Andrei Mincov, attorney and founder/CEO of Trademark Factory®, reveals his first and favorite client, what had him feeling like Rambo, why Elon Musk definitely is not an idiot, what a trademark is and what it isn’t, which company went from a “lemonade stand with a dream” to a multi-billion dollar valuation, and just what the heck is a Drum Desk?

Welcome to Let's Talk Legacy. I'm your host, Gary

Michels. And today we have a real special guest. Andrei

Mincov is the founder and CEO of Trademark Factory. He believes

people who have created something deserve to not have

that stolen from them. And hard working entrepreneurs shouldn't

be taken advantage of. That's why he founded trademark

factory. And that's why he is passionate about sharing his

experiences. And to him this is legacy. So welcome to the show,

my friend.

Thanks for having me, Gary, great to be here.

So your career in this area, I'd really

interesting start actually beginning in Russia, where you

bought a radio station, this stole your father's music, talk

a little bit about that.

Yeah, I was born in Russia, you can probably hear

it from my accent. You know, I tried to not use it too much.

But I was born there. And I went to my first law school there.

And I really didn't see myself as a lawyer. But one day, my dad

who was a famous composer there, Mark Minkoff, he saw him on the

radio. And it wasn't just played as a song, it was played to

advertise an event by Samsung. Nobody ever asked him if he was

okay with that nobody ever asked him maybe, you know, he'd like

to be paid for that. And so he called the radio station and

said, You guys can take my music and use it as you please. And

they told them that they were making him even more famous, and

that he's you should just sit down and shut up. And, you know,

if you knew my dad, he'd know, very quickly, that this was the

wrong way for them to handle it. And so he said, Okay, great.

I'll see you in court. And that was 1996, when Russia has just

transitioned from the Soviet laws toward more or less free

market was around IP. And so there weren't really a lot of

lawyers who knew how this work, there were no case law, there's

nothing. And so he said, he came to me and said, Can you can you

take this case, and go against the radio station, like you're

supposed to know the law, and I used to sing this song with them

on like, hundreds of concerts when I was a kid growing up,

right? So it was personal. And I saw what it was doing to him

because he was pissed. And I knew nothing about copyright. I

knew nothing about what you do in the courtroom when I said,

Sure, let's figure it out. And so I took them to court first

hearing, you know, I'm there with my long hair and a

ponytail. And there's this other lawyer, and I ripped them apart

is over, they somehow got the postponement next time that for

lawyers aside, the judge made the decision that was not in our

favor. I was sitting in my room reading that decision that made

zero sense. And my dad came into the room and said, Well, what

are you going to do now I did all the right things. I said all

the right words. And I don't know what to do. So well, if

you're not going to appeal this decision, you should quit your

law school and find yourself a different profession. And so I

appealed that velocity appeal. At that point, I figured out

what to do later. So we appealed it even higher, basically, as

high as it gets to the second highest court in the nation. And

we won. And in the process, I got really, really passionate

about, you know, helping people who created something that only

exists because they created it, to help them protect what's

theirs, and ensure that that doesn't get stolen from them. So

my dad was my first and favorite client, as I like to put it,

then, you know, I had a big career in Russia as copyright

lawyer with the biggest international law firm in the

world doing work for JK Rowling, Apple, my personal dream,

whatever you can think of a big business, I've probably done

something for them. And then in oh seven, I realized that I had

enough of Russia, and I moved to Canada, just to start everything

from scratch. IP that has a lot more similarities than many

other areas of wall because so much of it is done in accordance

with international treaties that allow you know, IP owners to

protect their stuff in different countries. And so when I went

back to the to Canadian law school, I said to myself, You

know what, this is a good opportunity for you to try other

areas of lawyers and see if you like them. Maybe you fell in

love with IP, just because of your dad. Maybe there's

something else. And the only other area of law that I

enjoyed, you're gonna love it was Insurance Law. Oh, wow.

Because it was so technical and so logical, and really was less

about emotion, but more about how can we do what's right, but

I never went into insurance law I kept with IP because I

realized that, you know, it's the one thing that I'm really

passionate about. And so I finished my Canadian law school,

the top of my class got exactly zero offers from Canadian law

schools. It felt a little bit like you remember Rambo one when

he's uh, he is at the store. And he says, back in Vietnam, they

trusted me with million dollar equipment. And in here I can

find a job parking cars. That's pretty much how I felt with my

years of experience my PhD in law, my top of the class thing

and like nobody would trust me to review a $500 contract. And

so I started my company, still the only firm in the world that

offers trademark registration services with a guaranteed

result for guaranteed budget. Really what we do now is we help

entrepreneurs whether they're zero figure entrepreneurs are

there 5, 6, 7, 8 figures protect what they think will become

their legacy. That's really what big brands are, you're building

something that goes beyond you, the founder, and you build a

brand that if you're lucky, 1000s and millions of people are

going to law remember and love and trust to me, really

trademarks. Yeah, there's there's some money part to it,

that the increases your valuation does believe different

things. But it also builds that legacy that that allows you to

build something that you'll be remembered.

So we're talking about trademarks here. And so we

have a pretty educated audience here on Let's Talk Legacy. But

tell us briefly what exactly is a trademark and what isn't a

trademark.

I'm gonna give you a definition that you will

find in the books. But I'm going to give you a definition that I

think makes sense. A trademark is the legal right for you to

stop someone else from using a brand similar to yours to

compete with. So a brand really could be your name could be a

logo could be your tagline could be whatever you feel will

identify you from the crowd of competitors who do the exact

same thing or something similar to you. But that word phrase or

image that you want to be your brand does not really become

your brand, until you can legally stop others from popping

you right. And the only way to do that is by getting that

trademark. If you get a LLC or corporation registered, that

doesn't protect your brand, if you set up a website or get a

domain name that doesn't do that, if you set up a social

media profile that doesn't do it. If you put a TM symbol next

to your brand, all it does is it tells the well I wanted this as

my brand. But really you can't do very much with it. Once you

file the trademark once it goes through, that's when you have

that legal paper that says that's my and that's really what

a trademark is what it's not, it doesn't protect the idea of your

business, or even copy my business model. But the name the

Logos, the tagline is daswell trademarks protect.

What's the difference in a trademark and

copyright?

Well, copyright is more about content, like

books, videos, music, right that that song that the radio station

stole that was copyright infringement. Software,

copyright cannot protect brands, which is why sometimes students

say, Well, you know what, you can just send yourself a letter

with your name, and not open it. And that's going to protect you.

But it's not because death now what copyright is about, really,

there's a reason they came up with the trademark law. Because

when the businesses were starting hundreds of years ago,

I was hard for people to do. And so initially they have this

what's called Common Law, right? So fastening off when if you are

making shoes, and you would put a brand on them, and someone

would copy you do you have some recourse to go to court and

prove this guy is trying to copy. But then when we went

through industrialization, we started getting those factories

and became progressively easier for people to to build something

similar. They realized we need a more robust way for people who

invest and spend money building that brand to protect it. And so

they came up with, let's make it easy for our people who care

about their brands protect them. And so let's allow them to

register it in some registry. That's going to have a list of

active trademarks, they're gonna say who owns them get on now,

today, things are getting even harder for brand owners because

competition is fierce. What used to take years for you to build

as a brand presence can now take days and you can set a website

in a matter of days, you can have AI, populate all those

pages. And you're out there. The question is, how do you make

sure that what you came up with stays yours? So and that's what

trademarks are all about.

Got it. What are some of the most common mistakes

you see people making around trademarks, mistakes of people

that didn't get the trademark and wish they would have?

Well the second type is unfortunately more

common people way too long before they realize hey, my

brand might actually be worth something. So with trademark

factory first thing we do when someone becomes a client is we

do a comprehensive search To confirm that, whether whether

this brand is trade markable or not, oftentimes we have to tell

them, You know what great brand, that's not yours really should

someone else's, you can't have it anymore. And it's usually,

you know, it's it's pretty dramatic because nobody wants to

hear that. They say, Well, I did my search, and I found nothing.

Well, because you don't know how to do search. It's what we do.

And so we found this. And so the most painful is when we tell

them, You know what you said, You've been running this

business for three years, this other trademark, then we found

these guys just filed it six months ago. And they're like, so

if I filed my trademark seven months ago, I would have

haven't. Yep, that is really the most painful news to deliver.

Because it's a self inflicted one. They just waited too long.

They they made their brand known to too many people. And at some

point, like imagine this, imagine if Elon Musk was an

idiot. And for whatever reason he chose to not trademark Tesla.

And anyone, you or me could just go up there and follow that

trademark and own it. Can you imagine how much money URI would

make but just by saying, you know, when Tesla, I own it, now

you can't make cars and call them Tesla. Or you can just buy

this trademark off of me.

So you're saying somebody creates, I'll just use,

for example, an amazing lemonade in town. It's local and at the

restaurant, and it's like really catching, somebody else sees it,

say I know what they're doing. I'm gonna go trademark that

lemonade, even though I didn't make it, think of it or

anything, they can go ahead and do that and get approved for

that?

Yeah, because trademarks office doesn't care

about anything outside of our own system. So if you haven't

filed your trademark, they're going to approve unless the the

person who came up with a lemonade what's called opposes

the mark, so they have to go and it's almost like a lawsuit

within the USPTO system. And if they can prove that their brand

was made known to a significant number of people across the

states, they can win, it's going to cost them a lot of money,

it's going to cost them a lot of time, they could have easily

prevented by just filing firms, but they also have to somehow

find out about you. And here's the bigger problem. If it's a

lemonade stand, if it's not federal, usually what it's going

to mean is that a certain ourselves is gonna say, You know

what, great, where are you selling your stuff? I don't

know. Austin, Texas. Okay. So what is going to be in is that

this guy who copied you will have coverage all across the US

as a federal trademark. But you will have a license to continue

selling your lemonade in Austin? Oh, geez. Right. And so really,

like I said, the whole idea of trademark was to give brand

owners who care about their brands, an easy way to protect

them. And the assumption is, if you didn't do it, you probably

don't care about it very much. Because it's so easy to do use

the tools that we gave you course, are not very sympathetic

to entrepreneurs, who suddenly remember that their brand is

worth something once someone else made a lot of money using

it.

You say that trademarking is all about

building and protecting a legacy for the business that that

obviously makes sense. And you cite Coca Cola as a really

famous example, tell us the coke story. And if there's a few

other good examples that people would recognize.

Yeah, Coca Cola is another one of my favorite

examples, like I will remember it. Why? Why are you waking me

up in the middle of the night, I'll tell you, they trademark

their brand back in 1892, which is incidentally, the year when

they just set up a company. And when they were selling nine

drinks a day, I call it a lemonade stand with a dream

because they all they had is this idea that, hey, if we are

going to spend any time, money and effort try to build those

into a brand and national brand, we might as well own it. And

trademarks is the only type of intellectual property that you

can own forever in theory that copyrights expire, patents

expire. Design, patents, everything expired. Trademarks,

you can renew and renew it renew. So they've been renewing

that same trademark since 1892. And I can bet that there was a

lot of people out there who looked at them, and said, Why

are you bothering spending money on lawyers to trademark this

stuff? It's just a drink. Now this brand is worth $80 billion,

just the brand itself, not their factories, not their trucks, not

their bottles, not their recipe, just the brand itself and

whatever they paid their lawyers back in 1892. It's probably the

best return on investment they've had ever. Right. Sure.

The more recent one, which really highlights the value of

getting it done right. An early there's this startup called

Bird, the electric scooters. Right you see the map freeware,

they were back in 2021, recognized as the fastest

company to grow to a billion dollar valuation. They knew a

thing or two about building a successful business. So what

they did is they started the company, and 13 days later,

after their they started the company, they filed their

trademark before they launched before they had their first

cooter made before they like I don't know if they had an office

back in the day or not 13 This again, because they asked

themselves the question, will the brand be important to us if

we are to become successful? And the answer to that was, of

course, because if anyone can put his scooter and put the same

brand on it, we can't have a viable business model, because

people are going to be confused, and they can't operate like

this. So they said, Yeah, brand is going to be important. We

want to build it into something that will become big. And so

they that they went on trademark, and now it's part of

the billion dollar valuation.

Is there more cost to a certain type of trademark

than another cost? Or does everybody file a trademark just

same way?

So there are extreme cases, when you file

what's called an unconventional trademark, like if you want to

trademark a smell, or if you want to trademark a sound. So

there's significantly more that goes into those. But those are

like a fraction of a fraction of 1%. Whether it's name logo or

tagline, the normal ones with with the trademark factory, it's

the same thing. And really, that's where the name trademark

factory, a wildlife was born. Because I asked myself a

question, if Bill Gates goes to McDonald's and wants to water

the Big Mac, are they going to charge him 10 times more just

because he has more money? No. Right? They're going to charge

them the exact same thing. And I realized, for business owners

for entrepreneurs, a trademark is a trademark, you don't care

how difficult that is for me to give it to you. All you care is

did you get one? Or did you not?

Aside from the incident where you help defend

your father, what else drew you to the area of law, but what

caught your attention to even go in that direction?

That's a funny story. So in Russia back in the

day, if you didn't join a university, if you didn't go to

university, you had to join the army. I'm a short guy, not

tremendously, you know, big muscle. I didn't want to join

the frickin army. And so I realized I got to go to a

university, I got to study something. And I had no idea

what I wanted to do live is zero, then I remember that when

I was growing up, I would always come up with some some arguments

to get what I wanted to get from my parents, like, I would

structure structure it in a way that they felt compelled to give

me what I want. And they would say, hey, gotta be a lawyer.

Right? When I was four or five years old, right? Maybe I should

become a lawyer. And, and the other part of that was, it was

1992, when I had to make the decision to go to university,

that's when Russia was just collapsing. And even though my

father was a famous composer, he was barely making enough money

for us to eat. We were all used to a very good standard of

living before that. And I saw how unreliable that was, even if

you were asked, talented as he was. And so before then I was

studying music and still loved music. But I realized I didn't

want to be in a position when I wouldn't be making any money. So

like, what can I learn that that is an easy path to comfortable

living law. And so I went to law school, really, for the first

couple of years, all I cared about was girls, alcohol and

parties and music rock'n'roll, but then my dad heard his music

and that like changed everything so very quickly for me. So the

the overall success rate with trademarks filed in the US just

51.7% means half of the trademarks filed, never make it

with trademark factories. 99.3. So we do something different

from everyone else. And there was this other category of

websites out there that you know, I'm sure your listeners

have come across, you know, those $69 offers Whoa, we got to

trademark your brand in five minutes. They're not even follow

through a lawyer because they've duped a lot of entrepreneurs

into using them and some train must go through even through

them. But their model is also the same and we're going to file

your trademark and if it doesn't go through Well, too bad so sad.

I wanted to do something different. I want to give them

the the the assurance that there's someone on their side

who actually gives a damn, and who wants to give them the same

result.

Absolutely. So as you know, our show is called

Let's Talk Legacy. And I'm curious, what does legacy mean

to you both on the business side and then in your personal

family?

On the business side? It's it's easy really.

It's building something that you transcends Do you something that

you want to be remembered. And it's really we build businesses,

a lot of reason, of course, is to live a comfortable life.

That's great. But the only way we get rich, the only way we

make that money is when we give the world something then the

world wants, the more of it we do, the better trace, we leave.

And that's what to me legacy is about. Like with brands, we're

going to, I'm going to challenge you try thinking of one

successful business without thinking of its brand, you

can't, because the brand is what we think about when we think of

a successful brand. The brand is the thing is it it is the thing

we remember the business for. And that's, that's, that's the

legacy part on the personal side, I just want to be

remembered for being a happy, happy father, happy husband and

a happy guy who played the drums. And it was a little crazy

just to, to move from Russia, to Canada, from Canada to Dubai.

And I don't know what else is gonna lie ahead of me, but who

lived a happy life. And that's something that's worth

remembering you by.

Awesome. So before we let you go, you've got to

tell us about your drum desk, I'm sure people would get a kick

out of this. What in the heck is the drum desk?

It's something that I drempt up maybe 12, 15

years, I can't remember but a lot of years ago, and the idea

was how do I combine an office desk, where I will do boring

work with something that's that's going to give me the

energy of something that's going to make me excited about being

here. And I love drums, like from from my from my high school

days. I love drumming. I remember to this day like you

were in a classroom. And me and my friend, were listening to

wasps, I want to be somebody. And then there's a section in

the brain where the deputy put up do, we were just using

pencils and rulers just playing that. And the one day we're

like, hey, why don't we go and learn to play verticals? And so

it became my big passion and like, How can I combine a disc

with a drum set? And I had some ideas about this. And, and then

one day, I'm like, You know what, I actually made enough

money that I can make this dream a reality. I put together my

thinking cap. And I'm not much of an engineer. I'm not, you

know, I don't understand physics all that well. But I wanted to

figure out how can I make it work so that the surface that

you write on or that you type on doesn't prevent you from using

the surface of the drums. And so it has this thing that moves

moves away. And you know, my biggest concern was, how do you

make sure it doesn't topple over, I figured out how to do

it. And so he has a fully functional double bass kit.

For those of you listening today, he literally

is...we're looking at each other face to face. Here he is playing

the drum like you would see a normal drum player playing.

That's awesome.

If you go to YouTube, you can search for

Andrei's dream drum desk, it will show you the whole thing it

will show you how I play it. It's a little video that I had

been shot and that will give you...

You probably just got to several more views on

your YouTube my friend, hahaha. If someone wanted to get in

touch with you talk to you about trademarking and getting their

company trimmer, how would they reach you?

So trademarkfactory.com is the

easiest way there's a big button that says Book a free call with

one of our strategy advisors flicked up bottom, you fill out

a little form. And you get on a call and they're they're going

to answer all your questions. They're going to help you

prioritize what to start with where, what, and if you feel

that it's a good fit, they're going to help you get started.

And if not, then you get free advice. Because one thing and if

you want to learn more about trademarks, I've posted close to

1000 videos on that YouTube channel. I know there's a

question about trade, which I'll probably answered more than

once. So that's another way to kind of get to know us a little

better. And once once you realize that, hey, there's a

reason I came up with a brand for my business. Right? This is

the stock that kills me right? And that's that's to your point

about mistakes. There is a reason you came up with some

name, like you didn't go with just a random number or random

sequence of letters. There was something going through your

head there was something going through your heart and like I

want this business have this name. It means it meant

something to you. There's one message that I want to finish on

is that your brand, even if you haven't built it into

something's huge, it's not worthless, it's worth something

and if you are planning if you're hoping that one day

you're going to build it into something successful something

worth remembering you buy, go and get a trademark today

because tomorrow might be too late. Yeah, when you booked that

call with a strategy advisor mentioned you came from the

show, we're going to do something special for you.

Because, you know, to me legacy means a lot. And I really

appreciate you having me on the show. So as thank you to you,

we're gonna pass that thank you to everyone who's gone shunned

from the show, just tell your strategy advisor, were here from

let's talk legacy, and they're going to do something special

for you.

That's awesome. But gosh, thank you so much,

Andrei. It's really been thought provoking for me and I know our

listeners are going to love it.

Thank you.