Patents, Trademarks & Legal Hacks Every Inventor Should Know!

In this exciting episode of The Bold Inventor Show, join patent attorney J.D. Houvner and trademark attorney Matt Kulseth as they dive deep into the world of intellectual property. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, inventor, or business owner on the brink of something big, this episode is packed with crucial legal insights that can help protect your innovative ideas.

🌟 Highlights of this Episode:

• 💡 Patent Restore Act & Prevail Act – Understand the latest developments in patent law and how they could shift the landscape for inventors. Will these acts tip the scales in favor of patent owners?
• 🔑 The Importance of Trademarks – Learn why your brand's trademark could be your second most valuable asset, and how it plays a key role in scaling and protecting your business.
• 🎯 Real-World Legal Questions – Hear answers to pressing legal questions from business owners about patenting motorcycle club patches, inventorship vs. ownership, and more!
• 🛠️ Tools for Market Domination – Get an inside look at how to leverage tools like AnswerThePublic.com to sharpen your SEO strategy and stay ahead of the competition.

Plus, Matt shares stories from the front lines of trademark battles and their surprising connection to memorial walls and motorcycle clubs! This episode is packed with actionable advice, humorous moments, and expert legal knowledge to empower you to take your business to the next level.

✨ Don’t miss the live audience Q&A and insightful tips for entrepreneurs looking to secure their intellectual property in today’s competitive market.

Transcript

00:01 Good afternoon, everybody and welcome to the Bold Inventor Show. You're here live with Attorney J.D. Houvener and trademark attorney Matt Kulseth.
00:10 Hi, howdy, hello. Hi, howdy, hello. Thanks again for your time, Matt. As always. Um, we're here, uh, we're sharing. We're giving.
00:18 We're chatting. We're talking. We're giving. You know, between the two of us. We're just giving away all this, you know, half a million dollars worth of education.
00:27 Oh, oh, at least. I mean, then you know, Because it goes on the graduate, that's the law school. You bet.
00:35 We're totally free of charge. So you're welcome. If you're coming in live, we're going to welcome you to join in.
00:42 Throughout the segment, we will be going up to an hour. If we have, you know, a final request. We have enough information and stuff to talk about.
00:53 Our audience, you guys out the listeners. We know it's made up of attorneys. So you guys are watching. We also have inventors, business owners, entrepreneurs, or those that may be on the cusp of something big.
01:04 And they want to know if emotional property, patents, trademarks is the right way to go, how to go approach it and the strategies there.
01:11 And so welcome, welcome, all. I do want to do a quick disclaimer. I'll flash it up here that I just mentioned before.
01:17 This is not legal advice. We're just talking about legal information, updates on the law. And we'll be talking about the Patent Restore Act in the Proveil Act.
01:28 This came in on a really good question. Cool. Carcora Audience. I'll touch on that bridge fleet. I mean, it's cool as a patent bill can be, right?
01:37 I mean, if you see it. They're not, I mean, yeah, trademark patent law, like, you know, and the laws behind it.
01:44 It's probably not the sexiest thing in the world. No, no, but we are looking good. I made a mention that before you're looking quite good.
01:51 Yes, thank you. It's uh, I don't know, like French Mediterranean is kind of what we're going for or maybe polling one of the two, you know, we just got back from a trip.
02:00 Yeah, well we were up in the boundary waters canoeing a couple weeks ago, and then I'm going out to Montana that go chasing elk with a bow.
02:11 next week. And then Maggie and my wife and I are going to go to Italy for a couple weeks. See, you walk in the yard and That's really why not the nature in a bunch of yaps.
02:21 That's the one I'm excited for you. Yeah, those are two very different things. Yeah, so we're celebrating our 15 year anniversary.
02:27 So we're going to Europe. That is wonderful. Well, congrats to you guys. When you're ahead of us, I don't mind I'll celebrate next July.
02:38 Nice. So, cool. Again, Marital Advice. Marital Advice. Yeah, opportunity presents itself to also engage in that. You know, I think you're trying to give a piece of Marital Advice.
02:54 Unsolicited, absolutely. Unsolicited, Marital Advice. You only need to speak when you have something that's both kind, honest, and necessary. I'm getting a pen down, I'm going to put it here.
03:12 We try to teach our kids that too because sometimes they might say something that's necessary and honest, but it's not kind, right?
03:23 So maybe it's kind and honest, but is it really necessary? Probably not. So I'm mixing the vent diagram of these things that I'm going be drawing this up.
03:34 Yeah, you could walk on all day with the opening mouth, I guess, you know there are times though even my daughter's taught under the moments where I'm obviously being silent.
03:48 And they know even they know then they know that I need to wear a bag over my head and not talk something.
03:55 Yeah, there you go. Oh, the body, the body language. Okay, well, excellent. Let's jump in. We have a few questions here.
04:03 It came over the week. It was the holiday week, so it was slow. I think we have three that are lovely virtual assistant Amira was able to get going.
04:11 Great. And yeah, one from Ovo, one the big one from Porra. Let me just, you know, let me just jump in on this one here.
04:19 This honestly, this question came in two weeks ago. I skipped it because I have no idea what the patent for store act was until I dug in.
04:27 So I'll throw the question up. Who asked this question? It's quite studious. They're obviously looking and seeing what's on the radar.
04:35 What's coming up? So do I believe that the restore, and that's a giant, you know, congressional acronym, patent rights act and the prevail act, will rebalance the scales of patent infringement?
04:49 No. You know, I don't know. Yeah. New splash mat the trademark attorney does not know Well, you know now of course get lots of disclaimers, you know here at bold We have you know, I'll say a specialty within patents and like a lot of things as soon as you cannot get into the ditches There's even more
05:12 right yeah, so we even we you know, we focus obviously patent law We actually don't do litigation at the moment, right?
05:20 We do a free litigation and friends with an analysis of what it comes to actually filing cases in federal court.
05:27 We use our part of our management because they're in court. They're used to those proceedings, mitigating and settling. So it's it's incredible for those, you know, those listening at home.
05:36 It is very rare to be either patent or trademark practitioner and be both on the registration, you know, transactional side and the litigation side, especially if you're doing federal court litigation.
05:47 You know, at our firm, like occasionally we'd send season to cis letters and do like tea tab litigation, but which is trademark trauma pool board litigation, but we leave the litigation to the litigators.
05:59 Yeah, absolutely. It's just too much to balance both of those. Yeah, that said, it is important that us cotton prosecutors are still aware of the law.
06:10 Yeah, because it's true, even though, let's say a patent gets granted a year ago, patent laws change. Federal Circuit Supreme Court cases get handed down that do eventually change the law in terms of the scope of rights that you have.
06:23 The most recent one, of course, was the change to abstract idea and the concept of whether a software, a computer, an invention is eligible.
06:33 One of those did in the years following that Supreme Court case of Alice or CLS bank, we're starting out as invalid.
06:40 It's an easy example and it could happen. And on this case, this is sort of on the front end of the law creation.
06:48 This sort of came from a case, eBay versus Microsoft. And that case was talking about a rebuttable presumption of, here we go, this is legal, he's coming in, rebuttable presumption.
07:03 So who's got the, yeah, who's got the onus here? Yeah, all right, here we go. I'm going to try to get this right.
07:09 Revival presumption of a, what's the wording? It's a injunction of a permanent injunction, whether when a court, when a judge says final ruling, there is infringement.
07:26 Should there be a rebuttable presumption of a permanent injunction? So let's unpack that. That's the question, but I don't I don't yes Well, and so That case I talked about eBay back in 2006 put a question mark on that because it said you know what no We're not going to use this old four-product test
07:46 We're not always going to assume them And so the problem there is is that even though it's a planet, right?
07:53 Let's say the little guy Wings right gets the wind against the big guy the hot you and fringe my pattern No longer can they expect to have their infringer stop.
08:08 But again, it's safe. So what this act would do is it would restore and is a plaintiff. Is a patent on a friendly bill.
08:15 So of course, we're going to be in favor of that. At least the way I read through it. But what it will do is it will give that via the law.
08:22 So it will take it out of the hands of the judge and say, look, the law, as soon as there is a definitive judgment on infringement, the infringer must stop, must cease, absolutely stop any, you know, making, using, selling or importing of that claim subject matter.
08:40 Okay. And now it's on the defense to come up with some wild, crazy, convincing argument. Otherwise. So that's really what it is.
08:48 And I do I say, yes, I do think that will work toward rebalancing the scales toward, you know, the pen owner.
08:56 It's a long-winded way of saying that. Quick note on the prevail act. I did dig in a little bit. It is over my head, frankly.
09:04 Having to do with what's called IPR, Interpartis review, post filing, excuse me, post judgment at the federal circuit. What this is aiming at doing is basically cleaning it up.
09:17 As it is now, the pendants can face two separate attacks. federal court in IPR, honestly, you know, and you went to Las Vegas, the whole I concept of, you know, the plan of shouldn't get two bites at the apple, right?
09:35 In general, you want to, you should try to, what's the stair to size now, but I'm not going to try to put the Latin here, but you should all be handled in one case, so it's efficient, all things handled in one, so you've a final decision, no double jeopardy, no ability to come back and just let's the
09:54 same, you know, underlying positive action. Yeah. So that's kind of what the Prelector is. There is sort of this gap in the loophole, if you will, where they can get hit by the p-tab and federal court on basically the same subject matter.
10:08 Sure. Sure. So I appreciate that question coming in. All right. Great, great answer. Well, thank you. I can tell you did your homework today.
10:16 I did. I was, you know, reading off of, you know, a couple of sources there. I love that. I think that was really, really useful.
10:25 Yeah, I had an interesting client matter the other week that maybe we could talk about it on some teacher episode.
10:32 But something you don't hear a whole lot more about these days, but UDRP, Uniform Domain Resolution Procedure, basically a way to claw back websites from trademark trolls or, you know, defend them from overreaching companies, trademark holders.
10:47 really interesting. So maybe we could talk about that on a future. Yeah, I love it. And then with the cliffhanger, I'll take a note.
10:54 Yeah, that is, you know, that topic would be just some re-summarized. So that would be for someone who, you know, is the main squatting, right?
11:02 They just, but maybe have been hanging on to it for years. And now, all of a sudden, there's an actual business or product that they want to start, you know, they want to eliminate any confusion in the marketplace for that.
11:13 And there's a mechanism You said the UDRP? UDRP. Yep. So it's through WIPO, World Intellectual Property Organization basically has a tribunal or administrative panel of judges who basically look at all these cases of controversies and figure out whether or not they need to transfer the domain from the
11:32 domain owner to the legitimate trademark holder, or whether or not the domain use is actually legitimate, in which case the domain does not transfer its days with the current owner.
11:44 And we always represent the good guys. So whether you're legitimate trademark owner or you're legitimate domain owner, I want to be on that side of the equation and not the other side.
11:56 Very well. Yeah, we're not. Hey, you know, yeah, everyone deserves a day. Of course, yeah, I mean, cyber squatters, you know, they deserve their, you know, their attorneys as well, but just not right right right that's a beautiful thing you as a as an attorney you do get to take your clients so I would
12:18 say approved to that uh that on a future future show you bet let's do some research about that case study together I think that'd be worth very worthwhile let's take it let's take it up to a little more simple if you will not necessarily always complex but simple question coming at you this is coming
12:40 out of Abo in the Chicago Illinois area. Chicago land. We've been doing this for so many years I feel like some of these questions are kind of they come up again and again.
12:52 How do I patent and name and patches for a motorcycle club? I've done this. Okay. Oh, you've done this yourself.
13:01 Yeah. Okay, we did. We thought what does already? No, no, but then I've trademarked, you know, it's an incorrect term for it.
13:10 I've trademarked a couple motorcycle clubs over the years. Oh my gosh, let's have it. Let's have. Yeah, so I mean, yes, you can, yes, you can.
13:19 And there are a couple ways to go about it. You know, you can either register your motor, as soon as your motorcycle club is not descriptive of the geographic location, which you guys ride and live.
13:30 Yes, you can register your motorcycle club as A club, essentially, the USPTO. The USPTO has these 45 classes of goods and services.
13:40 Everything we do falls into one of those classes. There's motorcycle, well, let me pull up the trademark ID manual and I'll actually get you some further information, but basically there's kind of two ways you can go about registering motorcycle clubs.
13:59 One would be to register an actual like club affiliate services, you know, application. So basically it's a club, it's a social club, right?
14:09 That, you know, you can belong to and promotes its club, right? That's one way to do it. What I've also found to use a lot of these motorcycle clubs, no matter how, you know, how rough and rowdy they are, a lot of times they have a charitable side to them too, where they might have a memorial wall that
14:24 they maintain, or that they raise money like the Shriners do for kids in hospitals, the Shriner Hospital system. So a lot of times you can also register as a charitable organization, right, providing raising funds for cancer awareness or you know, men's health, that sort of thing.
14:42 So lots of ways to register these things. On that note, so in terms of the trademark law or the process for applying for it, does it matter whether you are a for-profit or not?
14:52 No, does not, does not because, you know, a for-profit company can still have a charitable mission or a charitable service that they provide.
15:03 So it can be a private, you know, for-profit, you know, company organization. You can be a collective of individuals or you can be a non-profit.
15:11 It doesn't really matter for the USPTL. I've only been through the trademark stuff with your help for ball. And obviously we had to show evidence where he commerce.
15:22 How does I work for those that aren't selling anything? Yeah, so you don't need to sell anything to have a trademark registration.
15:32 So I'm thinking back to the most recent motorcycle club that I worked on. They had a memorial wall, right? So basically if you are part of the membership, right, part of your membership, of these go to maintaining this memorial wall for writers who have died, right, whether the front of the club or outside
15:49 the club. And the way that they kind of also fund that is that, you know, let's say, you know, you got a brother who passed away as a motorcycle enthusiast, right, maybe died on a bike.
16:00 And you'd like his memory kind of preserve somewhere. You might make a hundred dollar donation to this motorcycle club in exchange.
16:06 They create a plaque with a picture and they post to maintain it basically in a park. That's kind of they do it.
16:13 But there's lots of ways you could prove that use. So when we work with them, we submitted both pictures from the website.
16:22 So like how you could donate to their charitable giving services. And we also submitted some pictures of the wall too.
16:29 That's great. They were both branded, obviously, with the name of their club. Perfect, perfect. Well, thank you for that answer, Matt.
16:36 It's awesome to be with the a member of a snow hog club. You let me know. I will. I'll let you know.
16:46 I was on one of those about 15 to 20 years ago out in the middle of nowhere Idaho. Nice time.
16:53 Super fun. That's the place to do it with in the mountains. Super fun. So anybody out there listening to a couple of live viewers, if you have any questions, I mean, really anything goes, feel pretty shooting in the box.
17:04 We'll get to you. You'll get to the top of the list. Yeah, a couple more I think here. Let's see.
17:12 One on patents here. Yeah. Two part of question. I'll take this one here. So I had this idea. It sounds great.
17:26 My friends and I want to patent it. I love it. We look online, but it's actually already patented sort of.
17:34 And here's the rest of the question. I'll just read it There's been multiple applications to patents in multiple countries, but they've all been abandoned except for in Japan, which in the status application said to be pending since 1998.
17:48 So it's been around for a long time. a number of years, if this person has lost interest in the patent or just based on their LinkedIn career, this person has really been researching.
17:58 And just left a pending, is there any, does that open it up to the market again to be patenting? Great question.
18:06 And I got a pretty straightforward answer here. Is it a two letter answer? Yeah, no, you cannot patent something that's been out there already.
18:18 unfortunately, but what's great is you can go to market with it. So you've done a heck of a job researching, sounds like this is an important idea.
18:27 I would, you know, I would caution, you know, being a patent attorney, if you think there is any additional nuance, improvement upon, you know, what this prior invention had, anything that might be some additional novelty, something makes this thing different above and beyond, what this other, you know
18:45 , patent that's been published in Japan for over 20 years, has done, have a talk with the Patent Attorney, you know, give us a call here at Bull and we'll be happy to chat with you.
18:54 But if it's exactly on or very, very close to what's already been out there as you've found, not a good, not a good chance of getting a Pat.
19:04 So I wouldn't even pursue that, what you can be sure of is that no one else has a Patent on it because it's been published already as an automatic defense to anyone who may allege infringement.
19:16 So quick answer, thank you for that question. It's good. One of the quick note I will say is that if you're investing with your friends, and I wanted to mention that too, your friends and I want to patent it.
19:26 Well, what's important to understand is there's a difference between inventorship and ownership. There's one important thing here, but I want to make that point that if you are the sole inventor, or only you should be named as an inventor, and if your friends want to basically go into business with you
19:41 , right, around the technology, around the invention, while I recommend informing a business LLC, or a C-Porp, and having your interests documented in a formation agreement's contract that's binding around the ownership, and you can assign the patent that you own as the inventor to the company.
20:00 That's gonna be the most sophisticated way to handle that. All parties are taken care of. Yeah. Agreed. That sounds great.
20:08 All right, Matt. You're really good at this bad stuff. You should own your own offer. Let's do it. Let's let's people.
20:17 There's a critical website that I found. I've been using this map. It's an inside baseball stuff. It's called answer the public dot com.
20:27 Cool. It's got tons of questions. It's basically, it's being put on by a really famous marketer, Neil Patel, MP Digital.
20:37 Oh, yeah, I know that name. Pretty good. Right, so I'm going to flash this on this screen. You know, why not?
20:44 We don't seem to have a whole lot of emotion on our chat channel at the motion. So, answer the public.
20:53 This is basically just put in patents here. And again, all of these questions, the most common questions that are apps in patents for your new and they can expire, extend it.
21:05 Do you use this for your SEO marketing? I just found this a few months ago. This is great. This is awesome.
21:16 So what I want to do is have a little fun, spin the wheel. If you're going to live in more new mountains, we're live.
21:24 Is it actually spin the wheel? No, I wish it did. I'm going to, I'll kind of just, I'll kind of, I won't look.
21:33 Let's see how up on, let's see how caffeinated madness today. This will be great. This will be great. I appreciate this.
21:40 I mean, this is worth the price of admission just to see, you know, where you can get maybe some insight into.
21:46 How to, what questions people are interested in answering about, you know, trademark standards, you know, whatever. So we're going to do two brand new things at once.
21:54 We're going to pick one random. And then we're going look at that. It's totally random. It's not okay. And then we're going to do that.
22:01 Stop. This chat GPT. Oh, yeah, yeah, wait. Yes, they stop. Stop. Why do we got here? Why it's trademark is important.
22:11 Oh, it's not. It's not. It's not. Oh, no, that's not true. Whoops. Okay. No. Yeah. If you want to answer that question, why it's important?
22:20 Okay, I would put it to the listeners at home or in the office that your trademark registration is potentially your second most important legal document that you're gonna have for your business besides your operating agreement either for LLC or your articles of incorporation for your corporation.
22:39 They're very important to protect your brand from consumer confusion and allow you as the trademark owner to police your trademark out in the wild and force the market against third parties who are misbehaving and ultimately protect your brand for a wide swath of products and services.
22:56 They become very important as you grow the business and you potentially want to franchise or license the name to a third party.
23:06 And then ultimately, when you sell a business, the value of a trademark registration can be huge. Your trademark registration basically is the goodwill that you've accumulated in that brand over time.
23:18 So for UJD, it's bold patents, it's the brand, and if you had someone come in and do an evaluation of what your business is worth, and I know it's worth a ton of money, they would basically have a line item, and you're looking around like, what?
23:36 They basically have a line item that would be the goodwill of the company, and what that's actually worth on the open market.
23:42 it. Part of putting a number on it, but it goes into that equation that we think about, we value a business, maybe net revenue times two times three, or profits times X-factor.
23:55 But yeah, your business is worth what it's worth because of the branding. In large part, you take away the assets and the liabilities of the company you're left with, something that's still worth a lot of money, that thing is the brand.
24:07 You know, it's the good will that you've been in and gendered over the years working with clients That is money.
24:14 I'm probably I love you did that. I like the wheel Yeah, I love the wheel. I love it. I think I think you should commission your kids to build you like a wheel in the background And you can just do the wheel Love it We don't want whammy's big bucks.
24:29 No whammy's right right? Yeah, so you're gonna If you're going to call the stop on the patent side, let me get the wheel pulled out.
24:36 I want to, you know, wants my money. You might be, I'm going to be running out of free searches here.
24:40 OK. Oh, no, patents. Let's see. Oh, yes. Oh, great. You're free. A crown. No, see? Yeah, no. No, I was going to say, like, the members of the thing stop and he's been the wheel will say injunction, injunction, then.
24:56 I think we're done. Oh, all right. Well, that's how you do marketing. Oh, two weeks from now, two weeks from now.
25:02 Well, update. I may invest in that, it's pretty fun. It is fun. Yeah, totally. All right, guys, we're going to jump to our bowl fight.
25:12 I think, yeah, we've got half hour. And I've got this one, Q that, yeah, yeah, let's do it. Q the music.
25:25 Technically. Do, do, do, do, do, do. I think that's um, I dream a genie because I was like buildings island.
25:31 I forget I'm dating myself your man You know, I'm almost 40. Are you 40 yet, Jamie? That's on March not till March.
25:39 All right, man We're just young bucks in our 30s at this point. Oh, yeah No, we're near me. I mean, I'm deployed.
25:48 Do you have any grays? I got grays going. Oh, yeah, it might be your Yeah, yeah Oh, I did the wrong.
25:54 Oh, no, I'm good. I still agree on me. Okay Check, check, check, check. We're going to present this one. I'm going to turn off my art industry.
26:05 It's going to get warm. Oh my goodness, here we go. Yes. We're going to talk about manscaping here. Hey, we have a manscaping client.
26:19 You know what I'm talking about? Oh, you're talking about Mr. Raskard? Hasnard? Yes, absolutely. Okay, let's jump to that. We'll see that.
26:30 There we go. The first thing to the day is a public line for today's repined modern man. Hi, my name is Steve King and this is my son, Josh King.
26:49 And we're from San Diego, California. Our company is Manscapes. And we're here today looking for $500,000 per 7%. 7%? Wow.
27:00 Jarks is time to talk about it. Forget about the beard oils and the hair creams. When it comes to malgrooming, there's more to a man to mix the eye.
27:09 For what goes on below the neck and the waist can be ignored no longer. At Manscapes, we're dedicated to beautifying and refining what truly makes a man a man.
27:19 We have crafted the only kit you would ever need to practice proper lawn care. It comes for regions left neglected for far too long.
27:29 We give you the lawn mower 2.0. A trimmer powerful enough to cut through any unruly shrubbery with a banding. As you can see when you trim the hedges the tree stands taller.
27:44 Look, the market found out it was a title. It's a very successful business plan. I wouldn't be where I am without Tim.
27:53 Oh, okay. I'm sorry. Let's focus on the task at hand. 7.1 million dollar valuation. That's a lot of hair down there.
28:02 So 2017, we finished off the year and did 1.5 million. Yeah, brilliant. Oh. We launched in January 2017. It took us about four months to work out how to message our target market.
28:16 And so we, we actually almost walked away and closed the business. We just couldn't get it going. Then we discovered we should try humor.
28:23 Humor would appeal and be able to resonate with our audience. So we had three thousand sets, his kits, and we went back to market in April.
28:32 And we sold out in 13 days. And so that was the message. Where did you do this, Mark? What was the humor?
28:38 We let we put all the stories that are sat around that table with my friends and turn them into live videos and we're at 48 million video views for I'm gonna assume because your margins aren't big enough on this to pay for your customer opposition cost We we've been reinvesting every penny.
28:56 I put the question Let's get down to the business model because there's nothing proprietary about putting razor blades and her fumes into a bag and selling it online.
29:06 The whole business now is what's your customer acquisition cost versus the margin of the bag? What does it cost you to acquire a customer, a new customer?
29:13 So right now, Cosmite was across his $16. What's the margin on the bag? Right now, about $7 per kit, that sucks.
29:26 We'll make you more and save you more to more than balance it all out. I'm going to find out if millions of women want me to take me.
29:35 Most of us stop when you stepped out here with this presentation. The chance of you walking out of the shark tank would have a million dollars for zero.
29:43 You have a real offer that you can do. Hey, they got a deal oh that was so much fun man.
30:02 I I I'm aware of that brand. You are okay. I'm not a card you know carrying member of Manscapes but I am I have seen their stuff.
30:11 And it's interesting. I mean, yeah, that's very cool. And Charles Bark leaving on the show come on. Yeah, I'm glad I found that one.
30:20 I mean, obviously, I had to skip around to make sure we're not over our time on our sharing of that, you know, copyright forecast.
30:27 And we're going to do a critique here, which is what allows it to be fair use. And it's important, you know, Obviously, those father-son duo had very good pitch, I would say, and we're really, you know, funny, part of some humor.
30:41 The English accents, it's hard to hard to beat. Really nice Christmas. Yeah, when they were like, they're from California. I was like, yeah, it's probably just like fall off the, you know, the continent, swim down south.
30:57 I did, you know, yeah, let's see, I mean, lots of things to talk about. I did want to, Obviously, I focused in on Mr.
31:03 Wonderful. He's always bringing things back to business. He did point out, and I have to agree that he is, there's nothing proprietary about products.
31:13 So it does come down to a marketing play. And like he said, margins, margins, they had a really hard time getting their margins, which I think is only $7, okay.
31:23 Your guy is super not unheard of. I mean, I know that that business brings millions and millions of dollars per year, But customer acquisition, marketing, I'm sure there's something most of their stuff through Amazon unless they're doing some sort of like You know club kind of thing or Yeah, were they
31:41 doing like a monthly subscription or like a quarterly subscription or something like that, but yeah, Amazon Like you up and take your profits from you Right, right.
31:50 Yeah, I think it was interesting I would love to share more on that episode. Laurie comes in with sort of this brand new perspective obviously it's a huge, you know, QVC online shopping and then the women, right?
31:59 It's a concept of actually marketing it to, you know, girlfriends, you know, wives, you know, whatever significant others that may need that want to recommend it for their husband or your wife.
32:11 Yeah. Hey, I got a question for you, JD. Do you ever work for your face razor and can't find it only to discover that your significant other has taken it and used it herself?
32:20 Um, no, because I use the really cheap. See, that's what I was talking about. Disposable, dude. I got so many nice ones that, like, my significant other will take and use and leave in hotel rooms.
32:33 And, you know, like. Good for you. That's why you're so clear. Maybe I need to step it up in my razor game.
32:38 But I do know my electric razor would be I never use, because I get hung up on it. I can't use it either.
32:43 Just choose me up. And so she is the user of that. But, of course, it sits on my side, you know.
32:50 Yeah, it is it is what it is. Yeah, I'm just hung in with the very cheapest of the cheap and it just values I love it Consisting just the two blade or even like a single So trademarks Let's talk trademarks They have a ton of trademark registrations at the US BTO it is Okay, I've seen lots and lots and
33:22 lots of trademark applications Tell me I would be a lot more than five more. Yeah, let me let me actually So let me I can pull up and give you a definitive answer.
33:34 How many trademark applications? They have Registration or something I could pull up the hyperlink and so let's go off what you're looking at Yeah, can I share my screen?
33:45 This would be on this would be a first if you can do do you see the present button? I do.
33:50 I do. I do. I do. I do. I'm going to share my screen and I'm going to share let's see here.
33:56 I'm going to share and I'm going make sure there's nothing proprietary up here that's going to get me in trouble or personal.
34:02 Yeah, or personal and we're good to go. All right. Let me know when you can see my screen. Here we go.
34:13 There it is. Yep. All right. Let's go ahead and run a quick search. So So this is one of the programs that we use at the firm, so TMTKO, it's our fancy expensive search report generating system, right, that looks at the USPTO, it helps us look at common law, unregistered use, that sort of thing.
34:34 Now, there's probably lots of different manscaped LLCs out there across the United States, but it's entirely possible that a lot of these are owned by the same company.
34:47 You have to narrow down on this a lot, but to back up, let's see if I can find here. There are a lot of man-scaped applications and registrations at the USPTO.
35:03 I would imagine many of these are owned by our company and man-scapability. In order for me to search this, I probably have to look up man-scaped and then look at their address.
35:12 At least they're a turning of record for most of these to discover how many they have but you can see they have a lot of man-scaped registrations and applications.
35:22 Why would you, let me just scroll back up for a second. So just that simple type, why would someone have multiple registered marks for the same work?
35:31 Really, really good question, right? It's because they're going to be in multiple classes at the USPTO. So we talked about those 45 classes of goods and services, and I can already tell that that they have a good trade market attorney.
35:43 Because right up to that, I see a class 35 application, which is gonna be from online marketplace or online retail store services.
35:51 That's one that gets missed more often than it should. Now, why they have multiple different applications in the same class.
36:00 Maybe their businesses changed over the years and they wanna expand kind of that scope of services that they're doing. Maybe they're doing club services, right?
36:10 they're offering like monthly or quarterly pricing and services, that's why they do it. But you can see the electric hair trimmer is right, now they're in body sprays, looks like they expanded the nail clippers and things like that, you know, apparel, and then one other thing over here is we see is they
36:27 have hair salon services. So what's cool about the USPTO is that you are a super internet sleuth and you want to know kind of what's coming down the road from one of your favorite companies, you can go search that company's LLC name or corporation name at the USPTO, and you might happen upon a more recent
36:48 trademark application. So for example, this application right here, if we kind of scroll down, it looks like it was filed on June 29, 2022, and it's going to be for hair salon services.
37:03 So ManScape has ambitions, at least on paper to open its own salons. Look at that. Look at that. Cool. Something that you could be interested in looking at.
37:17 And this is something too that we don't talk about this probably nearly enough. And I'm going to stop sharing my screen here.
37:24 But, you know, if you're entering the competitive marketplace where you think that, you know, you might have a foothold and something unique that you're going to be offering your clients, it might be who be to talk to a trade market attorney to see kind of what's coming down the, down the pike as it 
37:38 were, you know, from competitors. Yeah. I think it needs to see that. In terms of the business development, I just went on their website, honestly, it looks like they're just, they're dominating.
37:48 They have a huge, you know, now that, like you said, lots of products and they've expanded, you kind of chart and see as a company grows.
37:56 Yeah, particularly because they've got, they probably would never foresee being in a salon right right but you know at some point right you keep expanding your products and then you're like where do we go from here right and then somebody knocks on your door and says you know I'd like to open up a man's
38:12 gate you know salon and someone goes that's a great idea let's do it yeah yeah very cool now super cool it's a great name from a branding perspective in my opinion nothing doing this now for 14 years files like 1600 trademarks man's gate is like a great brand And if you're going for like that humorous
38:32 kind of catchy branding, which obviously has worked for them, obviously like it plays on landscape, right? But it uses the, you know, the similar sounding word man, there's some overlap in terms of their sound for lawn man, and then makes a new word man-scape.
38:49 And so it's easily suggestive in terms of like looking at that. If you told me like you got a brand that a product's called man-scape, I know exactly what that is.
38:57 I don't even have to look at the website, right? You don't have to tell me. I can just instantly kind of know what that's what that's going to be.
39:03 It is, it is smart. They've got some really funny stuff. And in that clip, they're not joking. They do have a registered mark for lawn mower, right?
39:12 So lawn mower is registered for the clipper that's made for, you know, trimming down there, right? Yeah. Obviously not mowing a grass lawn.
39:23 Yeah. Really kind of tongue-in-cheek, funny thing, but you need to know what to do. but pretty funny so yeah yeah this is a family show so we're not going to go there but no no you can use your imagination it's again there as well yeah very good well we covered a lot today last chance for those online
39:44 that are watching I see a couple out there far away any questions or give us a shout out and you know to your first hand checking this out subscribe to our channel that we get all the latest videos we're pumping out as well as our notification for being live next week at 1.30, this is a big time.
40:01 Matt, any final words? Questions? No, I wish you the best of luck in the next couple of weeks here for the listeners at home in the office.
40:10 I'll be out of town here chasing Elk out west for the next couple of weeks in Montana. Through Jamie, you will have to hold down the fort himself, which he does more often than he You probably would like.
40:24 I do plan to be here, I will hold a post for sure while you're out, Matt, I appreciate it very much.
40:32 Cool. All those out there, wishing you a great day, Matt, happy travels to you. We'll see you when you get back from your journey.
40:40 Go big, go goal.