EPS 51 - Copyrights or Trademarks: Understanding Your Corporate Client’s Perspective

Erin Austin: Hello, ladies. Welcome to the Hourly to Exit podcast. Today is LinkedIn Live Day. I do LinkedIn lives every last Wednesday of the month at 12 Eastern, 12 noon Eastern, where I answer your questions about transforming your expertise based business. From a unscalable, hourly, one to one that is scalable and hopefully you can sell someday.

Erin Austin: So since today is a LinkedIn live, I do have some slides, but this topic is one that you can live without the slides if, uh, if you, um, are listening on the podcast. But you can check out the slides on the YouTube channel as well. So today we are talking about something that came up during, I was a guest, ex expert in a mastermind.

Erin Austin: And of course I was talking about contracts and copyrights. And of course someone said, yeah, but what about trademarks? So, uh, that has inspired this conversation today. So it is entitled your Copyrights or Your Trademarks, which one do your clients actually care about? And uh, if you know me at all, you probably know the answer, but I'm gonna tell you why.

Erin Austin: So let's talk about copyrights. Just really briefly, just make sure we're all on the same page. So copyrights are intellectual property protection that protects the original creation, original creative works of authorship that are an expression of an idea. And what's important here? Well, all the words here are important actually.

Erin Austin: Original, creative, and expression of an idea. So it has to be original. It can't be something that you took from somebody else. You don't get copy up protection for that. It has to be creative. So you know, the example is the list of. Phone numbers as if you know the old phone book example, which probably no one knows what a phone book is.

Erin Austin: And, uh, and then the expression of an idea. The ideas themselves are not protected, uh, by intellectual property law. You have to put it into some tangible form. The expression of the idea is considered a tangible form. The examples here are books, presentations, research reports, market analysis, training materials, SOPs.

Erin Austin: And so you, once you. Create something with your idea. So you put pen to paper figures to keyboard, uh, brush to canvas. Um, you know, then once you create something that's original, then you. It is eligible for copyright protection, and the beauty of copyrights is that it provides a legal monopoly over your original creation.

Erin Austin: So the co, the monopoly that you have is only you. Have the exclusive right to make copies of the material, to distribute it, to perform it like in the case of a song or a movie, um, to create derivatives from it. So to use your original painting to make postcards or t-shirts, um, or to give, uh, rights to third parties.

Erin Austin: So anyone who wants to use your uh, copyrighted material has to come to you to get a license to use it. Uh, so that is copyrights. Now what about trademarks? So a trademark is a word, phrase or symbol, or could be a combination of them. Even sounds can be, uh, trademarked, um, that identify the source of a good or service.

Erin Austin: And of course the more unique the mark, you know, such as something that's kind of made up like Google. The stronger the protection will be. So examples, Google, um, company names, logos, like the golden arches of McDonald's, or a branded offering. Um, many of you who are, um, experts may have, you know, a framework that you've developed that you have a trademark in just the name of the.

Erin Austin: Framework versus your company name. So it can be anything that, um, uh, identifies the source of the good or the service. And the purpose of a trademark is to prevent confusion, uh, by consumers. So if I see the Barbie trademark, I know that this is a Mattel company product, or if I see the, you know, big Mac, uh, I know that that is a McDonald's product.

Erin Austin: So that tells me the origin of that product. And the same would apply to services. Those are called service marks, but it comes all under the heading of trademarks. So, When I am thinking about which one. Does the client really care about? So this is the one slide that you might wanna check out, which is copyrights and trademarks side by side.

Erin Austin: And so on the left I have, you know, copyrights reminder that copyrights give you a legal monopoly in your original creation versus a trademark, which is intended to prevent confusion of the consumer. So no confusion in the marketplace. So what do your clients care about? Your clients care about the value that you create for them or that you provide to them.

Erin Austin: They care about the return on the investment. They care about the results. They care about the transformation that they get from working with you. And so in kind of just. Generalized terms, you know, the copyrights are client focused. Copyrighted materials are the workshops that you deliver, the courses that you create, the, um, trainings that you deliver, the books that you write.

Erin Austin: Those are all copyrighted materials, and those are all the ways that you, uh, deliver value to your clients. Versus trademarks, and I generally refer to these as being you focused because they aren't about the value that your client gets. They're about protecting you and your materials from a third party claiming, um, Uh, claiming to be you.

Erin Austin: So let's say that you are, have developed your workshops and everyone loves your workshops. They create this amazing transformation. Um, your name is all over the place. Is this the person you need to talk to to get this type of, let's just call 'em HR workshops. And then once you have developed these amazing transformations for your clients, then the trademark becomes important to make sure that some other consultant doesn't pretend to be you.

Erin Austin: And, um, and say that I can deliver that transformation to by using your name. So, or using a similar name, I should say. Like, we're not, we're not even gonna go with someone just stealing your stuff, cuz there's always gonna be someone who's gonna steal your stuff. But for someone who can confuse the market by saying, you know, I have, um, You know, Aaron's HR protocol and let's just say you can get that copyrighted, um, or you can get that trademarked, excuse me.

Erin Austin: And so someone couldn't come along and have, you know, Ellen's HR protocol, which could, which would be very confusing to the marketplace. They know it's something like that begins with an e a couple of, you know, they know the number of syllables and all that good stuff, and so they would think that Ellen's HR protocol was.

Erin Austin: The same as Aaron's HR protocol. So it's not that trademarks aren't important, it's just that they aren't what provides value to your clients. It's the transformation and the results that provide value to your clients, and those come via your copyrighted materials. So since we know that copyrights are the primary value, and I say primary in the context of an expertise based business that serves corporate clients, like if you are, uh, franchising your methodology, obviously the trademarks.

Erin Austin: Uh, is very important, um, in order to get, everyone knows that that, um, uh, solution comes from your materials, um, out in the marketplace. But when we're talking about providing value to our corporate clients, it is our copyrighted materials that provide that value. And so in order to protect that value, there are three fundamental things that you absolutely must do.

Erin Austin: One, you need to create original materials. Remember that copyright protects original creative materials only, and so if you. Are using third party materials, uh, or in order to provide value to your clients, yes, your clients are getting the value. Um, let's say you have licensed, um, some materials from a training program that you went through, and now you're able to use those materials for your clients.

Erin Austin: Um, for instance, I mean they're, uh, I was just looking at the one page business plan book I had. One on my shelf for ages and ages and it was interesting conditioned cuz I hadn't cracked it open. And so I was going through it and I could see that in there you can become a certified one page business plan consultant.

Erin Austin: And so you, and they were talking about, you know, all of the testimonials about how these consultants, you know, made X amount of sales once they became a certified consultant and started using the one page program with their clients. And that's great. They absolutely have provided, um, value to their client, to their clients.

Erin Austin: They are not creating their own assets. They are not creating their own copyright old material that they can use to control the distribution of the derivatives of, um, and license to other people. So they're limited to their use. They don't have all the other, uh, upsides that come from owning your own copyrighted materials.

Erin Austin: So create your own original materials. Secondly, you need to register those that are revenue generating. If you're anything like me, you're constantly creating, um, materials. You're writing posts all the time. You're recording podcast, you're doing stuff on LinkedIn. You are guest, uh, being a guest expert inside of someone's mastermind.

Erin Austin: You're creating deliverables for your clients. Um, you're having. Someone on Fiverr create, you know, logo for you. All the ways that copyrighted materials are in and about our businesses, but we don't register all of those in the US Copyright Office. It's not rocket science to do it, but there is really no reason to register something that you wouldn't enforce.

Erin Austin: In a court of law, frankly, I mean, this is my opinion, um, some people might choose to, to register absolutely everything, and it, and it could depend on, um, how valuable you consider your non-revenue generating materials. Um, Like, for instance, let's say you have a book that you're literally giving away. Say it's a white paper, you're literally giving it away.

Erin Austin: And so it is not directly generating revenue, but it is a very important lead magnet. It's part of your authority. Um, that is something that is something that even though you're not selling it, that you would consider registering it with a copyright office. So the second one is register your revenue generating materials in the US Copyright office.

Erin Austin: And last but definitely not least, you wanna make sure you are using and understanding written agreements. These are gonna be the agreements that you enter with your clients. And if you don't have your own template, um, one, you should, but in any case, when you have corporate clients, Oftentimes they will require you to sign their agreements.

Erin Austin: You need to make sure you understand them because those agreements will determine who owns what rights in the deliverables. So make sure those are understood. And then also when you are the client, when you are using subcontractors, maybe you're having someone create materials for your business, or maybe you're having someone come in and help you service your client.

Erin Austin: And so in those circumstances, you should also be using and understanding the agreements. Um, it's very important again, to determine the ownership and use of the copyrighted materials that are developed in connection with those engagements and protect you, um, from. Uh, reuse of your materials, and that applies both to your client agreements and your subcontract agreements.

Erin Austin: Especially if, say you are using facilitators to deliver your workshops, um, you wanna make sure that you have protections in them so that your copyrighted materials are not being. Use without you, that derivatives aren't being created without your permission. Um, so those are all important elements of your agreements that involve copyrights.

Erin Austin: So copyright protection is more than copyright registration. You also need to make sure that you have the right agreements in place to make sure that you control those materials. So in some. First is the value. The value comes from your copyright materials. Make sure you're putting your resources to creating value for your clients in the form of your copyright materials, your trainings, your courses, your workshops, the deliverables, and then.

Erin Austin: The branding, which is the trademarks. Not that it's unimportant, but we need to make sure that we're putting the right resources in the right place, emphasizing the value that we're creating for our clients, and then also, um, creating our brand. And that would be in the form of trademarks. So hopefully this was, uh, helpful to you.

Erin Austin: If you have any questions, you know where to find me. You can either find me@thinkbeyondip.com. You can find me at LinkedIn. I am the original Aaron Austin. I. Or of course, um, always on YouTube as well. So look forward to hearing from you. I'm always happy to answer your questions. Most of these LinkedIn lives are from your questions, so please feel free to reach out until I see you again.

Erin Austin: Cheers.