In this intellectual episode, Andrei Mincov, CEO of Trademark Factory® International Inc., shares how he built the only firm in the world that offers trademarking services with a predictable result for a predictable budget.
You will discover:
– Why and when to apply for a trademark
– A simple way to structure your international trademark strategy
– How the rich think about trademarks differently than everyone else (even before they become rich)
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello Hello and welcome welcome once again to the secrets of the high demand coach and I am here with yet another high demand coach and expert. It is the one the only Andrei Mincov who became an intellectual property lawyer when his father caught a radio station stealing his music to advertise for Samsung. He filed his very first complaint and case from the bottom court all the way up to one level short of the Supreme Court of Russia. And one, at the pinnacle of his career. He is recognized as one of Russia’s top five intellectual property lawyers and Andre helped many multibillion dollar clients protect their intellectual property, including you might have heard of them, Apple, Microsoft, Sony, DreamWorks, JK Rowling, and Ford. He moved to Canada and founded the trademark factory international using a unique business model. And they’ve helped 1000s of entrepreneurs to trademark their brands with a guaranteed result for a guaranteed budget. Well, Andre, glad to have you on the show. We’re excited to jump into this. I’ve heard you say if it’s worth promoting, it’s worth protecting. Tell us a little bit. What do you mean by that?
Andrei Mincov
Well, first of all, excited to be on your show. And I think that, yeah, this is not just a saying it’s one of our trademarks that we’ve trademarked. And my point with that was, if you’re spending any time, if you’re an entrepreneur, if you’re spending any time, any money, any effort, try to promote your brand to go out there and ask people find out about you remember you, whether you’re spending any money on ads, it means you’re, you’re thinking ternary, that you’ve got something valuable. So it’s crazy for you to not also want to protect that. Because if you’re not building your brand, you’re building a brand for someone else. Right? And that’s a big problem.
Scott Ritzheimer
Wow. And so you’ve experienced this firsthand. You kind of mentioned in the bio here, this is something that’s not just an abstract idea. It’s something that’s really meaningful and personal to you. Tell us a little bit about what happened with your father, and how did all of that go down?
Andrei Mincov
So back in the day, as you mentioned in the bio, I was living in Russia still attending my first law school there, you know, and one day, I come back from from from law school and see my dad is just raging like he’s mad as hell, I like what what’s going on. And he’s like, we called this radio station that took the song that actually used to sing with him when I was a little boy, like, I was like, eight or 910, eight, whatever. The guy that used to sing it on stage of like, he’d do a concert. he’d called me for the last couple of songs, I’d say those couple of songs, and I’d get all the flowers and all the canyons. But so it was it was one of those songs that they took, and they turn that into an ad for an event by Samsung. So he called the radio station. And they told him that they could just take his music and used use it as they pleased to wish they said that he should just sit down, shut up and be grateful that they were making his music even more popular. And if you knew my dad, you’d know right away, it was a wrong thing to say to him. So he said, Okay, great. I’ll see you. And of course, he slammed out the phone. And the funny thing was that it was 1996 when Russia has just transitioned from post Soviet copyright laws, which really didn’t protect anyone to more or less modern age remarket copyright laws, which did authors prediction problem is, there were no lawyers who actually had any experience without stuff. Right? So he came and asked if I could help him with this. And I said, Well, I know nothing about intellectual property. Well, aren’t you in law school? And I like Well, yeah. And like, I’ve always admired him, I’ve always wanted to gain His approval. And I say, Well, you don’t mind me dyno, the learning this as I go and build this plane as I have would abide by be glad to do that. And so we did. And I, as you mentioned, I started, started, started a law law case, wall suit took us about two and a half years to take it from all the way the bottom to the second highest court in the nation. And we won and the rest is history. And I always say she was my first and favorite client, right? Because I’ve before I left Russia in oh seven. There had not been a single federal TV channel that I have not sued over his music. And I’ve won every time and all we have to do is once because next time we would catch now I’m doing something stupid. All I have to do is just say, now that we’ve gotten to it again, it’s and what They each wanted to get their, their, you know, their their, to test to test the legal system with their theories. And every time I was able to win, so and it was, it was, it was fun little journey there. And then when I moved to Canada, I realized I wanted I wanted to kind of switch from copyright into into trademarks and more entrepreneurial kind of stuff then, because I really wasn’t feeling that that much of a connection there.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, that’s actually where I wanted to go next. Because I think a lot of folks the whole idea of intellectual property and the law just, it’s overwhelming. So is, you know, is there a difference between copyrights and trademarks? You know, we see the little c and the TM and the R like, what does all of that mean? Give us kind of the simple need to know for a business owner?
Andrei Mincov
Sure. So I actually wrote a book about this many years ago, I had my nine year old then nine year old daughter proofread it, because I wanted to make sure that whatever is in the book can be understood by a nine year old. And what are the core concepts there is understanding the difference between different types of IP. So copyright protects content, right, your music, your videos, your texts, your images, your photographs, your software. So the stuff that content, right, the trademarks protect identity, right, so if you go to a store, and you pass through the shells of ketchup, and so on, we’re gonna say fines and so on, we’re gonna say something else. There is the same glop in that bottle. But the trademarks allow you to pick one ketchup from all the other ones. Patents, that would be the third main type, which is and patents protect inventions. So you came up with a genius idea, a brand new product, or a brand new way of doing things. That’s what you can protect with bad and so intellectual property is really interesting in the sense that it protects different things, different ways. And most people who don’t really understand how it works, oh, always get pissy about, you know, how can you own a dictionary or like, you know, you didn’t invent the word for trademarks. And like, that’s the whole trademark with the purpose of protection with trademarks is not that you have to come up with a new word like Apple, like they didn’t invent the word apple, but their brand board is worth a few billion dollars. Well, if you doesn’t billion dollars, 200 billion. And that’s not because they create, they came up with a name, it’s because they built a very strong brand, that now they have the monopoly over to be able to say to all of our competitors, you can’t use that. And that’s what trademarks do.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. So how does someone know whether or not it’s time for a trademark? It’s one of those things that can feel like, Oh, we’ll get to it later. We’ll get to it later. And then you don’t really find out that you need it until you need it. So how do folks know when the right time is to apply?
Andrei Mincov
So you should set it really well. By the time you become biggest successful, someone will have trademarked your brand, might as well be you. And the there’s their stuff, a few ways that you can look into it. But I came up with a framework that I think should make it really easy. So first question you ask yourself with this brand, are you building a business? Or is it just a side hustle a hobby, something like that, and there’s nothing wrong with running a side, hustle or, or a hobby, I’m not trying to look down on the other people because you know, that’s nothing wrong with that. But if it is a side hustle that you don’t say, you’re gonna grow beyond where it is today, then unless it’s an ego thing, which again, there’s nothing wrong with it being an ego thing. There’s probably no economical or legal reason for you to own that trade. If it is a business, then you ask yourself two questions. The first question you ask yourself is, if this business gets as successful as I hope it will be, right, everything goes according to the plans and, you know, the dream comes true. Will I still be selling these products or the services that I’m currently selling under the same brand, two or three years from now? The the reason you look at that timeframe is because trademarking is a long process. You don’t want to go into that process, knowing that by the time you get that trademark, you won’t need it anymore. Right? Well, why do I do that? But if you think that, if that that brand is still going to be around, you’re not building a bat that’s only going to last six months, right? Then you ask yourself the last question, the last question is, again, assuming everything goes as well as you hope it will. Will the brand help you build that business by? Will it help you get more customers would help you get more people to find out that you exist? Will it increase your help you increase your sales conversion rates? While we’d help you attract better talent? Will it help you increase valuation in the eyes of your investors? And if your answer to that question is no, it’s not going to do any of that, then my advice is go back to the drawing board and come up with a brand that can because really, that’s the big reason successful companies come up with brands is that first your word for the brand, then the word start working for you by dead with top talent. You know, think about it, like if you if you if you’re a software developer, and you have two offers on the table, one is from Google, and the one is from a no name startup. For you to go work with a no name startup, you probably want to get paid a lot more than you will accept from Google simply because Google’s name on your resume means a lot more than no name start, right. And that’s how it works. So if like I said, if your brand is not going to do any of that for you come up with a different brand. And if you think it is going to do at least one of those things for you, then I would say go and trademark it as soon as possible. Because the easiest time for you to get that trademark is when nobody knows you, is when you don’t have angry competitors. When you don’t have jell O’s, you know, copycats, when the brand needs nothing to pretty much nobody but you might you may go and do a small market test to confirm that people want what it is that you’re planning to offer to them. And if you see a glimmer of hope that this might be the thing, go and trademark it before someone else figures out that it’s nothing.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah. So again, so business is getting more and more international. It feels like every day now, right? Especially post COVID that everyone’s on Zoom, the boundaries are getting less and less obvious. From a business standpoint. How do you trademarks work internationally? Is there anything special that a business needs to concern itself with?
Andrei Mincov
So there’s no such thing as a global trademark protection. Trademarks are done in a per country basis, there are international treaties that make it easier for you to file one trademark and multiple jurisdictions at the same time. But in the end of the day, you’re still going to end up with separate trademark registrations, and that’s going to cost you a pretty penny. So I have a rule of thumb for what business owners should consider in terms of where they should trademark their brand. First, you always start with your home country. Right? And when I say home country, it’s if you’re filing in your personal name will obviously work use the country where you’re the citizen. If your company then when the where are the company’s registered? That you always start there. There’s no no no, no other option. The second tier of countries that you should look at is where you think you’re going to be making a lot of revenue from. Right? If you’re a Canadian business, for example, but most of your sales come from the US, you want to be Canada and US. Right? If you think you’re gonna get some sales from European Union people get a trademark there. By the way, with European Union, you can actually get one single trademark that covers 27 countries. And, and, but don’t go crazy with that. Because you know, just because you might have an occasional sale from you know, one person and that in some other country doesn’t necessarily mean you need a trademark back. Yeah, my magic number is 30k a year. If you have at least 30k A year from a certain jurisdiction, go get a trademark. The third tier is countries where you have a lot of expenses, whether you’re targeting ads to a particular country, or you have an office, a branch, something like that. Again, if you show interest in a particular country, so so much so that you’re spending money to have a presence there. Protect your brand there, right and they’re booked the numbers even lower, I think it’s like 5k a year. And lastly, the fourth category, which a lot of people don’t realize is that you have physical products made overseas. Even if you don’t plan to sell a single item there. You got to trademark get a trademark there because if you don’t, and somebody else does, then they can stop you from exporting your own products that you paid for, well, country to where you want to sell it. Right and we had a situation with an eBay company out of us. I can’t provide detail specifics, but it was just a complete horror show. So the guy thought a factory in China made a huge order to make those e bikes, though, that paid for the order, they made the bikes that put those bikes in a container that put that container on a ship. And then the captain of the ship got presented with a demand letter for someone who trademarked that brand. And say, you can’t take that container out of China, because we own that trademark. And it came to our knowledge that you are trying to transport bikes marked with our trademark. And so the captain of the ship communicates with a factory owner, the factory owner sends a message to the to the to the to the US guy and says, We can’t ship your bikes as a what, what what, what can’t you do? Right? And so he’s out of money is making the bikes but he can have the bikes, right? He’s got all those pre order. Like he was just nightmare. And of course, you know, the the guys did it, because they, they expected him to pay up and just buying that trademark off of them. And it’s a situation when you really don’t have a good solution. What are you gonna do you gotta leave rolls by to container? No, right, you got to pay those guys, you know a lot of money, you still don’t want to do that. But the only good solution to that was to jump into a time machine and go back to one day before those other guys fall their trademark. But it’s not
Scott Ritzheimer
Moral of the story, do not make your IP policy or plan dependent on time machine, it’s probably not going to be super helpful.
Andrei Mincov
And you know, that goes really well. The first question you asked me, When should I trademark your brand? Right? When should I trade about my brand? And really the question is that you got to do that one day before somebody else does it? Yeah. I think I just came up with a good piece of market injection. Really, you can do it any time. But as long as that’s one day before somebody else does it. Right? You don’t know when they do?
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. Yeah. So there’s a question I like to ask all my guests. And it is this what is the one thing what is the biggest secret that one thing that you wish everybody watching or listening today knew?
Andrei Mincov
Uhm I think it’s that a lot of people think that intellectual property is just for the big guys. For the big companies with billions of dollars, but not for the little guy. And I think just the opposite. Because the big guys have all the money in the world that they can drown you with live, you know, litigation, and you know, old our motions, and, you know, all all that wonderful stuff that the lawyers do, they have the money to do that, even if they’re wrong, and you’re still going to lose. IP is designed to help the little guy fight with the big guys. Because then at least you have something that you can fight them with. And if you do, there’s going to be a wind up all the lawyers will want to sue the big guys, because they see a potential win and big guys out of money. Right? So don’t look at intellectual property and trademarks, in particular, as something that I’m going to do it later when I become big and famous. Again, by the time it’s going to be too late. And if you look at all the success stories, you’ll see that these guys file our trademarks really early on might one of my favorite examples is bird, that electric scooter company. So they filed they were actually one of the buy them. So I think I read the news some sometime in 22 or 21 they became the fastest company to get to a billion dollar valuation right in history. And what they did is they father a trademark 13 days after they started the company. Like before any launches before hating any announcements or any bank by the EU, they started the company that you went for our trademark because they knew that if they are to become successful, they needed to own the brand. Because there’s a lot of scooters out there. So they wanted to make sure that they could stop everyone else from pulling their scooters burned. And they do and they did and now now you know they’re a billion dollar company. But when they started they weren’t they were just few kids in a garage. And that’s what pretty much every single business when it started was a nothing burger. And you know, there’s this wonderful image that gets passed around all the time with the whey powder so huge companies look alike. When they started those companies, and he said, would you have invested? Like, I think it was like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, all those, right? They don’t work like someone’s who will have built a billion dollar company. They didn’t have the money to but they had the brains to act like what you what you’re building is worth something. So that’s really probably the the one secret that I don’t want you to be someone who who succeeds on the second try after your first brand was stolen from you. I want you to do it right the first time, right because it hurts, you know, Robert Kiyosaki with his wallets, Velcro, right. It’s he he won’t, he always talks about this, that he came up with this genius idea about velcro wallets, and he didn’t bother to protect it. And so the whole business was ruined, because all because of all the copycats. Right, it taught him a great lesson. But I wish I’m sure he wishes he didn’t have to learn that lesson in the heart. So that’s that’s kind of the secret.
Scott Ritzheimer
Fantastic. Well, Andrei, there’s some folks listening. And this is just that last, like, Oh, my goodness, I have not done this. I have to do it. I have to move now. But they’re still like, how do I do that? You know, how it feels foggy and muddy that like how do you actually do it? I believe that’s where your company comes alongside and helps to tell us a little bit about what you’re doing and how folks can get in touch with you.
Andrei Mincov
Sure. So Trademark Factory, as you mentioned, we’re the only firm out there that offers trademarking services with a guaranteed result for a guaranteed budget. And what that means is that, first of all, we don’t want you to file a trademark that has no chance of going through, we’ll tell you right away. And if if your trademark has less than favorable chance, you should either get a full refund or come up with something else. Right. There’s no point wasting your time and money on a brand that you can’t own. And if we file your trademark, and it still gets rejected for whatever reason, you got all your money back. That’s the boast. That’s the strongest selling proposition that we have around trademark fat. Now, there’s, there’s two paths that you guys can take. First is if you just want to learn more about trademarks, you can check out our YouTube channel. I’ve posted over 1000 videos there. If you have a question about trademarks, I probably answered it more than once. So you just go to YouTube and he started for trademark factory. And if you’re an entrepreneur who’s been sitting on a brand thinking, Hey, do I need to trademark that or not go to trademark factory.com. There’s a big button that allows you to request a free call with one of our strategy advisors Free call. And their job on that pole is to listen to you to understand your story. And help you figure out whether you are in the situation when you need to trademark bad brand. And if you have multiple how to prioritize it, you start with a name and go with the logo. Do you go with this country without country? So their job is to help you get that clarity on that call. So that whether you go with us or you go with someone else, which is why would you but even if you don’t go with us, you’ll still go out of that hole with clarity about what you need to do with your brand. And I and that poll is free. So start there and we’ll we’ll you know if you see that there’s a good fit between what we can do for you and what you’re looking for. We’ll be happy to add you to the trademark factory family. We’ve done this for over 4000 people and you can be one of them.
Scott Ritzheimer
Fantastic. Andrei thank you so much for being on the show. It’s just an honor privilege having you here fantastic conversation for those of you watching listening you know that your time and attention mean the world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact Andrei Mincov
Andrei Mincov became an intellectual property lawyer when his father caught a radio station stealing his music to advertise Samsung. He filed his very first case from the bottom court up to one level short of the Supreme Court of Russia and won. At the pinnacle of his career, he was recognized as one of Russia’s top 5 IP lawyers. Andrei helped many multi-billion-dollar clients protect their intellectual property, including Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Dreamworks, J.K. Rowling, and Ford. He moved to Canada and founded Trademark Factory® International Inc. using a unique business model. They helped thousands of entrepreneurs trademark their brands with a guaranteed result for a guaranteed budget.
Want to learn more about Andrei Mincov’s work at Trademark Factory? Check out his website at https://trademarkfactory.com
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