This podcast episode dives into the crucial differences between copyright and trademark, providing listeners with valuable insights to navigate the complexities of intellectual property. Scott shares personal experiences, including a humorous yet eye-opening encounter with Patagonia over trademark infringement, illustrating the potential pitfalls of using brand names without proper research. Kevin joins the discussion, bringing a lighthearted tone as they both reflect on their journey of learning how to podcast. The episode emphasizes the importance of understanding legal protections for creative works, encouraging aspiring podcasters to do their homework before launching their shows. Throughout the conversation, Scott and Kevin blend humor and practical advice, making a potentially dry topic engaging and accessible for their audience.

Takeaways:

• Trademark and copyright serve different purposes; trademarks protect branding while copyrights cover original works.
• Understanding the difference between trademark and copyright is crucial for content creators today.
• Filing for a trademark involves costs and a lengthy process, but it helps protect your brand.
• Even if you don’t plan to sell merchandise, filing for a trademark can safeguard your podcast name.
• Be aware that using a trademarked name can lead to legal issues, as seen with Scott's Patagonia cease and desist.
• Researching existing trademarks on the USPTO website is a smart move before launching your podcast.

Links referenced in this episode:

• USPTO.gov
• legalzoom.com

Mics used

Scott: Samsung Q2U

Kevin: Sure MV88

email us

Scott's podcast

Kevin's podcast

Scott: 00:00:00

Now it's recording.

Scott: 00:00:02

Let me change your name.

Kevin: 00:00:03

, like Squad Caster something: 6000

Scott: 00:00:08

Okay, you bet.

Scott: 00:00:10

Ready?

Kevin: 00:00:11

Yeah.

Scott: 00:00:12

All right.

Scott: 00:00:12

Born ready.

Scott: 00:00:14

Born ready.

Kevin: 00:00:17

Welcome to the idiot's guide to podcasting.

Scott: 00:00:31

Welcome back to the idiot's guide to podcasting.

Scott: 00:00:36

Number four, number episode.

Scott: 00:00:38

Episode number four, most likely, depending on how we organize this and put these out.

Scott: 00:00:43

But if folks remember from the last episode, I had kind of teased at the end, talking about some trademark copyright stories that I've come across across all my various dabblings on the Internet, to include some cease and desist letters that I received from one smaller company and actually one very, very big company, probably a year and a half, maybe two years ago.

Scott: 00:01:16

So before we get to that, for folks listening, if you guys enjoy this, just leave us a review wherever you're listening.

Scott: 00:01:23

This podcast is about the two of us.

Scott: 00:01:25

Kevin and I were brothers learning how to podcast together.

Scott: 00:01:28

I've been doing it for a couple years.

Scott: 00:01:30

Kev, you've been doing it for, you know, minus two months.

Kevin: 00:01:33

Yes.

Kevin: 00:01:34

T minus, actually.

Scott: 00:01:36

Yeah, t minus to the official launch as.

Scott: 00:01:39

As we're recording this.

Scott: 00:01:40

We haven't even launched this particular podcast yet because we're going to probably record one season at a time.

Scott: 00:01:47

So, kev, what do you know about the difference just off the top of your head, because it's probably a good place for most people to start.

Scott: 00:01:55

What do you know the difference, you know about the difference between trademark and a copyright or any of those things?

Kevin: 00:02:02

That's a good question.

Kevin: 00:02:02

I'm gonna play.

Kevin: 00:02:03

Play the hardcore idiot on this one.

Kevin: 00:02:06

I know that when I see the TM for trademark around, it's usually on products, and copyrights are usually on, like, written material.

Scott: 00:02:22

Yeah, that's actually, that's actually pretty good.

Scott: 00:02:24

So in the era, in light of all the AI that's going on, I actually generated a podcast outline for those, if you are interesting, who are learning on podcasts, learning how to podcast with us.

Scott: 00:02:39

I just kind of started with a baseline of going into chat GPT and saying, actually, I use Google Bard for this one.

Scott: 00:02:50

That's their free AI tool.

Scott: 00:02:52

I said, hey, give me a podcast outline about trademark versus copyright, and it generated an outline, and I.

Kevin: 00:02:59

That's what this is.

Scott: 00:03:01

That's.

Kevin: 00:03:01

That's what this is what we're looking at right now.

Kevin: 00:03:03

Dang.

Scott: 00:03:03

Well, yeah, yeah, what we're looking at.

Scott: 00:03:05

So I had kind of.

Scott: 00:03:07

I tweaked a couple little things.

Scott: 00:03:09

I kind of highlighted and bolded a couple things, but you're right.

Scott: 00:03:13

So a copyright and a trademark.

Scott: 00:03:15

They're two different things.

Scott: 00:03:16

They are not.

Scott: 00:03:17

Absolutely not the same thing.

Scott: 00:03:18

And I, before we go too far, Kevin and I aren't lawyers.

Scott: 00:03:21

I'm in the military.

Scott: 00:03:23

Do not take our advice as legal advice.

Scott: 00:03:25

I'm just telling you what I found on the Internet.

Kevin: 00:03:28

I already told you, the idiot.

Kevin: 00:03:29

So.

Scott: 00:03:30

Right.

Scott: 00:03:30

Which is, you know, we're relaying what we found on the Internet, and I'm also relaying what I've learned through my own experience because I have filed for a trademark.

Scott: 00:03:41

So I'll talk about that a little bit later.

Scott: 00:03:43

So I'll give you my experience filing for a trademark.

Scott: 00:03:47

Well as getting cease and kind of like a cease and desist, I don't know what they're called.

Scott: 00:03:52

Like a cease and desist type letter from a small company that sells online merchandise surrounding kind of history type content and then just kind of throw the spoil out there.

Scott: 00:04:04

I actually received a notification from Patagonia about two years ago.

Scott: 00:04:08

Like the Patagonia clothing brand company.

Scott: 00:04:10

One of their lawyers sent something out to me and I'll talk about why here in just a little bit.

Scott: 00:04:17

So the difference between a copyright and a trademark is that copyright, like you said, copyright protects original works of authorship in a tangible medium.

Scott: 00:04:28

So this is written work, music, visual art, you know, so kind of like it could be certain videos, films and stuff like that.

Scott: 00:04:40

You can, you don't necessarily have to register a copyright from what I understand, in order for the material to be copyrighted.

Scott: 00:04:50

It's kind of in most places, and again, not a lawyer, I believe the copyright is inherent when you create the work.

Scott: 00:04:58

However, to be able to better legally defend that copyright, the smart thing to do would be to register for a copyright.

Scott: 00:05:07

Right.

Scott: 00:05:07

So that's why you'll see the c with the circle around it.

Scott: 00:05:11

So that's where that kind of copyright comes from.

Kevin: 00:05:15

So I mean, just, just off the cuff here.

Kevin: 00:05:18

I don't see that on a lot of podcast like pages or, you know, podcasts websites or something like that.

Kevin: 00:05:26

Like, I don't see that a lot.

Scott: 00:05:28

Yeah.

Scott: 00:05:28

So, so I see it a little bit in the back end of my podcasting hosting platform that I use.

Scott: 00:05:35

I use captivate.

Scott: 00:05:36

Highly recommend that.

Scott: 00:05:37

And we'll talk about podcasting platforms in a future episode.

Scott: 00:05:42

So there is some, and again, I am not an expert on this, but from what I understand, there is some inherent copyright that comes with kind of just creating the work.

Scott: 00:05:55

You know, it's to be the same reason that on YouTube you can't create a video of your own using, I don't know why I'm thinking of this band, but nickelback, you can't use a nickelback song, right, to just create a video all the time.

Scott: 00:06:13

You can't use a song of theirs on YouTube because the music is copyrighted.

Scott: 00:06:18

There's a company that holds the rights.

Scott: 00:06:21

If it's not the band, then it's UMG or universal or whatever, these, these companies that hold the copyright for that song.

Scott: 00:06:28

And you'll actually get copyright strikes or copyright hits, you know, things like that.

Scott: 00:06:33

If you try to do that and those companies, the software is automatic where it can catch it.

Scott: 00:06:40

So yeah, you're right, really, in podcasting, you don't have to sweat copyright.

Scott: 00:06:45

Now, trademark, what that protects is the trademark protects either a distinct symbol like name, phrase, slogan, or logo that distinguishes basically a product and potentially like the name of a show or a service.

Scott: 00:07:08

So it's focused on branding and preventing consumer confusion.

Scott: 00:07:13

That confusion piece is very, very key, and I'll talk about that a little bit more.

Scott: 00:07:20

So the scope, it's kind of whatever you're applying it to.

Scott: 00:07:23

Like when we applied.

Scott: 00:07:24

So we run a YouTube channel called Walk with history.

Scott: 00:07:27

Jen, my wife and I do, and we wanted to file the trademark for walk with history.

Scott: 00:07:33

You can file it for just a name or you could file it for a logo.

Scott: 00:07:38

Like if I'm sure that Pepsi has their kind of logo trademarked, right.

Scott: 00:07:45

They're kind of classic yin and yang looking type, type logo.

Scott: 00:07:49

So we wanted to trademark, not necessarily our logo because we do have one, but we wanted to trademark the name walk with history so that it, ideally it wouldn't be able to be used.

Scott: 00:08:03

Or we could try to challenge anybody that tries to use that name, any sort of future similar type of medium.

Scott: 00:08:16

So, you know, if someone wanted to create another, like a television show using our name walk with history, we could say, hey, legally you're not allowed to use that name.

Scott: 00:08:26

That's ours.

Scott: 00:08:27

We have a trademarked, you're not authorized to use that because we filed this trademark.

Scott: 00:08:32

And there's certain categories you can file it under.

Scott: 00:08:35

It says right here in our kind of outline, the trademark grants the owner exclusive rights to use that mark.

Scott: 00:08:43

And they can call the mark three words, one word, you know, whatever that is.

Scott: 00:08:50

It could be the logo with specific goods and services.

Scott: 00:08:53

So also, if you're filing the trademark under, you know, kind of published video, historical content or something like that, then that's where that you would have legal standing to tell people, hey, you're not allowed to use that.

Scott: 00:09:11

And really what it says here, even in our outline, and this is what I saw when I received those notifications from both Patagonia and this other company.

Scott: 00:09:20

It says, this means that others cannot use a similar mark in a way that might confuse consumers about the source of the products or services.

Scott: 00:09:29

So I'll tell you guys my Patagonia story.

Kevin: 00:09:31

Yeah.

Kevin: 00:09:32

Yeah.

Scott: 00:09:35

I've dabbled with online websites, my own website, and this, that and the other.

Scott: 00:09:38

For multiple years, I've had multiple ones.

Scott: 00:09:41

I just, like trying and building that stuff and just testing that kind of stuff out.

Scott: 00:09:46

So a couple years ago, I had read this article that just caught my eye, and it was all about the Patagonia dad.

Scott: 00:09:54

And it was a tongue in cheek article, you know, about.

Scott: 00:10:00

I don't remember what publication published it, but they.

Scott: 00:10:03

It was a tongue in cheek article about the Patagonia dad that has, you know, the.

Scott: 00:10:07

The vest, you know, for the fall.

Scott: 00:10:09

And, like, they pass their stuff down to their kids and, like, all the cliches, and then they just kind of made a picture of you, and they had a picture of someone who looked a lot like me, you know, wearing their gear.

Scott: 00:10:21

And it was very tongue in cheek, but it just.

Scott: 00:10:24

I.

Scott: 00:10:24

It made me laugh.

Scott: 00:10:25

And so I kind of adopted that social media handle for a little while.

Scott: 00:10:28

Like, on Twitter, I was Patagonia dad, and on Instagram, I had, I think my handle was Patagonia daddy.

Scott: 00:10:35

And so I had, I think I had started a website just called Patagonia dad because patagoniadad.com was available.

Scott: 00:10:42

I was like, cool, I'll take it.

Scott: 00:10:44

Right?

Scott: 00:10:44

Yeah, it was available.

Kevin: 00:10:45

Patagonia hasn't jumped on that.

Scott: 00:10:47

That's what I said, too.

Scott: 00:10:48

I think Patagonia mom was open as well, and so I got the Patagonia dad one, and I had just.

Scott: 00:10:56

I basically started my own blog.

Scott: 00:10:58

That's it.

Scott: 00:10:59

It was just my.

Scott: 00:11:00

That was the name of it.

Scott: 00:11:01

And I just didn't write about anything in particular, just kind of whatever I wanted to.

Scott: 00:11:05

And then eventually, what I did do is all the rise of websites that create these kind of print on demand t shirts and merchants stuff like that, like teespring or other ones out there, spreadshop.

Scott: 00:11:21

I was like, cool, I'll make myself a shirt.

Scott: 00:11:23

And so I made a Patagonia dad, like, kind of my own little online shop.

Scott: 00:11:28

Never sold a single thing to anybody myself a couple times, but that's it.

Scott: 00:11:34

Zero.

Scott: 00:11:34

Like, completely, like, swear to God, I sold zero things on that website.

Scott: 00:11:40

But I had it linked from my website, you know, and the site was there.

Scott: 00:11:46

So I had that, and I had it for probably like a year, maybe, maybe less than, I don't know, somewhere around there.

Scott: 00:11:52

And I finally get an email saying, hey, you know, lawyer with the company Patagonia, you know, you're not authorized to use this because this could cause confusion, leading people to think that you are, you're affiliated, you're associated with the Patagonia brand.

Kevin: 00:12:10

That makes sense.

Scott: 00:12:11

And so there, I mean, their instructions to me, and I'm so I was like, I kind of first was like, wait, what is this?

Scott: 00:12:18

Did some quick online research.

Scott: 00:12:19

I was like, oh, yeah, this is a real thing.

Scott: 00:12:21

Like, they could very easily sue me for having this Patagonia dad brand, especially on this website where I'm selling merch.

Scott: 00:12:33

So I got the kind of notice from the Patagonia lawyer, and they actually said to me, I think because of the nature of the name, because it had Patagonia in it, not only did I have to rename and kind of take down any Patagonia daddy merchandise that I had on that store, but they asked me to, like, change all my social media handles the name of the website, you know, anything, anything like that.

Scott: 00:13:01

And I, you know, begrudgingly initially kind of complied, and then I was like, you know what?

Scott: 00:13:07

Like, I'm not making any money.

Scott: 00:13:09

I don't really care in the long run.

Scott: 00:13:12

So that was kind of my initial experience.

Scott: 00:13:14

So you do have to consider, you know, copyright when it comes to that kind of stuff.

Scott: 00:13:20

And really where it comes in again is that confusion piece is, could people confuse whatever name or mark that you're using with the organization that owns the copyright rights for a mark that's close to that right now.

Kevin: 00:13:40

I will say this, Scott.

Kevin: 00:13:42

When we started this, we actually had to talk through that because our title of our podcast is idiots guide to podcasting.

Kevin: 00:13:52

But for those of you who are a little bit older, you remember, like, there's like dozens of books, you know, all marketed the same way, like complete idiots guide to, you know, underwater basket weaving or whatever.

Scott: 00:14:08

Like they're algebra, all sorts of stuff.

Kevin: 00:14:11

Biology.

Kevin: 00:14:12

And, like, they've got everything.

Kevin: 00:14:14

And so I was like, this is a great name because I'm an idiot who's trying to figure out how to podcast, but are we gonna get slapped upside the head with some trademark thing?

Kevin: 00:14:27

And you kind of knew where to go and where to look, so that was really.

Scott: 00:14:30

Yeah, yeah.

Scott: 00:14:31

And one of the things that I.

Scott: 00:14:33

That we'll put in the show notes of this, and you can just look it up if you don't want to look in the show notes.

Scott: 00:14:38

Anybody listening can just google it, but just, you can look up the USPTO dot gov.

Scott: 00:14:43

So that's the US patent trademark office, their official website.

Scott: 00:14:48

And they actually have.

Scott: 00:14:49

You can search trademarks for free.

Scott: 00:14:52

It's completely free.

Scott: 00:14:53

So you go on to UspTO dot gov and you can search.

Scott: 00:14:56

So we searched for walk with history and there's others that are close.

Scott: 00:15:01

There's like walking through history and it's like a, it's a tour guide kind of place based out of Boston.

Scott: 00:15:09

So when we filed our walk with history trademark.

Scott: 00:15:12

Now how do you file that?

Scott: 00:15:14

We actually.

Scott: 00:15:15

You can file it on your own straight through the USPTO.

Scott: 00:15:19

They have a process.

Scott: 00:15:20

If you just kind of take your time and do your homework, you can do some kind of research.

Scott: 00:15:25

They have videos, they can step you through about the difference between a trademark and a copyright and what's copyright infringement and all those things.

Scott: 00:15:33

And I had watched some of those.

Scott: 00:15:34

I had considered filing it on my own, but ultimately we decided to actually pay to go through legal zoom.

Scott: 00:15:41

So everybody kind of knows legalzoom.

Scott: 00:15:43

And you can pay, you know, it's, it's a basic fee just to use legalzoom.

Scott: 00:15:48

And then one thing that I didn't realize, that they didn't roll in the cost of filing because it costs like $250 just to file a copyright.

Scott: 00:15:57

Just even that, that's, if you're doing it on your own, we paid marker.

Scott: 00:16:01

Either it was trademark.

Scott: 00:16:04

I'm sorry, trademark.

Scott: 00:16:05

So, so we filed that, that trademark.

Scott: 00:16:08

So it's like about 250.

Scott: 00:16:10

You know, this is as in: 2023

Scott: 00:16:17

And then for legalzoom, when we paid for it, no discounts or anything, it was about like $600.

Scott: 00:16:24

Yeah, so it was a lot.

Scott: 00:16:25

But at the time, Jen and I, we actually had a potential tv show production that was kind of interested in the walk with history concept.

Scott: 00:16:36

And so we were actually kind of slowly walking in that direction just before the writers strike happened and everything got put on pause.

Scott: 00:16:42

So we decided to go ahead and file walk with history because that, for us, is kind of a long term business video channel that we're going to do together for as long as we can think of.

Scott: 00:16:56

Right.

Scott: 00:16:56

For us, that's a business.

Scott: 00:16:59

So you can file it through a trademark lawyer.

Scott: 00:17:02

You can use a service like Legalzoom.

Scott: 00:17:04

There's, if you just Google, how do I file a trademark?

Scott: 00:17:07

You'll still see tons of ads for different legal services out there.

Scott: 00:17:11

There's there's an endless, you can pay.

Kevin: 00:17:13

Us to do it.

Scott: 00:17:15

You can.

Scott: 00:17:16

The one thing that I liked about that was we got about a 30 or 45 minutes phone conversation with a trademark lawyer who kind of walked us through.

Scott: 00:17:29

They did a lot of research.

Scott: 00:17:30

They kind of did their own search through the USPTO about all the different companies that were similar marks that were close enough that they think, hey, the USPTO, the patent trade office, they could deny your request even after you pay the money and file the claim because they might rule that your name is too close, and it would cause confusion with this other name, this other trademark that's active, because you can search active, and they call it dead trademarks, and you can keep a trademark active as long as you're using it.

Scott: 00:18:06

And you just basically just don't.

Scott: 00:18:08

Don't let it go away.

Scott: 00:18:10

So there's a whole process to that.

Scott: 00:18:12

It's pretty straightforward.

Scott: 00:18:13

I won't go into too much detail, but it does take time after you file it.

Scott: 00:18:17

I think we have to check back in, like six to nine months, is what they said.

Scott: 00:18:21

Yeah, yeah.

Scott: 00:18:22

It takes a really long time.

Scott: 00:18:23

It's not quick, but it's totally doable.

Scott: 00:18:27

And for us, we did that because we want to build walk with history as a business.

Scott: 00:18:31

To your point, kev, I don't think you and I are planning on selling it.

Scott: 00:18:36

It's guide to podcasting shirts or courses or anything.

Scott: 00:18:40

This is literally.

Kevin: 00:18:41

Yeah.

Scott: 00:18:42

You know, a season, maybe two seasons, if people like it, podcast, you know, for other folks to kind of learn how to podcast, just like us.

Kevin: 00:18:50

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kevin: 00:18:53

And that makes sense.

Kevin: 00:18:54

I mean, I think that's, you know, what we're really.

Kevin: 00:18:58

I think talking about here is, like, how big do you want this to be?

Kevin: 00:19:03

What's the scope of what you're doing?

Kevin: 00:19:04

Right.

Kevin: 00:19:05

I mean, ours is relatively narrow, pretty focused.

Kevin: 00:19:10

We don't need to worry too much.

Kevin: 00:19:12

Yours is a little bit broader.

Kevin: 00:19:14

Walk with history.

Kevin: 00:19:15

I mean, you know, my podcast, I, you know, maybe down the road, I could, if I start to kind of expand some of my ideas and things kind of do start to take off, maybe I might think about that.

Kevin: 00:19:29

But, like, you guys have been at walk with history now for how long?

Scott: 00:19:34

We're five.

Scott: 00:19:35

No, it's like two and a half.

Scott: 00:19:37

Creeping up on three years.

Scott: 00:19:39

It'll be three years in the spring.

Kevin: 00:19:40

So you guys have even kind of taken this long to really file that?

Scott: 00:19:46

Yep.

Scott: 00:19:47

To be perfectly honest, we probably didn't need to.

Scott: 00:19:50

The thing that really pushed us towards that was this tv show offer that we kind of had on the table that's been put on pause because of the writer strike.

Scott: 00:19:59

The one other thing with the trademark is the trademark is considered strong or weak.

Scott: 00:20:07

And the one thing if you file a trademark is you have to kind of enforce that trademark so you can basically, it's actually not too hard to set up like a Google automated kind of like search that'll notify you anytime certain search terms come up.

Scott: 00:20:29

So I set that up for a walk with history a while ago.

Scott: 00:20:31

It doesn't happen too often, but that's probably how the Patagonia folks found my website eventually, even though we're not selling anything, when doing anything, it was just something that I liked, but they were like, yep, this could cause confusion and you're not legally allowed to have that.

Scott: 00:20:47

And I was like, yeah, you're totally right.

Scott: 00:20:51

So just kind of an interesting thing.

Scott: 00:20:53

And then we, we also, for an actual product that we actually, we actually had sold one or two things.

Scott: 00:21:01

We had, Jen would wear a hat that I designed that said history nerd on it and it had our walk with history logo kind of on there.

Scott: 00:21:09

And we grew drastically on Instagram over the summer.

Scott: 00:21:13

We grew from about: 4000

Scott: 00:21:20

And one of those reels had kind of popped off and had over 100,000 views.

Scott: 00:21:25

And some online company that sold history merchandise that actually had the history nerd trademark.

Scott: 00:21:32

So they had trademarked the term the mark history nerd on merchandise.

Scott: 00:21:38

And I hadn't done my research ahead of time and I should have.

Scott: 00:21:41

And so he said, hey, he kind of had a standard verbiage, right?

Scott: 00:21:46

He's like, you can't use that.

Scott: 00:21:48

Like, if you do, like, either take those down or can you please put a link to my, to my merchandise website so that people aren't confused?

Scott: 00:21:55

And on your, on your.

Scott: 00:21:57

We have a walk with history gift shop where we actually do sell merchandise.

Scott: 00:22:00

Every now and then people go in and buy things.

Scott: 00:22:02

It's, we don't make a lot, but, you know, could you please take down anything that has history nerd on it?

Scott: 00:22:09

I do have the trademark on that.

Scott: 00:22:10

And I looked it up and he did.

Scott: 00:22:11

He was completely right.

Scott: 00:22:12

And I said, yep, I'll take it down.

Scott: 00:22:14

I'll put the link in any videos that have her wearing the hat.

Scott: 00:22:18

And then we looked up a couple alternative ones.

Scott: 00:22:21

So we were not, Jen's not wearing the hat with history nerd on it anymore.

Scott: 00:22:24

Even though I like that we changed it to history buff is kind of the thing that we changed it to, and there's no trademark on that, so I'm not going to file for it.

Scott: 00:22:33

It's not important enough to me to spend dollar 250 to try to get that trademark.

Scott: 00:22:40

But yeah, that was just an online retailer.

Scott: 00:22:44

That was a much smaller website.

Scott: 00:22:45

But he found our reel and he said, hey, I have that trademark.

Scott: 00:22:49

And he's right.

Scott: 00:22:50

So I supported that.

Scott: 00:22:52

I was very open with him.

Scott: 00:22:53

I was very accommodating, and he appreciated.

Scott: 00:22:56

He actually, even after the fact, offered to give me an affiliate program type link where he says, hey, if people use your link, I can make a small amount.

Scott: 00:23:05

I was like, you know what?

Scott: 00:23:05

That's okay.

Scott: 00:23:06

I took everything down.

Scott: 00:23:07

I linked it.

Scott: 00:23:08

I'm not really looking for an affiliate link.

Scott: 00:23:11

I don't need to bother with worrying about promoting your stuff, but those are the basics.

Scott: 00:23:18

It's the difference between a copyright and trademark.

Scott: 00:23:22

Copyright is for that fixed medium.

Scott: 00:23:25

You write a song, you write a book, something like that.

Scott: 00:23:29

Technically, I guess a podcast can be copyrighted and then a trademark is really more for your mark that you want to have, whether it's.

Scott: 00:23:39

Maybe it's the name of your podcast or the name of your business or a logo that you want to trademark, because you would have to trademark them separately.

Scott: 00:23:46

You can't do two at the same time.

Scott: 00:23:49

That's one thing that I found out.

Scott: 00:23:53

I mean, that's.

Scott: 00:23:54

Those are kind of the basics of it.

Kevin: 00:23:56

Yeah.

Kevin: 00:23:57

And I think, you know, if somebody's kicking off their, their podcast, then that's, that's what.

Kevin: 00:24:04

That's where you start, right?

Kevin: 00:24:06

You start at the, at the, at the basic level, and it's not really, I think, until you're getting, you know, big time that you really take any copy copyright, trademark stuff to the next level.

Scott: 00:24:17

So, yeah, I mean, it doesn't hurt to go on the USPTO and kind of just do a search for the trademark.

Scott: 00:24:24

Because if some, if you're starting a podcast called, you know, the Star wars podcast, you know, then maybe, you know, just having the Star War, Star wars in it, it's probably not something you can sell merchandise for.

Scott: 00:24:39

Right, right.

Scott: 00:24:39

Because Star wars is most likely copy or trademarked.

Scott: 00:24:43

So it doesn't hurt to go on there and search for a trademark to see if there's active trademarks out there, just out of curiosity.

Scott: 00:24:51

But to be honest, like, if you're just doing a podcast like this, you know, um, you probably be okay.

Scott: 00:24:58

Podcasts are small enough, but definitely always something to consider.

Scott: 00:25:02

And it doesn't hurt to do your research ahead of time.

Kevin: 00:25:05

Cool.

Kevin: 00:25:06

All right.

Kevin: 00:25:07

Thanks, Scott, for walking us through that.

Scott: 00:25:09

Yeah.

Scott: 00:25:09

Well, hopefully folks listening kind of learned a little bit from me.

Scott: 00:25:12

And you guys don't get emails from Patagonia saying, you can't do that.

Scott: 00:25:18

That was interesting.

Scott: 00:25:20

I'm not gonna lie.

Scott: 00:25:21

A little slight adrenaline rush when I.

Kevin: 00:25:23

Didn'T just send you a box with, like, a big punching glove in it.

Scott: 00:25:26

And just go, I know, it was kind of crazy.

Scott: 00:25:30

So, again, any questions, don't reach out to us on this one.

Scott: 00:25:35

Reach out to a lawyer.

Scott: 00:25:36

We are not trademarked copyright experts.

Scott: 00:25:39

I'm just relating to you my experience in filing for trademarks and being told that someone else has a trademark for something that I was trying or not really successfully selling.

Scott: 00:25:51

So, yeah, that's all I got.

Kevin: 00:25:53

All right.

Scott: 00:25:55

All right.

Scott: 00:25:56

Peace.