Be careful with how you advertise, or you could violate copyright or trademark laws. Learn to avoid that.

💥 Imagine spending thousands on branding and marketing, only to get a cease-and-desist letter because your business name, logo, slogan, or other piece of brand identity is too close to someone else’s. 💥
That’s called trademark infringement, and it can shut you down and cost you a bundle. Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen to you.

🚨 Did you know that using the wrong image, song, or video clip in your marketing could land you in a lawsuit? 🚨

Copyright infringement doesn’t just happen to big corporations—it’s a major risk for small businesses too.

Today, I’ll walk you through how to stay safe.

This applies if you create your own marketing content or if you have your internal marketing department or hire a marketing service to do it for you. If you use the wrong thing, YOU’RE going to be the one in trouble. (I’ll have another post later on protecting yourself from someone else’s mistake.)

You put a great deal of effort in choosing the perfect name for your business. You registered the business with the Secretary of State in every state in which you operate. That’s all you need to own your business name, right? Wrong.

Most if not all states’ business registration offices don’t even check their state’s own trademark databases when approving a name for LLC/corporation/partnership registration to see if there is a conflict, let alone check the federal USPTO trademark database.

. . .

If this post scared you a bit, it was supposed to. Most people don’t know about this incredibly important information, and that makes them vulnerable to expensive and devastating problems. Now you aren’t one of those people, and you know what you need to do to prevent those problems!

I hope this helps you feel empowered and inspired to take action if you don’t already have your business name registered as a trademark. You deserve to have that peace of mind!

This episode is about the pitfalls of using music on your personal social media accounts to promote your business and how to avoid them.

For the Day of the Dead, the last in this year's spooky-themed Patrifying Patents episode. This one is about how patent applications and issued patents can die, either by a premature visit from the Grim Reaper or of old age natural causes.

Buckle up my beasties! This Halloween night episode helps you learn more about patents by digging into patents for strange burials, exploding graves, creepy dolls, and more! Happy Halloween! 👻

Get your ghoulish patent game on by watching this episode, in which I cover a game inspired by the 1973 horror film The Exorcist and do a deep dive into the intellectual property of the long history of the Ouija board. See if you can spot some lyrics from "Sympathy for the Devil" and a reference to the original "13 Ghosts" film. Learn a lesson the makers of the movie "Witchboard" learned the hard way. Hear about one of the things Alistair Crowley was afraid of.