Teri Holland (00:05.536)
And Andrei welcome back to the show.
Andrei Mincov (00:08.143)
Thanks for having me back. Good to be here again.
Teri Holland (00:10.318)
Yeah, so the, you the reason why I knew I needed to have you back was I was teaching my podcast training last week and all of these questions started coming up about trademarks and copywriting as it relates to the creator space. So for podcasters and YouTube and our social media content. And I thought, well, I know the exact person who could answer these questions because I can't. So here we are. Perfect. Thank you.
Andrei Mincov (00:36.69)
I'll do my best.
Teri Holland (00:40.632)
So let's start with, I know we talked about this last time, but I think it's important to start here again. And that is, what is the difference between a trademark and a copyright?
Andrei Mincov (00:51.75)
Yeah, so copyright protects content for how it's expressed. I use this concept of magic words, right? To me, the magic word for copyright is how because copyright doesn't protect the underlying idea behind what you're teaching, but how you're doing it, like the sequence of words that you've used to express that idea or the actual video that you put out.
or if it's a longer course, like the sequence of modules, like all of that could be protected by copyright. And again, that protects content, the words, the videos, the images, the music, the software behind it. And trademarks, they protect the brand, which is the name, the logo, the tagline, and in the coaching space, sometimes also the visual representation of the system. Like for example,
Bob Kiyosaki's cashflow quadrant. That's a perfect representation of the ESBI. He knew that he couldn't protect the knowledge around it as his own, but he can get the monopoly over the quadrant where basically just he wrote four letters in it, trademarked it, and now nobody can teach it that same way. So that's the function of a trademark.
Teri Holland (02:11.171)
Yeah.
Teri Holland (02:15.403)
Okay.
Andrei Mincov (02:18.746)
a trademark. And we can we can talk a little bit more about this, the difference between because everyone says, you know, brand, brand is not just your logo. And they're right. You know, the brand is what they talk what they say about you when you're not in the room. And that's, that's, know, that's, that's cute, but also somewhat true. So there's a big difference between the brand as something big, amorphous, that, you know, kind of a feel good thing.
and brand symbols or brand elements, right? Because the brand as amorphous and feel good as it is, still has those elements that people specifically remember about you. Whether it's the name of the product, the name of the service, the logo that they saw that just do it as a tagline or some of those little things. And big brands have dozens, some of them have hundreds, some of them have thousands of them. So they're brand elements that...
Teri Holland (03:06.912)
Thank
Andrei Mincov (03:16.082)
can and should be trademarked because that's like if something is working for you, something was working toward you having that good, that valuable feel good, amorphous thing as a brand, you want to own as many of them as you can. And that's what the big brands always do.
Teri Holland (03:33.876)
Okay, so that makes sense. So what should podcasters and YouTubers be considering when it comes to trademarking and copyright?
Andrei Mincov (03:43.602)
really depends on what it is that they're trying to accomplish with that. Because, I mean, I can always say, Hey, you know, you got to trademark everything and you got to not, really a trademark, just like, you know, any other type of intellectual property is not the goal. It's the means to an end. and, if the, if the goal for the podcast or the YouTube channel is
for them to get recognized under a certain brand, be known for something so that it becomes a business for them. Then those are the things you want to own. Because one of my favorite sayings that I came up with is that there is no reason in the world to spend a dollar out of your pocket or a minute out of your life building a brand you don't own. And...
Teri Holland (04:24.194)
Right.
Andrei Mincov (04:40.9)
If you, if that's what you're doing, if you're actually building a brand, you, you want to build something that you can own and that you do own. And, a lot of people find themselves in the, in the, the situation when they are building something that they can't even own and there's no reason to do that. So, but if, if all you're doing is you're just having fun posting you playing a game online, you know, every, every, every, you know, week or so.
And you're not ever planning to monetize it. You're not ever planning to make a product out of that. You're just having fun and you don't really care what the brand is. There's no reason for you to spend any resources trying to own it because again, you're not building a brand. You're just using a platform, the free platform to share your content with the world. Right? So
Teri Holland (05:28.6)
Right.
Andrei Mincov (05:37.97)
From your question, I'm assuming that we're talking about adults who are actually trying to do something with it. with podcasts, podcasts is hard work. I know because I've tried doing the interviews on both sides, like extensively last year, and I realized how much effort it takes.
Teri Holland (05:42.872)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Teri Holland (05:50.318)
Thank
Andrei Mincov (06:03.972)
So if you're actually doing this, there's no reason to do it in a way that you're not building an asset for yourself. the way I look at that is the brand really is the most important part of what it is that you're building in a podcast. Because every single episode by itself, like, yeah, you can, you,
It is automatically protected by copyright. So the beauty with copyright is that it's protected automatically by Virtual View having created it. Like when a musician writes the song, they finish the song, whether they sing it on, you know, to their iPhone or they write it in notation or they put it in their digital workstation, it's protected by copyright the second he's done, right?
Teri Holland (07:00.947)
wow.
Andrei Mincov (07:01.298)
the content in written form, like for example, when you write an email to someone, if there's something creative in it, you have copyright on it the second you press send, right? You don't need to go to the government, pay them anything for it to be recognized as your work of authorship. It's, I mean, it's harder to prove without it, but you own it.
It's very different with trademarks. You own nothing without you actually being able to prove it. so going back to podcasts, every single episode by itself is not really that valuable in terms of contribution to your money making. It becomes...
Teri Holland (07:47.768)
Mm-hmm.
Teri Holland (07:54.872)
Right.
Andrei Mincov (07:55.664)
valuable because it becomes a series. It becomes something that people tune into, you know, whether it's every day, every month or every week, whatever the frequency of what you do. Like if you think of, you know, Joe Rogan, if you look at every single episode as interesting and as provoking as they might be, if you only had one, it's not a brand. That's not where the
That's not why everyone's dreaming to be on this show, right? It's because he's built this accumulation of branding, right? And that's why JRE is so valuable on top of his face, right? And so I don't know what he's gonna do with that, right? Maybe there's value to the brand.
Teri Holland (08:38.594)
Right.
Andrei Mincov (08:51.108)
even after Joe is no longer doing it. And you could still have Joe Rogan experience maybe without Joe Rogan, right? And again, that's another thing for you to think about when you're building the brand. Is it just about you? Or is it about the brand of the show? So those are the things that you wanna think about. I know that it's hard to think about those things when you're just starting out.
Teri Holland (08:55.746)
Yeah.
Andrei Mincov (09:19.026)
when you have like three listeners and two of them are your immediate family. And I know it's hard, but I think at some point when you continue doing this and you realize you wanna keep doing it for some time, you wanna ask yourself a question, what's the end goal here?
Teri Holland (09:22.153)
Hahaha
Yeah.
Andrei Mincov (09:49.18)
So, yeah.
Teri Holland (09:49.24)
Yeah. Okay. that's so helpful. And that was gonna be one of my questions. I'm glad you answered it is if we just once we publish a podcast episode, is it copyright? Because I've heard in the past it was and I didn't know if that was true or myth. So thank you for covering that.
Andrei Mincov (10:07.376)
And the funny thing with copyrights, it's automatically protected pretty much worldwide. There are a dozen of countries, maybe, maybe less. Like I know Afghanistan is one of them. That's not part of the Berne Convention for international protection of works of copyright. But basically, the second you finish that song or the second you publish your podcast, it's protected everywhere.
Teri Holland (10:13.215)
easing.
Teri Holland (10:35.285)
Amazing.
Andrei Mincov (10:37.234)
And that's, when they came up with different types of intellectual property laws back in the day, and there's completely separate protection for copyright, for trademarks, for patents, there was a method to their madness, right? They really wanted to make copyright protection really easy and really very, very, very long. Basically, it's the life of the author.
Teri Holland (10:54.71)
Hahaha
Andrei Mincov (11:05.778)
plus two generations after him automatically. But the scope of protection was very limited. Basically, as long as you didn't copy what they did, you could write about the same thing, you could talk about the same ideas. Like if someone interviews, if Joe Rogan interviews Bob Smith,
it doesn't mean that you can't interview Bob Smith about exactly the same things and even ask him the same questions. Right? So copyright, again, as easy it is to acquire, it protects the owner of copyright for a very limited scope of things. Now, patents on the other end of the spectrum are extremely hard to get. There is very high threshold of what's patentable. But if you get there,
Teri Holland (11:36.056)
Yeah.
Andrei Mincov (11:57.93)
after all the years of waiting, after all the money that you spend, what you can do with them is very, very, very strong. Basically, you can't stop anyone from making products that use the same idea or the same method, and you can block international shipments into your country of products like that. So patents are very strong, right? And trademarks, also differently, again, they protect about, they protect very,
Teri Holland (12:18.552)
Amazing.
Andrei Mincov (12:27.75)
a specific thing in very specific country for specific list of products and services. So that was their whole idea, right? So let's figure out what people are actually trying to protect with what type of intellectual property and give them, you know, do different combination of rights around it. The problem is that today's world is very different from...
Teri Holland (12:52.92)
Mm-hmm.
Andrei Mincov (12:53.67)
the world that existed when they were coming up with all of those ideas. And I would say today, the existing system is no longer adequate. The whole idea of trademark laws, for example, was designed around a few assumptions. The first assumption was that it is very hard for someone to expand their brand.
Teri Holland (12:58.403)
bright.
Andrei Mincov (13:22.78)
beyond one country and go international. The second assumption was that it's very hard and expensive for someone to add completely different new products and services on top of the ones that they started with. And that was true in 19th century. And the assumption was, if you have the money to go international, if you have the money to expand,
Teri Holland (13:41.088)
Okay.
Teri Holland (13:45.761)
Yeah.
Andrei Mincov (13:51.632)
you will have the time. and the third assumption was that copying was slow, right? So, and so the assumption was if you have the money to expand, you do have the money to register your trademark in all those countries, in all of those additional classes. Now, when, you know, someone who lives in I don't know, in Pakistan in a basement can launch a business,
Teri Holland (13:58.399)
yeah.
Andrei Mincov (14:20.368)
that goes global in a matter of hours, especially with AI, right? And like the system wasn't built to allow them to protect their stuff internationally because they don't have the money yet. They're still in the basement, right? But they're trying to build something big. And so I don't know how they're gonna deal with that. I think there will have to be a change.
Teri Holland (14:25.484)
Yeah.
Andrei Mincov (14:49.084)
to this global system of protection, but it's not there yet, so we have to play with what we got.
Teri Holland (14:55.34)
Right. So that makes me wonder then if someone trademarks, say, their podcast show name and they trademark it in Canada and the US, for example. Let's say that's where their main audience is. Then can someone, but the podcast gets broadcast internationally. So what if someone in Scotland has a podcast by the same name trademarked there? Is that, how would that work?
Andrei Mincov (15:06.866)
Okay, yeah.
Andrei Mincov (15:24.178)
It would work awkwardly, but that's how it works. nothing stops the Scotland Trademarks Office from registering a trademark that's identical to something that someone else owns in US or Canada. again, that's how it works. if both parties have the funds to fight it out,
Teri Holland (15:27.361)
Okay.
Teri Holland (15:43.393)
Okay.
Andrei Mincov (15:54.226)
And they actually do decide to do that. The likely outcome of that would be to prohibit the North American podcaster from making their podcast available in Scotland. And for the Scottish one from making their podcast available in the US and Canada. if you go and if they use
Teri Holland (16:12.503)
Okay.
Andrei Mincov (16:22.332)
public platforms, that becomes even more awkward. So YouTube sort of figured it out with making some of their content not available in some countries. And that's really why it's happening on the copyright side, but also could be on the trademarking side. So how you enforce it is a completely different question. honestly, it's a legal nightmare.
Teri Holland (16:25.698)
Yeah.
Teri Holland (16:33.163)
Okay.
Andrei Mincov (16:50.578)
There's, I mean, I can, we can talk about, you know, how it should be or how it could be, but in reality, there's really no good solution to that. And so what it boils down to is you really need to figure out what is your main market, right? If you really want to stay inside Scotland, well,
Teri Holland (16:51.064)
Thank
Teri Holland (17:00.022)
Mm-hmm.
Teri Holland (17:07.02)
Okay.
Teri Holland (17:13.632)
Okay.
Andrei Mincov (17:20.53)
Maybe you don't really care about protecting your brand in North America. That would be very limiting and that would work for someone whose business interests really are that local. But beyond that, you probably want to look at the biggest markets and you want to own the brand there. And that's why most...
Teri Holland (17:31.905)
Yep.
Teri Holland (17:39.171)
Yeah.
Teri Holland (17:43.883)
Okay.
Andrei Mincov (17:48.122)
most part of the English speaking world starts with US and Canada is usually the second part of that. Even if you're Canadian, right? And I know there's interesting time for Canadians right now in terms of how they feel about the US, but love it or hate it, US is still the biggest market out there.
Teri Holland (17:58.349)
Yeah.
Teri Holland (18:04.686)
I
Andrei Mincov (18:17.426)
And if you are not protecting your brand in both, you're not really being very pragmatic about what's going to happen a few years from now. I'm going to tell you a funny story. So I went to an international conference a few months ago and so met a bunch of colleagues from other countries.
So was basically a conference of a trademarking conference, right? And so talked to a bunch of trademark attorneys from different countries and I spoke to one from Russia, right? And you know that Russia has been sanctioned pretty much by everybody for everything. And still they're the third large country in terms of the number of trademarks being filed there every year. So China is by far number one.
Teri Holland (19:11.896)
Wow.
Andrei Mincov (19:14.424)
US with a huge gap is number two. And then comes Russia, more than Canada, more than European Union. And that's to me, that's interesting. And the idea is, you know, today is today, but there's always going to be tomorrow. And if you're not protected, if you don't have protection for the for the times when they change, you're going to have a big problem on your hands.
Teri Holland (19:20.547)
Wow.
Andrei Mincov (19:43.206)
So again, if you're in Canada and you hate America, that's fine, but make sure that no one in America can steal your brand. Same thing with Americans, right? If you look down at Canadians for whatever reason you think they deserve to be the 51st state, that's cool. But if you have a brand in US, but someone else has the same brand in Canada, you are...
Teri Holland (19:54.274)
Right.
Teri Holland (20:05.699)
Yeah.
Andrei Mincov (20:13.138)
going to have a marketing disaster on your hands. Because what are you going to do? You're going to be promoting two separate brands in two jurisdictions that are neighboring. It's going to cost a lot more money. It's going to create customer confusion. And why would you do that? So again, that doesn't matter what your politics are. And I'm sure a lot of people have lot of loud opinions about that.
Teri Holland (20:17.218)
Right.
Teri Holland (20:34.094)
Bye.
Andrei Mincov (20:42.354)
They probably should, one way or the other. But it still means that you want to protect your brand and kind of do your most important markets that are likely to generate revenue and long-term profits for you. I think I'm answering all the wrong questions, but I'm hoping it makes for an interesting conversation.
Teri Holland (20:43.011)
Yep.
Teri Holland (21:00.49)
Okay, good. No, no, it does. This is fascinating. Now, what about individual episode names? Because this question also came up in my training and people were like, what if I name my episode something and then unknowingly someone else has also called an episode by that same episode name? Is that protected? Can I get in trouble for that? And my first thought was, well, there's
millions of episodes out there. Like how would you even know? is that, should that be something we're concerned with?
Andrei Mincov (21:40.082)
most likely not. Most likely not. unless it's something so unbelievably original and creative. That one episode that the, the, the phrase that you used in the title is worth, you know, worth millions. That would be like, I can't even come up with an example for something like that, to be honest.
Teri Holland (21:44.034)
Okay.
Teri Holland (22:07.639)
Yeah, fair enough.
Andrei Mincov (22:08.85)
but we all know situations when, as you know, for example, athletes, they, they say something, on the way, you know, of the, of the, of the field. And that becomes their tagline worth millions. Right. So that happens. So, if you realize that you've, you've said something during your podcast that you keep saying,
Teri Holland (22:27.136)
Yeah.
Andrei Mincov (22:38.278)
It doesn't even need to be the title, but you know, it's more of a tagline really. So if you, if you realize that you keep saying something and people react really well to that, that's the thing to trademark. How you, how you say, you know, my episode with this or that person, it's not really a name. it's not really a title worth trademarking or, know, I'm talking with Teri about intellectual property. Well, there's nothing to trademark there. A trademark.
Teri Holland (22:43.342)
Mm-hmm.
Teri Holland (23:06.497)
You
Andrei Mincov (23:07.384)
is supposed to be, you trademark something that protects a brand, right? A brand is something that allows people to tell one person who's offering certain services or products from the other person who's doing exactly the same thing. We talked about it in the first episode, like the toothpaste example, right? And...
Teri Holland (23:32.226)
Yeah. Yeah.
Andrei Mincov (23:36.198)
very rarely would a brand, the name of the episode be so distinctive that it would identify the source of the product, i.e. the podcast itself. So the name of the podcast might be protected by copyright. So different countries look differently as to whether titles of works of copyright are protectable by themselves. Most countries do allow that.
as long as the name is original, some countries, for example, US, specifically say that the title is not copyrightable because it's so short and they don't want to create unnecessary litigation around that. But really,
Teri Holland (24:18.615)
Yeah.
Andrei Mincov (24:31.777)
I'm sorry, it's a long answer. I'm trying to kind of think while the words are coming out of my mouth. But the real answer is this. If you came up with something, like if you came up with a title that you think is worth its weight in gold, it's probably more than just the title. You probably are using this somewhere else. And you're probably using it in more than one episode.
Teri Holland (24:34.958)
Tell us. Good.
Teri Holland (24:51.01)
Mm-hmm.
Andrei Mincov (24:59.64)
And if that's the case, then yes, for sure it's something that you should consider trademarking. But if it's just a random name for a random episode and you've got hundreds of them and you think that every single one of them is so amazing, probably not.
Teri Holland (25:11.278)
You
Teri Holland (25:15.31)
probably don't know. I know mine aren't. I'm not that creative. They're pretty straightforward.
Andrei Mincov (25:20.178)
And really, that's not where your creative focus really should go. We all know those entrepreneurs who are going to agonize for months over how their logo should look like and not even bother to launch their product to the market and see if the market even cares. And they're like, well, know, I'm just polishing the seventh version of the logo. got the new designer team. They're going to, once it's done, then I'm going to launch.
Teri Holland (25:33.741)
Mm-hmm.
Teri Holland (25:39.448)
break.
You
Andrei Mincov (25:47.546)
you know, in three months from now, like, dude, do you even know that people care about the product? Right? So it's a say it's the same thing. Like if you're agonizing over naming every single one of your episodes of your podcast, you're focusing on the wrong
Teri Holland (25:53.059)
Yeah.
Teri Holland (26:03.086)
Oh, such good advice. So good. And then what about things like if someone's reviewing someone else's material? So if they're doing a podcast or a YouTube channel where they're talking about a movie, or they're talking about another podcast, for example, or referencing other material, what should we be aware of there?
Andrei Mincov (26:25.214)
That's a great question. So, and that's where copyright becomes a little bit of a gray area and gray line between what's infringement and what's use for the purposes of critiquing someone else's work. And my rule of thumb when I try to explain this like I would to a nine-year-old is that if,
Teri Holland (26:32.896)
Okay.
Teri Holland (26:44.46)
Okay.
Andrei Mincov (26:55.16)
the extent of you using someone else's podcast or someone else's show, someone else's something, is to allow the world to see more of that other podcast for free. Or if your goal is to mostly basically draw attention to yourself,
Teri Holland (27:15.724)
Mm-hmm.
Andrei Mincov (27:24.75)
at the expense of that other thing, you may be in danger zone. If you're actually adding some value by sharing your opinion, by using the just as much as necessary to prove your point, that's perfectly okay. That's what fair use and fair dealing exemptions were designed for. So that if you have an opinion that you think the world wants to know,
Teri Holland (27:30.174)
Okay.
Andrei Mincov (27:53.298)
you know, that's okay for you to use someone else's work without permission. Like, I'm gonna give you two examples, kind of, to illustrate this point. Let's use music. Let's say I love a song, whatever, any song, right? And I feel that I'm gonna get a following if I...
Teri Holland (28:08.622)
Mm-hmm.
Teri Holland (28:16.269)
Yeah.
Andrei Mincov (28:22.994)
just play that song, say, you know, whatever. Wasp, I wanna be somebody, like the first song that came to mind, right? And all I'm gonna do is I'm gonna play that song and I'm gonna place my face on top of it and I'm just gonna do this, right? Nothing else, it doesn't add any value, really. All I'm doing is I'm using someone else's track.
Teri Holland (28:32.524)
Yeah.
Andrei Mincov (28:52.806)
to draw attention to me. Right, that's a problem. I should get permission from them. If I'm like, let's break down why this was such a successful song, right? We can talk about the intro, we can talk about the chorus, we can talk about the verse, we can talk about the video that they did. See what they did here, here, right? If I actually explain...
Teri Holland (28:56.428)
Okay.
Teri Holland (29:20.078)
Hmm.
Andrei Mincov (29:20.824)
some things by, so that adds value, some value, right? And again, I'm not playing it from start to finish. I'm using snippets from it to make a point. That's okay, right? And again, this is not a black and white answer, right? At some point, there will still be gray area. And the way I look at it is,
Teri Holland (29:23.788)
Yeah.
Teri Holland (29:43.726)
Yeah.
Andrei Mincov (29:45.906)
Because I'm originally copyrighted lawyer by train, right? You know my story, I started because of my dad, was a composer in Russia whose music got stolen. And so I've always been of the opinion that people who create amazing stuff deserve not to have it stolen from them. They deserve to not be robbed of control of saying whether or not they want the world to...
you know, to have access to their stuff in this form. So the way I look at it is that if
If someone strongly opposes you using their stuff in your content, I think it's good ethics to actually not, as much as you want. Get their permission or don't use it. So it's okay to assume that the fair dealing, fair use exception applies to you, but if they're actively opposing,
Maybe, you know, give them enough respect and take it down. That's what I would do. Right? It's not legal advice. It's human advice because
Teri Holland (31:02.082)
Okay.
Teri Holland (31:06.989)
Yeah.
Andrei Mincov (31:10.374)
you know, nobody likes their stuff to be screwed with, right? And the person who's doing that podcast would probably just as much not like someone else to do something they wouldn't want with their content, right? And it may be, you know, under different circumstances, but there are situations when bad publicity is not good. And so, you you,
you would want them to listen to how you feel about that. So why don't you listen to how they feel about their content? So that's kind of my take on this. Again, whether or not you could get away with that in court, know, don't do stuff that hurts other people. That's kind of my go-to advice.
Teri Holland (31:50.572)
Yeah.
Teri Holland (32:04.43)
great advice. And then what do do if, say we accidentally use someone's copyrighted material or a trademark we don't know and they come to us like what is what is our next step as the creator to correct that? Is it just take it down or change the name or
Andrei Mincov (32:24.014)
It depends what you do accidentally, right? If you accidentally start a business that's called Microsoft Software Solutions, like you didn't know, I mean, look, this is a funny example, but like you can name a business that has the same name as somebody else's trademark, right? And whether you did it accidentally or deliberately, doesn't matter.
Teri Holland (32:26.603)
Okay.
Teri Holland (32:33.283)
Hahaha
Andrei Mincov (32:53.882)
If someone registered a trademark, you are deemed to have known about it because it's public information. So they can go after you. They can force you to rebrand. They can claim all the revenue that you made under the brand that is actually theirs and not yours, right? Whether you knew about it or not. And intent is not a part of that.
Teri Holland (33:10.775)
Wow.
Teri Holland (33:22.56)
Okay.
Andrei Mincov (33:22.61)
Part of that equation. Now with copyright, intent does play a role. But again, intent is seen from what you actually do. if, like, and that's the funny thing with copyright. In theory, two people can independently create the same tune or write the same poem, right? The longer it is, obviously, the less likely it is to be accidental.
Teri Holland (33:46.733)
Yeah.
Andrei Mincov (33:52.624)
But if you can prove that you had no access to the other person's work and you just wrote it on your own, two people will own copyright for exactly the same thing. So unlike with trademarks. if you talk about something on your show and you quote and you, it's okay. You are allowed to mention other people's brands.
Teri Holland (34:04.802)
Wow.
Andrei Mincov (34:22.29)
detected by copyright, like when I mentioned Microsoft Software Solutions or Joe Rogan or whatever other brands we've talked about, I'm not infringing on their trademarks because I'm not selling any products that compete with theirs under that brand. I'm just mentioning them. So that's okay. If I were to, in illustration of my thought about Wasp's song, say, you know what?
Teri Holland (34:29.974)
Yeah.
Teri Holland (34:38.284)
Right. Yeah.
Andrei Mincov (34:51.482)
let's take a break and listen to this amazing song for four minutes and I will just have you play it. You know, that'd be a problem, but you know, whether I know about it or not is really irrelevant. So again, use common sense and usually if you use common sense and decency, you will avoid most of the problems.
Teri Holland (34:56.567)
Yeah.
Teri Holland (35:18.486)
Okay, that's great. And is there anything like when it comes to social media, and there are a lot of people that copy other people's social media content or reuse it in ways that maybe the original creator did not approve or does not want, is there any protection for that kind of creation or is that just a free for all in social media?
Andrei Mincov (35:42.61)
Ugh.
Andrei Mincov (35:46.118)
There's a big difference between being right by law and actually doing something about it. So the owners or the creators of the original content that's being copied probably might have the legal right to do something with the copiers, right?
Teri Holland (35:56.492)
Okay.
Teri Holland (36:15.149)
Okay.
Andrei Mincov (36:16.764)
but it's impractical for them to actually go out there and enforce their stuff. So again, as long as it's kind of minimal and you're not constantly being a parasite of just one channel, you're probably gonna get away with that, even if it's not strictly legal, right? But if for example,
Teri Holland (36:22.466)
Yeah.
Teri Holland (36:33.931)
Mm-hmm.
Andrei Mincov (36:47.398)
So I'm just going to give you an example. let's say I'm a fan of Alex Hermosy, right? And so let's say he puts out a video and I'm like, wow, that's a great video. Why don't I repurpose that video and do something similar on my channel? If I do it once, you probably won't even notice. If I do it a couple of times...
He might notice, probably be just a little bit annoyed and do nothing about it. But if I take every single video that he puts out, run it through AI, and change it, because now the technologies are amazing. You can probably take someone's video and replace the talking face with your talking face. You're saying exactly the same thing.
Teri Holland (37:38.094)
Andrei Mincov (37:45.658)
Right? So let's say I automated something like this. I'd probably see a letter from his lawyers pretty soon. So again, it boils down to how nasty you want to play this and how much you're going to piss them off. At some point, you're going to go beyond what they're willing to tolerate and
Teri Holland (37:46.04)
Yeah.
Teri Holland (38:03.544)
Yeah.
Andrei Mincov (38:13.979)
At that point, it becomes a big problem.
Teri Holland (38:17.048)
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And what is the process like for if, you know, people are listening and they're thinking I should trademark my podcast name or my YouTube channel name or logo or what do we do next? What's the next step?
Andrei Mincov (38:32.846)
Next step is trademarkfactory.com. That's your one-stop shop for protecting your brand in US and Canada. And we are known for trademarking services with a guaranteed result for our guaranteed budget. So we make sure that you don't waste any time and money trying to trademark something that will be refused.
Teri Holland (38:36.046)
Mm-hmm.
Teri Holland (38:40.258)
Yeah.
Andrei Mincov (39:00.114)
And if we see that your brand is not trademarked, we wouldn't want to tell you about it as early as possible so that you have an opportunity to switch to something that is ownable as much as it might hurt in the beginning. And we have packages that basically have you prepay for unlimited amount of attorney hours spent on follow-up communication with a trademarks office and
Teri Holland (39:15.213)
Yeah.
Andrei Mincov (39:28.57)
One of them even has a hundred percent money back guarantee. So I don't want to do too much selling on your show, but really the easiest way to get started and figure out what best works for you, go to trademarkfactory.com, book your free call with one of our strategy advisors. They're not just there collecting your credit card. They're there to help you actually figure out what you should start with, where.
Teri Holland (39:31.8)
Amazing.
Teri Holland (39:38.709)
Hahaha
Andrei Mincov (39:57.926)
How and things like that and if you see that there's a good fit they'll help you get started
Teri Holland (40:03.726)
perfect. And it's, you know, and I will say I have been a client of Trademark Factory and, and I appreciated how streamlined everything was. And I think a lot of small business owners think, I can just do it myself. But there's, like we were talking about before we start recording, you don't know what you don't know. And it's going to cost a lot of time and money and headaches to try to go your own way, I think.
Andrei Mincov (40:19.461)
Yeah.
Andrei Mincov (40:29.77)
So the cool thing about this, we are about to launch a brand new version of the client cabinet. all of our clients have a client cabinet where we are very transparent about the status of all their trademarks that we're handling for them. The new version is a billion times better than the one we had before. It's actually going to show you the full history.
Teri Holland (40:37.715)
Teri Holland (40:54.062)
Cool.
Andrei Mincov (40:56.21)
for each trademark. It will have all the links on the website, on our website, on the Trademarks Office's website, and be a lot clearer in terms of where you are right now, what we want from you, for renewals, for office actions, all of that stuff. So I'm very, very, very excited about that. So you're going to see that in April sometime. And you're absolutely right. The trademarking process is much
Teri Holland (41:03.747)
Yeah.
Teri Holland (41:14.114)
Wow.
Teri Holland (41:20.963)
Amazing.
Andrei Mincov (41:25.606)
more complicated than most people realize. They think that, I'm just going to file the application and that's it, like a domain name. No, takes over a year in the US, takes over three years in Canada. There's a billion moving parts there. And unless you know how to handle them, and most people don't, your trademark will be denied. The problem with that is there is no immediate reaction from the trademark software.
Teri Holland (41:28.59)
Mm-hmm.
Teri Holland (41:33.443)
Yeah.
Andrei Mincov (41:53.81)
So it's not like, again, like a domain name where you say, I want to own this domain name and say, you can't, right? With trademarks, you file your trademark application and they say, great, you filed your trademark application and you think you're done. But then nine months into the process, they tell you what you filed cannot be accepted. And you've spent these nine months trying to promote this brand and you had no idea, right? So it's critical for you to, first of all, know
Teri Holland (41:54.147)
Right.
Teri Holland (42:00.225)
you
Andrei Mincov (42:22.962)
that what you're filing is trademarkable. And it's a lot more than just doing a knockout search for identical trademarks out there. There's a lot more that goes into that. But once you know that it is trademarkable, it's also about filing it in the correct classes with correct descriptions. All of that is about getting it done right. And we see a lot of people who file their trademarks almost like a marketing material. They try to convince the trademarks office
Teri Holland (42:26.051)
Mm-hmm.
Teri Holland (42:32.339)
Yeah.
Andrei Mincov (42:51.932)
that they have the best products in the world. you know, they tell the story of how they came up with it. The trademark's office doesn't care. They care about the application being done in a very particular manner. And again, unless you know what you're doing, most likely you're gonna get your trademark application denied. And with Trademark Factory, have, so I, we have the success rate of 99.3%.
Teri Holland (42:53.944)
Good.
Andrei Mincov (43:19.472)
Right? Compare that to industry average of 51.2. Right? I think we have the highest success rate in the industry, but again, I don't know everyone else's. So I'm going to say we have one of the highest success rates in the industry. And there's a reason behind this discrepancy, right? Almost twice. But if you look at the failure rate, our failure rate is 0.7 compared to what? 48.
Teri Holland (43:20.023)
Night.
Teri Holland (43:23.746)
Wow.
Teri Holland (43:37.027)
Yeah.
Andrei Mincov (43:47.73)
percent for everyone else, right? There's a reason behind that. We have a team who really know what they're doing and who really give a damn about the clients and their brands and we do whatever it takes to get their brands straight.
Teri Holland (43:50.146)
That's amazing.
Teri Holland (44:04.814)
Amazing. Well, one final question. This came from my previous guest, Destiny Cop. So what I'm doing now is different from the last time you were on, is that giving each guest the option to pass along a question to the next guest without knowing who they are. So the question that Destini passed along for you is, what's one thing in your life that you would change for your future self? So if five years down the road, what do you think you should be doing today to make your future self better?
Andrei Mincov (44:18.748)
Nice.
Andrei Mincov (44:36.818)
Huh.
What should I do differently today? Or what should I just do today?
Teri Holland (44:45.038)
What should you do today to make your future self better?
Andrei Mincov (44:50.738)
Focus on being happy today. Focus on doing things that make me happy today. As opposed to...
Andrei Mincov (45:12.486)
focusing on taking as much pain as I can today in order to maybe be happy five years from now. I think that we as entrepreneurs and founders sometimes we punish ourselves more than we should. And we do that expecting that the world is going to reward us with
Teri Holland (45:30.626)
Mm-hmm.
Andrei Mincov (45:39.664)
something amazing if we suffer just about enough. And it's not how it works. mean, there are, again, as much as I love Alex Hermosy and, know, Gary Vee, not everyone's gonna build a business like theirs. Not everyone's gonna have the traits that they do have. Not everyone needs to work 20 hours a day to get to where they want.
Teri Holland (45:44.322)
Yeah.
Teri Holland (45:56.974)
Mm-hmm.
Andrei Mincov (46:08.05)
And it really boils down to what do you actually want? Not every one of us is going to build a billion dollar company. And it doesn't mean that we failed. And that was probably one of the biggest realizations that I had recently. to me, the messages, you know, the
Teri Holland (46:17.23)
Yeah
Andrei Mincov (46:35.088)
Happiness in the future is not the reward for misery today. Happiness in the future is basically the continuation of the happiness that starts today, that can start today. There's always something good we can do today, even if we don't make enough money, if we don't have everything going the way we want. There's always...
something we can find in today's life that's good enough for you to notice and be happy about. So probably that.
Teri Holland (47:15.503)
Fantastic answer. I love that. That's great advice for everyone listening. And what's a question you would like to pass along to the next guest without knowing who they are?
Andrei Mincov (47:24.838)
I have no idea. Okay. So I don't know what they are. Wow. Okay. That's interesting.
Teri Holland (47:28.099)
Yeah.
Andrei Mincov (47:45.324)
What is, this actually could be a question that ties into the little conversation you and I had before we started recording. So how do you know when you don't know that you don't know and what do you do about
Teri Holland (47:55.15)
Perfect.
Teri Holland (48:04.564)
that's a great question. That's a good one. Love it. Thank you so much for coming on today and any last words you want to leave the audience with.
Andrei Mincov (48:16.274)
Well, again, thanks for having me. And last words for the audience. If you have a brand that you're building, that you're actually spending any time and money trying to put in people's minds, hearts, and memories, you want to make sure that you own it. You want to make sure that you won't be that person who is going to end up building a brand
that's valuable only to find out that it's not yours. So make sure you do the right steps to trademark it early on. And sometimes again, it comes with a pain of finding out that the name you came up with is not the name you can own. Rebrand before you've got thousands and thousands of followers. And start on the right note and build it into an asset that's going to make you
money in the future. So trademarkfactory.com is going to help you with that. Again, thank you, Teri, for the opportunity to be with you. I always love having these with you because your questions are so good every time. So really, really, really awesome.
Teri Holland (49:27.214)
Thank you. I appreciate that. Thanks.
