Rich Goldstein 5:07
Yeah, absolutely, I agree. And it’s funny, you mentioned that, like you, you can put something up there for a month, and then you’ll find the competition. And it’s almost as if, well, I made it is as if there are tools that say, you know, copy this or copy that there are analytics tools that, that that point people in the direction of you when you’re doing well. And so it’s, it’s almost as if you’re the software telling people copy this guy, you know, and so it really is important to create as much of a moat as possible, around around what you’re doing to prevent other people from from copying you. And, you know, it’s interesting to like in your case, but like a lot of your products that are kind of content oriented, that copyrights are, are an option. For a lot of product ideas. copyrights are not really an option. They don’t really provide coverage, some provide protection for ideas, they provide protection for content type expression. And then design patents, which you mentioned, to are for the ornamental appearance for product, the look of a product. And I’d say the design patents are an issue for a lot of art, not an issue are an option for a lot of sellers. Like if you have a product that has a unique look to it, then design, patents are a good way to prevent other people from knocking you off by making a product that looks just like yours. So, you know, they’re both effective tools for protecting you on Amazon. So yeah, I agree with all of that.
Josh Hadley 6:43
Yeah. So Rich, why don’t you give people kind of a lay of the land, as if maybe they haven’t heard much about, you know, IP protection? What what are the types of protection that people can get? You? We just spoke about copyrights and design patents, but why don’t you share with the audience that what is a utility patent? And what’s a trademark, and what are the differences? When is the right time to use each of those different types of protection for the business?
Rich Goldstein 7:12
Absolutely. And so, trademarks, and patents differ in the type of thing that they protect. So if you’re talking about a product and what makes a product unique, then you’re talking about a patent, if you’re talking about branding, and the things that consumers look for, to know that you are a certain company that know that that that this product is coming from a certain source or a certain company, then that’s what a trademark is for. So like the type of things that you when you look at, and you say, Oh, that’s a Nike product. Well, if you if you see a can of software and get a store, you say, oh, that’s Coca Cola, based upon the the name based upon the writing style on the can based upon the color scheme, like those are elements are all what are protected with trademark. And just to kind of deal with trademarks, first, think trademarks are a no brainer for every Amazon seller, you should have a brand. And you should get that brand protected. And so getting that brand name protected means getting a registered trademark, getting a trademark application filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. And, and then once you have the trademark filed, you can submit for brand registry through Amazon. And that’s kind of how you effectively protect that.
Josh Hadley 8:33
Yeah, and the trademark is essential on Amazon, everybody. If you’re not on brand registry, I mean, that should be on your top to do list here. Because there’s so many features, you know, you’re gonna get brand analytics data, you’re gonna be able to dive into you know, your keywords in ways that would kind of blow your mind at this point if you don’t have access to that data. So getting brand registry, yeah, what’s required is simply having a registered trademark, but I believe they are also except, you know, sometimes if it’s in pending status, right, even if you’ve applied for that, and do you help Amazon sellers with that, Rich, and maybe even international protection as well, I think is something we should talk about.
Rich Goldstein 9:14
Yeah, absolutely. So in terms of getting brand registry on Amazon, yes. I mean, once you have applied for the trademark, then you can submit within your seller account for brand registry. And it’s kind of like they will give you brand registry status and give you access to those tools. But you can’t enforce the trademark until it actually gets approved. And they will take away the status if it turns out that your application gets rejected and goes abandoned. So so it’s kind of like you get a bit of a temporary brand registry status with access to the tools while the mark is pending. But really what you need to do is to make sure that that markets are registered in a way that it’s enforceable. And so just in terms of applying for trademark, it’s possible to apply for your own trademark, it’s possible to use one of these non lawyer tools like, like Legal Zoom. And I would say going one of those routes, like you probably get it right about half the time. And the other half the time, you’ll either need to fix some things, or maybe it won’t be fixable, and you’ll have to start over again. And these days, it’s taking about a year and a half to get a trademark. So you don’t want to have to start over again, the trademark office is actually really backed up right now, from a lot of a lot of applications have been filed, a lot of them from overseas. And so it takes quite a while to have to go through. And then also like, how the trademark trademarks are very nuanced. And so how the trademark is done, it might be very simple to file the trademark, but there are nuances that can make a difference with protection in the long run. So, yeah, we told my cost a few $1,000 to have someone handle it well. And it’s it’s probably worth
Josh Hadley 11:12
Yeah. And I think there’s even a couple differences within trademarks, right, you have your standard character mark, and you kind of have just like the image or logo, appearance, right? And what’s, what should people be striving for?
Rich Goldstein 11:26
Yeah, so in general, what you want to get is the word mark, the word mark is for the name. Regardless of what style that name is written in, or what font or what logo it’s associated with, like you want to have that name protected. So that’s like the most important protection. Beyond that, once you have that, like if you do have a distinctive way in which the mark is presented. In other words, you’ve got a logo that’s pretty distinctive looking, you might want to protect that logo separately. And the advantage of that is that even if someone uses a different word, something that wouldn’t be confused with your word mark with the name of your, the name of your brand, but it looks close enough that people would be confused. That’s where the logo mark, that’s where the logo trademark would come into play. That’s where it would help. So primary is to get the word mark. And then secondary to that is to get a design mark or, or a logo, Mark.
Josh Hadley 12:29
Yeah, that makes sense. And I think backing up to what you were talking about earlier, Rich, is it better to kind of like do this on your own or go seek like an actual lawyer like yourself that has experience in applying for and receiving trademarks. That was one of the mistakes that we made when we first were acquiring our trademark. So I went I had a buddy that was a lawyer. Now he was not experienced in trademark, you know, issues or IP, things like that. But he had he was a lawyer. Right. And so I wanted to have a lawyer, you know, on the the application status right with the USPTO. But long story short, because he didn’t he wasn’t well versed in the trademark arena, we applied for our trademark and the brand’s Hadley designs, right? But the when we applied like we filed it under my wife’s name, Rebecca Hadley, well, the challenge was, we could not get it registered on the primary registrar because they said, Hey, you can’t use you know, if it’s your first name Hadley, then we would be willing to add this right and maybe register it in the primary registrar. However, we just got kicked off. And we are in the secondary registrar, which gave us no protection, really. And Amazon does not accept that for brand registry. So we had to go. This was a couple of years later, we had to actually work through a legal firm that then said, Oh, well, this is an easy way around this objection that you got, all you need to do is apply for this not using your individual names, but apply for it using an LLC that has no relation to your names. And then it was literally as easy as that we went ahead, we registered it got it on the primary registrar. So I think that’s one thing I would add for our listeners, like, don’t make the mistake of trying to do this on your own, like paid a little bit extra to make your process that much easier. And working with somebody that actually has experienced knows what they’re doing.
Rich Goldstein 14:33
That’s a great example of how it’s nuanced that it’s not like, you know, overall, the principles might seem simple, but there’s some things that come from experience that you know, to do it this way instead of that, and that’s usually that’s typically where it pays off to have someone who’s handled, say hundreds of marks to know exactly how that how it needs to be filed. To avoid a problem like that,
Josh Hadley 15:02
yeah. And Rich, let’s talk about is it important to get a trademark in international locations, obviously, for Amazon Brand Registry, you can actually get them from different international locations. But the main one that you obviously want, because you’re selling in the US is from the US. But what’s the advantage of going and getting these trademarks in other countries? Well, it really
Rich Goldstein 15:24
depends on where you’re selling. So you want to have a trademark, wherever it is that you are selling, if you’re selling in Europe, then it would be good to have a European trademark, because that’s necessary to enforce it in Europe. So that’s one thing. The other thing is upside. And I’m thinking we might talk a little bit more about this later. But but but when you go to exit your company, having additional territories protected, gives the appearance, the if not real, that you have that there’s upside there that there’s there’s opportunities and potential. So it’s like, even if you’re not selling these other places, the fact that while you’ve got it protected in, in Europe and Japan and South Korea, for example, says to someone who’s acquiring your brand a while like we can expand into those areas, like that’s kind of already set for us. And that that amount of upside or opportunity is, is going to exceed by far what you spend on the international trademarks. So it’s a clear choice. If you’re thinking about exit, then international trademarks just make a lot of sense, just from the standpoint of, you’ll probably get 100 time ROI on what you spend on those international trademarks.
Josh Hadley 16:43
That’s fascinating. And I think that’s a great tip for everybody to learn that’s considering exiting in the future. You know, Rich, I’ve also heard that it’s important to get a trademark in China, especially if you’re trying to source product from China. I’ve heard I haven’t experienced this. But I’ve heard horror stories where your competitors go apply for your trademark in China, they get it and then they can stop shipments from going out. And so you’re effectively cut off from being able to ship anything or export anything out of China. Is that true? And what’s been your experience there?
Rich Goldstein 17:16
Yeah, see? No, it’s interesting, because I haven’t had the direct experience that too. And I’ve heard also, I have one person who said it had happened to him. I haven’t directly experienced it. But yeah, I mean, it’s it’s definitely the case that, that China operates as a first come first served jurisdiction where you can, someone can go and register your trademark, or even the trademark of a famous brand who hasn’t bothered to trademark it, they are first and can cause all kinds of difficulties. The kind of the silver lining to it, though, is it seems, as I’ve seen more recently, is that there are procedures for undoing it, but it cost money. And very often it just makes a lot more sense. If you’re doing business in China, if you’re having a product manufactured in China to just get a Chinese trademark to you know, check that box. So yeah, like still mostly anecdotal. of, you know, info on that topic, bought it, you know, again, considering the cost versus the, the the the ultimate difficulty if you have to try and undo someone else’s trademark, it seems worth doing.
Josh Hadley 18:32
I think that’s that’s good insight, as well, Rich, let’s move into utility patents. And I think what we will do is we’re going to lead up to how all of this intellectual property becomes super valuable when it comes time for exit, because Rich has been on the flip side, you know, he’s had many companies come to him and have him that the intellectual property of other companies that these bigger brands or companies are trying to acquire. And so Rich knows what these aggregators and other sellers and big brands are trying to or what they’re looking for when it comes to intellectual property. So Hank, we’re gonna ramp up to that r Rich, but why don’t you give us a base understanding of what’s the purpose of a utility patent?
Rich Goldstein 19:19
Okay, so a utility patent is what you would typically think of when you think of a patent, you think of someone, let’s say, working in their garage, trying to improve something trying to make it work better than other things that came before. And so like that process of, you know, of trying to come up with something that’s improved, will result typically in different structure, different functionality for the product, and that’s what gets protected with a utility patent. It’s that structural difference. It’s the structural difference that they have for a functional purpose that we that we embrace with utility patents. And so utility patents We’ll protect an improvement in in our product, like a physical product could also be a composition, such as a supplement, or a haircare product or a pharmaceutical, something that’s a combination of Newing of ingredients like not necessarily new ingredients, but a new combination of ingredients that could be protected with a utility patent. And then also a process, a process can be protected. Most typically, that’s computer software that gets protected as a process with a utility patent. So again, utility patent is for protecting a functional product, or when the difference in the product is functional in nature, as opposed to a design patent, which we talked about before, which is it’s just about the appearance of the product, it’s just about the look of the product, and then that’s what gets protected with a design that’s designed versus utility.
Josh Hadley 21:01
That makes sense. And then ultimately, and then copyrights are helpful only if somebody is trying to literally replicate your exact same design. Right? And that’s something for more of like media or, you know, a piece of artwork, is that correct?
Rich Goldstein 21:17
Yeah, copyright is for content, though copyright protects those those items of content, such as you say, like a work of media, or like images, or text or sales copy, or, you know, the graphic, say, graphic design, and a product like that could be protected with a copyright. Because the copyright is for the for the content. It’s not for the idea underlying it, but it’s for the content and the way that that contents expressed.
Josh Hadley 21:49
Okay, that makes sense. I think you’ve given our listeners a great understanding of, you know, the basics of what type of intellectual property there is, and, and what value that provides to the business. But the next question I want to add, Rich is, with established sellers, right, that already doing well, they want to scale to eight figures and beyond. Why is this so important for them?
Rich Goldstein 22:13
Yeah, I mean, the, of course, there’s the the obvious reason, which has to do with like, creating a moat around your brands to prevent other people from coming close and ripping you off and giving you tools for enforcement. But I think the, the best reason these days is when you have an IP portfolio, it just increases what you will get when you exit your company, that increases the size of the check that that will be written to you when you go to sell, sell your company. And, and one of the astounding, astounding things is that even if you get lousy IP, even if you get IP that’s really doesn’t quite measure up and doesn’t, and doesn’t really prevent competitors from making a similar product, it’s still going to increase what you get, the fact that you’ve got an IP portfolio is going to increase that check. And so maybe instead of getting, you know, 6 million, you get 7 million. But that would be on an investment in IP of maybe it’ll 40 $50,000, let’s say. So that’s like a 20 time ROI. So even that’s like you said, even when you’ve got lousy IP, the fact that you have it is going to make a difference. But, but having good IP can make a tremendous difference. And that’s where I’ve seen companies that were going to be paid a multiple of four, get a multiple, like, like eight, where it’s based on the fact that that you do have the IP that prevents other people from coming into the field. That that makes it that much more attractive to to the company acquiring you, and makes it worth them paying that much more. In which case then like if you’re, if you’re increasing the multiple like that, it could be 100 Time ROI on the money you spend on IP. So that’s the value of getting good IP. But the I think maybe the takeaway lesson, though, is any IP at all is going to be an ROI if you get to exit Now not every company gets to exit not every brand exits, but if you do, you will definitely get way more than you spent the high IP paid back to you at that point.
Josh Hadley 24:29
Fascinating. Rich, how much does it typically cost then for each of those different IP you know, protections that we talked about? Trademarks, utility patents, design, patents, and copyrights. How much wood chips should somebody be budgeting or expecting to pay for something like that, that way they know if they’re being taken to the wringer or if they’re getting a that maybe this is a little too cheap, but what do you say is like the going rate for that those protections? Yeah, I
Rich Goldstein 24:57
Yeah, I would say, you know, copyrights are the least expensive, maybe around $1,000 for copyright to have that handled professionally, trademark, maybe two or $3,000, design patent, maybe roughly three to $5,000, or design, patent utility patents is always going to be north of $10,000. Maybe on average, something like 15,000. So clearly, utility patents are all the most expensive. And that’s more questionable whether it’s worth getting, if you’re getting it for that asset value, again, that makes a kind of a no brainer in almost every situation. But if you’re looking toward protection, if like, you know, granted, all brands, and all businesses have limited resources, and you have to use them, you can’t, they can’t all be about kind of saving for later. Like, we can’t always, we say like, Hey, you know, if, if I if I’m able to if I was able to put, you know, you know, $10,000 a year away, when I’m 18, that’s gonna be, you know, $2 million, when it’s time to retire, right. And like, we know, that type of thing. But you know, there’s just no way we’re gonna get put that money away when we’re 18. So similar thing with utility patents, we might know that, hey, like, we will always get our money back if we get to exit. But some utility patents are very narrow, very limited, they’re not going to have much value while we’re operating a company, but they’re not going to have much value in terms of slowing down the competition, if it’s a very limited patent. So I think the decision to do a utility patent or not, is one that needs to be made carefully, according to the resources you have available. And according to what is possible with a utility patent, is it going to protect an overall concept? Or is it just going to be for a specific variation? Because both of those are possible, right? When it comes to trademarks? Well, first of all, when it comes to design patents, I think it pays to have a design patent, if you think your product is going to be you know, at least you know, five figures a month, then it pays to do the design. Because the just being able to shut that down, shut down a competitor for a short period of time is going to get you your money back on that. So design patents make a lot of sense, not quite a no brainer. But that but um should be carefully considered. Trademarks are a no brainer. Trademarks always do. Do them, right? Get the trademarks. Because also when it comes to acquisition, if you don’t have the trademark, it can be a deal killer, if it turns out that that that there is is a lack of clarity around whether you’ve got the rights to this name or not, or whether someone else might be able to cause you an issue, that’s going to be something that can have an acquiring company walk away from the deal. So it always tricky to get your trademark ducks in order at an early stage. And then copyrights, if you have content, again, just makes makes a whole lot of sense. Because they’re pretty inexpensive.
Josh Hadley 28:11
Yeah, I think you gave everybody a great summary of what they should be focusing on, and why. But yeah, I think the most important thing, too, is that you can’t wait too long, right? Especially if you can’t say, Hey, I’m going to sell my business tomorrow. And I’m also going to apply for my trademark tomorrow. Because like you mentioned, it’s like 18 months right now, to actually get that trademark. Approved, heaven forbid, you get some objection. And you know, it goes through a really tough process getting that approved. But I think the other thing, and we were talking about this before we hit the record button on the podcast here is that there is a time limit or a time period of when you can apply for patents. And do you mind sharing that with the audience, Rich, because want to make sure that if somebody has come out with a great product, sure be unfortunate for them to come to you five years down the road and say, Hey, I have this amazing product. You’re like, yeah, that is cool and unique. But sorry, you can’t do that. Well, what’s the rules?
Rich Goldstein 29:11
Yeah, I wouldn’t want to see that happen to anyone. Here. Anyone listening, because that’s happened way too many times during my career is that it makes a lot of sense as an entrepreneur, that you spend your money on what isn’t what situations are in front of you what opportunities are in front of you. So very often, entrepreneurs will look at the possibility of patenting something and say, Hey, that’s pretty expensive. Maybe I’ll, I’ll do it later. If things go well, then I’ll do it later. Let me launch the product. And then I’ll see. The problem is that under US patent law, once you make it public in any way, one year from that date, it’s then becomes too late to apply for a patent. And kind of like you mentioned, you know, five years later when people say You know, we’ve got this great product, it’s been doing fantastic. We need to get this protected, then they come to me. And I have to ask, well, when did you start selling? And they tell me that it’s been on sale for five years or even 18 months, you know, and in which case, I have to tell them, it’s too late. You can’t ever apply for a patent. And, and most of the time, people will say, Well, how can I possibly know that? And unfortunately, you know, there’s no way unless they’re listening to your podcast, Josh, you know, like they, they would not know that that’s that that’s going to trip them up. Or so that’s, I think maybe one of the most important things that everyone should know about patents is that you lose the right by by making it public without having applied for a patent. something even worse is that in a lot of the world, you don’t even have a year, once you make it public, it’s immediately too late to apply for a patent. Those are called absolute novelty countries. And so the so the situation really is that you want to explore whether it makes sense to apply for a patent before you launch before you make it public. And sometimes it won’t make sense. And then you just you move forward, and you don’t look back. On other times, if it does, then, then it’s important to take the steps that are necessary to make sure that you you get it filed, you got to protect it and you don’t lose the opportunity to to ever get a patent on it. Yeah,
Josh Hadley 31:33
I think that’s some important words of caution for everybody, they need to make sure they make make that mental note like you’ve only got one year from initial public disclosure. So get your ducks in a row. I think we’re fortunate, you know, one year is not long, but it’s better than half and to have it, you know, before you disclose it anywhere. So we’ll, we’ll thank, you know, the stars for the year that we do get, I guess, yeah, so Rich, I want to hear your experience and maybe some case studies that you can share. You don’t have to disclose specific brands. But what have you seen as you’ve evaluated for an aggregator that’s going to acquire a potential brand? What is it that you’re looking for, from a legal standpoint, as you assess their portfolio of IP? And then on the flip side, as you help prepare people for exit, right, what are you doing to help people get their ducks in a row so that, again, since you’ve seen both sides of the story, people are coming with an amazing portfolio of IP that to your point, if I could take, you know, my multiple goes from four to eight? Heck yeah, like, what do I need to do to take the multiple that high? And IP it sounds like, Is that significant? So do you have any case studies you could share?
Rich Goldstein 32:49
Yeah, and you know, of course, I have to be careful about that, like, sometimes with them forgive too much info, then people could figure out what we’re referring to, like, you’d be surprised how small of an industry it is, and how much you know, how, like, you know, how? Well it’s a small world, and people kind of know, a lot of these scenarios, but just kind of, I’ll give you like some examples here. So like, often what happens is, when they come to me, there’s already an LOI, you know, there’s already a letter of intent, where they’re intending to pay a certain amount of money for the for the business, you know, subject to the due diligence, they do subject to kind of digging into the facts. So a lot of times, it’s kind of goes like this is like they say, Well, we’re looking to acquire this brand, because they have the patent on the blank that does blank, like as if, you know, they have a patent on something in a very broad fashion, where it’s like, you know, anything, any blank that does blank, like, that’s what the patent is for. And I kind of where I come from, as well, I’ll be the judge of that. So like, then I dig into it, and it kind of could only go in one direction, it could only go bad, it could either get confirmed or it could be worse, right? Like, you know, it’s not typical that I’m going to then look at the patent or patent portfolio and say, well, it’s even better than you thought. You know, other than that has happened once that I can think of, but in general, yeah, it’s like it typically starts out where the, you know, the the seller, they they even think they’ve got the patent on the on the blank. So they like they’re portraying it that way. Because like, that’s as best as they understand it. Yeah. But once I get to dig into it, I can see a well no, you don’t exactly have a patent on the blank that does blank. You have a patent on X, Y and Z that those blank. So you have a patent on some of the details that are inherent in that. You know, like you might say, Um, you know, I have the patent on the screw top beverage container. And I would say, Well, no, like your patent actually is limited to a certain way in which, you know, the the threads of the cap engaged threads on the bottle. And like there was something that made it distinct. And that’s what led to the patent. So the now the patent is limited to that thing that made it to stay. Yeah. So very often, that’s how it go. And so just flipping over to the lesson side of things, I think it’s important to to really understand what your own patent is for, like really understand kind of what are the limitations to it, because there’s no point in going of selling it beyond what you can deliver. And it just makes more sense, because again, even having having a patent portfolio will increase the value that you get. But in most cases, when it gets to due diligence, it’s going to be disappointment, and it’s going to lead to renegotiation. In other words, negotiation down from the offer, that that you got. So like, that’s kind of a good way to encapsulate a lot of it. But then again, I’m actually really surprised at how much kind of gung ho energy sometimes is, is present on behalf of the aggregators, where like, they don’t even want to hear the truth. They just like, Well, yeah, we’re buying the patent ,we’re buying the company with the patent. And we’re excited about his brand. We’ve already written the press release to announce that we acquire them and like, they really they want to find a way for it to be what they thought it was. So on the one hand, I want to say like, I think it pays to be clear of what you have, and be honest about it. But on the other hand, there are definitely situations where nobody seems to care. Interesting to get the deal done. Although this bag has been was more the case in 2021, than it was this year.
Josh Hadley 37:00
Yeah. Very fascinating. Thank those thanks for sharing those examples with us and just kind of helping everybody understand, you know, what’s at stake. And I think, all the more reason, Rich to make sure that if you are applying for design patents, utility patents and things like that, the more you have them buttoned up professionally so that there’s fewer holes that people can pick into it right? Or that it’s more encompassing, right, that’s going to make it that much more challenging for a competitor to you know, have to go around that pan, I think it’s well worth the time in speaking with an attorney like yourself that is well versed in understanding, reviewing design patents, because and utility pants, because that’s one of your jobs is like Alright, so how do I go around this? Right?
Rich Goldstein 37:48
Yeah, I mean, at times, like, like, one of the questions that we’re dealing with is like, what? Well, first of all, whether whether someone is actually infringing, so when it could be that they get their listing shut down, based upon someone else’s patent? And then the question is, Well, are you actually infringing? And then if it seems that they are, then one of the solutions might be to determine what the limits are of the patent and then see what we can do to go beyond the limits. You know, sometimes it’s not really possible, because what was protected is actually the thing that’s important to the product. And other times if the there are things that might still make it a reasonable prop product, but would take it outside the scope of what the patent is all about. So yeah, so sometimes what we’re looking at is designing around what exists. And so you know, it pays to, you know, on the other side, it pays to have a patent that’s as strong as possible to prevent ways in which people can get around it. And then on the other hand, if you’re a seller, and you’re making products that are similar to others, and you discover that someone has a patent, it’s important to have an infringement evaluation done and figure out what what exactly would make it infringe? And then what could make the difference in having it not be an infringement issue?
Josh Hadley 39:21
Yeah, Rich, you’re a wealth of knowledge. And I think everybody is going to walk away from this podcast much more enlightened around IP protection. I’ve got got my last kind of wrap up questions that I do want to ask you. But before I get to those, I do want to kind of summarize, what are some actionable steps that people can take moving away from what they’ve learned in this podcast today. So I love to leave the audience with three actionable takeaways from each episode. Here are the three takeaways that I noted, Rich. Let me know if I’m missing something. But number one, I would say you’ve got to make sure that you have a trademark. If you haven’t registered your trademark, go register your trademark. And especially if you’re sourcing products from China, go get the trademark in China as well. And then any other international locations that you are currently selling in, or you see the potential of selling into, it is well worth the time of acquiring those trademarks. Action Item number two, is looking at your portfolio of products. And figuring out if you can acquire a utility patent or a design patent, I think that you’ve, you’ve only got one year to do that. And so if it’s, you know, if the past is in the past at this point, then start focusing on those new products that you’re going to be launching, and get in touch with somebody like r Rich so that you can vet maybe one of your new ideas and product launches that you have coming up. And maybe you can evaluate how successful the launch is before you actually apply for that pan. But make sure that you do that within one year. And then I think the third takeaway is understanding that IP protection is not just about like limiting your competition in the existing market places around the world right now, or specifically in the US, your IP protection is going to be that much more valuable and have a higher ROI. If you are looking to exit. So for people that are looking to potentially exit their business, I think they need to start giving more credit and paying more attention to their IP. Is there anything you think I’m missing here, Rich?
Rich Goldstein 41:30
Yeah, no, that’s, that’s perfect. And I’ll just add a little on to it. First of all, with regard to the last part, if you’re if you’re scaling your brand, if you’re growing your brand, I’m you’d said it’s important for them to look at their IP, I think it’s important to have an IP budget, I think, I think as your company grows, you should have a budget that increases over time, you know, or increases as the company gets bigger, just already allocated and set towards this so that you can seek to create those assets as your business grows. And, and that would lead to the ROI that we’ve been speaking of, you know, and just also tagging on into that. And looking at IP and understanding IP, I think it’s really helpful for entrepreneurs to understand IP, I think the more you know, the better the decisions that you make, and a little knowledge go a long way. I would say I mean, there are some great, I’ve got great videos on my website. And also, just, you know, shameless plug is the book that you mentioned. So I mean, it’s kind of like The ABA Consumer Guide to Obtaining a Patent. It’s about a four hour read, 20 bucks on Amazon. If you want to learn more about IP, within about four hours of pushing the 99th percentile of what other sellers know about, about patents and IP and how to utilize it. So you know that or but the bigger message is really just learn about IP, however you do learn about IP, because a little bit of time invested in learning about IP will go a long way.
Josh Hadley 43:08
Yeah, I think those are words well spoken. They’re, Rich. Last question I have for you Rich is you are one of the most well connected people, I would argue in the Amazon or just e commerce space. In general. If there’s a conference, Rich’s probably been there, done that. And if you are planning to go to a future conference, Rich’s most likely going to be there. And he’s probably going to be speaking. So make sure you go watch one of his sessions, if he is speaking at one of the sessions, because he is fantastic. And you’ll love to get to know him. But Rich, you’re so well connected. I think our audience would be interested in hearing from you. Who are some of the people that people should be paying attention to, right, if they’re maybe newer to the space, or they want to hitch their wagon to other really successful individuals. Who are those people that, you know, people in e-commerce should be paying attention to?
Rich Goldstein 44:00
Well, of course, they should be listening to your podcast. But also, yeah, I mean, Kevin King always has some of the best, most actionable content out there. And, you know, I think it’s very worthwhile content. You know, Brandon young also, like, he’s just he runs a group with a couple of 1000 people that you know, and he gets some some of the best information. You know, I’m also a fan of, of Titan Group, you know, I think that they’re set up in a way that they really help mentor and bring people along in their mastermind in their mastermind groups and like they help people at different levels of selling. And yeah, um, Norm Farrar is another great source of information and, and also Danny McMillan, Seller Sessions, like these are the ones that just popped into my mind immediately. And I apologize if I didn’t think of someone else. They I think you did. You did. But hopefully I pulled out some good info on the spot.
Josh Hadley 45:13
Yeah, no, I think you did. All of those names are great people. We actually had Kevin King on the podcast just recently. So go check out that episode, he dropped some amazing knowledge bombs on all of us. That’s an exciting episode. Well, Rich, thank you again, for joining us. I hope our audience walks away much more knowledgeable about IP. And I would invite people to go check out your website. So Rich, where can people find you and learn more about what you have to offer?
Rich Goldstein 45:41
Okay, well, if you go to GoldsteinPatentLaw.com, there are a great resources there for learning about the patent process, including videos, you can check out the book I wrote, which I talked about a moment ago, The ABA Consumer Guide To Obtaining A Patent on Amazon, my podcast Innovations and Breakthroughs, where I really kind of follow the path that someone takes of, of having an idea or a product idea and bringing it toward launch. And you know, you mentioned about the the connected part and attending lots of events. If you want to see more about the events that I’m going to like things I’ve been to and where I’m going next, and events and parties that I’m organizing, I actually have something set up for you to get on that list. That’s GoldsteinPatentLaw.com/events. So if you want to sign up to just hear more about those, that’s how you do it. And and that’s really about it, Josh,
Josh Hadley 46:40
I love it. Well, thanks so much, Rich. It was fun having me on the show today.
Outro 46:45
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