TRANSCRIPT
Dot the i's and cross the t's | Get started with Patents and Trademarks for your Business
Iva1:00
Hi, and welcome to a new episode of the Mom Bosses Abroad podcast. Today we are here with Devin Miller, and he is going to help us understand how to work your start-up as small business with patents and trademarks. So, Devin, we are so excited to have you here because this topic is something that we were always very keen to know a little bit more of, but also because you are our first male guest in our podcast. So welcome!
Devin 1:47
Awesome. Well, I'll take that as an honor. So I'm excited to be here and excited to chat a little bit about intellectual property. So thanks for having me on.
Desiree 1:55
Devin, you love start-ups and you run your own patent and trademark law firm to help start-ups and small businesses. He also founded his first start up while earning his law MBA degree. Since then, he has founded several seven and eight figure start-ups and enjoys every single minute of it. Devin, we come prepared with so many questions for you like Iva said, it's a topic we've been meaning to dive into ourselves. So you came just at the right time,
Devin 2:29
Or is it good timing, so no, I'm excited to chat. So yeah, go ahead, fire away and we can have a good conversation.
Desiree 2:34
Yeah. First of all, how did you get into law in the first place and what made you say, ‘Hey, I'm gonna work with start-ups and small businesses specifically’?
Devin 2:48
Yeah, so that goes a ways back, so I probably more than that, when I was doing my undergraduate. So I ended up doing undergraduate or bachelor's degrees. I got a couple: one in electrical engineering, and one in Mandarin Chinese. So with that, as I was getting finishing up the undergraduate, I kind of you know, got to the end of those focus on doing engineering work, and I got the answer. Well, you know, I liked doing it. I liked doing engineering, but I didn't want to be an engineer in the sense that I didn't want to be a typical engineer stuck on a small part of a big project for a long period of time, takes you a long ways to work up and you know, have a lot of diversity or things within when you work on it. So I'd say that, you know, when I want to grow up or what do I want to do, and I grew up and that wasn't it, and so I was kind of thinking, you know, I kind of had some passions on the entrepreneur side and doing start-ups and small businesses that I'm pretty interested in. And then the legal side, particularly with intellectual property, I've been able to work with a lot of start-ups and small businesses to protect their intellectual property also sounded interesting. So that's really kind of as I was deciding what I wanted to do. I was trying to decide between the two and I guess I came to the decision that I wasn't going to choose one or the other and I am just going to do both. So that's where I went and I got a law degree, an MBA degree, started doing start-ups while I was earning the degrees, I was also working as a law clerk and starting my family and so it kept me pretty busy and then I have just been kind of continuing to pursue things ever since then.
Iva 4:18
So you fit the profile of a multi passionate person, an entrepreneur, right? There's no need to choose right or left. Like you can really find your own niche. Integrating your skills and talents and putting them together towards a combination that truly works for you. So that’s pretty nice and inspiring as well for anyone that is listening that it is possible to combine a lot of your passions and skills together into something that you can make into a career.
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Desiree 4:51
Yeah. And the busier we are the more inspired and the more creative we get as well. Don't wait. So you said a word or phrase there that is just so important, especially for us as entrepreneurs, because we do have a lot of intellectual property that we need to take care of. So first of all, I'm just going to ask the basic question here. Just to clarify right off the bat. How what is the difference between a patent, a trademark and copyright?
Devin 5:28
Yeah, no, I don't want to take this one step even further back by me, which is you know, because you'll hear the fourth term which is intellectual property, and then people will use them all interchangeably and it's sometimes a bit hard to understand the difference. So, intellectual property is an umbrella term. In other words, it kind of encapsulates all three of those. So when someone refers to intellectual property, it could be patents, trademarks, copyrights, or a combination of them. It's just kind of a general or umbrella term.
But within those, so yeah, so patents. The first one is patents really go towards protecting an invention, or something that has a functionality, something that does something and it could be software, it could be hardware, it can be mechanical, sometimes it could be pharmaceutical, and a lot of different areas. But really, if you think about it as an invention that does something is what you have a patent to use to protect. Second one is trademarks and trademarks are going to go towards a brand. So anything that is associated with branding, so the name of a company, name of a business, a name of a product, a logo, a catchphrase kind of all those things that fall under branding, are going to be protected via a trademark. The last one on copyrights is going to be more of something as on the creative picture. So if you're think of, you know, creative, so a book, a poster, a picture, a sculpture, a painting, a video, anything along those lines. As kind of more of the greatest side, you're gonna protect via copyright. So patents are for inventions, trademarks for brands, copyrights or creatives.
Iva 7:02
So just to go a little bit deeper into that, would you say your website is copywriting, right? That's why there's a little title bit that says copyright on the website? Why are their copyrighted?
Devin 7:14
So the website probably has a couple things. If you're gonna go to our website as an example, you would see our logo up there and so the name of our company as well as the logo, those are going to fall under trademarks. We also have some different kind of product lines. So we have a podcast of our own. That would be the name of the podcast is trademarked, you're gonna go to some of the programs that we offer those of the trademark. Now if you go into the actual kind of content, so the images and videos, the copyright that are written are things that are written out in the text and that those would fall under copyright. So a lot of times if you're only going to website, content is going to be more of what's copyrighted. The branding of the website is going to still fall under trademarks.
Desiree 7:57
Right, right. And it's true as well, isn't it that I heard you can even trademark colors like specific colors so other companies can't use it? Like actually heard that UPS trademarked the color brown, so they're the only delivery truck that can use that color brown so like FedEx couldn't come up with, ‘you know what? We're changing our trucks to a brown truck now.’ So because they've got that trademark, that that yeah, trademark.
Devin 8:28
Yeah, so there's certainly expanding things and so really, if you're to look at it is really anything that you're using to identify your product. So you know, UPS has a specific color. You also have Mary Kay which is a lot of beauty products. They also have the color paint that they can do for Cadillacs. You have the smell- or the smell of playdough is technically trademarked. Smell Yeah, it is. You also have sounds and so if you're to think, like you know, it used to be AOL back in the day that ‘you've got mail’ sound, and there's, that was a dream. It can expand out most of the time and usually falls under more logos and names of companies and products. But if there's something that uniquely identifying about your brand you can usually protect.
Desiree 9:22
I love the Play Doh thing.
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Iva 9:25
I know that that's something that you didn't know would even be a possibility. And speaking of possibilities, Devin, when you find yourself ‘okay, I am building my business. I really want to start doing my branding or producing content that is obviously of my own intellectual property, when is it or when does it make sense to really start going into that process and through what channels and the reason why I ask this is because if you are in the online space, obviously your clients can be anywhere in the world. So now you're looking at possibly the idea of jurisdictions. Of how that comes into play or where you register things can be very complex and maybe, you know, you don't handle every single jurisdiction in the planet, but maybe you can give us a rough guideline of how to go about it. Is it depending on where you're based or where your company is based? Or how would be a good rule of thumb to follow?
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Devin 10:34
Yeah, so with that, you know, there isn't a right or wrong answer, but a couple kind of more of guideposts that you might consider so you can file in every country that you want to file into. Now, I don't recommend it, it doesn't return the value. But if you want to, you can have protection in every country around the world and I'll have clients so sometimes they'll come into the office and they'll say, we've got a product, this is gonna be worldwide, it's gonna take off and it's going to be amazing and awesome and everybody's going to want it so we want to protect it in every country. Possible. Then we started to talk about well, if you're protected in every country possible, you're going to be into the hundreds of 1000s and millions of dollars and it probably doesn't give you the return on investment but now what you're looking really in reality for any of the three big ones: patents trademarks and copyrights is_where is your customer base? In other words, where are your customers all located? You know, some of our clients in the US and you're saying, hey, 95% of our clients and our customers are going to be in the US well, great, then reuse or really just focus on the US because that other 5% doesn't warrant the investment in the various other countries. You focus on those other clients, you know, we have a medical device client, and they have it pretty well split between Europe and the US and they're saying about half of our clients or customers are in the US and the other half in Europe and so they viable from the EU and in the US.
Others are saying ‘hey, we really are just in Australia or New Zealand or Japan or China’, whatever that is. So really, you're looking at where are your customers located? Where are you selling your products or your services? And then that's where you're going to want to have protection and if you're not_ so one other thing that comes up and you didn't ask the question, but a lot of times people will say ‘well if my manufacturing is in China- if China is making my products in China, they're making it there. Do I need to get protection there?’ And in the general answer is, again, if you're not planning on it, on not being a marketplace, if you're not planning on selling in there, and it's not going to be where your customers are, and if they knock it off in China, let them knock it off in China and sell it in China. What it does is if they were to make it in China, knock it off, and then import it into your country, you can still enforce your trademark in your country or your patent or your copyrights and so it's really wherever you're located, where your customers are that you tend to protect
Iva12:50
It's not necessarily where your business was registered as such are where you're having physical jurisdiction yourself, not jurisdiction, but location where you're based in that moment, but it's where most of your clients target audience market is going to come from. That's the territory that you want to put your flag in, so to speak.
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Devin 13:09
Yeah, because wherever you're putting your flag in, that's where you're going to have protection. So let's say you were headquartered in New Zealand, but all your customers were in the European Union EU, then it doesn't matter that you have protection in New Zealand because you're not going to do anything. You're not going to have any clients and there's nothing to prepare all your clients and where your products are sold. Everything else is in the EU. So yeah, it really doesn't matter where you're headquartered. It matters where your clients are.
Iva 14:33
And this may be, I mean right now you are preaching to the choir, but there might be someone out there that is still not fully convinced or they fully don't understand the impact and scope of actually investing in something like this and saying like, ‘Well, why should I even consider or look into setting up or registering a trademark or copyright or patent for my business? What is that? What does that even mean for me? If I'm a small business owner or someone that is starting out?’ What answer would you give to them?
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Devin 15:09
Yeah, so I would give the couple of motivations as to why you'd want to bring your- why you'd want to and it's really going across the board so but I'll back up so the overall idea and the reason it's called intellectual property is a give me an example is so everybody gets in grasp real property, real estate, right? So you own a house, you own a car, you own a building, you own something physical and tangible. Everybody gets it. I own it, somebody else doesn't own it. What gets more difficult is when you're doing something is intellectual. So if you're not tangible, you can how do you own all the blood sweat and tears of research and development, the marketing dollars and all the branding that goes into it, it gets a bit more difficult to own that. So that's where intellectual property comes in.
And so really when you're investing in intellectual property, there's a couple motivations. So one is more of a defensive posture. So what you're doing, let's say you're going to whether it's patents, trademarks, or whatever but let's say you have a company and you have a great brand and you put in a ton of money into SEO for your website, you put in a ton of marketing dollars, you've done a big campaign and you've really built a brand up. What you're wanting to do is protect it_ what you don't want to do is have someone come along and be able to knock off that brand with very be able to, you know, use the same name or very similar logo, and all of a sudden all that time, money and effort you've invested into building your brand. Now somebody else is just copying it or otherwise doing something similar riding your coattails. So one is it allowed you to block others from riding your coattails on your brand. Same thing with a patent you know let's say you made the world's next best thing and it’s gonna just blow everybody away. That's gonna take a lot of research and development a lot of costs and time to develop. And look, you know, once it's out there, it's kind of like a magic. We want
Desiree 16:52
To go back and change it
Devin 16:55
Yeah. And once you know how it's done, everybody can reverse engineer it. So you put your product out in the marketplace, people can say ‘Oh, I get it. I know how it's done. I can replicate it.’ And but yeah, you had to put in all that research and development earlier on to create it. And so again, you're trying to defend if we're going to put all this investment, whether it's creating a brand or a product, we want to be able to defend it. So defensive is one aspect. The other aspect is more of an investment or investment. So it's kind of more of it's an asset that you can own- so a lot of times if you're saying ‘hey, we were going to go out and invest or pitch to the investor community, we want to get investors to come on board and do it.’ They're going to want to have assets that are something they can own a lot of times if your earlier stage, it may be the brand you're developing or maybe the product you're doing research development or something of that nature. So they can invest in it, you can license it or if you're going to sell your company is something that you can get a valuation for because you own something that's proprietary. You own the brand, you own the products and the proprietary nature to them. And so it's kind of both you're defending others from encroaching into your space as well. As you're building an asset for the company that increases your valuation.
Iva 18:02
That's fantastic to know. And I was I was of that notion that yes that in in having this intellectual property fully, fully registered or fully established as you say, so that nobody can easily come in and take it away from you, you're also creating that value within your financial books as well as that increases in goodwill, in recognition, in people associating this image of you or your brand, with that with whatever it is that you've registered and trademarked or copyrighted or patented, and definitely increases the value of of your business, if you're willing to take on investors or as you say, sell it or whatever it is that you want to do moving forward. So that's great to know.
Desiree 18:55
But also a lot a lot of us being in this because it's a passion business, right? We go in there and we pour our heart, we pour our soul tears and all of that inside and yeah, just imagining that someone would come around the corner and say like and probably with their lawyer- and say, ‘Listen, I just trademark this name, you've got to take it or you got to change it.’ And I mean, I know does happen someone told me about a really good thing and they call it the gut punch test. You know, like also like how attached are you to your name if someone will call you tomorrow and say, look, you've got to change you've got to stop using that name. How much does that hurt? And if you're like ‘oh, well alright, I'll go and just tweak it or do something else’ that you're probably okay but if you're like, ‘oh my god, I can't believe it. You know, that really hurts’, I think that's a good time now to start thinking about trademarking that piece.
Devin 19:53
I call that what I call the ‘ouch factor’. So in other words, if it was somebody to come along and they're to knock off your brand, knock off your product or anything else and say, ‘oh, yeah, that's you know, it's not fun but I can rebrand not a big deal. Nothing lost more the product and developing, I'll just make a new one.’ It doesn't hurt it doesn't have that out factor. And so that's fine, then you can continue forward and move forward and you're probably not to the point you'd want to invest. But the other hand, you're saying ‘no, somebody to come along and you know, or copy my brand outside or as a business is going to take a lot of money and effort to rebrand, we're gonna have to do all the logos, we're gonna have to do her, let all of our clients know we're gonna have to, you know, do everything all over again and it's gonna hurt the business,’ that's when you're gonna get to that point. So kind of same thing is that gut punch would be what I would call the ‘ouch factor’ that kind of had that same idea
Iva 20:40
and playing a little bit devil's advocate. You might also- people might also go into this direction of saying like, ‘okay, yes, let's say I do understand the value and the benefits of being on the on a defensive posture with regards to what I'm building and also creating an asset in the long run’, but if you know as they say, ‘if 100 kilo gorilla decides to sit wherever they want, then they sit whatever they want. Like what are my chances, if a bigger business with more clout, more power, right, more resources, decides to, I don't know it takes something that is not theirs, that it's, you know, infringing upon my own intellectual property. What are my chances of really being able to take on something like that if it were to happen?’
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Devin 21:33
Yeah, I think that it's a fair question, because I mean, you're writing all legal systems, I don't really care which country you're in. It's going to be the same. The company that has a lot more money, a lot more resources, as always has an advantage. Now, the question do you typically or what arises, one is that's not always the case. Right? So sometimes it's a small business and a small business and you know, your if they're in small business, they can't afford the legal battle any more than you can, especially if they're in the wrong so you have to look and say, okay, are they in the wrong? Are they a small business? Are they medium sized business? Can they weather this any better? They're already even smaller than us is a different situation then to your point is now let's say that they're the big you know, the big player in the sandbox, they have millions of dollars, they have much more resources then in question is typically there is a bit of a different approach. But most, almost all industries, there isn't just one big player. So if there is a you know, Apple has Samsung, Pepsi has Coke. Nike has Adidas, you know, M&m, like I can think about whenever that's happened, all the other candy bars that are out there a lot of times Milky Way or whether
Desiree 22:42
All three Yeah.
Devin 22:45
So the question is, is if there's multiple big players out there, and one of the big players thinks the way you're doing is valuable and worthwhile to knock off, you may not be able to take on them, but it may be valuable to the competitor. So let's say I'll pick on Apple- just a big one. But let's say Apple goes and you create the next best smartphone and Apple says, ‘hey, that's awesome.’ And you have let's say you have patents on so you did your due diligence. You got a couple of patents on your invention. You make the world's best iPhone, Apple says, Hey, we got much more money than you were just gonna knock it off. We're gonna copy what you're doing and good luck trying to sue. While you're probably not gonna go on Apple, but you can go to Samsung say, Hey, we've got something valuable. We have very, you know, great protection on this from the patent perspective or intellectual property perspective. Would you like to either acquire us or take a license or otherwise and they'll give you the ability to have a leg up on Apple, your competitor, and then you can go and buy those bytes and you are positioned well to buy and they make much more sense because it gives you that competitive edge and you can take that away from Apple. And so why you may not for the big ones always do that. The other one you may do and just say timing is not right in that right now. We're not going to be big today, but wait out in three or five years, then we're going to as you know, three or five years comes down. We're going to be big enough. We're going to be able to take on the competitors we're going to be able to do it so you may simply just hold off until you have the wherewithal or the funds, or the ability to take them on and so you're gonna wait today but you're gonna say in three years when are bigger one bite the item.
Desiree 24:11
Yeah, well, let's hope that never happens. But that just teaches us a lesson right? We need to we need to get in there fast as well. But for example, what would be our chances of okay Iva- let's say we've been doing this podcast for like for eight years, which we haven't but you know, down the line. Eight years, the Mom Bosses Abroad, we've built a course you know how to start and monetize your podcast, labeled it that- Mom Buses Abroad. And then we have like, a lot of our branding around but we've never trademarked that name. And someone then after all these years comes around and says ‘Listen, I'm going to use that name for something’. What are our chances to maybe then defend or fight it or, or claim that name like afterwards?
Devin 25:09
Yeah, so every country is a bit different. So I'll base my advice on the US because I’m familiar, but you know, generally you're in a bad position, if that's where you're coming out of it, you're at a weaker position or a more difficult position, if not impossible, but what at least in the US so let's say that was an example and I'll give, you know, we'll say your podcast had been out for eight years. You never trademarked it and another podcast came along and whether they ripped yours off or they just happen to think of a similar name and they filed for theirs. Then when you guys end up relying on as what's called common law rights, or a lot of Americans call it state law rights here in the US. And what that basically means is, you do have some very limited rights when you if you're the first person to start using your brand for a product or service. You have some very limited rights. The drawback is those rights only extend to whatever the geographic location that you're wanting to use it. So give a bit of a different example that gives you a bit of context. Let's say I started a restaurant and it was the world's best pizza and I went to Chicago here in the US, and I started and I built up the world's best pizza in Chicago. Never trademarked and never filed on it. And then somebody came along and went to California and knocked off the name. They started their own pizza joint and they filed for a trademark here across the whole US. They were later on, but they filed for it first. That's the example. What would happen is I can keep using my or keep my restaurant in Chicago, I can keep selling my pizza. I can keep doing what I was doing. But I can never expand out- means I could never go to a new location and open up a second restaurant. I couldn't franchise I couldn't sell it anywhere else but Chicago so you do have some very limited rights. By being the first user but it also comes with wherever you're at the time that somebody else files for the trademark. That's where you get to you can’t expand out, you can’t go to new locations or do anything with the business basically watch -so that's where you're at. If you do have some rights in play, you're pretty limited and it's just kind of the if that's all you have, you'll go and do business and you'll work with what you have, but it's not recommended.
Desiree 27:23
What if it's different industries like you come up with a brand name and but actually that name is based in different industries Does the same apply or it can
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Devin 27:31
It depends on how similar the industries are. So I’ll give a couple of examples. One is let's say you went and open a restaurant and you're serving fast food and have a restaurant. Somebody else comes and takes the same name all called ABC food. This is an easy one to remember that you did ABC food. Somebody comes along and says ‘hey, we're gonna freeze dried similar food but it's going to be freeze dried that we sell in a you know as a shipment or drop shipping it or sell or shipping it to people that they can cook.’ Those ones are probably similar enough they're both in food industries. and your customers gonna associate them now. Let’s do a different example.
Let's say you have ABC food and a airplane, airline industry says we're going to name our airline industry ABC. Not a good name for an airline but we'll use that as an example. Probably separate enough, different enough, people aren't going to think that the restaurant and the airline industry are the same company or that they have an association or are really kind of depends on how close the industries are. The tests that they use is what's called confusingly similar. In other words, if consumers were easily able to distinguish between the two they could say ‘hey, a restaurant and airline industry, they're not going to be the same company. I can understand that they're two separate companies. I'm not confused’, then you're able to coexist. By the other hand, you have fast food and you have freeze dried food or shipping food. They're gonna say ‘hey, those are pretty similar. I would think that a restaurant would also start selling the freeze dried version of their food similar enough you're gonna cause confusion with the client and then you then you would have it makes sense.
Iva 29:13
And so a little bit going into, as you say, like your niche which is people with you know, smaller businesses or people that are starting out. One of the main things it's always the part of investing and saying like, ‘Oh my God, how much is this going to cost me starting out when I have all these other investments that I'm doing’ so what could be a good suggestion or advice for somebody that has a limited budget and you say, you know, this is a good way to look into this or to get the ball rolling, so that you're also not completely unprotected, right moving forward. So that this is something that eventually you can really fully look into.
Devin 30:02
Yeah, I mean, I think that first of all, get your business up and going before you worry about intellectual property and not saying it's not important you shouldn't consider it. Let it if you never get the business up and going if you don't have products, you don't have customers you don't have a game plan. All the intellectual property in the world doesn't matter now. The flip side of that is that people get going they put that on the backburner not worrying about it not worrying about it and then it becomes a much bigger issue that can create a lot of problems for the business. So there is kind of that balance. But I was looking at you know first day okay, get the business up and going get some sales, get some customers, but then you should best way to even approach it is look and see let's get a roadmap. So because it's so different for each business. If you're a brand company, get out there as that you know start to work on your branding, start to work on what you're doing when you're out there for a year or two. And if you're getting some success, you're getting some client base, then you'd probably consider getting a trademark. Difficulty with patents is a lot of times those are for products that require more research and development, R&D and investment. Well before you get out in the industry and especially if you're in a competitive industry and a lot of people are working to solve the same problem. You probably don't have the luxury of getting out there and selling your product and getting your business established. And so you're going to have to look at are you going to bring on investors, are you going to bootstrap it and how you do it.
So there isn't an easy way to simply go out and and say how do you do this? As a fixed budget because depending on when your company is a fixed budget, maybe $5 and I'm going to start out mowing lawns versus ‘Hey, I'm gonna go start a daycare or create the next smartphone.’ It's going to be multiple millions of dollars invested before you ever get out on the marketplace. Both of those are start-ups, both of them have limited budget but you're just gonna have to look and say, Where is the core of our business? What is it where's the value? And what do I have to have protection? Why do I need to have that so that the business as it grows will be successful and then you're just gonna have to budget accordingly. Not an easy answer just because there's isn't a simple approach other than looking to say let's get a roadmap of what's gonna cost and when's it gonna cost me?
Iva 32:11
This is the part where all this nuances right really depend on talking to an expert and somebody that really knows how to help you navigate this labyrinth, so to speak, of how to go about it and what would be the best solution for your particular situation. And case and I think in that regard, you have something that you're offering today for our listeners, which is a Free Strategy Meeting for a one-on-one call with you so that anybody that has any additional questions pertaining to their particular set of circumstances, can approach you and really get a more palpable feel for what is best for their case and scenario.
Devin 32:52
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So as you mentioned, and I think that's, that's a great follow on to the answer, which is, every business is different. And so we do a Strategy Meeting and basically what we'll do is all sit down on the business, all kind of will talk through what they have going on and sometimes the answer is ‘hey, you’re too early. I wouldn't invest in any of this yet. But hey, six months or a year down the road, you certainly want to consider X, Y and Z.’ More could be the answer of how you've been in business much longer, you're already way behind and you need to get caught up and here are the things you need to start getting caught up in and why and this is how much gonna cost because it's variable. The Strategy Meeting is definitely a good resource. And so we do a 1:1 strategy meeting we'll sit down for 15-20 minutes free of charge, just to offer you know, some guidance, more specifically tailored strategy for what your business is doing. Easiest way if people want to take advantage of that, grab a strategy meeting and grab a 1:1 with me, you must go to strategymeeting.com that links right to my calendar shows all my availability and schedule a phone call or a Zoom meeting. You're welcome to come in the office live here if you are nearby, but just go to strategymeeting.com You can schedule a 1:1strategy meeting makes it easy to get some a personalized strategy for your business.
Desiree 34:01
Perfect. Tell us a little bit what are you working on right now as well?
Devin 34:12
To many things. Certainly continuing to expand, expand the law firm. So we are, we're continuing to see what are the ways that we can help our clients so everything from we're continuing to redo our systems and update them. We also as an example rolled out that just this week, a what we call a Pass Password allows you if you need to expedite things, you can either buy a one day's Pass Pass or you can buy an annual Pass Pass I'll let you get things done quicker if you need to get it done so law firm doing are doing that all the time. We also launched just recently launched a sister company, which is doing for website design and development. A lot of times what we're finding is, you know you're coming in, you need the paginated trademarks, you're getting a business up and going into start up and you're also looking to build an online presence and so we also do that name of that businesses action design. And we do that as well. So we got a lot of things going on. We've got a podcast, we've got the website building, we're building a law firm, plenty to keep us there. keep me busy.
Iva 35:11
That's exciting.
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Desiree 35:17
So Devin, you mentioned to us as well that you have some DIY legal products and some like white label versions because to be honest, we're looking you know, we're creating everything really fast and undergo sometimes really looking for some good legal like disclaimers. Or terms to put onto our website or into a course recreating or any like content we've created and want to send out to our community.
Devin 35:42
If you can afford it, I would still recommend an expert, but as a start up or as a small business not you don't always have the funds or the budget or the bandwidth to do an expert and that's where we introduced our DIY legal product. So they're called Snap Legal and really what their setup is we did a lot of video courses, has forms and information and walks you through the information that you'll need to do a trademark or to do a copyright or to do an NDA a nondisclosure agreement. Or independent contractor agreement. We have about 15 Different DIY legal products and they're really set up to kind of fill in that gap. They're not intended to be a replacement for an attorney. Attorneys are going to be your best option that kind of says, ‘Hey, a rather than just go and figure out how to build a tent and do it on your own.’ You have a product that helps you in a less expensive or price to show get a reasonable product and as you're getting started to have that option. So that's one of the other things we offer on our website. We also offer it as a white label service. A lot of businesses are looking to expand into other product or service offerings offer additional things like go or complement and go along with that. And basically have a white label service that allows you to embed or integrate that into your own website offering as part of your business and then there's some B and profit sharing on that as well.
Iva 36:59
This has been such a great a great conversation. So if you want to connect with Devin, you can find him on Facebook and on his website. As he said we're going to be sharing all the links in our show notes. That that way you're able to really connect fast and easy with him and we just want to thank you so much for coming here today and spending this time with us and allowing us to understand as well everything related to intellectual property and what is that all about? So thank you so much, Devin
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Devin 37:12
It was my pleasure. Appreciate you having me on.
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Devin Miller
Devin loves start-ups. He run his own patent and trademark law firm to help start-ups and small businesses. He also founded his first start up while earning his Law & MBA degrees. Since then, he has founded several 7 & 8 figure start-ups and enjoyed every minute of it.
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