’s like everything else. Once you, at the beginning, it’s like, well, I’m not thinking about that. No one’s going to infringe on me. Then you start getting to the top of the pile or you set, if you’re Shopify site, start getting to step to top of the search engine. That’s when infringement really starts to kick in and it kicks in in a big way. And so you’re going to want to have strategies that you can say, Hey, I’m going to effectuate a takedown on Amazon.

18:53
And how you do that is you to send in a registration certificate. And so the registration certificate, that process costs about $350. And then you fill out a form and you hope that that will take down the infringement and that the infringer is minorly and nothing else will happen. all of this, you guys, is a ticket to entry.

19:21
No protection, no ticket to entry. And a lot of times it’s like those types of calls, it’s like, well, I understand that, know, raw entrepreneurs, we’re trying to save money and, and increase the bottom line, but no, if you don’t go through any of this, you’re not going to, you’re not going to be able to take down anything. Right. So this is par for the course, basically, if you ever want to, So I’d say, you know, Steve, most people don’t have

19:49
something that’s worthy of a design patent. And most people, unless you have the cure for cancer or something, don’t have a particularly viable utility patent claim, meaning they don’t have real invention. And frankly, it’s hard to market an invention because no one’s ever heard of it. It’s an invention. No one’s ever heard of it before. So that’s usually a different type of entrepreneur than an e-commerce entrepreneur. So then it just becomes a trademark is a must. And I think the literal element is the most important.

20:18
And really, you know, running by me or running by a member of my team, just, okay, what’s unique about your product in the look and feel and can we get any of that copyrighted? And then you have your ticket entry, you know, and you’re talking about a max like 2000 to $2,500 price point. It depends on, you know, if you have multiple types of clipboards, might have 20 designs.

20:46
Well, you know, it’s 350 times 20. doesn’t, there’s no real cost savings. Right. So, you know, everyone’s different, but then we would look at, well, you know, that red with the dot on it is really not that unique. We let’s put that low priority. And so we’ll help you get like, we want to help you save money. Um, because it’s, it’s, it’s no value to just copyright everything under the sun.

21:10
If you haven’t picked up my Wall Street Journal bestselling book, The Family First Entrepreneur yet, then now is the time. My book will teach you how to achieve financial freedom by starting a business that doesn’t require you to work yourself to death. After all, most online business gurus constantly preach that you have to hustle, hustle, and hustle some more just to get ahead. Well, guess what? It turns out that you can achieve financial success without being a stranger to your kids. You can make good money and have the freedom to enjoy it, and you don’t have to work 80 hours a week.

21:40
and be a slave to your business just to make it all work. I will teach you how to start a business from the perspective of a parent who makes both business and family work. Not only that, but I’ve made it a no-brainer to grab the book because I’m still giving out $690 in free bonuses. And here’s what you get. You get instant access to my three-day print on-demand workshop. In this workshop, I’ll teach you exactly how to get started running a print on-demand e-commerce store, and I provide you with a free website theme as well.

22:08
You also get access to my two day passive income workshop where I’ll teach you how to make money with blogging, podcasting, or YouTube. Go to mywifequaterjob.com slash book and I’ll send you the bonuses right away. Once again, that’s mywifequaterjob.com slash book. Now back to the show.

22:26
When does it make sense to patent because to me you can’t you have to get the patent before you even start selling right and a patent takes a while to get is that. Yeah I think if in an ideal world if you’re an entrepreneur and you want to visit this at the very beginning to see if you have something that has a unique design especially with this new Amazon scheme to.

22:56
to evaluate. And so I think it’s important to do it early. Sometimes you have up to a year after the issuance of the product into market to obtain that patent. But I think it’s good to do. And then if you don’t do it at the beginning, well, again, it’s not like your life’s over. It’s just a strategy that we might have to revisit on your newest design. OK.

23:25
And if you go the patent route, you were saying $3,000 minimum to get that process started. It always seems that way. Depending on. Okay. Yeah. So you know what? I personally, I don’t, I’m not licensed to practice patent. We have people who do it. Um, but they, so it’s an interesting field because it depends if you’re coming to me and most of your clients are, but if you’re coming to me with a, um, a computer program, it’s one person.

23:54
If you’re coming to me with a chemical, it’s another. If you’re coming to me with just a basic industrial design, that’s much cheaper person. So it just depends on what the patent is. What’s the timeframe approximately that you would expect to get this thing done so you can start selling? So the cool thing about everything but copyright is the moment you file protection goes back to that date. OK.

24:23
The important thing is to get it filed, not so much to get it granted, including. So that’s what’s cool about also Amazon brand registry. We just need to get you the serial number to get on brand registry. It used to be that you had to get it registered or use their, what is it called? IP accelerator program accelerator, which, know, we get a lot of business because that got screwed up. So be careful on the accelerator.

24:52
But anyway, what are we talking about time frame to get it filed a patent filed just a trademark we’re looking a trademark we’re looking at less than a week to get the search done and filed for patent and a patent we’re looking at maybe two weeks. Oh, okay. That’s not so we work fast. Okay. And we have and the way we’ve done that is systemize everything and keep the cost down because we’ve systemized it. Okay.

25:20
So in my opinion, correct me if I’m wrong, we’ve kind of talked about the basics here already. When does it make sense to protect yourself in a country like China, for example? Well, that’s a really good question and one that can be granular or not. You got to look at what your nexus is with China. if you’re a lot of people are coming out with unique designs and then

25:50
their manufacturer and sometimes even their distributor is based out of China, like it’s drop shipping out of China. So at that point, China becomes a very important part of your strategy. And it’s very inexpensive to get the work that we’ve done in the United States duplicated in China. And so you got to keep in mind that China is not a big fan of enforcing American laws, right? They don’t mind.

26:20
I think it’s a myth that they don’t enforce their own laws. They do, and sometimes very harshly. So we have relationships with Chinese consul, and we’re going to evaluate if it’s, and we can do some of this work, and we will evaluate what the cheapest way is to effectuate the same strategy we’ve used in the United States to make sure we have the protection in that trade channel. Because a lot of times what’s happening is infringement on the trademark side.

26:49
and on the copyright side, and sometimes even on the patent side, is happening on like Alibaba, or it’s happening through the manufacturer that the manufacturer is running your run plus 100 % more that they’re distributing either under that brand name or the same brand name. And it’s really, we’ve had quite been quite successful in using a strategy number, but the strategy of

27:19
of on how to take that down. But the strategy has to involve it’s now no different than the United States. No Chinese protection. No, no strategy. Like I don’t know what else to tell. let me ask you this, because if you have all those protections in the US and someone, some Chinese factory decides to take your design and sell it to somebody else, you can get the listing taken down the US. So what is the advantage of nipping it at the source versus when it actually gets sold?

27:49
And what are the trade-offs in actually getting that additional protection in China? Well, I think it’s a fallacy that a lot of times, unfortunately, that a takedown is going to take care of your problem. Because what’s happening is that these are, if you’re lucky, you found somebody that maybe is sitting in their apartment or their house in China, and it’s one person and they’re just finding low hanging fruit and it just happens to be you. But unfortunately, it’s like money laundering.

28:19
it’s a sophisticated scheme. And so a lot of times you can’t even, you don’t even know when you see the takedown, you’re looking at the tip of the iceberg of the issues that you’re really potentially facing in China. a lot of these people are very, or organizations are very sophisticated crime syndicates. And so I hope a takedown works and a lot of my clients can do takedowns by themselves. don’t.

28:46
even need me. mean, it’s good to keep me in the loop, but it’s no cost. It’s like, okay, great. I hope that works. But a lot of times it take down. It just pops up under another brand, another name, another. see. It might show up on another website, might show up on their own Shopify site. It just it’s sophisticated. And so the strategy is always going to be how can we get the message to

29:15
the infringer, is usually a criminal or what I call it criminal or tortious organization in China, that you don’t want to be screwing around with us, you want to be screwing around. I would prefer you not do it at all, but leave us alone because we’re going to go after you. And so that’s the exact frame that we look at all our China cases with. How are we going to send that message and how are we going to do it as cheap as possible?

29:44
But you need some protection in China to do it because they’re not gonna, they don’t care about the American. It doesn’t have any ramification. Are there the same protections in China or analogous as to the ones we just talked about in the US? Yeah, and without getting into like international relations class. China is more administrative, and we tend to use our legal systems more. So they use administrative law. But yes, it’s very much,

30:12
It’s a similar scheme, similar laws, similar system. And we even have treaties and protocols with China on how to handle this. But most importantly, you want to work with an attorney who has a good relationship with Chinese consul. And we’ve worked with Chinese consul to build the same, we have the same processes and work together a lot. So how I tell my clients as far as cost, it’s like, all right, if it was a thousand dollars in the United States to protect it, it’s a thousand dollars in China.

30:42
because it’s the same process, it’s the same thing. And a lot of times it’s even less. So once we have a strategy to effectuate that strategy, you gotta look at their copyright process is a little more expensive than ours. So it’s a little more like $500 and ours is 350 and their trademark process 895 and ours is a thousand. But you know, I just like, by the time everything is said and done, it’s like a thousand dollars, a thousand dollars.

31:12
So if you have three protections here, you wanna do the same in China, it’s six times. So walk me through this. So let’s say I have this clipboard design. I’m a little nervous about having this factory make it. It’s my design. I don’t want them selling it to other people or creating it for anyone other than myself, even under a different brand. What do I need to get? Sure. So there’s one area of intellectual property that we haven’t covered and that’s called the trade secret.

31:42
A lot of this is an area where a lot of e-commerce sellers, their heads not in this place is you have a relationship and if you were in the United States, you would sign a contract and you would have a contract and would include an exclusivity provision. And it would include that this clip we’re providing and maybe the die casting we’re buying from you is trade secret. And we don’t want this distributed to anyone else.

32:12
That’s kind of a no brainer if you did it in the United States. In China, you can do the same thing. And so we work with Chinese council. So the first step is to work with Chinese council and get it translated into Mandarin, put an international arbitration clause in it, waive some UN clauses. So it’s international. Anyway, write an international contract that we have a form of. It’s not like this hasn’t been done before.

32:40
get it signed by both parties, then you can enforce trade secret protection in China. So that’s a really a piece that a lot of entrepreneurs miss. But a lot of entrepreneurs are buying on Alibaba and just buying the clipboards. That’s not gonna work in that because that’s just wholesale Amazon. So that’s number one. Number two is… Before we move on. So this trade secret, it’s an agreement that you would draft up

33:10
and then the factory would sign it as well as you, and it becomes like a legal document that you can use to enforce that they don’t sell it to anyone else. Is that accurate? So if anyone else take your die cuts and just attribute them to any partners or affiliates, because it’s really interesting, Steven, in China, what we get is every time we hire Chinese consul to have a discussion, like a door knocking, like,

33:40
hey, we think you’re violating intellectual property of our clients. It’s recorded because they don’t have the same laws. So they record it and then they translate it into English for us. And so, and this is all like next to no cost. It’s a very, it’s not a very linear discussion like we would maybe have in the United States. Like if you me money and I called you and I said, Steve, pay me the money. That’d be a, I might say, how’s your family? And then you owe me money. But the,

34:09
in China, it really is like, it’s quite a different cultural experience discussing disputes. And so you really, it’s very beneficial to have that contract, but also have experienced Chinese console can really explain that. How much are we talking about to set that up? Everything seems like it’s a thousand bucks. Translating is 300. Having them make the call, they charge like,

34:39
$200 an hour, you know, it’s really cheap. mean, is that even more valuable than, than getting the trademark and the copyright? Well, the trademark is going to help you. Let’s continue the journey. Okay, sure. So we have the we have the we have the agreement. So we have a prophylactic that this on this product is is going to be exclusive to our manufacturer. And if it gets into another manufacturer, at least we know it’s not our

35:09
The second thing is trademarks also can be used to seize goods at borders. also Alibaba will take down. if, the manufacturer doesn’t do anything wrong, but somebody sees it in the Chinese marketplace and for some reason, and it gets to Alibaba. So Alibaba is selling it wholesale, generic wholesale. Like here’s this clipboard with this unique clip.

35:39
So, how are you going to take it down on Al, you can take it down on Alibaba, but you need a Chinese trademark and you, or Chinese copyright. So they, Alibaba has a more robust takedown program than Amazon. So they’ll, they’ll take it down if you have a Chinese trademark or copyright. So you want to stop the product at the source. Say you can’t do that. Say you missed the boat on that one, literally then, you know, the cost, the

36:09
it then is being shipped. know, China, there are lot of consumers in China, but we are the number one consumer country. So chances are it’s being loaded on a dock to come to the United States. So if you have an American trademark, you can seize those products at the border. So you file it with customs. And only if you have a trademark registration, you can have customs. You don’t even have to do it.

36:38
seize the goods. So you have a place to stop it. Then once it hits American distribution channel, you can rely on Amazon, you can rely on injunctions in court, you can do whatever you need to do. Now, sometimes it’s like so smooth and effective. It’s, know, unfortunately when you’re going after infringers, it’s like going after a criminal enterprise. Sometimes you’re lucky and you you saw like say you’re a cop and you saw the murder like,

37:07
because you happen to be drinking coffee down the street. Saw the guy whip out the gun. That’s one thing. The guy whipped out the gun, took off, and you don’t know about it for 20 days, and it happens to be the Russian mob. Well, and you’re trying to crack the enterprise. It’s a little more difficult, but you need these little pieces. And then you need to make, you need an attorney to make that cost benefit analysis with you if it’s worth it, because it’s really a pretty complicated world. My job is to make it simple and

37:37
help you make risk analysis. Is this worth it at this point? Or what are we going to do to do this on the cheap? And usually a combination of those factors work. Sometimes we have to file a lawsuit, but even that’s not very expensive. I just filed one in Miami for a dear friend of both of ours. And because what happened on there is just so I might be getting on a tangent, but this is a good war story. So he files a takedown on Amazon.

38:08
The Chinese party, against the Chinese party, the Chinese party files a counter notice saying, but the counter notice is BS. In a counter notice, you’re claiming, no, I have the copyright. So it’s a fake email address, but it’s the name of a real company. So you have 20 days at that point to either file a lawsuit in federal court,

38:37
and you have to have a copyright to do that, because it’s copyright issue, or it’s gonna go up and stay up, the posting at issue, it’s gonna stay up until you get an injunction from a federal judge. Well, that is gonna be really, really expensive. So you have to run and file this lawsuit. And so we ran and filed the lawsuit, and so that cost was about,

39:07
say $3,000, $3,000 to $4,000 because it’s not amateur hour filing a federal. Right. Right. And I just happened to be barred in Florida. So I was able to do it. And then the next step is I called my Chinese console and she verified who the company was. And I got in both Mandarin and English who this company is and the relation to who filed the counter notice. So I know and now I’m amending the complaint and already we’ve gotten

39:37
emails bagging us to settle from this Chinese company based on our working with Chinese console who so far is in charge of the dime for the services bagging the Chinese console to resolve this case. But now we want some money out of it. it’s not going to respond. Let me ask. So this case that you just specified without naming any names, did this person have the trademark in China also? No.

40:02
No, so they had no protections in China. This is just US protections copyright. US protection, but this is an example of filing a lawsuit in China. I’ve never gotten to the point where we’re filing a lawsuit. What we do in China is usually a door knocking strategy where once we find them and sit Chinese consul on them, I have a feeling that they, a lot of these people are very scared of going to Chinese court. And so, like, I think there might be

40:32
you can go to jail. they usually tends to take care of What can the Chinese consulate do? I why do they you just said they don’t care about US copyright. Oh, I’m sorry, consulate, not not consulate. So we oh, so let’s let’s do an example. So we know that the infringements on Alibaba, we know we have a so it’s kind of a generic good, but we have a trademark. And so say we were called Cheerios.

41:01
And we had a, were selling away. Um, and then all of a sudden Cheerios, the box shows up on, on Alibaba. We would have a Chinese trademark. We take down the Alibaba listing. We would find out through Alibaba who the Chinese console would find out. who, who’s listing that because I’m in Alibaba cooperates. They tell us the name or the Chinese console and they go and they have offices all over China.

41:31
they call and say, hey, we’re gonna file a lawsuit against you unless you enter into this settlement agreement. And so then that’s when you usually get this transcript that they’re like, well, no, that wasn’t me, that was my brother and my brother’s sister. And you get this really circumvent kind of discussion, but usually it ends up in a resolution. They can’t believe you found them. And they wanna find someone that

42:00
Hasn’t found them and go away. Okay, sorry. So just just for terminology sake, Chinese consul is just a Chinese lawyer, right? Chinese lawyer, right? My Chinese consul. Not the consulate. Okay, got it. Okay, so you have relations with Chinese lawyers who can actually give a little bit more weight to a Chinese citizen to be scared. Right? Absolutely. Right. Yeah. Okay, I get it. Okay. The trademark in China really only helps you

42:28
take stuff down in Alibaba and possibly if a Chinese lawyer needs more ammunition. Correct. And the second thing is it’s going to help you can seize the goods at Chinese ports. So the theory is either it’s coming directly from a manufacturer to the United States, or it’s coming. A lot of times it if if you’re small, like it’s you’re buying it off Alie Alie Express.

42:58
and putting your having the manufacturer in place your custom logo or and if you have the trademark for that you can take infringers tap. see. So what and what you found is just just a letter from a Chinese lawyer to the suppliers usually enough to scare them off because they’re paranoid in your experience. I call it a door knocking strategy or not. Yeah. Yeah. OK. We actually sometimes we knock on the door like it’s very in it. know again China a Chinese console.

43:28
not counseled, a bunch of counsel is not that expensive. And they have, you know, effectively called or actually knocked on the door gone to the factory to discuss our issues. Right. So I mean, I’ve had some experience in the US where, know, it costs a couple hundred bucks to write a letter. Is that like a price that you would expect to pay a Chinese lawyer to do something like that? The last time we did it, it was 1500.

43:56
$1,500. Okay, that includes a transcript and the sure resolution. I you know, right? I love it. And they have access to find out who exactly owns the the listings and that sort of thing. Right? They do it much better than I do. Like I have no idea how to use you. Alibaba to do that. I know, you know, you got to look at well, do we have any protection there? And if we do, yes, it’s a matter for Chinese console.

44:26
I love it. I would imagine a Chinese citizens just like a US citizen, right? Like if I got a letter, like if it was my first one, I’d be scared, right? And I would know it. Yeah. I think a lot of I mean, I would love to learn more. But I think a lot of these are criminal enterprises. But the criminal enterprises that are dumb, they want to, they want to if they have issues, they move on. Like, right, it’s gonna be

44:52
It’s not that we’re going to stop infringement. We want to stop infringement for people under our care. you know, Amazon is spending, according to them, billions of dollars trying to stop infringement. I don’t know. It’s not going too well from what I can see. And sometimes, you know, the Wall Street Journal at least reports that Amazon is partially responsible for this. Yeah, well, they make it so easy, You know, exactly. So you really have to it’s one of those situations that you have to read the tea leaves.

45:22
This is not supposed to be the most expensive thing you’re doing in your business. I realize that people don’t even really love talking to a attorney. And this should be like a little side distraction at a low cost. But if you don’t do it at all, it’s kind like one of those things like not getting a bookkeeper. Or knowing how to use QuickBooks on your own. It’s a business.

45:52
And so it’s important. I can tell you again, because right now I’m working on seven transactions, a record for me and M &A and it’s hot right now is that you don’t have this, you’re getting ding-dinged on the prices that us buyers or an aggregator is willing to pay. Right. It’s just so obvious that you need IP protection. Along those lines, I would imagine a patent is a lot more valuable than

46:21
in the eyes of an aggregator if you’re selling right. I don’t think a design pattern is all that.

46:28
All that sexy, really. think, yes, if you have a utility patent, even my eyes or my ears perk up. Like I’m like, let me study that. Well, that must really add value. wow, what is and what are your sales based on based off it? It all comes down to financials. There’s so many patent holders that have patents and then they can’t monetize them. So I don’t know. Like it’s the whole thing when you get to that point, which is a really

46:56
And Stephen, the last time I was on and we talked, I wasn’t doing a lot of this because it’s fun. A lot of my clients have grown. So now they’re at that stage. And so it’s been it’s an amazing place to be for them and for me watching their hardware come to fruition because they’re going to monetize their work. So but I see I look at it when I study. I try and get my mind in the eyes of the high banker or the acquirer.

47:25
It’s like, what’s sexy about this? It’s whole package here. But I would think a utility patent would add value if it’s being monetized. If it’s just like, well, I got this. It has nothing to do with the business. I don’t even know if they’re going to do due diligence on it. They don’t care. It’s really like that. So I think for every client, always be looking for how this particular piece affects bottom line. I can tell you, especially with Amazon Prime Day,

47:55
we had some clients that with infringers were killing them. Like they’re 50 % down. And it’s really like, well, we can’t do this in a day. Like this is something that we should have addressed a long time ago. So it really can affect your bottom line and that’s bad. And it really should, again, I love IP. It’s fascinating. It’s intangible stuff, very creative, but it shouldn’t be your take up.

48:24
Yeah, I’m into your money What I like about this talk today is you know, I’m sure a lot of times, you know copycats from China Copy stuff directly because they can get away with it and it’s not like someone in America can attack them in China So by by getting someone in China to knock on their door, I can see that as a huge debtorant Yeah, yeah, I’m telling you yeah, and it’s yeah, it it’s fun because I get these transcripts and I see how that works it’s like

48:55
Even if I knew Chinese, there’s a cultural thing. It’s like how they operate is like totally cultural. So it’s really super interesting. And again, the Chinese government is, I mean, at least in the things we’re talking about, which isn’t like fat and all trafficking, they’re very aware and very enforceable or deliberate in their own laws. They just are. It’s that kind of country.

49:24
It’s not the Caribbean or something. It’s very rigid country. So they’re very rigid in their laws. Cool, Steve. Well, where can people find you if they need some of these services? Sure. you can email me at SWEIGLER at Emerge, E-M-E-R-G-E, console, C-O-U-N-S-E-L dot com. And it’s www.emergeconsole.com.

49:54
Anytime that anyone wants to talk, I offer free get to know you consultations as well as knockout and quotes. So we like, try and be very project based. So we want to get to know the client, what their issues are, who they are, and build a relationship. Cause honestly, Steve, and this is a secret to all your clients is total TM, which is what we call a trademark is pretty much a loss leader. Like it’s, it’s, it’s pretty much.

50:22
because of the searches we do and everything and the amount of work it is, it’s pretty much at cost. But I want to build relationships with entrepreneurs that want to grow and in the e-commerce space especially, and be with them on the journey. And so that’s how I’ve done it. Sometimes my business advisors are like, Steve, why are you, you’re a law firm, why have a law leader?

50:49
But anyway, that’s another topic for discussion. I’m just just what I I like about Steve for anyone listening is everything you know what you’re paying for. And it’s not like, oh, yeah, it’s going to be $400 an hour. I don’t know how much long it’s going to be the project based pricing and the fact that he’s not going to nickel and dime me that that’s why I like Steve personally. Yeah, it’s not the easiest profession sometimes. I do enjoy it. So anyway, well, it’s always good hanging out with you. Absolutely. Thank you so much.

51:21
Hope you enjoy that episode. Just like brushing your teeth, if you want to protect your IP, a little bit of prevention goes a long way. For more information about this episode, go to mywifecluderjob.com slash episode 485. And once again, I want to thank Emerge Council for sponsoring this episode. Now, if you sell on Amazon FBA or your own online store and you want to protect your intellectual property from theft and fraud, head on over to EmergeCouncil.com and get a free consult. Just mention my name and you’ll get $100 off.

51:50
That’s E-M-E-R-G-E-C-O-U-N-S-E-L.com. I also want to thank Chase Diamond for sponsoring this episode. Chase is my go-to guy when it comes to email marketing. And if you want to learn how to run your own successful email marketing campaigns, check out his course over at mywifequitterjob.com slash chase. That’s mywifequitterjob.com slash C-H-A-S-E. And if you are interested in starting your own e-commerce store, head on over to mywifequitterjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course.

52:18
Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.