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Jordan Cooney
The Voices of Search Podcast is a proud member of the iHear Everything Podcast Network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast, iHear everything delivers podcast production, growth and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice? Then visit iheareverything.com welcome to the Voices of Search Podcast. A member of the iHear Everything Podcast Network, ready to expedite your company's organic growth efforts. Sit back, relax, and get ready for your daily dose of search engine optimization wisdom. Here's today's host of the Voices of Search Podcast, Jordan Cooney hello SEOs and marketers.
My name is Jordan Cooney from Free Visible, and joining me today is Andre Minkov, who is the founder and CEO at Trademark Factory. Trademark Factory specializes in trademark registration services and they provide comprehensive solutions for businesses looking to protect their intellectual property.
Sponsor Voice
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Jordan Cooney
AWT today, Andre and I are going to discuss Innovations to watch and trademarking. Okay, here's my conversation with Andre Minkov, the CEO at Trademark Factory. Andre, welcome to the Voice of Search podcast.
Andre Minkov
Thanks for having me. Really excited to be with you here today.
Jordan Cooney
Awesome. I'm pumped. We don't usually get to have someone who specializes in trademark litigation services.
Andre Minkov
Not the most sexiest of topics. I get it.
Jordan Cooney
I think it is. I think this is going to Be really interesting, because I think a lot of our listeners, whether they're business owners, agency owners, content writers, they should be thinking about this. This is an important topic and a critical one to the value of what they create. Right. And this is interesting right now in the AI world, right, where we've got, how is creativity valued today? But anyway, we're going to get into that. How about you share with our listeners a little bit about yourself, share with them what Trademark Factory is all about, and then. And then we can kind of go into more details there.
Andre Minkov
Sure. Well, once again, my name is Andre Minkov, the founder of Trademark Factory. What we do, what we specialize in, is trademark registration services. The guaranteed result for a guaranteed budget. And the beauty of that is that trademarking is a long and tedious process that most people underestimate how complex it is. Because a lot of people, especially in the tech space, they're like, well, you get a domain name, you just fill out a short form, you pay a little bit of money, you get a domain name three minutes later. With trademarks, it's almost the same thing, except you fill out the form and then you hear from the government about nine months into the process when they tell you about all the things you did wrong. And so the whole process with trademark registration takes about a year and a half in the U.S. about four years in Canada. And most entrepreneurs, they think about trademarking way past when they supposed to do that, and again, they think that it's going to happen much simpler than it actually is. So our job is to make sure that we educate people, which is why I'm on this podcast with you here today. And also for those business owners who actually see the value of their brand is to make sure that we get them the result that they're looking for as efficiently and painlessly as humanly possible. Yeah, that's really the Trademark Factory in a nutshell. We've been doing this for over a decade. We've done over 4,000 trademarks registered for our clients with a 99.3% rate of success, which is really unheard of in this industry, with the industry average being 51.2%. So almost double. But if you. If you look at it from the perspective of how many of them fail. Right. Our failure rate is point. What is it? 0.77%. Yeah, right. Compared to almost half of them not getting to the finish line when you file through someone else. So I'm pretty proud of that.
Jordan Cooney
And for our listeners, I think it's important to understand because I Think, especially for a lot of our listeners, they're going to think trademark and they're going to think by default, like big companies. They're going to think Coca Cola, they're going to think other consumer brand companies. I think that that's a falsehood, but correct me if I'm wrong, there's a lot of trademarks that probably happen in non big corporate settings. So tell us a little bit more about where and when is it valuable to consider getting a trademark?
Andre Minkov
Yeah, so it's a really interesting dynamic because every single successful company you see out there has their brand trademarked. Like every single one of them. You go to a store, you pick up a product, you know it's trademarked. And there's also businesses that started yesterday in your dad's basement, they don't have a trademark, so they get a trademark somewhere on that path. You know, a lot of people ask me, well, when should I trademark my brand? And my answer, a little tongue in cheek really is whenever you want, as long as you do it at least one day before somebody else does. And you know, problem with that of course is you never know. And the other problem with that is with trademarks, it's not just identical brands, it's similar brands too. So if someone trademarks a similar brand, you won't get yours. So again, it's not like domain names, when you add a one at the end or at the beginning and you're like, well, it's a perfectly registerable domain name that doesn't work like that with trademarks. And so the important thing here to understand is that while all the big guys have their brands trademarked, it's the little guy who needs the trademark more than the big guy. Because the big guy has all the frickin money in the world. To spend on lawyers. Yes, to spend, to outbid you with paid search, with advertising. They got the fucking money. Yeah, right. And the little guy doesn't. Exactly. Right. And so the only thing that allows the little guy to become the big guy is the assets, right? Something that allows them to stand apart from everyone else. And I'm going to give you an example. You actually mentioned AI and all of that stuff. Please 11 labs, one of my, you know, go to AI apps on the audio stuff. And so so these guys filed for a trademark a few months ago. So they did all the right things, except some other dude, like an individual filed for the same trademark on the same freaking day just a few hours before they did.
Jordan Cooney
Really.
Andre Minkov
And now their trademark application is being denied. Right. So whether they pay him off or they do some other stuff or whatever, I don't know the, you know, the full history, but they found themselves in a, you know, in a situation that they wouldn't have been had they filed their trademark just one day earlier. And that stuff happens all the time, whether you make announcements and people see, hey, you know, these guys are going to be successful. I always say, you know, by the time you get big and successful, someone will have to trademark your brand. Might as well be you, right? And again, when you're small, you have this piece of paper that says, this brand is yours, that allows you to do a lot of things, even when you're fighting the big guys. Sean Merriman, the football player, right, he trademarked Lights out back in the day.
Jordan Cooney
Really?
Andre Minkov
Right. Very smart gentleman. Not just a great football player. He knew that he wouldn't be playing football all his life, right? So he had this saying, lie, it's out. So he got that trademarked, and then he successfully sued both Nike and Under Armour for unauthorized use of that brand. And he won both times.
Jordan Cooney
Interesting. Wow. And that's. And this is an interesting point, Andre, because I think this is important for listeners to understand, because most of the time when people think about trademark, they think about trademark a business, the business's name or the business's service. But there's a lot more you can trademark than just the business. Like your example here, this is a saying. This is like a slogan. Lights out. Right? And that is being trademarked in this example.
Andre Minkov
It is. So trademarks, they are to protect the brand for products and services. So not just the saying in and of itself, like in a vacuum, like, this is a great saying or this is a great picture. No, it has to be linked to particular products or services that you're selling or that you're licensing someone else to sell for you. So for Sean, it was like the phrase on clothing, like on T shirts and other apparel, right? And so because he owned that brand for apparel, when Nike decided to do that, and when Under Armour decided to do, he's like, guys, I have this piece of paper that says, you cannot do this. And he was very happy that he got that piece of paper because without it, they just walk all over him, right? And with that piece of paper, they couldn't. They couldn't ignore it. They couldn't just say, you know, we're big and you're small. Like, they have to do something about it. And that's the beauty of it, right? When. Whether they're going to buy you out, whether they're going to, you know, pay you off or whatever, at least you get something out of that as opposed to just being completely ignored.
Jordan Cooney
Right now, as we think about trademarks and we think about the digital revolutions that have happened over the last 20 years, not only 20 or even 30 years, just thinking about the spawn of the Internet, then the prolification of web, and now we're in this AI revolution where now we have a whole new lever in terms of how we can use and leverage technology. How is trademarking and the use of trademarking changing as we evolve into this AI revolution?
Andre Minkov
So there's two parts to your question, really. There's definitely lots of things that are changing, and the biggest change is the speed at which you can create new products and services and at which you can take those products and services internationally. This is definitely not something that the trademark system or even the international trademark registration system was designed to cope with. It was based on the assumption that it takes significant time and effort for someone to copy you and take it to a different country. It was perfectly adequate for that world, the new world, not so much. How long it's going to take the governments to do something about it, I don't know. So it's a funny thing because governments don't like to lose power. They like to keep things going the way they've always been done. So even though everyone, I'm not saying anything that no one else understands, everyone knows that the old system, where it takes you four years to register a trademark and it's just one country. And if you add new products, products to your application, you have to start from scratch. Like all of that stuff is ancient history, right? It doesn't really address the needs of today's businesses, but that's what we have today, right? And I mean, I can be sitting on your podcast and bitching about the system, as it should be, all day long, but I think the real help that we can do is basically help entrepreneurs use the system as it is and maybe advocate for changes later. So, actually, if I were to go back to one other thing I wanted to say when you mentioned big guys and small guys. So the two biggest companies out there, Google and now X, both of them are doing horribly stupid things when it comes to brand protection.
Jordan Cooney
Oh, tell me more.
Andre Minkov
Yeah, this is interesting because the big anathema for the brand is when you allow your brand to be used as a verb. So, you know, let me Google this got Google in a big trouble. They actually had to sue this case to litigate this case in Supreme Court of US to prove that their brand did not yet become generic. Right. They managed to win, like, very tightly and, you know, a few more years and they're probably going to lose. With X. When Elon decided to change the name, everyone said he was nuts because there were other brands that had, you know, similar trademarks and they were less recognizable, but because both of them have so much money, they don't really give a shit. Yeah. Because they know that they can solve the problem with money. Right. And if you have a problem that you can solve with money, it's not a problem. Right. So think of this. Little guys cannot afford this, so they have to do things the right way. Now, to go back to your question about the trends and everything, AI. AI is a great tool. We use it all the time on lots of different things. It's not good enough for someone who doesn't understand what they're seeing, what the results they're getting. Right. And the best comparison I can give you is if you were to try to communicate with someone in a language that you have completely no idea about. You know, Chinese, for me, like, there's no way for me to know whether the translation I'm getting actually is correct. I can run whatever I say through AI translation, and it's going to give me something, but I don't know what it is. I can send it off and I can get myself in trouble relying on what AI gives me. Most of the time, it's pretty good. Not all the time when it's your brand relying blindly on some piece of code that spits at you, some results, not a good idea. So there are a few companies out there on the trademarking scene today that heavily rely on AI and not going to name them, but we've done some tests of their systems to see how good and reliable they are. Because if I can use them to reduce my cost, why the frick not? Right? I don't mind. But unfortunately, about 30% of the time, the results we're getting are just complete garbage. And even though 70% is really good, because, again, you get a result instantaneously and it's pretty accurate. And you're like, wow, that's really good. But the 30% are. If you were to build your business model around that, they're real people, they're real business owners who actually rely on you to do the work. Right. And we're not there yet. Yeah, maybe they're going to build better systems. Maybe they're going to build better, you know, Better algorithms and then everyone switches to it and you don't need humans for that. We're not there yet, so we'll see.
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Jordan Cooney
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I always find it funny. I always make the comparison of like AI work to construction work, right? If you go into an Airbnb or you go into like a house that's been remodeled and has only been as the job was only done 70%, well, you notice it pretty quick. You see that the tiles are falling out of the bathroom shower. You see that the light flickers a little bit. You see that the flooring isn't quite right when you're walking on it. Right? That 70% just isn't good enough. You feel it, you see it, you experience it. Right? But when it comes to AI, we seem to just be like, I guess that's good enough. Right? Which is just not. Not the right thing.
Andre Minkov
It's good enough for some things. It's definitely good enough for some things. But the reason it works for us is we can tell when the results are good and when the results aren't.
Jordan Cooney
Yeah, exactly.
Andre Minkov
And if you can't tell one from the other, that's when you run into problem, like they think of this, like all those AI gener image generators, like, because we know how humans are supposed to look like and that they're not supposed to have six fingers or feet growing from their ears, we can tell that there's a problem with this image, right? Or when they do weird text. I don't know why AI still can't do proper text on image, but we know this. But imagine that you didn't know you came from, from Mars, right? And you looked at the image, you're like, oh, that's a cool picture. It has a feet growing out of the head. That's what it's supposed to be. And you're like, well, that's really what happens when someone who doesn't know what they're doing just uses AI blindly.
Jordan Cooney
A million percent, million percent. Transitioning here to where innovation is going in the trademark space, there's obviously just this comprehension of where we can use trademarks. And as business owners, as creators, as content specialists, as, you know, digital entrepreneurs, we need to be thinking about trademarks. But where is the industry going? I mean, how is the industry evolving? What are some of the better values that you think trademarks are going to provide the business world in the years to come?
Andre Minkov
So the way I look at it is this. There's a framework that I use to help people figure out if they need a trademark and whether they need one. Now, the first question you ask yourself is, do you see yourself selling same or similar products and services under this same brand two, three years from now? Like, if everything goes well, according to your plan, assuming that whatever you started keeps getting better, assuming that you are getting to where you want to be in your, in your dreams, like two or three years from now, do you see yourself with that same brand? If the answer is no, then that's fine. You don't need a trademark. Because again, trademarks take too long, they take time, they take resources. And, you know, why would you waste your resources on something that you won't have even if you become successful, right? So don't do that. If the answer is yes, I'll need that, I'll still have that brand two, three years from now. If everything goes well, then the next question you ask yourself is, and there's only two questions, that's the second question. So the second question you asked yourself is, assuming, again, everything goes well, assuming everything goes as well as I hope it will, is the brand going to do something for me? Is it going to help me get more people to Know that we exist. Like, is it going to get me more leads? Is it going to lower my conversion from lead to sale? Is it going to lower my ad costs? Which you know, it very well could. Because for example, Google or Facebook, they don't like sending traffic to unknown pages, right? Because they don't want to risk, you know, all of those complaints about, you know, you, someone got scammed or something like that. So they're just going to give you a higher price per click as opposed to when a well known brand advertises there, they know that they're not going to get complaints and so their cost per click is significantly lower. So is the brand going to do that for you? Is the brand going to help you acquire better talent? Because again, when Google looks for software developers, they get a lineup almost like Apple does at five in the morning when you line up looking for their new model. When a startup that nobody knows says they need new developers, it's tough. It's tough because developers tend to not want to work for a company that may not be around two, three, two, three months from now. Correct. Right. So again, is the brand going to help you get that better talent? So you ask yourself, is the brand going to do any of this for me? And if the answer is no, it won't, then my advice is always go back to the drawing board and come up with a better brand. Because why would you spend your time, money and energy promoting the brand that does nothing for you? Even in the best case scenario, it's a pretty shit brand. And again, it doesn't need to be super smart. It doesn't need to be, you know, you don't need to have the best image in the world for your logo like Nike's swoosh. They pay 35 bucks to get that design right now it's worth billions. And if you look at it from the artistic standpoint, there's nothing amazing about it. It would have been different. There's nothing amazing about Apple's Apple logo. I mean, it's cute, yes, but it could have been anything else and it would have been just as valuable. But do you see this brand doing something for you? Right? And if the answer is yes, it will do some of those things for me, then the next question, then you say, yes, you need to get a trademark. Look at it as an investment in your brand's future. Because really that's what trademarks are. They're not about you protecting your brand today, they're about protecting your brand when it's actually worth something. And if you think about it, I'm gonna try to. Well, we're not on video, so I'm going to do an impossible thing of trying to draw a chart without anyone seeing it. So think about this. There's this one moment in time and space when you come up with the idea of a brand. You have this light bulb in your head. Let's call this product or service, this, whatever, XYZ something, right at that very moment, the actual value of your brand is zero. Nobody knows it, nobody has seen it, nobody has heard of it, nobody has seen your products. Like, it's just in your head. The potential value could be whatever, trillions, but the actual value is zero. Also at that very moment, this brand is as trademarkable as it will ever be. Because it might not already be trademarkable. Someone may already have a trademark that's covering something similar, right? And then what happens over time? You're like, well, that's a great name. Let's start putting our products out there. Let's start sending press releases, let's do SEO. Let's, you know, give some money to Zuck to run our ads on Facebook and IG and some TikTok so that more people know that we exist under this amazing brand. So what happened is that over time, the value, the actual value of your brand goes up because more people know about it. And as long as you sell to people something that's not complete garbage, there is some goodwill associated with that. So again, the value of the brand goes up, and at the same time, the trademarkability of your brand goes down because more people see it, and there is higher and higher and higher risk that someone else will take advantage of it and file that trademark like they did for ElevenLabs. And so at some point, so it looks like opening jaws of an alligator. So it starts at one point, and then one line goes up, the other line goes down. And so at some point, there's this gap that becomes so big that you run into a problem. And the other thing is, so most businesses, that's a common mistake. They think that in the beginning, life's going to be very hard, right? They're going to do some stuff under the radar. They're going to grind, they're going to work very hard without seeing much success. And then one day, something will happen. They'll find that one genius idea and suddenly everything is going to change and they're going to start swimming in money. And they think, when that happens, I'll definitely take care of my brand. And even if I don't I'll have the money to pay for. That's really what most entrepreneurs unfortunately think, because they think that whatever problems they've got, they're not really big problems, because nobody's going to notice. And when they do become problems, they'll have the money to fix them. In reality, what happens is that it's a much slower and less steep slope. You just go a little better, a little better, a little better. Some months you're going to have good months, some months going to be shit months. But overall, it's not a rocket ship, it's a tricycle. So what happens is that as you're climbing up that mountain and things are getting slightly better, and finally you're like, you know what, guys? Looks like this stuff is working. We can finally afford to pay the team. We can finally afford to do this and this and this and this. And you're like, we almost made it. And what happens is that if you get attacked at that point because someone else trademarks your brand and they sue you, that's going to cost you lots of money. The average cost of trademark litigation in U.S. is about 150 grand. The average cost of rebranding is about 70. Right. When that happens, like, if you thought that the rocket ship, if you do have a rocket ship and you are going from, I don't know, 60k a year to 60 million a year, like, if you have 60 million a year, you can solve the problem. But if you went from 60 to, I don't know, 150, and you need to spend 150 on litigation, that kills you, you're dead.
Jordan Cooney
Yep.
Andre Minkov
Right. And that's the problem, because everyone thinks that they're going to deal with that once they got to that dream scenario when everything's so good and so easy.
Jordan Cooney
No doubt. And actually, I think this is a great place for us to wrap up this episode of the Voice of Search podcast. Thank you to Andre Minkov from Trademark Factory for joining us in part two of this interview, which we'll publish tomorrow. Andre and I are going to discuss trademark your way to stronger business valuation, which is right where we're ending this episode, and how you create value in your business. If you can't wait until our next episode and would like to learn more about Andrew, you can find a link to his LinkedIn profile in our show notes or visit his company website, trademark factory.com okay.
Sponsor Voice
Thanks to Jordan Cooney, the founder of Previsible. If you'd like to get in touch with Jordan, you can find a link to his LinkedIn profile in our show Notes. You can contact him on Twitter. His handle is J.T. cooney. That's J T K O E N E. Or you can visit his company's website, which is Previsible IO that's P R E V I S I B L E I O and a special thanks to Ahrefs for sponsoring this podcast. Monitoring your website used to require multiple expensive tools, but that's not the case anymore, thanks to Ahrefs because they just launched their Ahrefs Webmaster Tools product, which monitors your SEO health, helps you keep track of your backlinks, and gives you the insight into what keywords are performing for free. So check out Ahrefs webmaster tools@ahrefs.comAWT that's Ahrefs a h r e f s.comAWT just one more link in our show Notes I'd like to tell you about. If you didn't have a chance to take notes while you were listening to this podcast, head over to voicesofsearch.com where we have summaries of all of our episodes and contact information for our guests. You can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter, and you can even send us your topic suggestions or your marketing questions, which we'll answer live on our show. Of course, you can always reach out on social media. Our handle is voicesofsearch on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or you can contact me directly. My handle is Ben J Shab B E N J S H A P and if you haven't subscribed yet and you want a daily stream of SEO and content marketing insights in your podcast feed, we're going to publish an episode every day during the work week, so hit that subscribe button in your podcast app and we'll be back in your feed tomorrow morning. All right, that's it for today, but until next time, remember, the answers are always in the data.
Voices of Search // A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Content Marketing Podcast
Episode: Innovations To Watch In Trademarking
Release Date: December 18, 2024
Host: Jordan Cooney
Guest: Andre Minkov, Founder and CEO of Trademark Factory
In this episode of Voices of Search, host Jordan Cooney welcomes Andre Minkov, the Founder and CEO of Trademark Factory. The discussion centers around the evolving landscape of trademarking, its critical importance for businesses of all sizes, and the impact of technological advancements, particularly AI, on trademark registration and protection.
[02:36] Andre Minkov:
Andre begins by outlining the mission of Trademark Factory: to streamline the trademark registration process for businesses. He emphasizes the complexities involved in trademarking compared to acquiring domain names, highlighting that while domain registration is quick and straightforward, trademark registration can take up to four years in Canada and requires navigating intricate legal hurdles.
Key Points:
Notable Quote:
Andre Minkov [03:17]: "Trademarking is a long and tedious process that most people underestimate how complex it is."
[05:21] Jordan Cooney:
Jordan challenges the common misconception that trademarks are only essential for large corporations. He posits that trademarks are equally, if not more, important for small and emerging businesses.
Andre Minkov's Insights:
Andre agrees, stating that while big companies secure their brands with substantial resources, smaller businesses are particularly vulnerable without trademark protection. He illustrates this with the example of ElevenLabs, where a delayed trademark application led to a denial due to a near-simultaneous filing by another party.
Key Points:
Notable Quotes:
Andre Minkov [05:49]: "The little guy needs the trademark more than the big guy. Because the big guy has all the frickin money in the world to spend on lawyers."
Andre Minkov [07:59]: "By the time you get big and successful, someone will have had to trademark your brand. Might as well be you."
[10:48] Jordan Cooney:
Jordan probes into how the AI revolution and rapid digital expansion are influencing trademark practices. He questions the adaptability of trademark systems in the face of swift technological advancements.
Andre Minkov's Analysis:
Andre points out that the current trademark system was not designed to handle the speed at which new products and services are created and globalized today. He criticizes major companies like Google and X (formerly Twitter) for poor brand protection practices, such as allowing their brands to be used as verbs, which can lead to genericide—a situation where a trademark becomes a generic term.
Impact of AI:
Andre discusses the limitations of AI in trademark registration, noting that while AI can expedite the process, it often produces unreliable results. He explains that Trademark Factory avoids over-reliance on AI to maintain high accuracy and dependability in their services.
Key Points:
Notable Quotes:
Andre Minkov [11:21]: "The trademark system... was based on the assumption that it takes significant time and effort for someone to copy you and take it to a different country. The new world, not so much."
Andre Minkov [13:34]: "Google had to litigate in the Supreme Court to prove that their brand did not yet become generic. They managed to win, but it's an ongoing battle."
Andre Minkov [17:04]: "About 30% of the time, the results we're getting [from AI-driven trademark services] are just complete garbage... We're not there yet."
[20:48] Andre Minkov:
Andre introduces a strategic framework to help businesses determine whether they need to pursue a trademark. This involves a series of reflective questions about the longevity and impact of the brand.
Framework Steps:
Long-Term Vision:
Brand's Strategic Value:
Investment in Future Value:
Illustrative Example:
Andre uses the trajectory of brand value and trademarkability to show that early trademark registration can prevent future legal disputes and financial losses. He emphasizes that delaying trademarking can lead to costly litigation or the need for rebranding, which can be financially devastating for growing businesses.
Key Points:
Notable Quotes:
Andre Minkov [20:48]: "Look at it as an investment in your brand's future. Because really, that's what trademarks are."
Andre Minkov [29:27]: "The average cost of trademark litigation in the U.S. is about $150k. The average cost of rebranding is about $70k. When you get attacked at that point, it's going to cost you lots of money. If you went from 60 to 150k, and you need to spend 150k on litigation, that kills you. You're dead."
As the episode wraps up, Jordan and Andre hint at continuing the discussion in a part two, focusing on how trademarking can enhance business valuation and create tangible value. They encourage listeners to connect via LinkedIn or the Trademark Factory website for more insights.
Final Remarks:
Jordan emphasizes the importance of proactive trademarking as a cornerstone for building and maintaining a strong, recognizable brand in today's fast-paced digital economy.
For more information on trademarks and to connect with Andre Minkov, visit Trademark Factory.