Protect Your Brand and Business with Robert Thony

Summary

The Lindsey Anderson Show: Protect Your Brand and Business with Robert Thony

Episode Release Date: July 15, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of The Lindsey Anderson Show, host Lindsey Anderson delves into the critical topic of legal protections for online content and business operations. Aimed at entrepreneurs, coaches, and consultants, Lindsey brings in expert insights to ensure that listeners can scale their businesses securely and sustainably.

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Meet the Guest: Robert Thony

Lindsey welcomes Robert Thony, the founder of Tony Law, an entertainment IP and business attorney with over a decade of experience. Robert specializes in helping entrepreneurs and creators protect their intellectual property, navigate contracts, trademarks, and negotiation strategies. His unique blend of legal expertise and creative industry experience makes him a valuable resource for business owners looking to safeguard their brands.

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Key Discussions and Insights

1. The Importance of a Strong Legal Foundation

Robert emphasizes the necessity of establishing a solid legal foundation from the outset of any business venture. He states:

"Protecting your brand, making sure that it is available to be registered with the trademark office as a trademark should be your first thought." ([04:25])

He explains that understanding the appropriate legal entity for your business, whether it's a consultancy, clothing line, or SaaS company, is crucial for aligning with your business goals and mitigating liabilities.

2. Trademark Registration: What and Why

A significant portion of the discussion focuses on the importance of trademarking both the business name and logo. Robert outlines the steps involved:

"You're going to want to think about two main things: the name of your business and your logo." ([05:48])

He details the trademark application process, noting that it typically takes 9 to 12 months due to the backlog at the USPTO. Despite the time investment, he stresses that protecting your brand from infringement is invaluable.

3. Costs and Considerations of Trademarking

When addressing the financial aspect, Robert provides clarity on the costs associated with trademark registration:

"The current fees with the USPTO are $350 per application, meaning per mark." ([07:26])

He advises entrepreneurs to budget accordingly and highlights the increasing fees over recent years, underscoring the importance of early investment in legal protections.

4. Consequences of Delaying Legal Protections

Robert shares common pitfalls businesses face when they postpone legal protections:

"They'll call someone like me on the back end and I'll be okay. Well, we have to analyze who was the first person to use it...sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't." ([09:19])

He recounts scenarios where businesses suffer from brand confusion and lost clients due to existing similar trademarks. These situations often result in costly rebranding efforts or, conversely, in protecting a client's mark from infringement.

5. Protecting Content on Social Media

The conversation transitions to the complexities of content protection online. Robert clarifies the distinction between copyright and trademark in the context of social media:

"If you are doing that without the copyright holder's authority, then you are potentially in violation of copyright." ([11:32])

He advises on the importance of understanding platform-specific rules and the potential legal implications of modifying or repurposing someone else's content.

6. Copyright Basics for Business Owners

Addressing common law copyright, Robert explains:

"There are common law copyright rights that anyone who essentially renders something through a tangible medium is how copyright is created." ([13:26])

He advocates for registering copyrights to gain enhanced protections and potential statutory damages, which offer greater leverage in legal disputes.

7. Navigating AI and Legal Implications

As AI becomes more prevalent, Robert highlights emerging legal challenges:

"Name, image, likeness rights...someone is in violation of their name, image, likeness, and potentially their copyright rights." ([14:29])

He discusses the importance of negotiating rights carefully, especially for creators whose voices or likenesses might be used by AI tools, ensuring that their original content remains protected and their future opportunities are not compromised.

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Practical Takeaways

Robert distills his advice into actionable steps for business owners:

"Do some research on what rights you have, what your intellectual property rights are...and if you have any questions, speak to someone like me or a professional who has more information about this so you can be fully protected and can negotiate a good deal." ([16:47])

This encapsulates the episode's core message: proactive legal protection is essential for sustained business success and avoiding costly legal entanglements.

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Conclusion

Lindsey Anderson wraps up the episode by reiterating the importance of legal protections for entrepreneurs. By securing trademarks and understanding copyright laws, business owners can confidently scale their ventures without the fear of intellectual property disputes.

If you're looking to safeguard your brand and ensure your business is legally fortified, consider reaching out to Robert Thony through his LinkedIn or email as provided during the show.

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Connect with Robert Thony:

• LinkedIn: Rob Tony
• Instagram: @islawthonylaw
• Email: [e-mail]

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Protect your brand today to build a resilient and thriving business for tomorrow. Tune in to The Lindsey Anderson Show for more insights and strategies to elevate your entrepreneurial journey.

Transcript

[A]

Hey everybody. Welcome to this episode of the Lindsay Anderson Show. Today we're talking about legal protections of your online content. You're showing up on social media, you're creating offers, you're generating content sales and leads. But here's the question that today's guest is going to answer. Is your business actually protected? Most entrepreneurs and content creators are bleeding money, missing opportunities and getting taken advantage of. They're not protecting all of their intellectual property. And today's guest is here to help you lock that down. I'm so excited to welcome today's guest, Mr. Robert Tony. Before we get started, remember this episode is brought to you by the Build and Monetize agency where my team and I partner with you to help you create a social media sales machine that will allow you to attract and convert high quality leads online. If you're looking to create a social media sales machine, make sure you schedule a social media strategy session with me by heading over to Lindsaya.com apply and applying for that session today.

[B]

Are you ready for next level growth in your business? Welcome to the Lindsay Anderson show where we pull back the curtain on the exact strategies, tools and mindsets that build million dollar empires. If you're hungry for more time, more freedom and a whole lot more impact, you've come to the right place. Buckle up because we're about to ignite your business journey. Now here's Lindsay.

[C]

This episode is brought to you by the BAM Agency. Done for you. Social media that actually drives results, not just likes, but high ticket sales. If you're ready to turn your content into a client generated machine, grab a free strategy session call by heading over to lindsay a.com apply.

[A]

My guest today is Mr. Robert Tony, the founder of Tony Law, an entertainment IP and business attorney who helps entrepreneurs, creators and business owners protect their work and close better deal with over a decade of experience. He's the guy behind the scenes making sure brands are protected and profitable. From contracts and trademarks to negotiation strategy. Robert, Rob, welcome to the show. Let's kick it off. What led you into this unique intersection of law, business and creative?

[B]

Sure.

[D]

Okay. Well, my first love as far as I can remember was music is music. I fell in love with the piano at a very young age and then finally at 9 started taking lessons and I just really enjoyed the instrument as far back as watching Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. Sesame street is richly grounded in music and musical themes and I just kind of fell in love with that and it was like a background music for most of my life. Even though I didn't choose that As a career path, specifically, it was always a strong hobby. I was a strong hobbyist, I would say, short of being a professional, but I was actually a science major and ended up teaching science, but I also ended up teaching music as well. When I decided to go to law school, I knew through my experience as a performer, my experience also having started and created record labels and doing promotional work and management work with artists, including family members such as my brother, that the only thing I wanted to do in terms of the law was representing artists. I understood their legal and I could bridge the gap between their ability to create and their need to protect their creations and have that conversation with them so that they knew what they needed to do and how they needed to be held. And here we are.

[A]

Here we are now. What an interesting intersection. What do you find, Rob? Are the biggest legal blind spots that cost entrepreneurs the most money in like sales and marketing on their business?

[D]

Sure. It depends on whether you're talking about a more artistic, creative versus an entrepreneur who has a more traditional business.

[A]

But entrepreneur based. Yeah.

[D]

As far as entrepreneurs go, I can say from the very beginning, you want to start off with a strong foundation, knowing that your business is well structured in terms of understanding what legal entity that you want to create based on what your goals are with your business. It could be a consultant's legal needs and their liabilities are different from someone who wants to start a clothing company or some kind of software as a service company. These are all different things that may require different kinds of legal structures. And to start off, a pet peeve of mine is when folks come to me and say, okay, well, I started my business, I'm running it, I want to now protect my brand. And I'm like, wait, okay, that we should have had this conversation weeks ago, months ago, years ago. Protecting the brand, making sure that it is available to be registered with the trademark office as a trademark should be your first thought. Because if you spend the time, energy and resources on your brand, you want to know that you're not running afoul of trademark infringement and on the true credits of someone else. And you want to make sure that you are protected against other people who may be depending on your. Right.

[A]

So Rob, let me ask you this. If I'm a business owner going to build my business, what kind of things do I need to run through the trademark office? What do I actually need to be protecting here?

[D]

Okay, you're going to want to think about two main things, right? Number one, the name of your business. Right? If your name is client Facing largely if it's business to consumer. B2C name that you're putting out on social media or that you're otherwise exploiting in terms of marketing, then you're going to want to register trademark in the name, meaning that you want to protect your name throughout the 50 states and the United States territories against any other mark that may have a similarly confusing name. We can get into that. But secondly, you want to, if you have a logo, you should also protect that. You should protect that as well. If there is a logo that looks like that of another logo. That can be potentially problematic. Whether you're infringing on someone's rights or they're infringing on you. Those two things would be the things I think about first and then how to do so. Well, this can be a somewhat involved process of registering it and seeing it through the registration, but the process is about 9 to 12 months best case scenario because the USPTO is swamped in application. But regardless, don't let the length of time of the process deter you because it's super important to at least know whether or not there is something out there that may be infringing on the rights or if you're infringing on someone else's. So doing a trademark search, a comprehensive search is key at the outset.

[A]

Okay, and then what is that? Investment. Typical. Obviously we want to hire a professional like you to do this for us. We do not want to be doing this on our own. But like in terms of investment outside of your fees, does it cost a lot to do the trademarks and stuff like that?

[D]

It's depending on the budget. The current fees with the USPENN, the trademark office are $350 per application, meaning per mark. Right. So every mark has its separate application and separate fee and they have been raising their fees across the board that they did so earlier this year in a few years past, but now it's at $350 for standard application.

[A]

Why do you find that so many business owners wait too long to get legal?

[D]

Well, it's kind of like insurance. Nobody really wants to pay insurance, but you know, when things hit the fan and you actually need protection, that's when you start thinking about it. And I find that my most informed clients are those who've gotten burned who didn't do their due diligence at the outset. And so it's the kind of thing where you don't need to register your trademark. It's required in order to go into business. A lot of folks are essentially they're trying to save as much of their money as possible because starting a business is a huge undertaking and if they're doing the bare minimum, they're not going to even if they consider the chamber, they're not going to go ahead with it until something happens. And then oftentimes they have to hire someone like me on the back end to fix things up.

[C]

If your content isn't generating sales, it's broken at the bamagency. We fix it. We build intentional systems that bring in consistent leads, convert DMs and grow your business, all without the overwhelm. Want to see how it would work for you and your business? Book your free strategy session now by heading over to Lindsay a.com apply can.

[A]

You share a client example of somebody who waited too long and what happened?

[D]

Absolutely. This is somewhat generic example because it happens quite regularly. Someone would go start a business and then there would be another business where clients are confused about the owner of the business. They'll call, email someone and get a response back from somebody completely different with the belief that they were targeting this client. And the client will find out and then realize that their name is already taken with the USPTO or just being used. And this costs them money. They don't know how much money it's cost them because oftentimes they would lose a client because of it and they would never even have known. Right. So they'll call someone like me on the back end and I'll be okay. Well, we have to analyze who was the first person to use it, whether or not that other person has a registration, and then decide whether or not it's you're able to fight for that mark. And sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it turns out that other person has a registration or was using the mark well prior to that client's use of the mark. And then that client has to completely rebrand. I've had several instances of that where I've had a client having to rebrand because they were fringing on someone else's mark. And on the other side, clients of mine forced others to rebrand because their mark was being infringed upon. Happens very regularly.

[A]

So the point is, if we're serious about business, you need to get this protection, like wasting all these years and investment time into something that you don't even own.

[D]

Absolutely. And that's a defensive stance. And you know, that aside, there are other opportunities to potentially license your brand to the extent that you are working with other partners, whether they be manufacturers, retailers, Investors, they are heartened when they see someone who has a registration. And they will be more likely to do business with you, more likely to license your mark, if they don't believe they themselves are at risk of being sued for trademark infringement.

[A]

Okay, so in this day and age of social media, there's a lot of content going out there. Is that protected? What are the rules around what I post for social media? Can anyone use?

[D]

Well, interestingly, the rules are a bit murky, but the long and short of it, we're mostly talking about copyright here. But trademark does come into play essentially to the extent that someone is posting some kind of content that is copyrightable material online. There are rules that the specific platform in which that which you are looking at it have around what can be done with it. So usually things like reposting someone's video, reposting someone's picture within the scope of the platform is pretty much fair game for most social media platforms. The minute you take it, alter it, put it on a different platform, or have some new and unique derivative of it, that is potentially a violation. And one of the bundles of rights that copyright holders have is the exclusive right to make a derivative work. And if you are doing that without the copyright holder's authority, then you are potentially in violation of copyright. Mind you, that's the law. Now in terms of how enforceable it is and whether people actually enforce it, it ruins the gamut. Huge entity like for instance, Sony Pictures, they have money and resources to check these things and they will send cease and desist in alignment with the Digital Copyright Millennium Act. And whereas some smaller entity may not have the wherewithal or the resources to go after everyone who may be infringing on their work these days, there are tools where you can track and something you can do yourself, but it's something that if you have the resources you may want to hire, either hire someone like me or find these tools that can automatically track these.

[A]

Okay, so is my. When I post on social media, is there any like inherent copyright that I, because I am I protected at all in that.

[D]

Good questions. There are common law copyright rights that anyone who essentially renders something through a tangible medium is how copyright is created. So whether it be a drawing, writing a video, this becomes the subject of copyright. It is common law in the sense that because it is not registered, it's limited rights, limited to your state and the region in which you live primarily. However, if you decided you wanted to go ahead and register with the copyright office, you get many more advantages, such as statutory Damages, trouble damages, three times the amount of damages in the event that someone willfully infringe upon your copyright. So there are a good number of damages that actually going ahead and registering the copyright with the US Copyright Office, which is separate from the US bank office, but the all encompassing intellectual property.

[A]

Okay, now AI, I'm going to bring up AI on now, AI is changing a lot of different things. What legal questions need entrepreneurs be thinking of when it comes to AI?

[D]

Great question.

[A]

Utop. I'm sure there's a billion.

[D]

Indeed there are. So now anyone who is a public figure, those creators who are of great prominence and actually, you know, let's scale it back a little bit. All of us to all of us, I'd say have some right to our image, name and likeness. Name, image, likeness, nil rights, as they said. And to the extent someone decides to take your image or take a video of you and change it in such that you know that data is put into some kind of AI tool and used, that is a violation of your name, image and lack of rights and potentially your copyright rights to the extent that copying that information and that data is put into this tool and potentially your right to privacy. So there are slew of rights and slew of arguments that can be made that this person or entity is in violation of U.S. law or local state law. Actually defending yourself against those people, I should say actually bringing an action against them. That can be a tall order depending on what we're talking about. But I think more importantly, something that I've come across, I have clients who are actors, voiceover actors, who are actually negotiating with entities who want their voice or their image, right? And the question becomes, what do you negotiate? What do you get? How much do you negotiate to give away your voice? That's not an easy question because a lot of these folks, either they're non union actors or the entities that work with non unions. And when I say non union, with the union being sag, AFTRA or the Screen Actors Guild, a lot of these folks are outside of the purview of the union. So they don't have much leverage in terms of negotiating something that's fair. If I am giving my rights away to my voice, then what is the value of my voice down the road for other opportunities? I'm essentially negotiating against myself. I'm competing with myself potentially.

[A]

So question. So, Rob, if you were to lead all the business owners in the audience with one message today, something short and sweet to summarize what we've talked about in terms of protecting yourself doing it early, taking yourself seriously. What's your big takeaway here today?

[D]

Do some research on what rights you have, what your intellectual property rights were meaning what you've created, whether it's copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret, and how best to protect it. Understand what that means in terms of your leverage when you go out there and negotiate a licensing deal, some kind of employment or services agreement. And if you have any questions, speak to someone like me or a professional who has more information about this so you can be fully protected and can negotiate a good deal.

[A]

I love it. Rob, thank you so much for being a guest on the show. I'm going to turn the time over to you. Share with us how to find you and anything else you want the audience to know.

[D]

Sure. So name is Rob Tony Robert Tony. You can Find me on LinkedIn. Same name, Rob Toney T H O N y My ig is at Islaw T H O n y L A W My email is Roboni Law Awesome.

[A]

Thanks Rob. Love having you.

[D]

Thank you so much, Lindsay.

[A]

That's a wrap for today's episode. And if there's one thing I want you to take away from today's episode is get yourself protected. Treat yourself like a real business. Protect those things that Rob brought up on this episode and really be able to go forth with confidence and serve and share your systems. A big thank you to Rob for being on the show. As a reminder, this episode is brought to you by the Build and Monetize Agency. If you're looking to scale with social media, your social media isn't working and you want to create a real social media sales machine. Make sure you head over to Lindsay a.com apply and apply for a social media strategy session with me. If you enjoy this podcast, please make sure you subscribe and leave us a review so you don't miss what's next. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode. Cheers to you and your success.

[B]

That's a wrap for today's episode of the Lindsay Anderson Show. If you loved this episode, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review and share how you're leveling up your business. Want more? Connect with Linda Lindsay Anderson and get the tools you need to crush your [e-mail] until next time, keep pushing, keep growing and turn those business dreams into reality.

[C]

Thank you for tuning in. If you got value from this episode, share it with a friend and hit subscribe. And if you're ready to stop posting and praying and actually generate revenue, let's.

[A]

Talk book your free strategy session by.

[C]

Going to lindsay a.com apply.