Hey there everybody, my name is Jason
Lott. I'm the Attorney Advisor for
Trademarks Customer Outreach at the United
States Patent and Trademark Office.
Which is really just a long way
of saying that it is my job to
teach you about trademarks:
what they are, why they're important,
and how a federal trademark registration
can help you build your business.
Now today, obviously we're going to
talk about more than just trademarks.
We are going to talk about a whole
lot of other things that you might
want to think about with regard to
your restaurant or your food truck.
Or whatever sort of food service
industry you might be in.
All of our examples today are going to be
really narrowly focused to that industry.
So we're going to start off with
some definitions just to make
sure we're all on the same page.
We all sort of like understand
on a very basic level what these
concepts are and then we're going
to dig in deeper into each of them.
Now I'm going to tell you up front,
I am a trademarks guy. OK, I am not a patents guy.
I'm not a copyrights guy.
I'm not a trade secret guy like
where I focused my career for
the past 20 years has been in trademarks.
So if you have questions today,
there are like really specific
patent questions about "Jason.
What art unit is responsible for?"
I am not going to have an answer for you.
OK,
so so I will not be able to go in
deep on a lot of those things,
but I can give you some great
information about each of these
types of intellectual property.
OK,
so interesting things that you'll want
to know and that will affect your business.
So we're going to talk through all
those different topics and we're going
to close it out with how to find help,
because I know you have the
potential to be very overwhelmed
by some of the information we're
going to go through today,
so there are lots of great resources
available to you and I want to
make sure you are aware of them.
Alright, well, let's get started.
Let's start off with definitions.
Let's make sure we understand
what we're talking about,
especially specifically when we
talk about intellectual property.
I mean, what in the world is that?
Well, if you look at the slide here,
you can sort of see the breakdown
and types of property.
Real property is stuff like land
and buildings OK.
Things that are like affixed to the ground,
if not the ground itself.
You know,
think about the house that you might live in,
or an apartment, or a condo,
or something along those lines.
That's going to be a real property, OK,
and so personal property are things like.
Certainly when it comes to like you know,
restaurants and food
trucks and things like that.
It's going to be the furniture,
the fixtures, the equipment,
probably the food truck itself would be
kind of a personal property since it's
not affixed to the ground and then in,
so that's going to be things so
personal property might be like,
you know things like, oh,
I don't know the silverware,
you know that you use, the plates,
the dishes, the cookware,
you know things of that sort.
Maybe the the maître d’ stand when
you when you walk in there like
that's sort of personal property,
not if it's not affixed OK then it's
going to be sort of what's kind of
referred to as personal property.
But what we're going to focus on today
are types of intellectual property,
which as you can see,
there is sometimes defined as
products of the human mind, right?
So which is really kind of
weird when you think about it.
'cause when you think about real
property and personal property,
those are things that you can
that you can feel and touch.
You can't touch intellectual property.
Right, it's just sort of like
floating out there. Now
there are ways to sort of protect
that intellectual property,
right?
But it's intangible is how we refer to it.
But just because it is intangible,
it does not mean that it's any less valuable
than the restaurant itself or the, you know,
the, you know, all the high end knives that
you might have in your kitchen, right?
Things like that it can be just as valuable,
if not even more valuable.
In fact, there was an executive at
Coca Cola who's once asked what is
The Coca Cola Company's most valuable asset,
and he said without question it is their
trademark, their registered trademark.
They could lose everything and
they could build it all back.
So long as they had that
registered trademark.
And if you look at ever look at
the valuations of some trademarks,
you might find that some are valued in
the hundreds of billions of dollars.
Coca Cola.
Probably Amazon, Google.
You know, Apple.
All those could be worth,
you know, if not tens if not
hundreds of billions of dollars.
And that's just the intellectual
property level.
I'm sorry, let me rephrase that.
Just the brand, OK,
just the trademark alone might be
worth that much money.
So that's why it's so important that
we understand intellectual property
because it can be an incredibly valuable
asset for you and for your business.
So it's just imperative that you
understand all of these things,
and so what we're going to
do is we're going to
I'm just going to give you a real quick
list of things you might want to think
about to think about what intellectual
property or IP as it's sometimes called,
might be valuable at your restaurant.
Right,
so think about these things.
Are these the sorts of things
that you might find value in?
Right? That you might want to
protect because it it brings
something in for your business?
Would you want to protect
the name of your restaurant?
Yeah, probably right. You know?
What about the logo, right?
If you happen to have a logo?
Or what about a slogan if you use one?
What if you use a hashtag for your restaurant,
is that protectable?
It might be, we'll talk about it.
It didn't used to be, but there is
sometimes when you can protect it now.
What about a specific menu item name?
Is that protectable?
Yeah, you're going to see that it is right.
What about the design of the restaurant
or signature food dish or a recipe?
Is that protectable?
Yeah, you're going to get the answer to that.
'cause I know that's one that
a lot of you folks have.
This is the question that
a lot of people ask,
can I protect this recipe for
this thing that I am making?
Well, we're going to talk about that as
we get deeper into the presentation.
What about the plating of the food?
Is that protected?
Right, so these rules,
the sorts of things that can
make your restaurant valuable,
and it can set you apart from
your competitors, right?
So if you were able to protect these things
to protect you from your competitors,
then it might be something worth
investigating or trying to protect.
Now here's some additional things
you might want to think about
that also might be protectable
as intellectual property.
What about collateral products, right?
Like if at your restaurant or wherever,
or your food truck,
whatever you're selling, T-shirts or aprons,
or hot sauce or barbeque sauce
or coffee and jams
and jellies and all that sort of stuff
that you serve in your restaurant.
But you also jar it up and sell it
for people to take home with, right?
Is that collateral products?
Can you protect those?
We're going to talk about that.
What about the overall menu
design or the marketing materials?
Or the website?
What about the lists that you have?
What about the music that you
play in your restaurant?
Are you going to get in trouble for
playing music in your restaurant?
It depends, right?
And we're going to talk about
that because all of those things,
and specifically with regarding music,
that is very much an intellectual
property issue.
OK,
so we are going to talk about
all these things.
We're talking about the things that
you might want to think about for
securing your intellectual property
to potentially protect all of
these different things that might
be happening at your restaurant.
So in order to protect your
valuable intellectual property,
we recommend that you secure your
legal rights and the names that
you see up here for trademarks,
trade dress, copyrights, patents,
trade secrets.
Those are kind of the basic ways
we think about legal rights.
This sort of different sort of
I don't know bubbles or buckets
OK of intellectual property,
and these are all legal mechanisms
that you can use
in order to protect your rights.
So with regard to trademarks and trade dress,
those are protected at our agency,
the United States Patent and
Trademark Office, right?
So if you have those things,
if you have a trademark in it or
trade dress and you want to get
nationwide protection for it,
you register that trademark
or trade dress with us.
If you have a copyright something that is,
I'm sorry if you have some sort
of material that is copyrightable
or has been copyrighted,
then you can protect that through a
federal registration of the copyright.
At the Copyright Office. That
is not through our office,
it is actually through the Library
of Congress. They actually are.
The Copyright Office is associated with them.
If you have something that is patentable,
then you can protect it through us
through the United States Patent
and Trademark Office, right?
And but just keep in mind that
there is nobody that is going to.
There's no agency that protects
your trade secrets.
OK, that is a different thing.
We're going to get into that at
the end of the presentation today.
There is not an agency that there's
no United States Trade Secret
Agency or anything like that,
so it's actually you can protect it.
There is a federal trade secret law
which you can sort of use to help
in a circumstance where your trade
secret might have been violated,
but that's a separate court case
that you would have to bring and
it is not where you like.
"Hey,
I would like to register my
trade secret with you."
That's not that's not a thing, that's
That that's available.
OK, so those are all the basic things.
Let's dig into some definitions before we
get even deeper into each of them.
OK, so what is a trademark?
Well,
we often think I think the easiest
way to really think about it is
legal protection for a brand, right?
So think about brand names and slogos.
I'm sorry, brand names and logos
and slogans and things like that.
OK? That we use everyday as consumers
in order to identify a product, right?
So here's an example that I often
like to give. If I say the word
BMW what do you think of. Cars, right?
If I say McDonald's,
what do you think of? Hamburgers.
Coca Cola? Soft drinks.
You know Wendy's? Frosty, right.
At anytime you see or hear,
which is also a trademark,
by the way.
Anytime you see or hear a
particular trademark,
it automatically calls to mind a
particular set of goods or services. And
that is really what a trademark does.
It is identifying the source of goods and
services and it is distinguishing that
from the goods and services of another party,
right?
So if we think about an
example, like McDonald's,
right?
If we think about that brand name
that that trademark of McDonald's,
anytime we see McDonald's,
we are knowing that we know
it's identifying the source
of those particular hamburgers.
And we also know that
it is not a Burger King.
It is not a Wendy's.
It is not a Chick-fil-A, right.
It is not a KFC. It's not a Pizza Hut.
It's not a Carl's Jr.
It's not a Hardee's, right.
It's none of those other things.
It is distinguishing them from
the goods of another party,
and that is what a trademark does.
It is identifying the source
of your goods and services and
distinguishing it from the goods
and services of your competitor.
Now you'll notice that the word
trademark encompasses both trademarks,
I'm sorry, trademarks encompasses
both goods and services.
Sometimes you'll hear somebody
refer to a service mark,
and that's totally fine.
Typically it refers to a trademark
that is being used to indicate
the source of services,
but, honestly,
you can just use the word trademark
and it's fine.
It's sort of a catchall, right,
for both trademarks and for for
sorry. Trademark is a catchall for
identifying the source of both goods
and services. You could also
just use the word mark.
I'll probably be using that all day today,
so if you hear me refer to something
as that mark, that's totally fine.
You can do that.
That's OK,
it's sort of a shortened version
of trademark and/or service mark.
OK,
so one thing to keep in mind
is that you know for you,
for your,
for your restaurants or your
or your cafe or coffee shop or
your food truck or whatever
it happens to be the that you're
doing in the food service industry.
Keep in mind that oftentimes a
business is going to be using sort
of both trademarks and service marks.
OK,
there might be a trademark that
is being used to indicate the
source of goods and that same
trademark is also being used to
indicate the source of services.
We'll, again,
dive a little deeper into this later on,
but if you think about, for example.
Think about McDonald's, OK.
So McDonald's being used as
a trademark for services for
those restaurant services,
but they also McDonald's also
might be used as a trademark
for the sandwiches themselves.
For example, right?
Because they're providing service.
But maybe it's also a thing.
Or if you think about,
you know some of the companies that have,
you know,
frozen foods that they also
that they also do.
I don't know something like a.
I don't know, Bob Evans.
I think, you know, Bob Evans
restaurant has restaurant services.
I think they also have something
in the frozen food aisle,
right?
So that would be use of a
trademark for both services and
trademark for goods themselves.
Or coffee shop, a coffee
shop would be a great example.
So a coffee shop might have used
the trademark as as a as a brand
for the coffee shop services,
but they also might put that same
trademark on the coffee beans,
the package of the coffee beans
that they sell that
you love their coffee so much that
you buy a pound and take it home
with you so you can make it at home.
So that's a trademark.
OK, it is a brand, legal protection
for a brand that indicates the
source of your goods and services or
somebody else's goods and services.
And that's a little bit different than trade
dress. They're incredibly similar
because they're really doing the same thing.
They're identifying somebody as
the source of a good or product,
and that is based upon the commercial
look and feel of the thing. That
could be product packaging, right?
So it could be every time you know.
I don't know.
There's a company,
let's say that they sell all their
shirts and it comes with a with a very
particular sort of packaging around it.
You know, it's a recyclable cardboard
thing that it comes in, right?
You know,
that could be every time you see that
you automatically know that's
that brand of shirt.
Or it could be the design itself.
Think about a bottle that's
shaped in a particular way.
That's that's trade dress.
It could be color, right?
If we think about colors
that have been protected.
Tiffany blue for boxes, you know,
like boxes that are used with jewelry.
Or it could be a configuration, right?
Which is the way the thing is,
the thing looks. And I'll give you an example
of that here in a couple of minutes.
So that's that's trade dress.
OK, so we have trademarks,
legal protection for a brand,
trade dress,
legal protection
for the commercial look and feel
of good or service.
And what about copyright? Now,
a copyright is legal protection for
as you can see here, an original
artistic or literary creation.
So we're talking about songs and
movies and books and sculptures
and paintings and photographs,
software, choreography, architecture.
There's a whole bunch of things that
that can be protected by a copyright
and and and the way that you do that is,
essentially,
you affix that idea that you
have into a tangible medium.
Right,
that's a really incredibly weird
and legal way of saying something,
but you can't own an idea.
You can only sort of protect
the expression of that idea,
and that is what a copyright does.
OK,
if you express an idea and
affix it into a medium you are
creating copyright rights in it,
and we're going to again talk a
little bit more about that as we get
a little bit deeper and specifically
with regard to how copyrights
work in the restaurant industry.
So another thing to think about,
and the other thing I want to make sure
we're defining here is a patent.Which
is, if we think about it in general terms,
it's really protecting an invention. Or
think about it like the sciencey stuff.
OK,
that's what it's protection for and
what's happening with a patent
is you are being granted a
limited duration property
right related to that invention.
And the USPTO is, you apply and
request this sort of patent from us.
We are our agency would grant you the patent,
and in exchange for you having that
limited duration property right
with regard to that invention,
you have the right to exclude other
people from using that invention
for a certain term of years and in
exchange for that right to exclude
other people from being able to use it.
You must then publicly disclose how the
invention is made or how it operates.
And it's really a policy tradeoff here.
So essentially the federal government
is saying, hey, we want you to invent,
we want you to invent awesome things,
but in exchange and so in exchange
for you inventing something awesome,
we will give you a limited time
to sort of make your money
on that thing, but in exchange
that means that when that time is up,
you then have to make sure that everybody
else can benefit from your knowledge
and from your invention, and that way
the whole world can sort of get better.
'cause we're always building on
the inventions of other people.
Right, so that's that's a patent, right?
And how does that work in the
restaurant industry?
Well,
there's two that are really kind of the
most relevant. One would be a design
patent, which protects the way that
something looks. And the other would
be a utility patent, which protects
the way that something is used,
or the way that something works.
And again, I'll get into specific
examples as we get deeper in, OK.
And so the last thing is a trade secret,
which protects information that has value
because nobody knows what it is.
OK, nobody knows how you're
doing what it is you're doing,
and the reason it has value
is because nobody knows how you're doing. So
famous examples would be Coca Cola, right?
The recipe for Coca Cola?
Nobody knows it except for a couple
probably select people at Coca Cola
and it has value because nobody else
knows how to make a Coca Cola, right?
Other people can make colas, right?
You can,
you know,
Pepsi makes their thing you know you know,
like RC would make their own their thing.
You know there's all sorts of
different versions of a cola,
but there's only one Coca Cola and
that's because Coca Cola has the
recipe for it and nobody else
knows what is. KFC would be another for
their chicken, right, or Mrs. Field's
cookies and those are sorts of things
that are protected by trade secret.
Nobody knows exactly how to make
those because they keep them secret.
Alright, so we've got trademarks,
trade dress, copyrights,
patents, and trade secrets.
Alright,
so those are the five big definitions
and the five different buckets that
we're going to talk through today.
And that you're going to find
hopefully very important with
regard to your restaurant.
So let's talk through these trademark basics.
And how they would apply to a restaurant
or a food truck or a cafe or a micro
brewery or something along those lines.
OK, so the cool thing about
trademarks is that you have options
in terms of how you protect them.
OK, so if we think about McDonald's like
McDonald's has various options of how they
might want to protect the word McDonald's.
OK, so if they wanted to protect that as a
trademark, they could apply, and they have,
they have they have registered McDonald's.
With us in lot in lots of different versions.,
One version is what is known as a standard
character format, which means you
are protecting the wording itself.
Not what it looks like,
but the wording itself.
Which is incredibly broad protection because
it means over the life of the trademark,
you can, you know,
change up how you're using that,
the what the trademark looks like, right?
You're not tied into a particular
font style or size or color, right?
So McDonald's, over the course of
their many years of existence,
you know, they might change the way
that the McDonald's wording looks.
And they can do that,
and they would still have protection
for that,
because they have registered McDonald's in
what is known as standard character format.
So you can protect and McDonald's,
as you can see here, has
different things, right?
They protected McDonald's.
They protected Happy Meal.
They protected a slogan such
as "I'm loving it" or "Two
all beef patties, special sauce,
lettuce, cheese, pickles,
onions on a sesame seed bun."
Right? That's protected or who, I don't know,
they still use it or not,
but they used to have that as a trademark,
right?
It protected that as a slogan
to indicate the source of their
hamburgers and their restaurant
services. So as you can see here,
you can protect any number of different word,
word or words,
or a slogan. It's up to you as the as
the trademark owner to decide what it
is you want to protect and sort of
what version of that you want to do.
'cause I'm going to show you
different versions of trademarks
that you could protect.
OK, so and again as you can see here,
sometimes people get
confused or like "Oh can I
can I do a slogan, right?
Can I protect it?
Or if it's a couple words is that OK?"
Yeah, absolutely right. Protection could
be for a word or words or for a slogan.
Think about Chipotle. Subway, right?
That's word. Words would be Baja Fresh.
Pizza Hut, right. Two words. Totally fine.
So if you have a couple words,
doesn't doesn't matter the
number of words in the thing,
you can probably protect it
through a trademark registration.
So slogan is just about the same
way you're going to do is you're
going to build the exact same
application in order to do it, but
just be aware there are couple of
trickier issues when it comes to
slogans because sometimes they're used
kind of not as not as trademarks, but just.
Now they're often used in an ornamental way,
which does not indicate trademark usage,
right? It's not indicating source,
so when you see a trademark being
like across the front of a T shirt,
that's what's considered ornamental use.
It's not considered trademark use,
so if the only place you're using your
slogan is like really big across
some t-shirt that you sell at,
you know, at your restaurant as people
as people you know, pay and leave.
Well, that's probably not going
to be trademark usage.
You might you're going to have to
potentially jump through a couple
of hoops in order to register
that slogan,
if that's the only way or if that's
what you put in your application.
OK, we can talk more about that.
If you have a question about that.
"Jason, that was really confusing.
Please talk more about ornamental.
I'm very confused and it matters to me."
Please by all means shoot an email
to TMfeedback@uspto.gov and
I will answer the question at
the end of the presentation.
OK,
so we know we can protect words and slogans.
Now.
I had mentioned hashtags earlier,
so as I mentioned,
traditionally hashtags were not
registrable because of what a hashtag is.
It is just a way to search for or filter
information on social media, right?
You know,
use a hashtag in order to find something on
Twitter or to find something on Instagram.
Whatever it happens to be. Whatever
your preferred platform is, right?
But but actually things have
changed a little bit now and
you can register something that
is a hashtag as a trademark,
so long as you as you use it as a trademark.
OK, so something like FastFoodie
or SteakWorthy or VivaLaRita,
right?
Those are all registrable as
trademarks because they the company
is using the hashtag as a trademark,
right?
So in terms of the examples, called
specimens, that you submit to
the office, in those specimens,
the office, the USPTO is going
to need to see how you use that.
If you're just using it as a hashtag,
just,
you know as a way to like "Hey for
somebody to find me on social media."
Nope, that's not going to work,
but if you were using the hashtag in
some other way as an actual trademark,
then it could be something that is registrable,
right? So Checkers registered
FastFoodie.
Logan's Roadhouse SteakWorthy.
And the Bahama Breeze Island
Grille was the VivaLaRita.
OK, so yes,
it is possible to register hashtags,
but you have to be very careful.
And make sure you're showing the USPTO
how you were using it as a trademark.
Not necessarily just using it as a hashtag.
Alright,
so so there are the standard
character form, right?
So that's protection for the wording itself.
You could also protect a trademark
in a way that's
going to protect what the trademark
looks like. These are called special form
format trademarks. So it could be a stylized
mark, like bottom left hand corner there,
Ronald McDonald in script form. Composite,
which is a combination of wording and a
design. Or just the design alone, right?
Such as the golden arches by itself.
You can absolutely register these
types of things as trademarks.
Just be aware that in your
examples in your specimens,
we're going to have to see how you're
actually using those trademarks, right?
So we're going to actually have to,
it's going to have to match, right?
How you're actually doing it. The
one way it doesn't exactly have to
match is as you can see here
these are all in black and white.
You have the option as the
trademark owner to decide,
as I said,
what version of your trademark you want to
register. So you could apply to register
your trademark in black and white.
And that means you're saying:
"Hey USPTO, I am not claiming any color
with the use of these trademarks."
And that means that over the life
of the trademark,
if you wanted to swap out the colors
that you're using in your trademark,
you could and would still technically
have legal protection for that.
Because your registration is not in color,
right? It's just in black and white.
But, if for some reason you were like,
hey, these colors are so important to me,
I must, must, must, must,
must have color in my trademark.
I want everybody to know that I'm
always using it with these colors.
Cool, you can do that.
You can submit an
application for your trademark in color.
And that means that when and
so that means your specimen,
your evidence of how you're actually using
your trademark, has to be in those colors.
OK,
you can't say I'm going to submit my thing,
and it's in red and yellow.
And then when you submit your specimen,
it's in purple and brown.
Well,
those don't match.
You could have avoided the whole
situation by just applying for
your trademark in black and white,
and then we as the USPTO when we're
examining your specimen of use,
we won't get all hung up on the fact
that it's in coloring over here,
but it's in a different color over here.
Things like that.
OK, so you have your option.
This is not legal advice.
I'm not telling you what to do.
I'm not telling you to register
your, trying to apply to register
your trademark in black and white.
I'm just saying that it is an option
that is available to you if you
want flexibility for your trademark
over the life of your trademark.
OK,
so let's see how some examples
of this in use.
OK,
so we know McDonald's has
registered McDonald's as a standard
character format mark, right?
Which means they can use it in whatever
font style, size, color they want too.
They've also registered the
golden arches there alone.
They've also registered the golden
arches over the word McDonald's.
Now if we look over there on the
right hand side of the screen,
we can see essentially four
different uses of their trademarks.
Obviously across the top
there McDonald's, right.
As you can see, that doesn't match, right?
You know the standard character
mark is kind of in Times New Roman,
but it doesn't look that way.
And that's totally fine.
Because when you register a trademark
in standard character format,
what does that mean?
It means you can use the
trademark in whatever font style,
size, color you want to, right?
It doesn't have to exactly match what
it looks like in the application.
It doesn't have to be in,
essentially, Times New Roman,
which is kind of like the
default font when you apply.
So, as you can see here,
totally fine to use it
in whatever they're in,
distinctive McDonald's font is, OK?
And so that's how we would see it
used on a specimen to say, hey,
I've got a restaurant and this is
how it appears on my restaurant.
Now, what about with regard to
the bottom left hand corner?
There, the golden arches is,
as you can see, it's in black and white.
Does it appear in black and white in
the photograph? No, of course not.
Why?
Because they can put it in whatever
color they want to because they applied
for it in black and white, right?
And we can see it appearing two,
actually, three times, technically,
on on the picture itself,
on the front of the building there,
on that stacked stone on the front.
On the side there, and more stacked stone,
and also up there on the top,
right, at the top of the sign we
can see those golden arches.
That's also good usage.
And, of course,
the the composite design that the
combination of the golden arches in a
McDonald's appearing on the top of the sign.
So if McDonald's you know potentially they
I forget if they used exactly this one.
I think that uses as one of their specimens.
I don't remember exactly. Then,
yeah, this is great usage.
You can, you can see, oh,
this is being used for a a a restaurant.
OK, so that's use of a trademark
as the name of the restaurant.
Or as the logo.
Now what if you were using a very
specific name for a menu item?
Could you protect that through trademark?
Yes, absolutely.
So here,
as you can see,
McDonald's has registered Big
Mac, Quarter Pounder,
Double Quarter Pounder, and you can
look there on their menu there on
the right hand side and you can see.
Yeah yeah,
I've circled it in red, but Big Mac,
Quarter Pounder, and Double Quarter
Pounder, all registered trademarks.
So if you have specific items
on your menu that you've got
your own catchy little name for,
you know, that no one
else is using that
as the as the name of that dish?
Yeah, you could. You could protect
it through a trademark registration.
Some other examples would be Rooty Tooty
Fresh 'N Fruity for, you know you,
IHOP fans. Moons Over My Hammy for you
Denny's fans. Bloomin' Onion from Outback
Steakhouse. Frappuccino, of course,
from Starbucks. And Cronut. Cronut
is actually a registered trademark.
That was obviously a big
craze not too long ago.
That cream filled doughnut croissant.
Uh, and so that is actually a
registered trademark for Cronut.
Alright, so as we can see menu items,
yes, yes you can register that as a
trademark because when you see Big Mac
you automatically know it's a burger,
and I know who provided it.
It came from McDonald's right?
OK, OK, so other sort of non-
traditional things that you could
register as trademarks. For example,
this sort of configuration, or a shape.
Or in this case,
the three dimensional mascot, right?
They've registered this
Ronald McDonald character here.
This is, I think,
the older version of Ronald McDonald.
They've updated his look since the beginning,
but as you can see here,
they say hey,
every time you see some guy
in a costume like this,
you know it's McDonald's and
it's that's Ronald McDonald.
Same thing with the shape.
You could protect the shape in this case,
the shape of the Happy Meal box.
You could also use color as
something that you use to protect.
So if you're a restaurant or
whatever it happens to be,
is is always provides a thing in a
certain sort of wrapping or packaging,
and it's always in a particular color.
You might be able to register the color
being used in that way as a trademark.
So as you can see here on the left
you know back in the day when I first
started you were not allowed to submit
an actual color drawing. Applicants
would have to submit something that
was in black and white and they
would have to line it for color.
So as you can see here
McDonald's has lined the outside in red
and the inside, those stripes in yellow,
right?
So as you can see there on the right,
every time you see that french fry
package that has the red outside and the
yellow and white stripe on the inside,
you know it's from McDonald's,
right?
So this is another example of some
of the way that a restaurant can
use a sort of non-traditional trademark
to indicate the source of whatever
goods or services it provides.
And one last example here of a
non-traditional type of trademark
this would be registering color.
As you can see here,
they've registered color yellow,
the yellow awning.
OK,
so when you would see the the
yellow awning on a building like
this you would say, "Oh that must
be a a McDonald's."
OK, so think about your restaurant.
Is there something about your
restaurant say on the exterior?
Something like that? There's like, oh,
this is every time you see you you
know exactly that. It's us, right?
That is something that could be protected
by a trademark so long as it is what?
Indicating the source of your
particular goods and services.
Alright, so that's sort of the
basics of what a trademark is, right?
It's legal protection for a brand,
which is something that indicates the
source of your goods and services.
So let's talk about those trademark
rights and how they're created,
because they really can be created
in two ways.
One is through common law and one is
is through federal registration rights.
So let's go through it.
OK, so first things first,
so it can be created through common law,
which essentially means that is
as soon as you start to use
something that has your trademark
to indicate the source of your
goods and services,
you are creating trademark rights.
Now typically this is done under state law,
so wherever you happen to be,
there's probably a law on the books or
probably a court case that says this is true,
that you were creating
rights under common law.
Now the issue is that your rights are
limited to the geographic area in which
that trademark is being used, right?
So if you have a food truck and
you only pull it into the park.
You know somewhere in you know,
in Austin, TX,
and that's the only place where
you're selling your barbeque.
Well, your rights are really going to
only be in that geographic area, right?
In which you're in Austin, for example,
if you never go anywhere else,
and you never really advertise anywhere,
you only are operating in Austin,
then your rights are really
going to just be there.
OK, well, that's that's fine, I guess.
But what happens when you want to expand,
right?
But if you want to start
operating food trucks
in other cities or in other states outside
of Texas or something like that, right?
What are you gonna do?
You want to make sure that you have
protection for your trademarks, right?
For all of these other trucks nationwide.
So you've got to find a way
in order to protect yourself
nationwide, OK.
We're going to talk about that
in just one second,
but I do want to point out with regards
to common law trademark rights,
and I get this question all the time.
"Jason, what is up with the TM
and what is up with the SM?
When am I supposed to use that?
Do I have to use that?
What's
going on with it?"
OK. So the answer is you can you don't ever,
ever,
ever, by the way, have to use a TM
or an SM, right?
But what it is is a common law
indicator of trademark rights.
So as soon as you start to
use something as a trademark,
you can slap that TM on there.
You can slap the SM
on there. TM stands for trademark.
SM stands for service mark.
You can put that on there and you're
essentially putting the public on notice,
"Hey, I am claiming this
as my trademark." Right?
I'm using this as,
you know, Jason's BBQ is the is my is
my name on my food truck and, you know,
I'm claiming TM, OK, at the end, right?
You can do that, right?
You can put people on notice that you
are claiming something as a trademark.
You cannot, however,
use that "R in the circle" symbol.
You can only use the "R in the circle"
symbol after you have registered
your trademark with our office.
And what happens when you register
your trademark with our office?
Well, it's a good thing you asked.
It's it's great because you get a whole
bunch of benefits that you didn't have
before and these rights are created as soon
as you register your trademark with us.
It creates a legal presumption
that you own the trademark.
And it's a legal presumption
you have the right to use that
trademark throughout the United
States and its territories.
You're putting the public on
notice that it is your trademark, right?
Just not in Austin, but across the
country you're putting people on
notice. "Hey,
this is my trademark." Right?
You can bring legal action concerning
your trademark in federal court,
so if it turns out that it pops
up somebody across the country all
of a sudden starts using Jason's
BBQ on their food truck.
But you already have a registration.
Well, before you would need to go there
and try and stop them, right, from you
need to go there and sue them to try
and get them to stop using that trademark.
But not true
if you have a federal trademark
registration. You can go to your
nearest local federal courthouse,
file there, and make whoever that
is come to you in order to defend.
You can also record your registration
with US Customs and Border Protection,
which is really great if you are
operating in an industry where
there's lots of infringing goods.
Now with regard to restaurants,
maybe that's not necessarily
going to be the case.
Maybe it is,
but typically it's going to be for
things like clothing and electronics,
and you know,
and things of that sort,
but maybe you have this amazing hot
sauce that you, right, and you end up
that you got and that you sell. Well.
It turns out somebody finds a way to make
it cheap and it's not as good as yours and
yours is so so popular that they want to
they want to capitalize on that,
right?
So they they create this fake hot sauce
and they try and slap a version of your
label on it to try and trick people,
right?
And then they ship it into the United
States to try and flood the market
with their cheap knockoff hot sauce.
Well,
if you have recorded your registration
with Customs and Border Protection,
they can stop those infringing goods
from entering into the country. Which is
pretty great.
You can also use your registration as
a basis for filing in another country,
OK, which is important because
trademark rights are country based,
right?
Just because you register
in the United States,
that does not mean that you have
protection around the world.
OK,
it only means you have protection in
the United States and its territories.
There is no such thing as a sort
of international trademark,
automatic international trademark protection.
OK,
if you want protection in Canada,
you gotta register your
trademark in Canada. You want in
Mexico, you gotta register in Mexico.
You want you want it in Italy.
You gotta register in Italy. If you
want it, you get the point, right?
So anywhere you want to have protection,
you need to register in that country.
Now the great thing is that a federal
trademark application or registration
can serve as the basis for extending
your protection into another country.
It's known as the Madrid Protocol, right?
And so if you want to
extend into another country,
you can file through the Madrid Protocol
and then it creates sort of this
international application and then that
international application can be used to
file in a bunch of different countries.
Now I'll tell you, right,
it's going to be expensive, right?
'cause you gotta pay fees everywhere
you go and what's happening is
essentially through the Madrid Protocol,
you're creating national applications
in all of these other countries that
you've identified. So much in the same
way that you might have a national
application here in the United States,
you're creating a similar one
in those other countries, right?
So you've got to go through their
process in order to register there.
But, as I said,
it's a great benefit because you can
use the Madrid Protocol to try and
extend your protection around the world.
And of course the coolest thing of all
is you get to use the "R in the circle"
symbol,
right?
You no longer have to use that TM or the SM.
You can slap your "R in a circle" on
there and people can know that you
have registered your trademark. Now
often times people ask and it's the
same thing for the TM and the SM,
they'll ask where do I use it?
Do I have to put it at the end?
Do I put it above? Do I put it below?
What font am I supposed to use?
Hey. It's up to you.
OK.
It is really your choice how
you want to do it.
Oftentimes, you will see people putting
it at the right hand side of a trademark.
They put it in superscript.
They put it in subscript.
But then again I've seen it pop up in the
middle of a trademark down at the bottom.
Doesn't really matter.
You can sort of put it wherever so long
as people are aware that it is your
that you know that they can see and
they can see that registration symbol.
Alright,
so now we know what a trademark is,
right?
And we know why you might want to
federally register your trademark in
order to get nationwide protection for
as your as you expand your restaurant
and began to franchise everywhere.
So let's very briefly talk
through through registration.
Oops, here we go, wrong way.
So let's talk through registration, right?
Because I understand people
sometimes confuse this.
They're like, "Hey,
I gotta go,
I gotta trademark something.
I wanted to trademark my
trademark this or I wanted to
buy a trademark. I wanted to go
get a trademark from the USPTO."
That's not exactly how it works. As
you might have already intuited,
what happens is you, as a
business, have a trademark.
You have your brand name,
your slogan, your logo,
whatever it is that you use to indicate
the source of your goods and services,
and what you decide to do is apply
to register that trademark with us.
With the United States
Patent and Trademark Office.
And that is our job. As the USPTO,
it is our job.
Our mission is to register trademarks.
And we wish we could register every
single trademark that came in the door,
but, unfortunately, that's not the case.
OK, we would love to.
We would love to,
but we can't.
So then the issue is that not every
trademark is registrable and there might
be reasons why your registration
might be refused and
I'm going to talk about two big
reasons why it could be refused and
the other thing to think about is that
not every trademark is enforceable.
So once you register your trademark
and you have in your hot little hands
that registration certificate, that
doesn't mean you're out of the woods right?
Because
of
common law
trademark rights. And common law
trademark rights are created when
trademarks first begin to be used
and trademarks in this country are
based upon use. So it could be a
situation where somebody you know has
been using a trademark for many,
many years.
Never got around to registering it,
but they've been using it nationwide.
They have super strong rights.
You go ahead and and register
that trademark. Well, guess what,
even though you have that
registration in your hand,
it doesn't mean that you have superior
rights. That other person who had
common law
trademark rights might be able to
stop you from using your trademark,
and they might be able to cancel
your registration because they
have the stronger rights.
So obviously you want to avoid
that situation. So you as a
budding restaurateur
or food truck operator, right?
You don't want that to happen.
You want to.
You don't want to go through the
process of like figuring out your
trademark is going to be and then
registering the trademark and only
to discover later on that somebody
else has stronger rights than you do,
and you can no longer use that trademark.
Or if you do,
you're going to get in trouble
and get sued for a bunch of
money. You don't want to do that.
No. So what you want to do,
and this is what we would love for
you to be able to do, is select a
trademark that is both federally
registrable and legally protectable.
And we're going to talk about two
big things that are going to help
you get there. Because it's it's
very important that you understand,
as well, the misconception that you
own words. OK, 'cause sometimes people
say that as well that they want to.
"Oh yeah, if I if I get a trademark in this,
that means I own it and no
one else can use these words."
No, that is not what that means.
What it means with a federal
trademark registration,
it means that you have the exclusive right
to use that word or words with regard
to your specific goods and services.
It does not mean that you own the words out
right? OK. Apple has registered
the word apple for computers.
Does that mean that no one
else can say the word apple?
No, of course not.
Everybody can say the word
apple if they want to.
Right, it only means that other
tech companies and other people
providing things similar to Apple
cannot use apple as a brand name.
OK, so let's talk about things.
Let's talk about a trademark that
is both federally registrable
and legally protectable.
And the two reasons why your trademark
could be refused registration with
the two main big concepts that we
want to talk through are likelihood of
confusion and strength of the trademark.
So, first things first.
Likelihood of confusion.
OK,
so this is a situation where two
marks are incredibly similar
and it confuses the public and
they're like not sure,
and they think that the same company
is providing both of those things OK.
And this is a statutory refusal.
And if your trademark is likely
to cause confusion
with one that is in our database,
your trademark will be refused. And
so what's going to happen is when you
apply to register, the examining attorney
in your case is going to look at
our database and they're going to
look at all the applications and
registrations that are in there that
are still alive and they're going
to say, "When I compare everything in
the database to your application,
are there any in which the trademarks
are confusingly similar and the goods
and services provided are related?"
Right, they're doing this test.
There are some other elements as well,
but it really boils down to these two.
Main prongs. Are the trademarks
confusingly similar
and are the goods and services related.
And if both of those things are
true, then your application will
be refused registration.
Now you'll notice the slide does not
say that the trademarks have to be
identical and it does not say that
the goods and services have to be identical.
It just says similar and
related. And similarity means
that it sounds like, looks
like, similar impression,
similar meaning.
And for relatedness,
it just means that consumers are
used to seeing one company provide
both types of goods. Or one company
providing both types of services. And
that's the test that's performed,
right?
So oftentimes people will say, "OK,
but does that mean that I can
there can't be two identical trademarks
that are out there?"
Well, no, it doesn't mean that at
all actually, because if you think
about some of the more famous
trademarks you might be aware of,
think about the trademark Dove.
Right? Dove for soap coexists with the
trademark Dove for ice cream bars.
Do consumers get confused by these?
No? And why is that?
Even though the trademarks are
exactly identical? Do we get confused?
No, because a company that makes soap
typically does not also make ice cream bars.
Right, think about Delta.
Delta is registered for airline services.
Is also registered for, you know,
faucets and plumbing fixtures. Are
we confused when we see Delta?
No, because we know the company that
does airline services probably also
doesn't do plumbing fixtures, right?
So the same thing could be true with
regard to your restaurant or your
food truck or your kiosk or whatever
it is that, your catering business,
whatever it is that you provide,
it's quite possible that you could have
the exact same trademark as somebody else,
but so long as you were providing
unrelated goods and services,
the two of you could coexist
in the marketplace.
So let me just give you a couple
examples that that we had found over
the years that have been written about.
One was a company that was a food
and restaurant company.
Olympia provisions. And they chose their
name and they called it The Olympic.
It was based upon the Olympic
Cereal Building,
which is where they were housed, and
so they had their signage
and their trademarks and probably
their menus and everything like that.
And they were they were doing,
I think they were doing delivery
services and and things like that.
Well, the actual International
Olympic Committee, is like no,
you cannot use the word Olympic and
know for that company had to stop
using that trademark and so that means
they had to give up all the things,
all the branding stuff that they had
created over over a period of years.
Another example was Chubby Noodle
and Fat Noodle, right? Case here
where Chubby Noodle and Fat Noodle,
both of them for for restaurants.
And so it's a situation where
consumers may like which one, is it?
Chubby Noodle? Is it Fat Noodle?
I forget it's Fat Noodle? Chubby Noodle, right?
So this trademarks are similar.
And they're being used for related,
if not identical,
services that could be a situation
where even if you put in a bunch of
time and effort into your trademark,
you might be in trouble if it turns
out that somebody else has stronger
trademark rights than you do, right?
So you want to avoid that situation.
All right, you want to avoid that,
and so the way that you avoid
that situation is you do what is
known as a clearance search.
and that means that you are clearing
the area around your trademark.
Now, if you're doing this on your own,
if you're not represented by an attorney.
Then there are at least two
things that we would recommend.
OK, at a very, very base level.
These are the two things we'd recommend.
First of all, you do a search in our
database and you search using the
Trademark Electronic Search System.
You can follow the link there in the
slides to take you to TESS, as it is known.
And you can look in our database to see.
Is there anybody else in here who has
applied for or registered a trademark
that is similar to mine and is being
used for related goods and services?
And the other thing we'd suggest
is you look online. Nice and easy, right?
You pop it into Google and Bing and
Yahoo and any other search engine
you can think of and look to see.
Is anybody else out there using a same
or similar trademark for restaurant
services or cafe services or bar services?
Or you know food delivery services
or whatever
it happens to be that that
is what you're doing.
Is anybody else out there already
using a similar trademark?
If so,
I might be in trouble I I might want to
rethink this and have another brand name
that I want to think of for my restaurant.
Now that's a very basic that you would do.
We also recommend always,
always that you end up working
with a trademark attorney,
because an experienced trademark practitioner
knows what she is doing OK and
who's done this a bunch of times.
Has done a lot of these searches and
so that means that that attorney can do
the search for you so you don't have to,
right.
And so the attorney is going
to search in our database.
Also, going to check state trademark
databases, foreign trademark databases,
business name registries.
Also going to be looking online,
and the great thing is that the
attorney is going to be able to do the
analysis.
So doing that search,
the attorney is going to be
able to look through, be like oh,
even though those trademarks are identical,
I can see these goods and services
are unrelated. Poof. Not a problem.
We can move on to the next one, right?
So we recommend that you would work with
a private trademark attorney to help you.
So because an attorney can help you,
not just with trademarks but with a
whole lot of other issues as well.
You do have the option to hire
a search firm if you want to,
but just be aware if you hire a search
firm that the search firm is not
going to do the analysis for you.
Traditionally what happens is if
you pay a trademark search company,
"Hey, will you do a search on this
trademark." Right? They're gonna
be like, "OK. And then here.
Here's the results.
Now it is up to you to go through
and do that
likelihood of confusion analysis."
So the wonderful thing about
hiring an attorney to help
you is that an attorney can do that
analysis for you because it's part
science and it's part art. OK. It's a
it's a real mix of those things,
and it takes somebody with
experience in order to
understand the nuance. So but
and I get it look, I get it.
You have a lot of expenses up already,
especially if you're a small
business owner just starting out.
I get it, I understand.
So keep in mind at the end of
the presentation we have a
couple of suggestions for free
and reduced price legal services
that you might want to look into.
So please please,
please don't just say well,
I can't afford one so I'm not
even gonna think about it.
Hold on because we have some
options that you might be able
to take advantage of and they
might be a big help to you.
Another thing to just keep in mind
as we move on and move off of
likelihood of confusion is keep in
mind if you are hiring a company in
order to create your logo for you,
maybe it's an agency or a graphic
design firm or something like that.
Keep in mind that they are not
necessarily doing a clearance search,
they might just be coming up with
a bunch of cool ideas, right?
So they might not have done that
search to see if anybody else out
there using you know a cartoon
character of a guy in a in a
checkerboard you know, like,
overalls and holding a hamburger on a tray.
Maybe they may be like, hey,
this is a good idea and they don't
realize that Frisch's Big Boy
has already been using that,
you know,
as their trademark for years
and years and years, right. Here.
Here's a cool idea, right?
They might not have done that search,
so that's great
they're creating something for you
and you're licensing that
artwork from them, or however,
that whatever that relationship is.
But just keep in mind you're also
going to want to check that to see
whether you can clear it as a trademark.
Just something to keep in mind.
OK,
so that's likely to confuse and the
other thing I want to very briefly
talk about is strength of a trademark,
'cause this is also incredibly important.
Likelihood of confusion is about federal
registrability and then and then really,
in some ways,
strength of a trademark is about being able
to actually protect the trademark.
So as you can see here this graphic,
it's it's often referred to as
the descriptiveness spectrum,
but I like to think about it as
a temperature gauge.
OK,
it goes from weak to strong or
cold to hot. Down at the bottom
are trademarks that aren't
really trademarks at all
when we talk about generic. But and
so you want to avoid weak or cold
trademarks and you want to focus your
energy on strong trademarks like fanciful,
arbitrary, and suggestive trademarks.
and let me show you what
I'm talking about here.
So fanciful and
arbitrary trademarks are the strongest
types of trademarks.
They are inherently distinctive,
and the great thing about them is that
pretty much nobody else is going to
have something similar to you, right?
So when we're talking about likelihood of
confusion, if you get something like
kind of like fanciful or arbitrary mark,
chances are nobody else is
going to have that,
so you're not going to have any
issues when it comes to doing that
likelihood of confusion
analysis and clearing your trademark.
So when we're talking about fanciful marks,
what we're talking about are made up words,
right or or things that have
no meaning in English.
Or in a foreign language.
So in this case here Starbucks
is kind of a made up word,
so the story as it goes, this the founders,
they wanted a brand that started with "ST."
And then one of them found a small
town called Starbo on an old mining
map and another one thought about the
character Starbuck from Moby Dick.
And so they've kind of put all of that
together and they ended up liking the
name because they thought perhaps it
evokes the romance of the high seas
the seafaring tradition of
the early coffee traders.
So that's sort of like where the
founders anyway are saying that
the name Starbucks came from, right?
It's a fanciful word, right?
And that's a little bit different
than an arbitrary trademark,
which is a word that has meaning
in English or in another language,
but no relationship to the
underlying goods and services.
So if you think about something
like Sonic for restaurants.
Sonic has nothing to do
with restaurant services.
so it's therefore arbitrary. In our
everyday life, think about Apple.
That's an arbitrary trademark,
for, you know,
phones and computers. Or BlackBerry
for mobile devices, right?
It's something we,
we know what it is like with
regards to its usual thing, right?
But has nothing to do with the
underlying good or service.
So in this case here,
fanciful and arbitrary trademarks,
these are great for restaurants
and and things like that,
because it doesn't necessarily
have anything to do with the
underlying good or service.
That means it's going to
be easier to protect.
So just below fanciful and
arbitrary trademarks, still good,
still good, but maybe not as good,
maybe not as strong, are suggestive trademarks.
These trademarks suggest something
about the goods and services,
but they don't necessarily describe it.
OK, there's like a mental step.
You have to make. The Dough
Roller for restaurant services.
OK, well, I can't I get it.
I guess they do pizzas?
Yeah yeah I guess pizzas right right.
So OK, is the a pizza restaurant, right?
But it's not "pizza restaurant," right,
for restaurant services.
For restaurants serving serving pizza,
No, it's the dough roller right?
And they're going to serve,
you know, various baked goods, pizzas,
and you know and breads and
pancakes and breakfasty
types of things you know,
that sort of stuff, right?
So in this case,
it's suggestive of the restaurant,
but it doesn't actually describe the
restaurant or what's being served there.
Now below that are
descriptive trademarks. Now,
descriptive trademarks,
they are going to be refused
registration when you apply.
OK, that's that's the long and short of it.
They're going to be refused registration. Now
in certain circumstances you are going
to be able to overcome that refusal
if you've been using the trademark
in commerce for more than five years,
or you can show good
usage, things of that sort.
There are a couple of things that you
could do in order to overcome it.
Say, for example, by claiming acquired
distinctiveness under section 2(f).
That's a possibility.
But you would have to make that claim,
but it's going to be refused, right?
So here, California Pizza Kitchen
for restaurant services.
Now that is a registered trademark.
However,
it is also descriptive,
or more specifically,
geographically descriptive of a pizza
kitchen located in California, right,
where the original one was anyway.
So in that case
a restaurant name or something like
that that is descriptive of where
and what it is you're providing that
is going to be refused registration.
But as I said,
there are ways to kind of overcome it,
but keep in mind it's going to be sort of
you're going to have lesser protection,
right?
Because it's not a strong mark, right?
It's not as strong as a fanciful
or arbitrary mark.
Right. Below that are generic and
honestly these aren't even trademarks.
OK, they're just words, right?
You can't register cafe for
restaurant services.
You're not going to register restaurant for
restaurant services, bar for bar services.
Nope, not going to happen.
And why is that?
That's because a trademark indicates
source. When somebody hears "cafe,"
does that automatically call to
mind a particular provider of
a particular good or service?
No, it's just telling you what the thing is,
right?
So it is not therefore not
functioning as a trademark.
It is just telling you what the thing
is. That, you know, it's a cafe, right?
It's a restaurant.
It's a cafeteria, that sort of thing.
So please,
please please avoid generic terms
in relationship to a restaurant
or something like that.
Right,
so keep in mind you can register common
words as trademarks, but you know,
think about our fanciful or or or
I'm sorry, our arbitrary trademarks right?
Those are. Sonic is a common word.
Apple is a common word.
Blackberry is
a common word that's registrable, right?
So here,
just keep in mind it's a little
bit different for generic. It's
not registerable because it
tells you what the thing is.
Alright, so just a real quick note here.
Another thing to be careful of
with regard to your trademark,
make sure that the trademark isn't
going to be misinterpreted as making
some sort of advertising claim.
Or if it is making advertising claim,
make sure that the claim is
legally substantiated, right?
So you know on your on your menu,
OK, you know, don't be calling
something something that it's not.
You know like case we came across was
was for Smashburger. They had something
that was called the Triple Double
Double. Sorry, let me say that again.
The Triple Double burger.
And the court found that the name Triple
Double burger was literally false.
And it constituted false advertising
because it seemed to advertise the
sandwich that was double the beef.
But it actually just doubled the
layers and each of the patties in
the layer were each half the weight
of the classic Smashburger, right?
So this is a case where they're making
a claim that it's a triple double
so you're going to think it's
even bigger than the original,
but it's actually not.
It's the same amount of meat in each of them.
OK, so just something to keep in
mind when we're thinking about it.
You know?
Look of McDonald's is making a quarter pounder
you better believe it's
probably a quarter pound of beef, right?
Otherwise somebody's going to
make a claim against it.
OK,
so if you want to register
your trademark with us.
The way that you do it is by filing
an application through the Trademark
Electronic Application System.
As you can see here,
first you have to create a uspto.gov account.
You know it's just like you have
to do in pretty much every other
website that you that you use
these days. You have to create
an account there,
but you have to create the account
before you can file and then
everything you do with regard to
your application going forward,
you're always going to be logging
into your uspto.gov account and
essentially what you're creating is an
intellectual property portfolio at the USPTO.
So in in that
account you're going to have
access to all of your application,
trademark applications and registrations.
Any patent applications and patent grants.
All those things are going to be accessible
to you through the uspto.gov account.
So, kind of cool.
So,
but when you when you apply,
you're going to have to apply using TEAS Plus.
Or using TEAS Standard.
We always recommend folks use TEAS
Standard because it is the cheaper
filing option and essentially the
reason for that is that what we're
saying is in exchange for you
front loading your application with
things you're going to eventually
have to put in there anyway,
you know, we will give you a cheaper rate.
So in exchange for you,
including goods and services that
are listed in our Identification
of Goods and Services Manual,
or putting in specific statements
that have to be in the record
for paying for all the classes,
all those sorts of things,
then then you would you can use TEAS Plus
right and you get the cheap rate.
You can save 100 bucks per international
class. If you're in a situation
where that doesn't matter to you,
right, or or you want to do
things a little bit differently.
You can use TEAS Standard,
but just be aware you're going to
have to pay a little bit more.
Uh, so with regard to the filing fee.
'cause people ask this all the time,
they're like, "Jason, how much does it cost?"
I'm like, well, it depends.
"No, seriously, Jason,
just tell me in simple terms,
how much does it cost?"
Well, I can't actually answer that
question because there are a lot
of factors that are involved in it.
And as you can see,
your international class is really
one of the reasons because it is
up to you what goods and services
you identify in your application
and the goods and services you
identify in your application
are going to be in 1 of 45
international classes. Now you might remember,
I said there's no such thing
as an international trademark,
right?
But there are international classes
and that is because we have agreed
through treaties with countries
around the world that goods and
services are split up into these
45 different international classes,
right?
So that's where the phrase
international class comes from.
So your filing fee is going
to be based upon the number of
these international classes that
appear in your application,
and I'll get into more specifics
in just a couple of seconds.
But I just want you to be aware of
how the formula is kind of calculated.
OK,
so when you apply you are going to
have to make a couple of decisions
as I already recommended.
And and noted,
you're going to have to decide
what version of your trademark
you want to register.
Do you want to register just the
wording alone right through a
standard character format drawing?
Such as Coca Cola,
which allows you this broad scope
of how you use the trademark over
over the life of the trademark?
Or do you want more sort of
kind of narrow protection protecting
the wording of what it looks like,
the wording and what it looks
like right through a
special form format. Could be stylized,
composite, or design mark.
And again,
it's going to be up to you
what you want to do.
I am not allowed to give legal advice.
Craig cannot give legal advice.
No one at the PTO can give you legal advice.
However,
keep in mind this is just through
my experience over the years of
working with small business owners.
Invariably, they would do one of two things,
specially if they didn't have
a whole lot of money.
If they,
if they wanted to protect the wording,
they would file for that standard
character format drawing.
Or if the design element was
important to them,
they would submit a special form drawing,
but they would do it in black
and white and not in color.
So again, not legal advice.
Totally up to you.
I'm just telling you,
sort of like what I have seen over the years,
OK? Uh, keep in mind as well that
you cannot add to a trademark once
you put it in the application.
But sometimes people do it. "Oh, I forgot,
I wanted to do this thing right?"
No, you cannot do that. Once you apply
that's what your trademark
application is going to be.
OK, you're applying for
this particular trademark.
If you want to apply for
a different version of it,
you are more than welcome to
submit another application. You can
have as many applications in our
offices you want to. Totally up to you.
But you cannot amend your trademark to like
sort of like add things and take things out,
except in very, very specific circumstances.
Another thing you need to do,
as I mentioned, is you have to
identify your goods and services.
And so really think about what
is it that you provide right?
As a restaurant owner.
What is it that you provide?
Then you would need to look at our ID manual.
I mean like oh I'm a restaurant.
I type in restaurants.
Oh look, restaurant services.
Click. OK. So you'll need to identify
your various goods and services
that you use your trademark with.
I'm just very briefly going to run
through a couple of the common restaurant
type IDs that you might want to be aware of.
These are all in what is known as Class 43.
So think about restaurant
services, cafe services,
bar services,
brew pub services, coffee shops,
food truck services,
namely providing of food and
drink via a mobile truck.
Restaurants featuring home delivery,
Takeout restaurant services.
Providing ghost kitchens for use in
preparation of meals and beverages
for consumption off premises
with food delivery services.
That's a new one right over the past year.
So those ghost kitchen services.
Those are all restaurant type
services which would be in 43.
Other services which are kind of
related that you may or may not
be doing or or maybe you actually
don't do them yourself,
but you hire someone to do them for
you would be what are known as these
class 39 services such as food delivery,
delivery of food by restaurants,
delivery of food prepared in ghost
and dark kitchen facilities.
So those are some of the more common
sorts of ones for restaurants and
caterers and and and things of that sort,
so you should be able to look
in our ID Manual,
clicking the link right there
and you can pull up
restaurant services, bar services,
cafe services, catering services,
things of that sort.
OK so I want to do a real quick breakdown
of. Let's say you are a thing right?
What are the types of goods and services
that you might be using your trademark on?
And you might want to protect
yourself with use of your trademark
for these goods and services.
So let's say you are a bakery slash
cafe, OK? We're going to call it.
We're going to call it Jason's,
Jason's Bakery, alright, and so
let's say in that bakery you have
you have baked goods, right?
You know you got you got the danishes
and muffins and bagels and cupcakes
and things right and your pastries so so
baked goods and pastries, right?
You're providing those things.
You're also providing a retail bakery
shop so somebody can walk in and they can
purchase a dozen doughnuts and walk out.
And you're also doing delivery
of your food.
OK, so if someone calls in and they're like,
"Hey can I get 10 muffins?" And you're like,
"Yeah, we'll be right over."
OK, so you're also providing delivery.
You're also providing perhaps
custom baking services, right?
So bakery services, namely,
the manufacture of bakery products to
the order and specification of others.
So if someone calls in is like, "Hey,
I want, I want a really special
cake for my for my son's birthday.
Can you do that?"
"Yeah, yeah, sure we can do that."
OK, that's a separate type of service.
And then maybe you're also
providing cafe services, right?
'cause people come in?
They order their coffee and they order
the pastry and they go sit at,
you know, the various tables and
and comfy couches that you have,
right?
So those are all five
different things that you might
be using your trademark on, right?
The baked goods themselves?
The retail store services, right?
The delivery?
The custom baking and actually the
cafe services.
So those would be five different
international classes altogether,
and so it would be up to you if you
want to, say, if you're using your
trademark for all of those things to
include all of those in your application.
Or you could say. "Ooh boy.
Uh, I got 250 bucks I can throw
at my trademark registration.
I'm going to go with the one
that is most important to me,
right?"
And let's say it's for the cafe services,
right?
That's totally fine.
You do not have to include the
other things in there that you
also use your trademark on.
Just because you put your trademark
onto your packaging for your muffins
and your doughnuts and stuff like that,
that doesn't mean you have to register
your trademark for those goods.
You could choose to just register it
for the one that's most important to
you at this time. I just want to
register for the cafe and guess what?
Six months later I got a whole
bunch of money coming in and I
want to throw more money at my
trademark registration.
So I'm now going to register Jason's
Bakery for my bakery services.
And I'm also going to register it
for, you know, for my for my baked goods,
for my pastries, right?
You can do that, if you want,
you can file a separate application
later to pick those things up.
The other thing I'll do very quickly.
Let's say you have a brew pub,
right?
What are the types of things that you might
have that you might want to
register if you're a brew pub?
Well, first of all, brew pub services.
OK? Or taproom services or
something along those lines.
If you're doing custom beer
brewing for someone else, right?
You know someone says, hey,
can you get me a batch of such as you know,
brew that up for me.
I want something that has, like,
really, really orange flavor.
I don't know.
Yeah sure or and if you sell your beer
like on site you know you you sell a six
pack or a 12 pack or a keg or whatever,
I don't know. If you sell it on site,
yeah, that could be a retail store
service featuring that beer for
consumption off premises. And if
and if you use your trademark on
like let's say on a six pack of beer
and like put on the label for your
beer or something like that right?
So this would be four different things.
The brew pub itself. If you do custom brewing,
for example. The retail store where
you're selling the beer itself,
and maybe, you know, T-shirts and
coasters and growlers,
and you know, and you know,
sweatshirts, whatever,
that sort of thing and then
also for the beer itself, right?
So again,
it would be up to you what you
want to try and protect with
regard to each of those things.
So another thing you have to figure out
before you file is your filing basis.
Just something to keep in mind in order
to register your trademark with us,
you must be using your trademark
in interstate commerce,
so you must be using it across state
lines or between one state and a
country or one state and territory.
OK? In order to register you must
be using it across state lines.
In order to apply,
you don't have to be using it yet,
but yeah, I do have to say, "Hey USPTO,
I realize that I'm not using it yet,
but I have a bona fide intent to do so
within the next three to four years."
That's totally fine.
OK,
so in your application you will
have to identify, "Hey USPTO,
I am already using my trademark
across state lines,
so I'm going to file under
the use in commerce basis."
Or you can say, "Hey,
I'm not using it yet,
but I have a bona fide intent
to do so." And you can file under
the intent to use basis.
Just keep in mind if you file
under intent to use then there's
more stuff you have to file right,
there are more more documents you have
to file, more fees that you have to pay.
So it's a little bit more
expensive in the long run.
But it's up to you if you're if you
haven't started your restaurant yet,
you're not up and running
yet and you're like, hey,
we're just coming out of the pandemic.
I'm just getting up and going,
but I but I have my trademark,
I want to get protected.
Hey cool, great go ahead and you can
submit that application and that's
totally fine to start early right?
You can apply to register early
before you're actually using it.
That's OK, just make
just be aware that before
you actually can use that
little "R in the circle" symbol
you're going to have to file more
paperwork and pay some more fees, OK?
So these are just a couple of
other reasons why your trademark
could be refused registration.
I'm just going to like point them
out real quick here and just so you
have them in the in the slide deck.
We don't have a whole lot of
time to dig into each of these.
This is like a lot of we can
go really in depth on these,
but I just want you to be aware of them.
OK, these are other reasons why your
trademark could be refused registration.
Another thing to think about when
you file is that your application
data does become public.
That's the law.
OK, that's the thing is we have to make
the information public.
So what that means is there are
private companies out there that
scrape our database and they take
those names and addresses and they
start start sending you stuff.
OK,
so if you file for an application and
you're not represented by an attorney,
you are probably going to get a lot of
misleading notices and offers in the
mail and they can be really confusing.
I was giving a presentation one time
and a guy came up to me and he's
like. "Jason, take a look at this.
Is this coming from you guys?" And I
said I looked at it and I was like, "No,
no that's not coming from us."
It was from some fake company
pretending to be the USPTO. He's like,
"Thank you he's like you just
saved me $1000?" Right?
'cause he was just about ready
to pay this and and oftentimes
these things look like invoices.
You know it might be for €4000 in
order to be on some private European
registry or something like that.
And I was like oh sorts of weird stuff
so so just be aware of these things.
OK,
that you will get these things in the mail.
You can use the link there that you see
on the slide for trademark solicitations.
You can go to that page and you
can see all of the examples
that have popped up over the years
and you can look and see does
mine match up with one I see online.
If it does, boop, right and rip that
thing apart and you can ignore it.
The only thing you're going to get from
us you will have a see a copy of it.
Sorry, anything that we send to you,
you will be able to see a copy of
it in our database, in TSDR, the Trademark
status and Document Retrieval
system, which you have access to 24
hours a day, seven days a week.
All you have to do is pop
your serial number into TSDR.
You can pull up everything in
your case and you can see,
"Hey, did the USPTO ask me
to send €4000? No, they didn't.
OK, I get rid of it."
OK, so so that's the basics on trademarks.
OK, and then, oh wow,
we're already about an hour and
15 minutes into this thing and
I still have some other stuff I
want to get to and I still want
to have room for questions.
So I'm going to move on at this point
to different types of intellectual
property that you are going to
want to know about with regard to
restaurants and foodservice industry.
But also I want to just do
a quick reminder here.
If you do have questions,
please send them to TMfeedback@uspto.gov.
I'm trying my best here to reserve as
much time as I possibly can to answer
questions before the session ends.
OK, but we're going to move
into trade dress right now,
which is a sort of version of trademark.
It's very,
very similar and you would register to
protect it through our office as well.
You know through through
a trademark application,
so trade dress is really referring
to the look and feel of your
product or your service.
OK, so it could be, you know,
as we saw with McDonald's,
it could be the exterior of the restaurant,
right?
Maybe maybe a bit of the yellow awning
and then the stack stone or whatever
it happens to be, right?
So the interior or the exterior
of your restaurant,
it could be a sign, every time people
see a particular sign you're like,
oh, I know who that is.
Or maybe it's a layout of the floor plan.
Or maybe it's the decor, right?
It's a bunch of stuff you
have tacked up to the walls.
You know, those sorts of things. You
walk into Cracker Barrel, you're like,
"Yeah, I know I'm in a Cracker Barrel."
OK?
I don't know if they register
that as trademark or not,
but if you walk into a Cracker Barrel,
you know you're in a Cracker Barrel, right?
And that's really what we're talking about
when we're talking about trade dress and and
going into something like a restaurant.
So one thing to think about
that in order to be registrable,
it has to be non-functional and
it also has to be distinctive.
So what do we mean by non-functional?
Essentially, it means that you
don't have to have like it doesn't
it doesn't
the product doesn't have to have
it in order to function.
OK,
so if we think about a bottle of
Coca Cola. Now a bottle is functional
because it is the function it holds
is holding the liquid inside it.
However, the Coca Cola bottle has,
like, little ribbing all the
way around the bottom, right.
It's a it's the shape
kind of like goes in, right?
We've all seen a
Coca Cola bottle before.
I don't know why I need
to describe it to you,
but but if we take a look at that that
that ribbing sort of around the center.
It is non-functional and so because it's
not necessary in order to hold the liquid in.
So what it is doing is being used
as an indicator of source. So when
you walk into a 7Eleven or wherever
you go and you look across and you
see that contour bottle in the in
the fridge like that's a Coca Cola.
I know it from across the room right?
So that is the trade dress that is
being used as a trademark to indicate
the source of those particular goods.
So it is non-functional because
it's not required.
So think about that with regard
to your restaurant
or your food truck, right?
So, so think about like a seat,
OK, in your restaurant is functional, right?
Because people need to be able to sit down,
right?
So so the fact that it's functional
that would not be protectable.
But what if it is distinctive in some way?
What if that seat for the, you know,
the the fuzzy mushroom mushroom pizza
joint is a is a stool that looks and
feels exactly like like some sort of
weird fuzzy mushroom that you sit on, right?
So in that case,
the seat itself would
be functional,
sure,
but what's being protected is not
the fact that the functionality
of the fuzzy mushroom stool.
It's got this like really cool
sort of like cover,
and it's built to actually look like
a mushroom that you sit on, right?
That would be distinctive.
OK,
so that distinctiveness is what's
going to make people think, oh,
every time I see one of those
fuzzy fuzzy mushroom stools,
I know it's the Fuzzy Mushroom, you know,
Pizza Palace or whatever the heck it is.
OK, so for trade dress,
keep in mind it has to be non-functional
and it also has to be distinctive.
OK,
so that means that people the
consuming public have come to recognize
every time they see that thing.
I know exactly who that is, right?
And so you're going to want to have
as much evidence of that as you can.
If somebody starts to copy you,
you mean like woah, woah,
woah,
I have been using the fuzzy
mushroom stools since 1974.
Look at all these advertisements
in which we say,
"Hey,
come to the Fuzzy Mushroom,
sit on our fuzzy mushroom stools
or or his own like that.
Or maybe it's a review of the
restaurant or or something online.
That said, like, "Hey,
the great thing about you know the
Fuzzy Mushroom restaurant is the
fact that they have these fuzzy
mushrooms. My kids love it.
They want to go and sit on."
That sort of thing, right?
So you would have that sort
of evidence to help
be able to establish a record in case
somebody starts to copy you in the future.
So let's take a really quick
look at some trade dress so you
can see what I'm talking about.
This is, I believe,
the original McDonald's hamburger stand.
Which is I think still standing, right.
So as you can see there on the
left, they have protected this sort
of outline there of the building.
The way the building looks. Is that
functional? Well to some extent, yeah, right.
The arches are probably functional,
maybe to some extent, but they're also
they also have a non-functional aspect to
them and they're also distinctive, right?
So it's possible to protect things
that are partially functional so
long as they are distinctive.
They have a distinctive element to it.
Mendicino Farms. They have registered
their blue and white splotched
cow there as trade dress.
So if you go into any one
of these restaurants,
you'll probably see some version of
the blue and white cow at some place
in the restaurant. What about this?
Any of you West Coasters? Automatically,
you know. Yeah, that's right.
It's an In 'N Out Burger.
And so you walk in,
you immediately know that you're
in an In 'N Out.
You can see, just based on it alone.
Now, as you can see their their stools.
Uh, and their countertops are white, right?
Those are those are functional, right?
But they're also distinctive, right?
The
The combination of the red and
white. Look at the booths.
OK, as you can see here,
they're claiming the red back in the booth,
right? The red chairs.
Anything that's not a dotted line.
They are sort of claiming as trade dress,
right?
So there's the dotted stuff is functional,
right?
The windows are functional.
They're not claiming those pendant
lights that are hanging down,
necessarily as part of the trade dress.
Like doorways, functional, right?
But the subway tile in the background?
The red subway tile,
the the white subway tile,
or like around the countertop,
the silver countertop.
Those are like the elements of the
trade dress that they are claiming.
so you'll walk in even if you
didn't see signs outside, you know,
wow, I'm in an In 'N Out
Burger, great. Same thing here.
You see any signage here?
You know exactly what that is. Right?
It's a Chipotle,
right?
You can tell by the distinctive
chairs that they have registered.
You can tell by the sort of industrial
ducting and plywood sort of stuff
that they have done across the roof.
Now obviously the picture on the
right doesn't exactly match.
I just happen to find this one,
but when you walk into a Chipotle
you know your in a Chipotle.
So think about your restaurant as well,
like when somebody walks into your
restaurant or walks up to your food truck.
Or your walks into your bar.
What is it about that place
that makes people think,
"Oh, I know exactly where I am." Right?
Because if you walk into one of these
restaurants anywhere you go in the world,
you automatically sort of know where you are.
And that's the power of trade dress, right?
I remember hearing someone talk
about The Cheesecake Factory.
You know, pretty much every single one,
it doesn't matter where you are in the
world looks exactly the same, right?
So your experience is exactly the
same no matter where you are and
it's and it's good with regard to
customers feeling comfortable in your
place and knowing, "Oh I know I'm
going to get the exact meal that I'm
used to no matter where I am." Now,
look well, that's good or bad when
you're off travelling and maybe it's
time to have a new experience and
maybe not one you have at home.
Hey, that's that's your own call to make.
OK, but this is sort of how trade dress works.
So you know another thing to think about,
very briefly, is plating.
So it's possible it could be
protectable as trade dress.
There isn't a whole lot of good information
necessarily on whether it is or not,
so this is not me saying yes,
you can protect plating as trade dress.
I don't know.
OK, there is no good answer out there.
No one can really necessarily
give you a good answer.
It's possible it could, if the plating has
as you can see here,
has earned a sufficient reputation
that anytime you see that dish,
I know exactly who that is, right?
So here's an example.
This is Grant Achatz at Alinea.
In Chicago. This is his salad centerpiece,
in which the salad is growing,
quote unquote, growing in that garden.
We have here this egg dish of Andoni
Aduriz at Mugaritz in Spain.
That cube there is actually an egg,
so sort of famous for that.
And this is the Cuban Missile Crisis
Cuban pork sandwich by Chef
Cantu of the restaurant Moto,
also in Chicago. And so apparently the bread,
the pork, and the pickles were flattened,
rolled,
fried, and then wrapped in a collard
green. And then the lit end of the cigar
there is red pepper puree. And the ash is
toasted sesame seeds and spices, right?
So if you saw this dish,
would you automatically sort of like
I know where I am?
Maybe right, right?
You know so
so you can probably see the argument
why it's possible that something
like this could be protectable as
a trademark every time you see it,
you know where you are.
OK, so that's trademarks and trade dress.
I'm going to jump into copyrights
very briefly.
If you have any questions about trade dress,
by all means email TMfeedback@uspto.gov
and I'll try and answer those
questions at the end.
So let's talk through copyrights.
OK, so copyrights,
as you might remember,
protection for creative,
artistic works.
Copyright protection can last for
a very long time.
It lasts 70 years after
the death of the author,
if it's an individual copyright owner.
And 120 years if it's a business
that is the owner of the copyright.
Now the main question I have and I know
I teased it at the very beginning and
it's a question that everybody asks.
What about recipes?
Can I copyright my recipe?
The answer is no. OK, categorically,
you cannot register a recipe as a copyright.
And the reason is, honestly,
it's not artistic.
It is as you can see here.
It's a listing of ingredients, right?
So it's just facts, it's functional,
and it's the directions.
Don't have any sort of creativity in them,
right? It's just a
process. You combine one cup of this.
One cup of that. A teaspoon of this.
A tablespoon of that.
You mix it all together and you
bake it at 350 for 20 minutes.
Whatever, that is, right, right?
So that's that's a recipe.
It's not artistic,
it's just telling you what to do.
Now. That's what the rule is,
right, recipes not protectable by copyright.
However,
if that recipe is sort of
presented in a creative way,
there is a possibility that you
might be able to register this
sort of combination of that stuff
through the copyright system.
So let's say that you've combined
all of the recipes into a cookbook,
and there's some sort of creativity
in terms of the cookbook.
So, you know, it's possible, right?
I'm not saying that you can do that,
but it must be that,
but it would depend on the amount
of creativity that you put into
the combination and creation
of that of that cookbook.
The combination of those things, right?
So it's not just a bunch
of listings of recipes,
but there's this additional creative
element that has been included in it.
Maybe there's a personal
story that you include,
or maybe the description of how you
do it is written out in story form.
If you think, I don't know,
so, you know, think about Shakespeare's
Macbeth. Like the the Witches' Chant, you know.
Boil. Double, double, toil
and trouble. Cauldron burn. Fire burn
and cauldron bubble, right?
Yeah, that that whole thing, that whole list,
they're essentially it's a it's a,
uh, what they're doing is,
you know, creating a spell right?
That's really a recipe of eye of newt and,
you know, toe of frog,
you know, wing of bat and tongue of dog,
right?
You know that sort of stuff right?
All those things that sort of resemble
it's kind of recipe, right,
kind of put it together,
but it's also creative,
right?
And so it's put it together
in a creative way.
Now I'm not saying that if you were
to create a recipe that's like the
Witches' Chant from from from Macbeth, you'd
be able to register this as a copyright.
But you might, OK.
I'm just saying, just think
about that creativity in terms
of your your recipe and if you
want to protect it through a copyright
and how you might be able to do that,
because traditionally you cannot.
Keep in mind, however,
one one very important important thing.
If you are trying to protect a
recipe by copyright because you
don't want anyone else to make it,
that is not going to work, OK.
Because you are then telling
people how to make the thing.
If you are thinking that, "If
I registered as a copyright,
no one else can make it?" Nope,
not going to happen, right, because you
were then essentially advertising
how to make the thing, right.
So the only thing that you'd be
protecting by copyright is your artistic
expression of how to make the thing,
not the steps
for making the thing itself.
If you want to protect the way
that you make the the thing itself
so that nobody else can make it,
well that's going to be a
little bit different,
and we're going to talk about that
when we talk about trade secrets.
OK, so recipes, no,
not traditionally protectable by copyright.
So with regard to your restaurant,
what would be protectable through copyright?
Well,
maybe the way that you've designed your menu.
Maybe there's an artistic way
that you've done it, right.
You've got these various design
things that. So we're talking
about the visual presentation
itself. Maybe there's leaves and branches,
or it's this a cupcake and layered cake
thing that you've that you've made.
Yeah,
that sort of stuff that can be
protectable through a copyright, but but
keep in mind you're not protecting the menu,
right?
You're not protecting the listings of the
of the foods and drinks that are on there.
You're protecting the
overall design of the menu,
not the specific things on there themselves.
If you want to protect the specific
name of a particular food dish,
how do we do that?
Through trademark registration,
that's right.
So if Big Mac was on your menu
and you want to protect that,
it would not be through a copyright,
you would protect the brand name of the
sandwich through a trademark registration.
Websites also protectable through copyright.
OK, very much so.
So if you have a website, yeah,
by all means you can slap that,
you know, copyright symbol on there, right.
You might want to register it
through the Copyright Office,
and it's incredibly important because
a lot of people misunderstand and they
think that just because something is online,
it means that it's free and open,
and it's public domain.
Not true, not true at all.
OK?
So if you are the owner of a
restaurant and you have a website,
you can protect your ribs,
restaurants, website
by copyright and
that's incredibly important
if somebody comes along and tries
to copy yours and like you know,
it's, uh, also there.
They've got a similar restaurant to yours,
and their website is really similar to yours.
Yeah, well, that could be a problem,
and they might have
infringed on your copyright.
OK, so something to keep in mind. Now,
as I mentioned with regard to plating.
Maybe predictable as trade dress,
maybe protectable as a copyright.
It's really unclear there haven't been,
at least to my knowledge anyway,
if somebody knows one, please let me know,
there are no court cases
that say that plated foods are protectable
through copyright, and the question is,
are they really fixed, right?
If we think about oh,
I sang a song and recorded it.
That's fixed in a medium.
I wrote a poem and I and I and
I typed it up on my computer.
It's fixed.
Just putting something on a plate.
Is that really fixed?
Because then it then gets eaten.
Yeah, it's an open question, right?
So it's something to think about anyway.
No really good answer here
about whether plating
is sufficiently fixed in which you
could protect it through a copyright.
Architecture is protectable
through copyright, but keep in mind
the rights belong to the original
designer or the architect, right?
Even though you hired them to design
your restaurant for you, those
designs for the architecture belong
to the architect, him or herself.
OK, if you want
those rights, you need to insist
on language in the contract that
says that all of the intellectual
property with regard to that are
going to be assigned to you.
OK,
so that's going to have to be
a separate thing that's in the
contract itself. Is going to
we're going to write that into the
contract to make sure that you are
going to have rights in the architecture.
And why is that important?
Because let's say you decide to move
from the place you're in your place
got too small because you had too
many people and you want to use
that same sort of architectural
design in the newer place.
Well, guess what. That architect be like,
"No, sorry,
you only had it with regard to this place.
If you want in a bigger place,
well,
you're going to have to pay some
more money in order to license
from me." Or something like that.
Or let's say that you begin to
franchise right and all of a
sudden you're opening up,
you know, Jason's BBQ or Jason's Bakery,
Whatever our example is. Like in places
all around the country, right?
And so you want to have that exact
same architecture because you want to
have it protected through trade dress.
Because every time somebody walks into
a Jason's BBQ, they're like, "Man.
I know I'm in a Jason's BBQ." Right?
And I can tell, right?
So you want to have the rights
to that so you can build
you can have over. Your franchisees
can build anyway all of these other
Jason's BBQ restaurants
all around the country.
And so having those rights means
that those franchisees don't have
to worry about the architect
coming after them and suing them
for copyright infringement.
Right? Oh, and the other thing
too is that if you own the exclusive
rights to that architecture,
it's been assigned to you,
that means that that designer is not going to
be, that architect is not going to be like,
"Hey, I've got an idea for a restaurant,
you know, competitor." Right? And we're like,
"Hey, we've got this idea for a
restaurant that has golden arches in it.
Would you be interested in?" So
so that's going to prevent that
from happening. A big one,
as we move on, is music in restaurants and
this is a question that does come up a lot
and again remember I'm a trademark guy,
right? I'm not necessarily a copyright guy.
I know I, I know enough to be dangerous,
but just keep in mind, so I can't answer
like really in depth questions about this,
OK, I just want I just want to put
that sort of warning out there.
But with regard to copyright. So when you
register something through copyright,
you essentially are being given
or creating a bundle
of rights. They often talk about it,
you know, the the sticks, a bundle
of sticks of copyright protection.
And what that includes is, if you create
something that means that no one else
can copy it without your permission.
Nobody else can distribute it
without your permission.
And the big thing is,
no one can publicly perform
it without your permission.
So let's say that you're a singer
songwriter,
right,
and you've created some some new music,
and you've recorded it. Well,
it becomes a really popular song.
And everybody wants to play it.
If you're a restaurant,
without any without any other
licensing and things like that,
you are not allowed to play publicly,
you know, that that song that this
singer songwriter has come up with, in your
restaurant without authorization. That is
considered a type of public performance.
So I guess the way to think about it
is like let's say that there is like
you put together a playlist and you've
got your little backyard barbecue going on.
You've got a couple of friends over to
hang out and or you're watching the game,
whatever it happens to be.
You can play your playlist among
your among your friends,
you know, 'cause it's private.
But if you take that same playlist
and you take it into your restaurant
or you taking into your bar or you
plug it into the speaker that you've
got hanging on your food truck and you
start blasting it out to everybody
that's in the park that you pulled up into.
Well,
that's considered
a type of public performance.
And so you are publicly performing
those songs without permission.
So that is a potential copyright infringement
that you could get in trouble for
and it could be incredibly expensive.
So the way to avoid infringement is
to is to pay for an annual license.
Now there are lots of different music
performing rights organizations.
They're called PROs.
The BMI, ASCAP, SESAC, GMR.
Those are sort of like the four
main top ones anyway. If you want
to play music in your restaurant
then technically you would want
to make sure you have a license
from the from one or all of the
performing rights organizations.
If if for example with regard to the
direct license, you could get a direct
license from the copyright owner
if you happen to know where they
are. Right? Like. Or you happen to, say
let's say that in addition to
being a restaurant owner,
you're also like this awesome guitarist,
right?
And and singer and and you know that
you're going to be putting on a
show and you're going to be playing
all the songs of Kenny Rogers, right?
OK, and so you're like
"Oh, what I'm going to do is I'm going
to get a license from Kenny Rogers in
order to do all of my Kenny Rogers
songs or his Kenny Rogers songs.
And I'm going to perform." So you
could do that, publicly
perform them, if you had a license
from the copyright owner.
Or if you were going to hire a band to
come and play at your bar or at your
restaurant or in the coffee shop or whatever
it happens to be. If they're playing
all of their own original music,
OK, no covers,
you know, no "Brown Eyed Girl,"
no "Sweet Caroline," nothing like that,
they're playing their own stuff.
Then you could get a license from them
because they are the owners of those songs.
So those are some of the main ways to avoid
a a a copyright infringement.
Another is,
if you're if someone is going to be
playing live music in your venue,
make sure the live music is
in the public domain.
OK,
so it's stuff that nobody else
has the copyright to, right?
Because the copyright has expired.
You know, maybe it's you know,
I think 1924 I think is where
they said anything before 1924
I think is what it just was.
It would be available.
Just keep in mind that sometimes
arrangements of famous
songs are protected by copyright,
so even though Beethoven's "Ode to
Joy" might be in the public domain,
you know newer versions of "Ode
to Joy" might not be, right,
because somebody has arranged it in a new way,
so that's that's something
you have to lookout for.
Uhm,
Another thing too is
maybe if your if your employees come
up with music as part of your, like, "Hey,
you know what we're going to have
a restaurant band and and so
as employees you're going to be
like writing music and performing
and singing and performing music
for us and stuff right?"
So that's a possibility right?
If you make the restaurant the copyright
owner of the stuff that you create
with your employees as you create this,
this band that performs only
in your restaurant or so
or something like that. It doesn't have
to be only in your restaurant, but
but but that could be a way if the restaurant
is involved in the copyright creation.
So, so those are some of the main
ways to avoid copyright infringement,
and so really it's
it's getting a license,
OK, in order to play the music in your
restaurant. That's incredibly important.
So I'm going to hit patents very quickly, right?
We remember what patents are, right?
We're talking about design patents.
We're talking about utility patents.
So with regard to a design patent,
this is possible protection for food, right?
For what the food looks like.
So we're talking about how the food is
displayed or the shape or configuration.
As you can see here,
the protection is limited to 15 years,
but the 15 years comes from
the grant of the patent.
OK, so if the USPTO says, "Yes,
here is your design patent."
Great. 15 years begins from when you get
went from which from the time
of which you were issued,
or granted that patent. Just a
couple of quick examples here.
This is protected by a design patent.
This is kind of a plating, I guess, of shrimp,
right? So this is a serving tray with shrimp.
As you can see here,
the shrimp are sort of like
layered in that particular way.
So this is protected through a design, or was
anyway, protected through a design patent.
Same thing here.
This is a pretzel,
a peace symbol pretzel.
And so that's also was also protected
by through a design patent.
And keep in mind, though,
we're talking about shapes of things,
doesn't that kind of sound familiar?
Doesn't it sort of remind you of trademark
configurations and trademark trade dress?
Yeah, and that's because they
are incredibly similar.
Ways to think about it, is you're
protecting the sort of non-functional,
distinctive things that when
somebody sees that they're like,
"I know who that is.
I know what that is." Right?
So think about Pepperidge Farms
goldfish or the Hershey's Kiss
or a Bugles corn snack.
Those are all sorts of things that I
believe are protected by design patent,
but also,
or at least are three dimensional
trademark configurations anyway.
So I will leave you with this
with regard to design patents.
A design patent last 15 years
from the date of issuance.
How long does a trademark
registration last?
Potentially forever,
so long as you continue to use
your trademark in commerce and
file the documents when they are
due, your trademark registration
could last forever.
So it's going to be up to you to decide.
Do you want to spend the time
and effort in order to protect
yourself through a design patent
of something that lasts 15 years,
or do you want to put the time and
effort into protecting something as
a trademark which could potentially
last for a very long time?
It's up to you, OK,
I'll leave with that.
So that's with design patents.
So what about utility patents?
Those don't just don't come
into play as much with regard to food,
but there's possible protection for
like food inventions, and techniques.
So a new way or a unique
way of preparing a dish.
So maybe it's using molecular gastronomy
to combine foods in some way, right?
Yeah, that that could be something you
could potentially protect through a
patent, if it's new, useful, and non-obvious.
As you can see, your protection
is limited to 20 years,
but this is different from a design patent.
So a utility patent is 20
years from the effective
filing date of the patent.
Not when it's granted,
but from the effective filing
date of the patent, right?
So keep in mind that the the calculation
is a little bit different, done
a little bit differently there.
But you could get protection for
various things that are food related,
like, you know,
here we go. Chef,
Contu of Moto is famous for for
being granted patents for edible
paper that taste like cotton candy.
A fork and corkscrew combination.
A utensil size device that turns into a
plate at the push of a button. A fork,
spoon, knife combination utensil, right?
So so there are lots of things where,
you know, people who are very inventive
can come up with new ways of doing things,
and something could be protected
through a utility patent.
So obviously you're going to
want to talk to a patent attorney
for information about this,
because before you get into
the patent process.
So the patent attorney is going
to be a really great resource for
you and helping you through that.
With regard to recipes, yeah,
it might be possible to patent a recipe,
but it might be a little bit difficult
because in order to be patentable it
must be new, useful and non-obvious.
So combining ingredients to create
something that's new or unexpected,
it's going to be kind of tough,
right?
So if you put in more sugar into something
that doesn't traditionally have sugar,
that might be not obvious,
but but it's also going to get sweeter and
you sort of know that that's going to happen.
So is that really non-obvious,
right?
So so we sort of an open question
whether you could protect
something through patents.
It typically does not result in
something that's patentable,
but something to keep in mind.
And also remember that protection
is limited to 20 years, right?
So and also keep in mind,
with a patent you are publicly disclosing
the way that something is made,
right?
So would you, if you have a recipe
that is and you want to be the only
person who knows how to create this thing?
Do you really want to publicly disclose
it in exchange for just having 20
years of not letting anybody else do it?
You might not. Instead, what you might want
to think about is a trade secret.
So a trade secret, as we know,
is something that
has value because nobody else knows about it,
right? So so it's protection for
information. Such as a recipe, right?
This is a great way to protect your
recipe. Not through copyright, right?
Not through a patent.
Not through a trademark.
But through a trade secret.
And the way you do that is
you keep it secret, right?
So these things, like recipes,
customer lists, vendor lists,
or the specific way that you prepare food.
Those are incredibly important and are
incredibly valuable because it might
be that people come to your restaurant
or come to your food truck or your bar
because they know "I'm going to get the best,
you know, honey-dipped whatever, you know,
I think, and they only do it,
there's one particular way at
Jason's BBQ, right?"
So it might be that that's incredibly
important and you want to keep that secret.
So think about McDonald's secret sauce,
right? We already talked about Coke formula. KFC.
Twinkies recipe, protected by trade secret.
Krispy Kreme Donuts. Also
protected through a trade secret.
Nobody knows exactly how
they make those things.
So how do you do that?
How do you keep something a trade secret?
Well, let's talk about, you know,
the elements of it.
OK,
so it has to be information that has value
because nobody else knows how to
do it. And it has value because they
cannot legitimately obtain it, right?
So there's no way to sort of like reverse
engineer it or something like that.
And also you were doing taking reasonable
efforts to maintain the secrecy, right?
So it's gotta have those
those three things in order
to be held as a trade secret.
And they can last forever.
OK,
so long as you continue to
keep things secret.
So sometimes a restaurant might have
staff sign a non-disclosure agreement.
So it's going to protect that secret
when they move on to another restaurant.
They have signed a contract that
says that they will not disclose
how to make, you know, honey dipped,
you know, barbecue sandwich,
whatever thing that we serve
at Jason's BBQ.
OK, so the ways to protect it.
These are some of the ways.
If you have a signature dish that
you alone are making, chef, and you
don't want anybody else to know,
don't show anybody else how to make it, OK.
Don't write anything down,
and then you can promote it as
your own unique creation, right?
That would be one way,
Or some ways to think about
anyway,
in terms of protecting it through a
trade secret. And here's an example of one.
This is a clear pumpkin pie also by
Chef Achatz at Alinea in Chicago.
So. Not quite sure,
I don't think anybody knows how to
make that thing except for the chef.
OK, all right.
So we have now gone through, wow,
over the last hour and 45 minutes,
trademarks, trade dress, copyrights,
patents, and trade secrets.
I'm very briefly going to hit
how to find help,
and then in the remaining time I'm gonna answer
as many questions as I have, as you have.
OK, so here we go.
Let's talk about how to find help.
If you are new to this and you've
never heard of trademarks and
patents and copyrights before,
what I would encourage you to go
to our website which is uspto.gov.
This is it right here:.
uspto.gov. As you can see here,
if you're interested in learning
about patents, you can hover here.
Go check out the patent basics. If
you want to learn about trademarks,
you can hover here.
I would recommend going to
the Trademark Basics page.
We have all kinds of great
information here about trademarks
and the registration process.
So there's all sorts of great
stuff that you can that you can find.
I would also recommend if
you're interested in learning
more about trademarks to attend
the Trademark Basics Boot Camp.
We're just finishing up a cycle
this week and next week and
we have a brand new cycle.
It's eight sessions, once a week on
Tuesdays at 2:00 PM Eastern, where I'm
going to be talking to you about trademarks.
A lot of stuff I talked about today,
but also we're going to go really in
depth in terms of how to search and do
a clearance search in our database.
How to actually file an application.
I walk you through
the actual application itself.
So if you're interested in
learning more about trademarks,
please come to our website and
you can sign up for the Boot
Camp through our website.
So I want to make you aware of all the
information that's available on uspto.gov.
There is also a downloadable trademarks
booklet, if you want to learn more.
And also we have a bunch of trademark
videos if you just can't get
enough of my big shiny forehead,
well,
be sure to log on and watch some of our
videos, because I appear in pretty
much all of them. So you can learn
more about trademarks through our
Basic Facts about Trademarks series or our
Trademark Information Network series,
which is a news broadcast-style
series. And also when you're
filling out the actual form,
you can watch the TEAS Nuts and
Bolts videos. If you're looking for
legal help and you you're like, "Jason,
I cannot afford it
on my own." Well,
we would recommend you check out
the law school clinic program.
The USPTO has partnered with law
schools around the country and they
have created various clinics. And so you
could apply to be part of that clinic.
And so if you were accepted into the clinic
with your trademark or your patent issue,
you will be working with a trademark or
patent attorney who is a professor there,
or maybe just loosely affiliated
with the school, and you will also
be working with a law student.
You will be getting all of that for free,
OK?
So if you're worried about
the cost and you're
like I want to work with an attorney,
I've got this issue.
Well, I'll tell you what.
Check out our law school clinic program
and see if you can get hooked up with
one of our clinics around the country.
There are about 60 of them at
present and we're in the process,
I think, of expanding to more law schools.
So hopefully they'll be
more opportunities for you.
I'd also recommend the Trademark
Assistance Center and they are our customer
service folks. They love to talk to you.
They love to give away information.
You can give them a call
8:30 AM to 8:00 PM Monday through Friday.
That's Eastern Time.
You can also shoot them an
email at any time.
They always pick up the phone very
quickly by within one or two rings,
but it might take a day or so
in order to get back via email.
Now they cannot provide legal advice.
As I said, I cannot,
Craig cannot, no one at TAC cannot,
no one at the USPTO can provide legal advice.
But they can give you great
information, direct you to resources on
the website and things of that sort.
Keep in mind,
we also don't enforce legal,
your legal rights.
So once you register your trademark,
it's going to be up to you
to protect it right.
Just like it's going to be up
to you to make sure you've got
customers walking in the door, right?
You know,
and doing your own advertising
and stuff like that, right?
It's also going to be up to you and
or your attorney, if you hire one, to
protect your your your trademark
rights and your copyright rights
and your patent rights and all of
your intellectual property rights.
Also,
we cannot recommend specific private
attorneys, even though we do recommend
you might want to work with them.
We cannot necessarily recommend
one that you work with.
We will say,
however,
that working with an experienced
trademark attorney is a great idea.
You will see, as you go online,
if you do a search for trademark
or patent or whatever,
you're probably going to come
across a lot of these companies
with regard to trademarks.
They are sort of often referred
to as trademark filing companies.
You'll see them advertise very cheap rates.
"Get a trademark for X number of dollars."
Uhm? So with regard to those companies.
Just be aware of what you're getting
for the money that you're paying. OK?
And in a lot of these situations, what
you're doing is you're paying them money
to do what you could do on your own.
You're paying them X number of dollars for
them to file your application. However,
because they're not necessarily attorneys,
at least in most of them,
they cannot provide you legal advice.
So really, what are you getting for
the money that you're paying? Right,
you're getting someone to do it for you,
but you're not necessarily
buying legal advice.
So I would say, if you do want
to use one of these companies,
please make sure you research the
company before you jump in and, you know,
slap down your credit card. And see
whether you're going to be working
with an attorney who's going to
be able to give you legal advice.
Because a filing company is just
going to be like. "What are you doing?
What do you want?
OK, will fill it out and here you go."
But an attorney will say, "OK.
So you're a restaurant, right?
OK, so what sorts of specimens
do you have available?
Have you done a search on your name.
What exactly are you providing?
Are you providing any, in addition to
restaurant services,
are you providing delivery services?
Are you also selling your barbecue sauce
and your hot sauce and your T-shirts and
your growlers and your kegs and your whatever?"
Right all those sorts of things?
All those questions that
we've talked about today,
an experienced trademark attorney
is going to ask those questions.
They're gonna say, "What version of your
trademark do you want to register?
Standard character version?
Special form format?"
Right.
All that sort of stuff the
attorney is going to know.
And you're not going to get that necessarily
with the filing companies.
So that's why we always recommend you
work with an attorney because the
attorney can help give you advice,
can help you with the clearance search,
can help you with the application,
can help you when dealing with the USPTO,
can help you enforce your trademark rights?
There is a lot of benefit that you
can get by working with an attorney.
So, I know. "Jason, they're expensive, so move on."
OK, no I get it, I know,
believe me,
I know attorneys are expensive. And
that's why we do recommend you
check out a couple of options here for
free and reduced priced legal services.
There are lots of resources available
through the American Bar Association
and also the International Trademark
Association. INTA. Top top top
trademark folks around the world.
They have their pro bono clearinghouse.
So you might want to check that
out and see if it's something
that would work for you.
The other thing we recommend,
this again is not legal advice,
but it's business advice. These
are the Patent and Trademark
Resource Centers, the PTRCs. These are
librarians around the country
that we have partnered with that have
specific patent and trademark knowledge.
You can probably find one at one of
the larger libraries near you and
they would be able to help you with
some patent and trademark questions.
Again, not legal advice, OK?
But they should be able to
give you some information.
We also recommend SBDCs, which are
the Small Business
Development Centers. They're part of
the Small Business Administration,
one of our sister agencies.
And these folks are great.
We always recommend them for, in
terms of free business advice.
They can help you with a business plan.
Maybe help you with financing,
help you with permits.
All that sort of stuff that you might need.
So we'd recommend checking out the SBDCs.
OK, wow. We only have 6 minutes left,
so I'm going to answer as many
questions as I can in six minutes.
Craig,
if you are available to come on
the line and let's see what we
can get through in six minutes.
-Jason, can you repeat when
you would use the trade dress
approach versus a design patent?
What is the advantage or
disadvantage of each? -Sure so,
again, I cannot give legal advice.
OK, but I would say with regard to
deciding between the two of them,
I would probably look most at how
long the protection is going to last,
and if a design patent is only
going to last you 15 years.
I I'm not quite sure what you gain
through that, as opposed to registering
it as a sort of a configuration or
through a trade dress for the trademark.
Because that's going to give you
long term protection as your as your
business continues to expand and grow.
So it's really probably going to
be up to you and your attorney.
Hopefully you're going to be
working with an attorney on this.
Certainly before filing for a design patent,
we'd recommend one,
obviously for filing for
a trademark registration.
But that to me anyway,
like maybe there's and I know that there are
several attorneys who have logged in today.
If one of them has a specific answer
with why a design patent would be
better than a trademark registration,
by all means, shoot an email to TMfeedback.
Love to hear that.
But I don't necessarily know why
you would choose a design patent
over a trademark registration.
But obviously maybe somebody knows
a little bit better than me.
What's next? -Uh, there isn't
anything next, Jason, that could be
easily covered orally. There are
there's always a few that I need to do,
an email follow up. -Sure.
OK, well, I'll tell you what.
Here's what I'll what I'll do is we as
we close out over the next say four minutes
or so. We'll give a little bit of time
if people want to add like shooting an email,
maybe hopefully we can get to it
within the next three to four minutes.
But what I will do.
I know I showed you already
the Trademark Basics Boot Camp.
But some of you might want to
know where to find more things.
More things like this.
Maybe you came through us through Eventbrite
You've never heard of the USPTO before.
You just happened to click
on a link that you saw.
That sounds interesting.
That sounds like me.
OK, so obviously this is the website.
What I would recommend you do, if you
want to find more events like this.
Let's go to "Learning and resources."
You hover over that and you come
over here to the right to "Events."
Click on "Events."
And you are going to see all the
different events that we have going on at
the USPTO now and heading into the future.
OK, so if you were somebody
who is interested in patents,
they sometimes, the Patent side
will run a Patent Basics Boot Camp
similar to Trademark Basics
Boot Camp. They are currently running
something called the Path to a Patent.
They're obviously already
into Part 3 right now,
but here's the Path to a Patent series.
And so if you're interested in
learning more about patents,
you can check this out here.
You can sign up for each of these
individual, individual sessions.
So as you can see,
you know, it started at the beginning of July.
And hopefully they're going to be
doing another session again sometime,
maybe, maybe in in this winter, so.
So that's another thing you might want to
think about if you're interested in patents,
yeah?
-Uh, if I can interrupt
because you did a shout out,
see if any attorneys had any suggestion.
I'm going to read one that came in. -Great.
-I would use.
I'd use the design to get the time
of exclusive use for the trademark.
-Ah, interesting.
OK,
so it's sort of a combination filing, I guess.
So trying to get the protection first
before the trademark registration comes in.
-Well,
unfortunately, I only know what was
written in the in the response.
I I don't want to expand on that.
-OK. Cool. Alright, well that sounds
like, you know,
kind of a sort of a sort of a 1-2 punch there.
So yeah, so cool.
Thank you very much for writing
it and I appreciate that.
I'm sure all the folks on the
call appreciate that as well,
so thank you very much for
for sending that in.
The other thing else I'll
say is if folks have
questions about copyrights,
'cause obviously copyrights is not
something that we do at the USPTO.
'cause as you can see,
here is the Patent and Trademark Office.
So what I would recommend,
though, is you go to
copyright.gov, which is the U.S. Copyright
Office. And the folks there are really
great, our colleagues, Craig and I,
we have colleagues that do
the exact same thing we do,
but they do them for copyrights and they have
lots of great information here as well.
You can find all sorts of things. I
happen to really like their circulars.
And these are all downloadable.
If you want to learn about say copyright
basics and registration and notice
and all sorts of things like that,
there are all sorts of great
information here in easily downloadable
form at the Copyright Office.
So if you have copyright questions,
I would say that would be a great place,
great place to go. But but but check out
the source of all sorts of different
events that we have going on at the USPTO.
You'll find all sorts of you know,
pretty cool, pretty cool things.
So, uh, we're just about at time,
so I will go ahead and start to to
close this out here and say thank
you very much for watching today.
I know it's been an incredibly fast two hours.
I mean, I know I talked very quickly,
and I apologize for that.
But there's so much information
that I want to get to and so much
information that it's, I think, it's
important that you learn and hopefully
will be able to help you with your
help you with your business.
So if you enjoyed today,
I'd encourage you to sign up for the
Trademark Basics Boot Camp. You're
going to be spending a lot more time with me.
And a lot more time with Craig as well.
So by all means, please, we would
love to have you.
We have another cycle that is beginning,
boy, at the beginning of August, I guess.
So feel free to sign up for that
and hopefully we'll see you
then. As I mentioned, you will be
getting an email from Eventbrite
shortly, if not right now, and it
will have a downloadable link to
the downloadable slides from today
and also a link to the survey.
So we encourage you to to fill that out.
We do look at the survey results.
We are always trying to do better,
to make sure that you have the information
that you can need, that you need in
order to help you with your business.
So thank you very much for tuning in today.
Take care and we'll see at
the next USPTO event.
Thanks.