In this Throwback episode, host Josh interviews patent attorney Rich Goldstein about the importance of intellectual property (IP) protection for businesses, especially e-commerce sellers. Rich explains the differences between copyrights, design patents, utility patents, and trademarks, highlighting why registering trademarks in China is crucial for those sourcing products there. They discuss how IP protection helps prevent copycats, increases business value, and is essential for a successful exit. Rich also shares actionable tips for building an IP strategy and recommends resources for further learning. The episode concludes with advice on connecting with top experts in the Amazon and e-commerce space.

Chapters:

Introduction to Rich Goldstein and His Background (00:00:00)
Josh introduces Rich Goldstein, his experience, and his role in helping businesses obtain patent protection.

Josh’s IP Mistake and the Importance of Early Protection (00:01:39)
Josh shares his mistake of not getting IP protection early and discusses the risks of product copying on Amazon.

Copyrights vs. Design Patents for Product Protection (00:02:56)
Rich explains the difference between copyrights and design patents, and when each is applicable for product protection.

The Importance of Registering Trademarks in China (00:04:33)
Discussion about the risks of not registering trademarks in China and the potential consequences for e-commerce sellers.

Understanding Utility Patents (00:06:16)
Rich explains what utility patents are, what they protect, and how they differ from design patents.

Three Actionable IP Takeaways for Entrepreneurs (00:08:44)
Josh summarizes three key IP action items: trademarks, patents, and the value of IP for business exits.

The Value of an IP Budget and Learning About IP (00:10:25)
Rich emphasizes budgeting for IP as a business grows and the importance of entrepreneurs educating themselves about IP.

Recommended Thought Leaders in E-commerce (00:12:06)
Rich shares names of influential people and groups in the e-commerce and Amazon seller space.

Where to Find Rich Goldstein and His Resources (00:14:32)
Rich provides information on where listeners can find his website, book, podcast, and event updates.

Links and Mentions:

Tools and Websites
Goldstein Patent Law

Books
The ABA Consumer Guide to Obtaining a Patent

Podcasts
Innovations and Breakthroughs Podcast

Notable Individuals and Groups
Kevin King
Brandon Young
Titan Group
Norm Farrar
Danny McMillan

Transcript:

Josh 00:00:00  Today, I’m excited to introduce to you Rich Goldstein, who is on a mission to connect, protect, and educate. He helps small businesses, startups, and in e-commerce and digital marketers and inventors in their quest to obtain patent protection. Along with his team of attorneys. He counsels individual inventors and startups regarding the best steps to take for patent protection and when patent protection is available. Over the past 28 years, he has obtained more than £2,000 for his clients. And Rich is the host of the Innovations and Breakthroughs podcast and is the author of The Consumer Guide to Obtaining a Patent, published by the American Bar Association. So Rich, welcome to the podcast.

Rich 00:00:46  Thanks so much, Josh. Thanks. Thanks for the warm introduction. And and really great to be on your podcast.

Josh 00:00:51  Rich, I’m happy to say that we are a part of that number of 2000 plus, you know, patent successful patterns that you’ve been able to obtain and counting. Right.

Rich 00:01:03  And counting.

Josh 00:01:03  Yep. So thank you for your help and helping us get some of those design patterns that we’ve received for our business.

Josh 00:01:10  So rich. Absolutely is the man.

Rich 00:01:12  Absolutely. My pleasure. It’s really exciting to see kind of what we’re creating there in your company in terms of, asset value and protection, you know, against competitors. So, it’s really cool. And someday we’ll, we’ll do a, you know, a Harvard business case study of some kind, to, you know, to take a look at what we’ve created here. I think it’s pretty awesome.

Josh 00:01:39  Well, I think that’s the hope for both you and I that we’re creating some significant value in the long run. Now, Rich, I shared this on previous podcast episodes as I shared some of the mistakes that I’ve made along my journey. One of those mistakes that I’ve made was not getting IP protection whatsoever for many of our products for four years, right? We literally went for in our business for four years before, you know, you and I fortunately met. And you’re like, dude, you’ve got to start doing something here. And we had a great conversation.

Josh 00:02:13  And now that we started getting copyrights issued for all of our products and then design design patents for some of our products, it’s allowed us to actually protect more of our products, because prior to that, as many sellers know, as soon as you launch a product on Amazon, it’s months, you know, sometimes as quick as a month later, sometimes 3 to 6 months later, you’ve got somebody copying your idea and being able to have something to protect yourself and even potentially get some of those other people knocked off or, you know, shut down their listings, I think is essential, especially as Amazon and e-commerce in general becomes more and more competitive. Would you agree with that, Rich?

Rich 00:02:56  Yeah, absolutely I agree, and it’s funny you mentioned that, like, you, you could put something up there for a month and then you’ll find the competition and it’s, it’s almost as if. Well, I mean, it is as if there are tools that say, you know, copy this or copy that.

Rich 00:03:10  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 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, like, a lot of your products are kind of content oriented, that copyrights are an option. for a lot of product ideas, copyrights are not really an option. They don’t really provide, you know, covers don’t provide protection for ideas. They provide protection for content type expression and then design patents, which you mentioned. Two are for the ornamental appearance for a product. The the look of a product. and I’d say the design patents are an issue for a lot are not an issue or 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.

Rich 00:04:24  So, you know, they’re both effective tools, for protecting you on Amazon. So, yeah, I agree with all of that.

Josh 00:04:33  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 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 00:05:00  Yeah I see. No, it’s interesting because I haven’t had a direct experience that to and I’ve heard also. I have one person who said it 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 there first and can cause all kinds of difficulties.

Rich 00:05:34  the 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 costs 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. But it, you know, again, considering the cost versus the, the, the, the, ultimate difficulty if you have to try and undo someone else’s trade mark, it seems worth doing.

Josh 00:06:16  I think that’s that’s good insight as well. Rich, let’s move into utility pants. 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.

Josh 00:06:45  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 I think we’re going to ramp up to that. Rich. But why don’t you give us a base understanding of what’s the purpose of a utility pad?

Rich 00:07:03  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 the 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, 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 the utility patent. It’s that structural difference. It’s the structural difference that’s there for a functional purpose that we that we embrace with utility patents. And so utility patents will protect and improvement in in a product like a physical product could also be a composition such as a, a supplement or a hair care product or a pharmaceutical something that’s a combination of of ingredients like not necessarily new ingredients, but a new combination of ingredients that could be protected with utility patent and then also a process.

Rich 00:08:12  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 the design. Yeah, that’s design versus utility.

Josh 00:08:44  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.

Josh 00:09:18  Action item number two is looking at your portfolio of products and figuring out if you can acquire a utility pad or a design pad. I think that 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 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 launches before you actually apply for that pen, 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 marketplaces 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.

Josh 00:10:25  Is there anything you think I’m missing here, rich?

Rich 00:10:28  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 mean, you 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 it 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 will go a long way.

Rich 00:11:25  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, you know, 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, it’ll put you in 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 00:12:06  Yep. 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 has probably been there, done that.

Josh 00:12:23  And if you are planning to go to a future conference, Rich is 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 00:12:58  Well, of course they should be listening to your, 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, you know, he, he runs a group with, a couple thousand people that, you know, and he gets them some of the best information.

Rich 00:13:29  you know, I’m also a fan of 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. Norm Farrar is another great source of information. and, and also Danny McMillen, Sally’s sessions like these are the ones that just pop into my mind immediately. And I apologize if I didn’t think of someone else. I think those are some.

Josh 00:14:04  Great.

Rich 00:14:05  You did, you did. But hopefully I pulled out some good info on the spot.

Josh 00:14:11  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.

Josh 00:14:32  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 00:14:38  Okay. Well, if you go to Goldstein Patent Houghton Law. Com there are great resources there for learning about the patent process, including videos. You could 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 product idea and bringing it toward launch. and, you know, you mentioned about the, the, connected part and attending lots of events. you know, 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, Goldstein. Patent law. so if you want to sign up to just hear more about those, that’s how you do it.

Rich 00:15:35  And, and that’s really about it.

Josh 00:15:37  Josh, I love it. Well, thanks so much, Rich. It was fun having you on the show today.