Create For Cash

How a Product Entrepreneur Can Protect Intellectual Property

As a product entrepreneur you’ve spent a lot of time and money developing new products, whether physical or digital. Then one day you Google your product keywords, and up pops a page with your exact product on a Chinese website, or any website for that matter, with a different name. Someone is profiting off of your hard work!

I know how this feels. As an inventor with a patent and trade dress on a product I was shocked to see my own picture of me wearing my product on a Chinese website. As I looked further I saw even more of them. Some used my pictures and some even used the trademarked name.

I had noticed that business had slowed down quite a bit, but couldn’t figure out why. Now I knew. I spent the next few months contacting infringers to ask them to remove the product. Some didn’t know they were infringing and took it down. Some ended up becoming my customers and bought from me. But I had to fight the ones that were left. And even now I spend up to an hour every day knocking counterfeiters off the Internet.

So, how do you protect what you create from infringers? I posed that question to several product entrepreneurs who each had their own way of dealing with infringement.

Sandy Stein – Finders Key Purse (r)

I invented Finders Key Purse(r) in 2004 while I was a flight attendant. I used my flight attendant friends to help me sell in to the retail gift industry, and in 2005 we sold 1 million units. Since this was done with my friends, we were sort of underground, but after those million units were sold, the copies came up instantly.

Luckily for me I had started the patent process when I first invented it in April 2004, so we had that to protect us but soon realized that it wasn’t much in the way of protection as the small companies would give up with a lawyer letter, but the bigger ones decided to keep going. We finally got our patent a few years later, and had to spend $1 million in legal fees to get one of the biggest infringers out of the market. Since Finders Key Purse(r) is our flagship item, I had to pursue this infringer at all costs, or he would have taken over the market with a similar product with a lesser cost. OUCH! We won-the infringer is no longer selling, but he went BK to get out of paying us.

Lesson learned. If you want to get a patent, that is not too expensive. If you want to protect and defend your patent, that is extremely expensive, and you need to decide the value of the protection. Had we not had a patent, I am sure we would be out of business today with that infringer and several others who said that they didn’t want to battle me since my patent was so good and I was so litigious.

Sandy Stein
President
www.FindersKeyPurse.com

Stephen Lesavich, PhD, JD. – Founder & CEO of Coconut Avenue, Book Publishers, Intellectual property attorney, and technology expert

Here is what we do to protect our books:

A U.S. federal copyright application is filed for the content of all our books and the book cover as well.

Information on copyrights can be found at www.loc.gov/copyright This allows an infringer to be sued in federal court if the book contents or cover is copied.

If there is a tag line or branding associated with the book, a U.S. trademark application is filed.

This allows an infringer of a tag line to be sued in federal court if a tag line is copied. [Read more…] about How a Product Entrepreneur Can Protect Intellectual Property

3 Ways to Make Your Brand Logo Stand Out

brand logo

If you were viewing your company’s brand on a distant billboard, would you recognize it? What about the NIKE logo or the Apple logo? You wouldn’t even need the name, just the symbol, right? How recognizable is your own brand?

Livestock branding has been used for thousands of years to identify cattle. In the early days of branding, ranchers would stamp a huge brand over most of the cow’s body to telegraph to others ranchers from a distance “Hey, this is my cow!”. This has since been replaced with a smaller brand, but the idea is still the same. It’s a way to identify what belongs to you.

Today branding is still a way to identify your company, through your logo, your name, your marketing, and even mascots. It’s the first thing people see about your company and it determines whether people want to do business with you or not. Customers are used to making split second decisions. And unless they’ve really had the time to get to know you, they will either decide to buy from you or keep looking. So you need to make your brand logo stand out from the crowd.

Here are 3 things to make your brand logo more recognizable:

Colors – As someone who sells a promotional product and prints logos on them every day, I can tell you that you need to think about the impact of your logo on a hat, mug, T-shirt, or pen before you decide on the colors. Customers are surprised when they hear that their logo will cost extra with each color they print. And if you have more than 1 or 2 colors, that can get very expensive. Match the colors to your industry and what your company represents. It’s probably not a good idea to use green as a color for a water company.
Mood – If you’re in a serious and somber business like the funeral industry, you probably want to stay away from a happy-go-lucky look. Unless, of course, you’re this company, who markets a no-frills cremation service in a different way.
Simplicity – A logo that is too complicated is also too much for the brain to comprehend and is much less likely to be remembered. Again, I’ll also mention that you want a simple logo for your promotional products. A complicated logo on a pen or hat will quickly be ignored. Keep it as simple as you can, while still communicating exactly what your business does. A simple logo of a car with the words “Detail Dude”, tells us everything we need to know.

Customer’s attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. Make sure you are able to convey your brand message in the least amount of time, while also getting your point across in a memorable way. A simple and concise logo is the way to do it.

5 Reasons Entrepreneurs Should Hire Young Talent

Reasons Entrepreneurs Should Hire Young Talent

Are just starting out as an entrepreneur? Creating your first business? Or are you a seasoned professional? There seems to be one thing people tend to overlook when seeking out talent. There is an ever growing untapped resource you can use as leverage to help make major moves and grow your business. It flies under the radar at times and can be considered a secret: hire young talent!

Below we are going to outline why entrepreneurs should hire young talent, as they can really help you grow, save money and push your business to new heights.

Economical

There is no way around it, if every entrepreneur had their wish, it would be top talent across the board. However, when seeking out individuals with years of experience under their belt, you better be prepared to pay a lot of money for them. Yet when you begin to widen your search, in the hopes of saving your profit and losses (P&L) table, you will notice that hiring a young professional, or someone just entering the field, can save your business a lot of money and still push you forward. Sometimes, you can even hire two people for the same amount it would have taken you to secure one seasoned person. A bigger reason for doing this is covered next. [Read more…] about 5 Reasons Entrepreneurs Should Hire Young Talent

Where are the Entrepreneurs?

Where Are the Entrepreneurs?

I wrote a post several months ago called “Is the Entrepreneurial Spirit Dead?” Well, according to new research at the Brookings Institute, it appears it very well may be. Their data shows that new business creation has been on the decline for the past several decades and for the first time in many years the failure of businesses is outpacing the creation of businesses. It seems that entrepreneurs across the country are getting discouraged. So, where are the entrepreneurs?

This is a scary thought. According to the Small Business Administration roughly 64% of all net new jobs that were created between 1993 and 2011 were created by small business owners. If we aren’t cranking out any new entrepreneurs, we aren’t creating enough new jobs.

Before the economic collapse I had 3 great employees. As much as I tried to hold on to them, eventually I couldn’t keep them. Payroll is one of the biggest expenses a small business has. If there isn’t enough business coming in to justify having them, you have to let them go. And believe me, no one wants to lose a great employee. [Read more…] about Where are the Entrepreneurs?

How Demand Economy Will Create More Entrepreneurs

On Demand Economy

With more people working more hours, consumers are becoming more demanding. I don’t mean that in a bad way, but we’re just too busy to be tied down to a time frame. If you don’t believe me, when was the last time your entire family sat down to a scheduled dinnertime? Instead we’ve become an on demand society and an on demand economy.

So, what does that mean for the entrepreneur of the future? More money, more markets, more customers, more products and more services. But they have to be delivered on demand. [Read more…] about How Demand Economy Will Create More Entrepreneurs