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Protecting Your Intellectual Property

So let's talk about the value of intellectual property to just to really drive the point home. Okay, Um, in the U. S. I. P is worth $5 trillion. That is twice the amount of what it costs to run this entire country. OK, that is a whole hell of a lot of money. I can't even wrap my mind around it. But that's what I p is worth in the US alone in other western countries is very similar. Um, I P is responsible for 39% of the European Union's GDP over $250 billion of the value of the eighth x 100. And that's the top 100 companies in Australia. Um, $250 billion of that value is attributable. Toe I p. Okay, so I p has a lot of value. This Israel word stuff. Okay, this is also what big business is all about. It's all about intellectual property. So let's talk about the value of your own intellectual property because I know you're gonna have that question like All right. Well, what is my hubby worth? I wrote this e book. How much can I sell it for, you know. So let's talk about how you'd actually...

do that. So your I P is part of your intangible assets, right? There are four major types of intellectual property, and I'm gonna give you a little bit more about the four different types later today. But just know that there's copyrights, trademarks, patents and trade secrets. You can value your I p based on how much across you to produce its current estimated value in the marketplace and its potential value in the future. Now, what I recommend is that you do all three. So let's do this with one of my assets, right? I have a legal kit called small Business bodyguard. Now, how much would it cost me to create? Well, was about $15,000 Probably not counting my time. It was like three months or four months of non stop writing as well. So if you don't count, my time is about $15,000 most of that went to a designer because I wanted it to be pretty. So that was like what it cost to produce. But then you also have its current estimated value in the marketplace. And luckily because I'm a lawyer. I know this because I do these contracts for transactions where business owners are selling their assets. Right? I have quite a few clients actually right now who are currently selling off some of the assets in their business or selling their entire business altogether. And it's often, like I said, made up of intangible assets, intellectual property. Ah, lot of it is actually info products, mailing lists, you know, block posts. These things have value. And I've done I'm telling you that do contracts where one party is buying this stuff. Okay, so it is incredibly valuable. So how do you figure that out while you could look at, you know, it's similar to real estate, right? So if you want to sell your house, your realtor would come and say, Hey, you have to look at the comps in the neighborhood. I know because my sister is a realtor. So you have to look at the comes in the neighborhood, and you look at you know the other three bedroom houses with two bathrooms in your immediate area, and then you have to, like, take some away because they have a barrage and you don't have a barrage, but then you can add something in because they have beautiful hardwood floors. I'm sorry. You have beautiful hardwood floors and they don't. Right? So that's sort of how you sort of figure it out and get a sense of what it's worth in the market place. Now, I wish that there was some sort of place, some website I could tell you to go to find this. But if you ask around and talk to your friends or just call me, we could talk about what the value is. I've seen people sell, you know, in for products for as little as 15,000 and then also as high as 400,000. Okay, so it depends on a couple of factors. And let me tell you where a lot of the value comes from right here. Its potential value in the future. Okay, so for a small business bodyguard, right, it's an info product. Um, it's got some audio. It's got a bunch of templates in there. It's, you know, about almost 300 pages. I know that I've seen it in for a product that was sort of similar style that was sold for 15,000 but it didn't have all the templates, didn't have any audio, and it was a different topic. I think this is, Ah, heavier topic, and it also saves people thousands of dollars in legal fees, which is different. So those are some of the different. So that's how I do the compensate. OK, well, maybe the product itself is worth maybe 100,000. And that's actually a number that has been explored at one point and then the potential in the potential value in the future, though that's where the real money is. That right? Because it's about its ability to generate revenue, right? So maybe it costs me $15,000 to create. And maybe, you know, I could sell it for $100, to somebody right now. Possibly. Or maybe I could get a lot more because it's a profit center. That's what intellectual property is. It's a way to generate revenue. So, you know, small business bodyguard has made you know a couple $100,000 a year for the last couple of years, so that means that most likely, it's going to continue to make a couple $100,000 a year for several years to come, right? So that means that it has a lot of value. It's not just worth the 15, that maybe take to create it. It's not just worth you know what? Maybe somebody would pay in the market if they didn't consider the future cost. So that's how you want to think about it when you're value valuing your own I P and I hope this is getting the juices flowing and it's worth this. It's worth doing this even if you're not currently considering selling your work just to know, just to know, so you can feel confident like, Hey, this stuff I created is worth money, you know? All right, so I want you to feel confident about that. In my experience over the last five years of being an entrepreneur. Confidence Is everything okay? So do this just for nothing else than to give you a boost. OK, you know, my business adviser Charlie tells me, like when you're confident that's when the magic happens when you're not feeling confident than a no magic happening right? So, of course, with anything that is highly valuable like this, there's a lot of theft. Raise your hand if you've experienced theft of your intellectual property. Yep, almost all of us here. Right at once. You're in business long enough, you are going to see someone take your article and put it on their block post or even take your entire info product. Slap their name on the front and try to pass it off as your own. I've also seen people take books that were like either self published or even sometimes traditionally published on Amazon E books. They will download it, slap a new cover on it, re upload it and sell it as their own. Okay, can get pretty egregious. Why? Because it's valuable and it's easy to steal because it's intangible, right? So it's easy to if you posted online or if it's somewhere available on the Internet, or if it's just a downloadable thing, it's easy to steal. So 200 to 250 billion I p assets are stolen in the U. S. Annually. Counterfeit copyright and trademark works was a $ billion industry in 2011 and it's only grown since then. So counterfeit I p is essentially like a whole industry You know, there's an industry of people who steal other people's intellectual property and generate revenue from it. OK, but we're not going to be victims. Okay, We're not having it. So this is how you deal with infringers. And if you want really, the detailed steps to this check out the advanced I p for entrepreneurs. Course, I go into a lot more detail and give you some templates and stuff like that for how to do that. But I'm gonna give you the steps right now, So first things first, you have to register your intellectual property. Okay? If you don't register your I p, then you create a situation where you can be an easy target. So you're in a registered I p register your copyright registered trademarks. You're gonna send a d m c A takedown notice to the infringers host. If that doesn't work right. So the next step is someone who steals from you. The D. M. C stands for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act on. This is sort of a law that's created to protect entrepreneurs and artists and inventors like ourselves. Right, So it's set up for us, and so you should think of it as your friend. I P law is your friend. Because there to protect you and to protect your work and to protect your revenue. Because that's how you make your money. Right? So the way you do this is you just send a letter to the web site host of the website that has stolen your work and posted it on their site, and they will actually take the website down. Now you have to sort of comply with some of the rules. There's, you know, it has to be in a certain format, but this is something you can totally do on your own. You don't have to pay a lawyer to do this. So that's something that you can do feel empowered knowing that that's a tool that you can use and have in your arsenal to stop somebody when they're trying to infringe on your work. The other option, if that doesn't work or, um, if they continue to do it, I've seen situations where somebody still someone's content and then puts it on another website so like they'll put it on one website, you send a D. M. C. A takedown notice that website comes down and then what happens? They put it on another website and they keep doing this right? So if that happens, you have them blacklisted on Google. This is another really powerful tool. Like if I'm not found on Google, how will my customers find me? Pretty powerful. You're going to get their attention. Um, and so that's just a simple form that you fill out on Google's website. If you just go if you I think it's I can't remember the u R L. But you can just Google blacklist on Google and the link will come up. You fill out a form and report them, and sometimes it's hard to get them taken down with the first try. But if they are the type of people who are stealing people stuff all the time, that makes it easier to get them blacklisted and then, you know, escalating, you know, from things you can do on your own and things that are sort of easier to things that are more aggressive is hire an attorney to send a cease and desist. Um and so my office charges. I think we charge around 8 52 some decease and desist. So not completely out of your reach is not astronomical. Not everything that you purchased from a lower cost. $10,000. You know, um, so that that you might want to reserve for people who are, You know, this isn't working these other steps. Or maybe if you're dealing with a larger company or something like that, and then for the truly stubborn infringers, you might have to file a complaint in court. And obviously, that's like the last resort. Um, And just know, too, that most of the time when you're filing a complaint in court, you're really just trying to get the case to settle. 95% of all cases filed in court settle. So that's what everybody is there for. Everybody is there to encourage the other party to settle as one point or another, but just know you've got five ways to stick it to them. Okay, so now you understand. Protecting your I p is really valuable. And that's me sitting there sipping tea content because I know I have these things when I protect my I p. I've got an insurance policy, all right, because once he registered it, you know that that's sort of your insurance policy protects you from infringers, and it's a deterrent from people who would infringe on your work. So it's like an insurance policy. It's also a retirement account because you are like, basically recording the assets that you have. So you have a way to sell this business if you ever needed to because you wanted to retire, right? Um, if you ever wanted to sell the company, that's what it does. Um, it's also quality of life guarantee, right, because it gives you more time, more money. Um, and you know, increases the impact of your work, all things that make your life better. So here's what you now know. Now you know that your business is made up of intellectual property. You aren't capitalizing on 95% of the I P. That's sitting in your business. That I p is incredibly valuable and has the ability to improve the quality of your life and business. So, you know, even if it's hard and honestly, it's not even that hard, Um, it's totally worth it to Dio as an entrepreneur. And then, you know the other thing. We unfortunately now know is that other people in companies will steal from you in a heartbeat, so you have to value your own work. And that's the reason why you'd invest in the time to send the DMC a takedown notice or to register your copyrights or to register your trademarks because you're valuing it just as much as the people who would still from you will value it. So now you know these things. What are we have to do now? So the steps or make this happen is an intellectual property on it. It's five steps. It's fairly simple. I won't say that it's easy, but it is simple. Um, and here are the steps. Step one is to mine. Okay, so that's like, you're gonna just get down and dig, okay? You're gonna look in your business, and it's sort of a systematic process. And that's where we're gonna talk to trust in my ops manager because she's really good at this. Okay, that's like her specialty. Um, but you're gonna mind your business and find the I p that's there. And I'm gonna take you through a process that we use to do this. And that's probably honestly the hardest step or or at least the most labor intensive. And then step two is to prioritize. So once you've got all this, I p that uses will start flowing, you'll start seeing things that you could do and seeing magical things that you can make happen. But you have to prioritize it, right, cause you can't do everything at once. Were small business. We've got limited, you know, human capital, meaning there's only so much work we can do in a day. So you have to prioritize and decide. All right, What? I'm going to take action on first, and then the next step is to rework, and we're gonna talk about a lot of different ways that you can rework the I p that you've already got to generate additional river revenue for you. And in this step will also talk about creativity. Cancer. Okay, which is an epidemic in the entrepreneur industry because what happens is every five minutes were like, Oh, I should make this or I should Oh, you know would be fun if I did this new thing. Oh, you'll be awesome. If I create this other course and then every five minutes we're creating something new and were not working that thing to generate tons of revenue for us, Right? So sometimes you have to just step back. Look at what you've already got. And look at how you can make revenue from the stuff you already have, right, Because that limits the amount of investment you have to put in to get that thing to market and to get that revenue coming in and then step for us to protect and notice that becomes before profit. Okay, so this should be part of your launch plan When you're creating something new, if you're gonna launch a new product or a new service or knew anything or a new brand Step four you know, before you can really launch it is to protect it. So registered the copyright for your new program before you put it out there into the world. Also, register your trademark for your brand before you announce it to the world. Okay, so that comes first. And then we have the happy step, which is we get to make money. Okay, so that's what we need to dio. One viewer says copyright protects you in the US, but what can be done to protect from people from overseas, etcetera. Trying to copy your content right? That's a really great question, and copyright actually is not just something that exists in the U. S. It also exists overseas. Um, and it depends on how it's being done if it's being done online. There are some tools that you can use, for example, to have a website taken down this overseas, and you'd be surprised. There are a lot of hosts that are based in other countries who still comply with the DMC A because they have a presence here and they have a lot of American customers. Um, so that's one tool that's that's there. And then you can also register the copyright in your you know, in other countries. So, like, let's say you have a huge following in the U. S. And then you also have a huge following in Canada. Then it might be worth it to register your copyrights here in the US and also register them in Canada. And so that way you have a protocol to deal with someone who is infringing on your work in that country. Um, and we also have another question from Sherry. She's Hi, Rachel were working on a Children's Web, Siri's Dewey trademark, the serious name and each one of the characters in Which categories would we use? We do plan to have it in T shirts and toys made out of characters and hope to license them. All right, um, so I mean, that's sort of a little bit of a business decision there, too. But, yes, I would definitely register the actual overarching brand. And if you're going to do licensing for, like, each of the characters Or, you know, if each of the characters are sort of a sub brand in and of themselves, then yes, you should register those as well, right? I'll give an example of that like we have our flagship product that I mentioned small business bodyguard. Then we also have these other you know, products that are a little lower cost that is called legal nunchucks. So we protect both brands because they're both, you know, brands under the sort of overarching small business bodyguard brand. So and this is a strategic decision to make right. So, like here, let me give you an example with legal nunchucks. It's a Siri's. So we're gonna do legal now. We've done legal nunchucks for photographers were gonna do legal nunchucks for coaches. Next, we have legal nunchucks for filmmakers legal none trucks for designers. So we're gonna cover a lot of different industries. So I could have named each one of those guides something really specific to that profession. But then I would have to trademark all of them, and that cost me a lot of money, right? So what I did was created a series where legal nunchucks is the trademark. And then we just add photographers as sort of like, um, the next line so that it's specific to them. But we don't have to have register, you know, the different names for 12 different things. So not to say that it's not worth it, though Sometimes it is totally worth it to just go ahead and register every single one, if that's the structure, and that sounds like it's the structure of her business. So if you've got these characters and you want to protect that, then yes, you should register. Register the brand for each one of them, and then in terms of the categories it varies. It depends on what you want to do with the business. But if you want to do apparel than you have apparel, there's a couple of different classes that she probably fall into toys. It could be, you know, um, you know, music or videos. I mean, I'm not sure what she's planning on doing it with it, but yeah, you might need to register in several different classes.