MSU Extension Product Center

Welcome, everybody. My name is Kendra Wills. I am an innovation counselor with the Michigan State University Product Center. Welcome to the Webinar on trademarking your brand with our guest presenter, Scott Keller, who's an attorney and a partner with Warner, Norcross, and Judd, who's been working with trademarks for years and years. I think we have a wonderful conversation of us. I have a few slides in the introduction, and then Scott is going to get into his presentation. First, I want to let you know that our programs with Michigan State University, Extension are open to all without regard to race, color, national origin, sex, gender, gender, identity, religion, age, height, weight, disability, political beliefs, sexual orientation, marital status, family status, or veteran status. If you require any accommodations for this webinar, please feel free to e mail me and my e mail will be presented at the end of the presentation. Again, we will be recording the webinar, and it will be closed captioned, and everybody that registered will receive a link to the closed captioned webinar after we have that available, which should be tomorrow. We are going to use the Q&A function of this Zoom webinar to ask questions. So the Q&A should be at the bottom of your screen. Hopefully you're hearing my audio. If you're not hearing audio, hopefully you can read this phone number on your screen, which is our help desk at Michigan State University. That number is 844-678-6200. They can help you with your audio. You also have in the very far right to left corner and audio settings tab. And if you click the arrow, that you can test your speaker and audio, Make sure you can hear. Always test your volume levels as well and make sure your headphones are plugged in, turned on. Those are some common issues we experience. So just a chat function, if you need to ask questions of me, but if you want to ask questions of Scott and relative to the presentation, please use the Q&A function. And again, we will take questions throughout the presentation. So feel free to type those in. So what is the Michigan State University Product Center for those of you that may not know. We are a network of resources. We have a team of about 12 people stationed throughout the entire state of Michigan. We cover everybody. What you're seeing there is a map of our MSU Extension regions. We kind of divide up the region. I'm actually based in Ottawa County, which is our District seven, but I serve also District 13 and a few counties in District eight. And I have colleagues all over the state. So we have a product counselor assigned to every county in the state of Michigan. We deliver support related to food and beverage entrepreneurs and product development innovation in the food and bioeconomy industry. Here are some services that we commonly work with entrepreneurs. Most of our clients are in the start up stage, but we do work with any size of company with market research and target market identification, business planning, regulations, getting licensed food testing, shelf stability testing, nutrition fats labeling, where you purchase bar codes, liability insurance issues, bringing a product to market all the steps throughout. And we don't do everything, which is why an attorney is here to work with us on trademarking and legal issues. And we encourage everybody to access all the resources they have available to start their businesses, including find a really great attorney. We have a once a year conference and trade show, and I'm pleased to announce our 2025 dates are May 6 and seven. It will be at the Lansing Center, which has been the location for the last several years. It's a trade show and a conference. We usually have about 150 businesses displaying their products and meeting with buyers. We have multiple conferences and speakers, so that's a wonderful experience. So those information should be coming out in January 2025. Expect it around then about registration and the agenda, things. We try not to send it out before the holiday. So look for that early next year. We also do, a lot of people think that the Product Center is a place to make products, but we do have a facility in Okemos called the Food Processing and Innovation Center. That is a rentable facility. It is USDA inspected and FDA licensed, and as well as Michigan Department of Agriculture license. We do small runs of co packing as well, but a lot of the times, it's a larger sized company renting this facility to make products and scale up. So for example, there was a farmer owned product development. They developed the formulation. They retorted the product at our facility in Okemos called FPIC. And they expanded the product alignment, and they ended up investing in their own building their own facility as a result. We did another project with a large consumer packaged goods company, and they just wanted to design a new product with new packaging, and they did some runs at our facility. So that's a little bit about the facility in Okemos. We also have the dairy complex facility is under the Product Center's base, if you will, which does do some co manufacturing and product development and ice cream cheese, yogurt, butter products. And we do offer a few courses for credit students, and the artists and cheese making courses open to the public. So I encourage everybody to look for that in 2025. We have another facility in Muskegon called Farm Food Agriculture Research and Manufacturing Accelerator. That is a space that can be leased for value added product development. So if you're interested in that, Clarence Rudat is the contact person, or you can contact me through my e mail, I'll get you connected to Clarence who manages our FARM facility in Muskegon. If you're interested in counseling from the MSU Product Center, there is a $100 application fee, and you can register through our website, and our website is listed here or accessible through the QR code. It is an online form right at the top of our website called "Become a Client" Click on that button, complete the form. Send in your $100 application fee and we'll get you connected to a counselor. So, that is the end of my talk. I want to introduce Scott Keller. Scott has been an attorney for almost four decades. He's helped businesses of all sizes safely navigate intellectual property and Internet issues with a particular focus on trademarks, copyrights, domain names, rights of publicly and unfair competition. Publicity, rights of publicity and unfair competition. He counsels clients across a variety of industries assisting them with screening, registration, licensing, protection, and defense of the available trademark and copyright assets worldwide. And he says there really isn't anything that he hasn't seen before. He's been doing this a long time. And again, I'm going to stop sharing and let Scott bring up his presentation and remind everybody, please use the Q&A. Scott wants a really robust conversation. Type in your questions as we're going. We're going to keep questions flowing here throughout the process. So I will moderate for Scott some questions, but keep typing in whenever you have an issue that you can think of. Thanks. Thanks, Scott. Hello, everybody. And as Kendra just said, I want to echo, I think these things go best. If you come up with a question, as I'm talking about something, please ask it right away. Chances are somebody else has the same question as you do. But in any event, doing it contemporaneously, when we're talking about something, it sinks in better and just goes for a better flow. So don't be shy. If you have a question, while I'm talking about anything, by all means, raised it, and we can address it right then and there. So what are we talking about? We're talking about trademarks. What is a trademark? I think you all probably understand. It's your brand. It's how you distinguish one product from another. It basically stands for your reputation. That's what you're known by. That is how you are identified in the consuming public. And basically, it can be the most important asset that a business has. As you know, name recognition in the food and beverage industry in particular is important. It's a very crowded field. There's always a lot of products in whatever particular type of product that there is. Okay. So again, now, what is a trademark? A trademark can be very many things. It can be words. It can be a name. I've got up there some classic examples Oreo, Heinz, Lipton That's your basic word mark. It can be I forgot to put it a slide. It can be it can be initials or acronyms. Think, NFL NBA, HBO, those are acronyms initials that also are well known trademarks as well. They can be logos like I've just put up. You've got the McDonald's arches, you've got the Starbucks logo, you get the Pepsi logo, so it can be those kind of graphic images. It can be slogans, you know, got milk, do the do, those kind of things. So taglines, those are trademarks as well. It can even be the packaging look, the iconic Campbell soup can. That packaging, look is something that's also predictable and something that Campbell's owns. It can even be either the product or the packaging shape, the iconic coca cola bottle. They have a trademark registration for that. Nobody else can do the bottle quite like Coke does. It can even be a color and just a color. Now, that is difficult to do, but when you see a brown truck going down the road, You know it's UPS, whether you see the logo on the side or not. Why? Because they really emphasized that. They had their whole marketing program about what can Brown do for you. It's not easy to get a color, but you can do it. Years ago, one of the classic first ones was Owens Corning getting pink for fiberglass. When you get a color mark, it can't be something that's essential to whatever the product is. Insulation does not need to be pink. So they chose pink to be a distinguishing color and then had their pink panther advertising and everything to emphasize that. If you want the color, you really have to emphasize that color alone being associated with you. Beyond color. Sound, a sound can be a mark. You think of and unfortunately, I couldn't get it connected up to get it to play, but you think of the NBC chimes, three chimes in the intel. Everybody knows the intel. Every intel commercial plays that sound that so those 45 notes. It's become iconic. So you can even get that. And finally, and I don't have a slide for this because you're not going to be able to even a smell can have a trademark. Now, again, it can't be a smell like a perfume can't have a trademark and a smell because the function of a perfume is to smell. One of the first ones that somebody ever got a registration for was it was a motor oil for motorcycle racing, and the owner of the mark, the manufacturer of the product, developed a way that the scent that would come out of the exhaust when you use this oil was a cherry smell. And they got a registration for this cherry smell. So if you saw you were at a motorcycle race and you had that smell, you knew that that particular motorcycle was using that oil. So there's all sorts of things that can be represented as your brand and what can function as a trademark, all of those things are things that the US Trademark Office will allow, as long as you've got the appropriate proof that it really is a trademark and functions as a trademark, you can get a registration in that. Okay. So what makes a good trademark? There are levels of distinctiveness that enhance whether a mark is going to be strong or not, and how much you can get recognition from it before you've even gotten deep into the market, because you can always, you can become famous just by inundating the market, having a lot of advertising a lot of sales and that kind of thing, you become well known that way. But how can you get well known or at least distinguish yourself and become recognized through your trademark before that. The strongest type of mark And the marketers all hate this, because marketers always want to do very descriptive names and so that the consumer automatically knows what the product is right away. But from a trademark perspective, that's the worst way to look at it. The strongest marks are coin terms, things that aren't even words, but are made up words. Microsoft, That was a smash up word. It really came from microcomputer and software. But there was no word microsoft before that. So it was a new term. Google. Google actually came from a typo. There's a word that's similar to that that basically means infinite numbers, and that's what they were playing off of, but it came from a typo. It was never a word before. So they coined the term. Those are the strongest types of marks because they make an impression because you've never heard it before. It's something unique. The next step as far as strength of a mark, would be an arbitrary term, something that's a known term, but has nothing to do with the product. Apple has nothing to do with computers. Nike has nothing to do with footwear. So again, because it is not something that would be normally associated with the product, it makes that impression and makes for a stronger trademark. These are all things you should be thinking about as you try to think of and develop your brands. The next step down on the ladder would be a suggestive mark, something that No, I think I got my slides mixed. Oh, well, Yeah. Actually, one of Starbucks was one of the ones I was going to put in the in a different spot, but a suggestive mark is something that actually talks, gives a little bit about the product, but doesn't straight describe it. Chips ahoy. It's got chocolate chips, and, you know, Ahoy is not anything, but you know more about it being a chocolate chip cookie. The sun kissed, you know, it's something that grows through the sun, that kind of thing. So there's not a direct connection to it, but it does, in some way shape or form, kind of connect more to what the product is. And now we're going to get into more of the marks that are more difficult to really get good strong trademark rights in. And that's something that's descriptive. If it's descriptive of the mark of what it is, then you can't get trademark rights in it until you've used it enough, that the public actually recognizes it as your brand rather than just a general description of the business. The example I use most often is National car rental. When you hear the name National Car Rental due to how long that company has been around, all the advertising it does, everything, you don't think of just any car rental company that functions nationwide. You think of the green and white company like the Logo that I've provided. That is what you need to do when you get a descriptive mark, that's the level you've got to get to before you really have any trademark rights in it. And kind of jumping ahead a little bit, when you file a trademark application, the trademark office will not let you have a full blown registration in a descriptive mark unless and until you can prove to them that you've used it long enough and substantially enough that the consuming public actually sees that name as your particular brand as opposed to just a description of the product and services. Here's where other examples. My slides got a little mixed up. Frosted flakes, obviously, very descriptive of the product. But through the allos use of it and promotion of it. It's become associated with a particular brand. Wheat thins the same thing. They're thin wheat crackers. But again, because of the substantial marketing that those are more uphill battles in trying to get trademark rights, not that you can't, but it's more difficult and it's more difficult to distinguish yourself in the marketplace when you've got a name like that. The last category, and that's a category that can't be trademarked at all, and that's a generic name. If something has become a generic name, then you can't get any rights. You know, General Motors is not going to be able to get a trademark registration for automobile. It's the generic name. And where this particularly becomes important is if you've developed a totally new product, something that nobody else has done before. And if you've done that, you know, it A lot of times you will want to use a somewhat descriptive name so that people kind of know what it is. But the problem is then it becomes associated with anybody who makes a product like that as opposed to just your particular product. So if you come up with something that hasn't been done before, kind of something that's totally unique, you want to think in terms of what should its generic name be? You want to an example would be Frisbee. Frisbee, there were no flying disc toys before Frisbee. So they needed Wamo, needed to come up with k, what you? It's a flying disc Frisbee. And what can happen is when you have a unique product like that, The name becomes associated almost with the generic. And companies that reach that level of success have to do all sorts of campaigns to make sure that their mark doesn't become generic, and therefore, they lose all control of it and all trademark rights. You know, Kleenex is an example of that. It's a Kleenex tissue. Kleenex is should not be considered the generic term, and I think it's Kimberly Clark that owns them not be happy if you used it as a generic term. There are all sorts of things in. So like I said, the most relevant for you is if you've come up with a new food product or beverage product that nobody's ever done before, you've got to make sure you're thinking in terms of if you want to capture that brand, if you're first in it, you have a great advantage. You're going to become the brand known for that particular new type of product. But if you don't do it properly, and then the name you pick for it becomes generic. And this is where kind of the descriptiveness issue comes in because most of the time, it's somewhat of a descriptive name of the thing. It's some kind of twist on something that already exists, probably. And so you're using that to kind of explain to people what it is. If you get that descriptive, make that the generic term for it and then pick a brand to put in front of it. You don't want to be known strictly by that generic term because you're not going to be able to capture the market as your own as being the first to have this product and being the company that's known for that product. Okay. We have our first question, if you want to take a question. Sure. If a trademark for a company expires, with the same name as yours, but with a different spelling, should you apply for a trademark before their extension period expires? And she says, I have been using the name for three years and the other company is located in another country. That can be tricky because if they it sounds like the registration is still in the grace period, which means that they could still keep the registration. And just so you know, and I was going to get to this, but we'll cover it a little bit now. When you have a trademark registration, you have to renew it. And the way the renewal process goes is after you get your registration, But the year period between the fifth and sixth anniversary of the registration, you have to file what's called a declaration of use. You have to submit a declaration that shows that you're actually still using the mark to maintain the registration. And by using the mark, it's got to be sales or offering of services in the US, if it's a US registration. In this case, since they identified a foreign company, if that foreign company is using it over in Europe but is not selling that product in the US, they can't maintain it in the US. It's be if it's a US registration, it's got to be US sales. So you have to do that between the fifth and sixth anniversary of the registration, because that's kind of the weed out period since a lot of marks get used and registered and then fade quickly. They have this declaration of use period between the fifth and sixth year to weed out those that were the quick come and gone. After that, then you have to renew the registration again between the ninth and tenth anniversary of the registration. And then every ten years thereafter, have you have to renew it. What I think the person is saying is the deadline for the renewal has passed, but the trademark office also gives you a six month grace period after the deadline to still file your proof of use to maintain your registration. So in this instance, if they're in the grace period, there's that danger that if the trademark registration owner can keep the registration alive, that they may do that, and then that could cause a problem for the questioner. The fact that it's a foreign company, there's probably a good chance that the reason why it hasn't been filed and it's in the grace period is they're not using it in the US. So from that if you're confident that the registration is not going to be renewed, you want to file as soon as possible because you want to get in line first because that's the way the trademark office looks at priority thinks of who files first. Now, it sounds like this person has already been using the mark, and therefore, they have some priority rights, which we'll talk about later that would predate the filing, but the trademark office handles all applications in the order of being filed. So even if you might have better rights in a mark, if somebody filed for it first, you've got to take care of that application before your application will go forward. So as long as there's confidence that the existing registration will not be renewed, I would say you file the sooner or the better. Hopefully, that answered the question. And so now we're going to back up and we're going to talk about that whole process. That was the next thing. The steps to getting a trademark, getting a trademark. The first step in any new trademark is you should have a search conducted to make sure that there aren't any conflicts with that mark, both from the standpoint of using the mark and registering the mark. And those are really two different things, and I'll explain why. And you can do your own searching through the The US trademark offices database of trademarks is searchable. I will tell you, I've been doing this for 40 years. They just changed the nature of the database as well, and all of us, longtime practitioners are still struggling a little bit with the new system. While they were trying to make it as consumer friendly as possible, it still is not real easy. But you can do that and It's not a bad idea for you to do it. First, you can save some costs. You can knock out names by finding things yourself. And the other thing you do is you do an Internet search and see if you find any brands out there that are, the brand you want is already taken by somebody else. Again, you can knock that out. I know I do this for a living, so it sounds like I'm showing for myself a little bit, but I really do recommend that you get a professional to look at it. There are things that can be conflicts that an ordinary business person are not going to recognize or a conflict, but us as experienced professionals do understand that. And when we do these searches, there's two things we're looking at. One, is the ability to use the brand? Is there a conflict out there that you're going to have some potential infringement liability if you use it. In other words, the owner of a mark can come after you and say that you're infringing their trademark and make you stop using the mark and potentially collect damages from you for your use of this mark that's as an infringement? That's one level. The other level is, are there any registrations or current applications out there that will prevent me from registering? And it sounds like they should be the same thing, but they're not. Because the trademark office when they're looking for conflicts, they're looking at they will only consider kind of the four squares of the documents. They look at the registration, and they give full credence to whatever the description of goods and services is in that registration. And it's presumed that that mark is used to the full extent of the description of goods and services in every market unless the market is listed in a restricted manner in the description. So there can be conflicts that will be a issue for registration because somebody has a very broad registration. But when you look at what they actually do, they do something more narrow, or they're in a very narrow market, but that markets not identified in the registration. So the trademark office is not going to consider that they're in this more narrow market and maybe a very different market than what your market is, they're going to consider that based upon that registration, those products are sold in anywhere where those products might normally be sold. So while that example I'm giving, it's probably not an infringement risk because if they wanted to sue you for infringement, Now the total market context is taken into account? And so if they're in a totally different market, and your people in your market would never be confused that you're associated with them, you're not going to have infringement liability. In an infringement litigation, the court is looking at the real world. What's going on in the real world, and will the customers for the respective products, is there a true likelihood of confusion that one will be confusion that there's a connection between the two or not? But in the trademark office, they're looking at it in this, blank state of what's in the paper. And so they're much more likely to find that there's a likelihood of confusion between the two. Not to mention the trademark offices stated purpose also is to protect registrations that are already on the book. So their bias is towards the registered mark, which is going to make it more difficult for you to overcome it when you're at the registration phase. So when we're doing a search, and I tell clients all the time. In fact, I just sent one this morning, where I said, We've got no risk of infringement liability. But I did find a couple of registrations that I think there's a 50 50 chance that an examiner may cite this because it was in the same field, but in a very different one was my client does consumer oil products, home heating, and that kind of thing. And the registration was for basically oil rig production. So I mean, they're in totally different markets, but because they both relate to oil, and the marks were similar enough to each other, you know, I warned the client that the trade, while that company will never come after you for using it, I don't think, but there's a there's a 50 50 chance that the trademark office might not let us get the registration. So that's the kind of thing that I'm talking about as far as giving advice once I've done the search. Now again, all this is talking about how do you get rights in a trademark? I've got good news for you. Use is the key to trademark rights. You don't have any rights and you can't get a registration if you don't use the trademark. And the flip side of that is even without a registration, you have trademark rights provided it's not one of these descriptive marks that I talked about before. If it's any of the others, if it's a coin term, if it's an arbitrary term, if it's a suggestive term, you have rights in that trademark from the moment you started to use it. Now, the advantage of a registration is, in particular, particularly for smaller businesses that are going to grow, this use or these rights based on use are limited to the geographic area within which you're using it. So if you have distribution of a product, if you've only got distribution in Michigan and Indiana, that's where your rights go. If somebody in California adopts the same mark for the same product, You have no claim over them, because you have no rights in California because you haven't sold there yet. You don't have use of the mark there. And that's where that's one of the key advantages to getting a registration. From the moment you file your application, assuming you get your registration, your rights are now nationwide dating back to the date of your application. And what that means, the whole key in conflicts of marks is priority, who used it first or if you didn't use it in a particular area, what's the date of the application that you got your registration from? So again, my example, somebody who's using it in Michigan and Indiana, we file our application today. If we go through the process and get our registration, our nationwide rights. Now, we've been using it already. So prior to today, we have rights established in Michigan and Indiana. But from today going forward, we have rights nationwide. And how does that help you? Well, if somebody was using the mark in California before today, there's not much you can do. You can't stop them. You can only freeze them to where they were using it as of today. But if somebody adopts it, we file our application today. If somebody starts using it tomorrow, once we get our registration, we have priority over them, we can stop them from doing it. So that's where particularly for start up businesses, getting a registration locks in your ability to expand nationwide, and that's one of the primary advantages of getting a registration. So like I said, registration does not actually confer the rights, the rights come from your use of the mark, registration is more of a recognition of those rights. And even as I said, even if you don't have that registration, you still have some form of trademark rights provided your mark is not infringing on somebody else who's got better rights in the same place where you are using it. But the benefits of registration that nationwide protection, the right to expand. Also, once you've applied, really, or registered, if conscientious business is doing their search to see if there are any conflicts with a brand that they want to adopt, they will find your mark and say, oops, somebody's already got it, we got to look at another direction. So you're also in a database that's going to work as a deterrent from others adopting your brand. Also, it infringers take you more seriously. If I write a demand letter, somebody say, Hey, you're infringing my client's mark, you got to stop. If I can say, we've got this registration, they take you more seriously and you're more likely to get them to stop. A registration also impresses juries and judges. If you actually have to go to court to enforce it, if you've got that piece of paper that says that you've got this trademark, no matter what kind of sales and market penetration and all that, you've got the best evidence you can have is just that simple piece of paper. Plus it gives you a presumption that you do own the mark. And finally, and again, something that's really important, I know to a lot of startup businesses, a lot of startup businesses, a lot of you entrepreneurs, you want to start this business, you want to make it grow and when you get to a certain point, you know that you don't want to deal with the headaches of getting any bigger, you'd rather sell it and star and start the next endeavor that you want to work on. Well, buyers really like when your brands are locked up with registration. So it really increases the value of that asset in a buyer's mind, and it gives them peace of mind that you've you've truly locked up that brand. So that's another reason to get a registration. I do have a few more questions if you're willing to take a co Co. All right. If our logo changes color based on the package variety, would we need to register all three colors or is there a general trademark that could apply to the market itself regardless of the color? My advice to people who if you don't use a consistent color in this instance where's there's a lot of h Products where they do that. You can register the logo without regard to color. And then therefore, it will it will cover whatever color combination you do. So that would be the way to register that logo. You just do you get a black and white rendering of it and you don't claim any color. The flip side of that is if you always do use it in a consistent color and that color is somewhat important, then it's better to register it with the color because the trade off is if somebody uses a logo, that doesn't quite look exactly like yours, but uses the same color and you've got it registered with the color, that color will help say that that mark is too close to yours, where if you have a registration without regard to color, you don't have that benefit, and so if the look is different enough, it can keep you from being able to stop somebody who's kind of mimicked your logo. But in the circumstance where it's not consistent, and I have a lot of clients that do this as well. They do have different color Sometimes it's because they used the flip. It might be a blue logo on a white background, and then sometimes they do the white logo on the blue background, that kind of thing. If you use a few different varieties, then I think the best way to do it is to register it without regard to color. And the other we have three questions. Two of them are kind of related to price. So what's the going rate? Is it a search price and then a registration price? And how does working with a professional price compared to services like legal Zoom or 700 bucks or whatever? Can you comment about that? Absolutely. And Kendra and I were talking about this a little bit before the presentation started? You know, I work with a lot of start up companies and I am always working towards getting the best value for it. We have fixed prices for the search for the application for the standard things that go along with an application. Like you can file a trademark application based on an intent before you're even using it. So if you've got a new brand, and it's going to be six months before you put it into production, actually get the product on the shelves, Like I said, you can't actually have a registration until you do have use, but you can file on what's called an intent to use basis. And I encourage once you've picked the brand and, you know, that's the brand you want to do, I strongly encourage filing that application, because, again, even though your use might be six months down the road, your rights to that mark will date back to the date of the application. And so if you file an intent to use basis, ultimately, you have to file your proof of use. That's called a statement of use. We have a set price for that. We have a whole fee schedule that we do. When I work with small businesses, one of the things is, I'm not going to overkill it. I'm not going to have you do more then you really need at that basis. I, you know, I always tell clients, you know, if money was no concern, we register things from every which way to Sunday. You know, we'd register with color without color, you know, in all sorts of variations that you have the broadest coverage possible. But cost is always an issue for anybody, even the bigger companies. So we never approach it that way. And when I'm dealing with smaller startup companies, I try to work with them. I can give breaks off of our normal standard pricing. And like I said, not doing more than really needs to be done. As far as these services that are out there, I will tell you that I've had a number of clients who have paid me more because they went to those services first, and you kind of get what you paid for. They do not identify all the issues that are potential. I mean, I've had a couple of clients go back to them and try to get refunds because these services have done searches, and they put all sorts of disclaimers as to the nature of their search and the limitations of their search and all that kind of thing, which makes it more difficult. And you need to understand No search can be guaranteed 100% effective, because of the notion that trademark rights can come from use without there being a registration, there could be some obscure use out there somewhere that you just can't find. That happens way less now that we have the Internet, and you can find almost anything on the Internet. But it still happens on occasion that there's something out there. But a professional who has been doing it for years like I have and that kind of thing. And even the younger people that do that do it in my firm you know that I work with, we've got the experience to do a quality search and well, we can't guarantee it, we can virtually guarantee it. You know, we my job I always look at my job. I don't Unless a mark comes out completely clean. If there are any issues whatsoever, it's my job to explain to you what's the level of risk. And then it's your job to decide what level of risk are you comfortable with? Are you willing to go with that name because, you know, just to throw a number out it. Let's say, I say, there's a 20% risk that this mark is going to create an issue. Well, are you comfortable with a 20% risk or it's not my job to tell you whether you should accept a 20% risk? My job is to give you the most information possible to make the determination as to whether it's a risk you're willing to accept or not. And that's the way I approach it. And I will tell you these trademark services, they also they're not good about the way they do applications. Lots of issues get created. A lot of them will not tell you if there's a descriptives issue, they won't tell you. And then you file your application and it gets rejected, and they say, Oh, well, Um, Most trademark professionals are willing to work with you and work within whatever kind of a budget that you have. And in the long run, given that this is a long term asset you're talking about potentially, and you don't want to get in trouble. You don't want to start using a mark and be a year down the road and have somebody send you a demand letter and have to totally change the brand. That's a painful process that I've seen happen many times before. And it costs more money. And it also stalls any momentum you had under the original brand. And also raises questions. Why why did you change the brand? Was it because the product was screwed up before or you know, you had claims against that product or that kind of thing, when it's none of that, and your product still is the great product it was before. But you got into this trademark issue, and that made you change your brand. Whenever a brand changes. Think about it, if you have a restaurant that you like to go to and it che and it changes its name. You always wonder, well, why did that happen? Was there some kind of issue? Are they trying to shift gears from a bad reputation, that kind of thing? And that's the problem you run into when you do that when you might not have had any of those real issues, but that may be the perception that's going to be out there in the market. We do have a question. A couple of them are sort of similar. So one person is saying that their brand is mostly just a name with a logo that's kind of stylized. But should we trade market as a word market in case they change what the logo looks like or Yep. Okay. Go ahead and answer that. That's a great question, and I was kind of thinking about that as we were talking about some of the other things. My recommend and this goes back to the if money was no object type of thing. If money was no object, you'd file both what they call it when it's just the wording in trademark parlance, that standard character. So that means it covers that word no matter what stylization that wording is in. If money was no object, you'd file it that way and you'd file it as the logo. But again, money always is a concern. My advice always is, go for the wording because logos have a tendency to change, no matter what the logo is, logos have a tendency to change. And if you get a registration with a particular logo, and the logo changes, you got to start from scratch. You're going to have to file a new application. You're not going to be able to maintain that registration with the old logo. Unless the change is very, very slight. An example of that is like the Betty Crocker logo over the years, they've kind of updated the look of what Betty Crocker looked like, and they were allowed to amend their registration because that was just a slight updating of the thing. But most of the time, when you make a change to your logo, it's going to cause you to have to go back to the scratch as far as applying and getting the registration. So my advice typically always is, get the, get the word, Mark. If you've got the funds and the ability then register the logo as well. And honestly, when it's just a stylization of lettering, unless it's an extremely artistic font that's newly created and not a font that's taking out of a font service. Then there's not a lot of value to the stylized mark. I still have the frosted flakes up there. I mean, there's not much style to that frosted flakes that's up there. Even though I think that's a logo that was registered, but Kellogg has a lot of money. But that is one where I'd say, don't bother with the stylization of the logo because there's just not enough there to do it. We do have a question about the fact if a brand name is used in the context asking about an infringement possibility. So there's a name that's used, and then there's that same name with like a bird that's used. It sort of depends on the use if they're going to infringe on each other. How would you comment about that? There's a like I said, it's whether there's going to be a likelihood of confusion or not, and all the facts and circumstances surrounding it, and there are several factors that the courts look at, the similarity of the marks, it is one. The similarity of the goods. I mean, is it for the same goods or not, if it's different goods, it may make a difference. If there are two vastly different logos, that might make a difference. But if you're talking about just the name versus one with the name with a logo, likely than not, that's going to be considered to still be an infringement? Tacking a logo onto it is typically not going to get you out of an infringement situation. But all the factors, you know, who is it sold to what kind of advertising? What markets do they travel in? Is it a consumer product, a low priced consumer product, or is it a very high good or service that somebody's going to really look into before they make the decision and therefore, take a lot more care in the purchasing process as opposed to an impulse item at the checkout at the supermarket. All of those are factors that play into whether something is an infringement or not. Well, Scott, that seems to be the end of our questions. I am going to just note that I'm going to put Scott's e mail address in the copy of the recording link, so everybody will get Scott's e mail address if you want to follow up with questions or connect with him about his services or your specific situations. We had a couple of people with specific situations that I recommend that you just e mail him individually about that. And somebody's saying, Yeah, I'd like to schedule a consultation with you, Scott. And you'll be able to do that. With his e mail address. We do have one simple slide for an evaluation, but I wanted to ask Scott, do you have any more images to show before I put my QR code up with the evaluation? No, I do not. So let me get out of There we go. Awesome. So, Zoom. And I'm going to advance some slides here. So thanks everybody for participating today. That's about all the time. We do have a couple of minutes, so we will still take questions if you want to type them in the Q&A. But please take a picture of the QR code with your phone. It's just three simple questions about the webinR today. If you can just take a moment, take a picture, hold it on your phone, type any questions in the QR the Q&A in Zoom. And we are going to again, e mail everybody a copy of the recording probably tomorrow after we have it closed captioned, and we are going to include Scott's e mail address in that message to everybody. I'm not seeing any questions in the Q&A. So I'll just give it one more minute in case anything. Oh, let's see. Yes, we do have a few questions. Oh, I'd like to schedule. Yep, I got that one. Oh, she can't scan the code. I tried it earlier. I will put the link to the evaluation in the e mail tomorrow as well. If you want to do it tomorrow, when you get a link to the presentation recording, I'll put the evaluation link in there as well. And I'm not seeing anything else come up, but I really appreciate your time today. Scott Scott works for Michigan State doing trademark work. So in addition to all his food and beverage work, he's working with Michigan State on their trademarking garden. Yeah. And here's my e mail address, if anybody needs to reach me or has questions, as well as the product Centers website. And again, I'll put that evaluation link up there. Appreciate everybody's time today. Thanks again, Scott. Have a wonderful afternoon, everybody. Thanks, everybody.