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In This Issue

Trademarks etc.

One Pge Summaries

Opportunity Inventory

Quick Links

Our Blog

ITTR

Penguin

October 15 Seminar

The Rochester Professional Consultants Network [RPCN] Has invited us to speak at their fall meeting. The topic will be "Expanding your Practice in New Areas" (when you cant do it all alone anymore). Watch this space for advance copies and trailers.

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Newsletter - May 2014

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Trademarks

Trademarks are a topic that we don't usually talk a lot about at BML as we in general don't offer the service of helping people register their trademarks. However we do work closely with patent attorneys who do offer that service and we are beginning to realize that inventors who patent their invention through us ought to pay serious attention to Trademarks and their consequences as well. Wikipedia

has a very complete discussion of the topic for those who want a more complete treatment than this brief monograph

There are several varieties of trademarks-

There is the simple trademark ^TM
There is the service mark ^SM
And there is the Registered Trademark Ž

The first two trademarks shown above can be obtained without contacting the patent office and without paying an attorney. The TM is for a product and the SM for a service.

Like the copyright symbol they just indicate that a company wishes to claim a particular word or phrase as a trademark for its goods or services.

The rights to a trademark are demonstrated by its usage-

"Trademarks rights must be maintained through actual lawful use of the trademark. These rights will cease if a mark is not actively used for a period of time, normally 5 years in most jurisdictions."- Wikipedia

What inventors need to understand is that the trademark gives an inventor legal title to a BRAND and brands can be extremely valuable, sometimes the entire worth of company is in its brand.

Unlike most Intellectual Property, Trademarks do not expire. If they are kept in use they can theoretically be owned forever.

But trademarks need to be defended and they need to be unambiguous. You obviously cannot use someone else's trademark but you must defend your own trademark else it may become "generic". Xerox has fought a lifelong battle to keep people from saying they are "Xeroxing" something to protect the Xerox trademark.

Also you can infringe someone else's trademark unintentionally . Oscar's restaurant was put out of business by the society of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences who owns the trademark to the famous statue. Oscars had used not only the name but the movie motif. After the lawsuit, they changed their name to Ozzie's but they were never the same and soon went under. Disney is such a vigorous defender of its trademarks that they protect the exact color of Mickey Mouse's shoes.

Trademarks can sometimes be a substitute for a patent especially for some items like clothing. Clothing designs are very often copied or "knocked-off". To protect their brand fashion designers vigorously defend their label instead. (which is trademarked). If you can establish a brand for your invention and trademark it, that protection is often as good or better than what you might get from a patent.

To help decide which approach is best for protecting your intellectual property, please contact us using the information below. If we think a trademark is a good method for you we will say so and refer you to a trademark attorney.

To learn more please email rblazey@businessmetamorphosis.com

or give us a call at (585) 520-3539

The licensee, the End user and the One Line Value Statement

When a client signs with ITTr we begin a process which includes creating a number of sales tools. One is the One Page Flier, another the list of targets and a third is The One Line Value statement. This tool is exactly what it seams it should be. It comes from the book "One Simple Idea" by Stephen Key and asks the marketer to describe the value of their product or service in one single statement- [Some examples from key are........]. The issue I wish to discuss here is not the creation of those statements but who they should be addressed to. Most inventors are pretty good at describing the value of their invention to the end user. That is after all who they had in mind when they made their invention in the first place.

However, the problem in patent brokerage is the person we are selling to is not the end user, its the patent buyer or licensee, and that person has quite a different agenda than the end user. He doesn't want to solve the problem the invention addresses, he wants to make and sell the invention to that person.

So he has some issues that are quite different than those of the end user, such as: Does this invention align with what I'm doing now, that is can I make it with the manufacturing processes I have in house and can I sell it through the channels that I have developed.

When asked to answer these questions the inventor is often at a loss. One of the best ways we have found to address the licensee's needs is to ask the inventor what he would need to do if he was making and marketing the invention himself or herself.

In looking at what person to contact at the prospective licensee's company we focus on the marketing department not the engineering department. While those in engineering might understand the product better they also have an agenda of their own and may in fact be competitors of the licensor as they may have been asked to solve the same problem the inventor has already solved.

Another approach is to make a list of benefits of the invention. Benefits are not the same as features. The old saw is that "features tell, benefits sell". A great example is from the first IPOD Apple sold. The competition was talking about how many Mbytes of storage they had (a feature) while Apple described their offering as 1000 songs in your pocket (a benefit). When you make your list of benefits for the end user then add to that list the benefits that the licensee might enjoy. Such as Millions of customers are begging to buy this product. One of our clients demonstrated this method when he sold out on QVC in 3 minutes setting a record.

To find out more contact us at the address below or learn more from the website.

write to rblazey@ittrifecta.com or call (585) 520-3539

Due Diligence

Companies that are considering mergers or acquisitions are usually quite familiar with Due Diligence reports. These often lengthy reports give a sufficiently complete picture of the operations of a company so that a prospective purchaser or merger partner can make the best possible estimate of the value of the company and hence what a reasonable offer might be to buy it.

These reports are also useful to owners who are thinking of selling their business and want to know what it might be worth and also what changes might enhance its value.

However full length due diligence reports may be far to expensive and complex for other less complicated transactions.

Penguins "First Look" product was invented for just such purposes. We had a client who wanted to compare several possible merger partners and what's more wanted to do so without their knowing. The companies in question were also privately held.

Such a report can be quite difficult to prepare. While publicly held companies are required to disclose lots of significant financial information about their operations, that is not true of privately held companies.

That is where the special expertise of Penguin comes in. Our researcher can draw on her many years of experience, her subscriptions to online services and her network of librarian colleagues across the globe. Combining that research with high level business analysis allows us to do surprising things

We used this technique to determine the true size of a company which had been estimated to be as little as $500,000 or as much as $5 Million in value. We were able to arrive at a defensible valuation for the company based on such things as press releases and reports in trade journals.

Our First Look reports use a subset of the 125 items found in most due diligence reports. We assert we supply 80% of the value for 20% of the cost of a standard report.

You can email me at : rblazey@rochester.rr.com, Call at (585) 520-3539. Or visit our website by clicking on this link

We appreciate your responses to our newsletters. Please send us your comments. We are always interested in what you want to know.

Sincerely,

Richard Blazey
Business Metamorphosis LLC

Disclaimers

Please realize that this newsletter contains only our opinions on patent matters. We are not authorized to give legal advice. If you are seeking such advice please contact an attorney.

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