Protecting what matters: Misconceptions around IP

all right well Michael we’re uh sitting there ready to go and uh chatting so

let’s uh let’s let’s get ourselves underway and and have a little bit of a chat um about our IP and and

misconceptions and obviously World IP day being Friday do you have a party on Friday for World IP day

that’s good that’s I probably that probably sounds about right for uh for all those matters in that regard but all

right let’s uh let’s get us underway and uh I welcome everyone who’s watching um on Facebook on LinkedIn and here in this

team’s call as well and we’ll start our session around protecting what matters misconceptions around IP um I want to

begin our session by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land of which we’re gathered on and pay our

respects to Elders past and present and recognize that you are joining all across the country to to have a listen

to this call or watching this later as well and we just want to acknowledge the way that they’ve looked after these lands and looked after the things that

are around them and shared and connected with each other through all of that uh and there is still so much for us to

learn from them um today’s event where is presented by Cooper IP the van demon project and the digital Solutions

program and obviously with World IP day on Friday but probably most of you are going to take Anzac day/ weekend equals

long weekend we thought we’d do this a little bit earlier in the week um and as mentioned our our session’s being broadcast live on Facebook and Linkedin

um and we’ve got a couple of people in our room as well um so we’re going to run through to about 11:00 with a bit of

a discussion probably just a little bit afterwards um around some of the common misconceptions Michael this is what he talks about all the time and really

interested unpacking some of that and then for those who have come into the core we’ll obviously allow you to ask your questions as well um for those who

I haven’t met my name is Adam mogle I’m the CEO on the chief entrepreneur at the van demon project involved as also in

education and social Enterprise and seeing great things happen with businesses um and I’m really excited to have

Michael Cooper here from Cooper IP Michael has years of experience in the space of Ip um in fact I did read

Michael you’re recognized in the I am Payton 1000 as one of the world’s leading Payton professionals it’s an

absolute honor to have you joining us and helping us out with this and after years of your experience and other IP

law firms you’ve helped set up Cooper IP to help innovators with cost-effective and bespoke services and I will also add

from my perspective do it in a way that actually helps all of us without multiple degrees understand how this all works which I think is AB which is

absolutely fantastic and why we love doing these things with you but with those intros out of the way obviously

everyone’s here to listen to these misconceptions and what’s going on and so let’s get into it often think about

IP as as offensive like to use a sports analogy I think it’s all about I’m going to create a product I’m going to sell it

in this space or I’m going to put my services into this country or that country and um you know I I don’t want

people to do this and I don’t want people to do that and and my IP is just completely offensive um and it’s it’s

about protecting my patch um that’s only half of the half the

matter um what a lot of people don’t think about is that others have IP and

you need to be mindful from a defensive perspective that you don’t get yourself into trouble um your IP strategy might

be to have no IP and for some companies that’s fine you know that might be a valid strategy but if you’re moving into

a new space you’re creating a product or a service or whatever and and we have this issue

all the time all the time um there’s others in that space they might have

patents designs or trademarks on products they might have trademarks um protecting their branding and just

showing up in a new space and expecting that there’s going to be this clear patch for you to operate in and you’ll never have an issue it’s

unrealistic and a lot of the problems we see um can be fixed up front you know

they can be avoided uh for you know what is what is a magnitude less than the

problem once it arises you talked about a strategy there so I’m really interested in that part so

you saying that like a business could almost sit here and go all right here’s what I need to do but I’m also also

going to pull the trigger on Parts when I say can afford it when I think it’s relevant are you saying so you can actually stage this rather than hey I

need to have everything sorted before I jump ahead yeah absolutely and you know your

product might be digital product or it might be a physical product um you know you’ve got your whole development

pipeline from your your minim minimum viable product through to getting it developed and getting it to Market

um you don’t need to file your patents or your designs if that’s what you’re going to do at the outset you know you

can go and you can work with an industrial designer you can use a non-disclosure agreement um that you’ve

got to be careful certain caveats in there and you want to be choosing a reputable designer but you

know you can work with that it might be a software development team or a hardware development team you can work

with them to prove a concept you know you can get something that actually works you know you can you’ve got to

keep it confidential you don’t want any public disclosures but you can start doing that initial work before you spend

a whole lot of money on on patents designs um and the same with the same with branding before you you know

committing to branding you can look at trademark application you can do some searching you can file an application if

you want and and have it examined before you before you launching so there are ways to stagger it um it doesn’t all

have to be done at once so you’ve talked about searching and checking and being a little bit defensive as well is there a

way that uh a business owner could like check some of these databases where can they look I I understand helping you

getting the help and being able to provide that assistance but if I just wanted to go hey where do I stand is there a place that I can easily

look yeah there is freely available databases where these things are so um

you know you can look yourself it’s important to note that it’s jurisdictional so there’s you know

there’s the Australian databases which are the Australian IP rights if you’re selling into the US there’s databases

that you need to look at for us and so on and so on um places like China are difficult because they’re um they’re not

in English harder to navigate but there’s there’s ways to do that um so yeah look if you’re doing creating

a new product um you can look at the patent or design databases yourself you

can just that you might have a competitor you might look at their name and say um hey this company is in this

space I like what they’re doing I’m doing something different but I want to see what patterns they’ve got just to make sure you can do a name search and

and see and you know it might be one or two or 10 pents you don’t know what it’s

going to be but once you do that search you can start to inform yourself of

what’s out there and and and there name with branding there’s a trademark database and there they’re constantly

improving it it’s through IP Australia you can search logos now you can search on a name you can search on a name in

all sorts of different ways it can be a phonetic it can be a fuzzy search it can be a part word search um you know it’s

really quite quite powerful so if you’re thinking of starting a business and and

putting a name on it that you think is new and unique or you think it might be problematic you can just go and start to

run some um searches and see hey the

what we find is that the results aren’t always click up and you might need a professional to um guide you on on those

results but if you want to um start um a business you know a

trailer business and Bulbs trailers and you go in there and there’s bulb trailer hire or something like that

instinctively you know it’s it’s pretty close and maybe you just want to steer away anyway yeah that’s good and it’s

good to know that they’re out there so obviously looking at IP Australia and being able to search that as a great place to start I think probably then if

I take a step back a little bit with this space there’s a lot of terms in this space patents trademarks you you’ve

mentioned some of them already um what does each mean in a really easy way that we can all understand and is there any

terms that we haven’t quite discussed that we probably should Define just so that we’ve got that Clarity and and make sense of of what we what these things

actually I guess entitled to you as protection but also what they cover yeah absolutely

great great question Adam um and I sort of chuckled to myself because not a week goes by that we get an inquiry that

everything’s um uh mixed up and someone called on Monday morning with a question

and it was they had just mixed up all the different terms and and what they

said made no sense whatsoever but it just reminds me and I’m constantly reminded of how um foreign the concept

is to most people um so it’s a great question um simplest one copyright MH copyright

protects um many things but typically Works um like artistic works and so

literary Works songs music um things like that can protect threedimensional

articles like sculptures but the line gets drawn um when it’s industrially

applied so if you got a commercial product basically if you’re making and selling something and copyright doesn’t

exist um but you know the the photos on your website the text on your website things like that there’s a a necessary

um sort of standard of originality to it so you know it’s not just free words on

your websites necessarily going to get copyright but maybe some interesting um unique copy that you’ve written will

will have copyright it exists automatically copyright notice on the bottom of your page um and it’s it’s

it’s not a strong form of protection because someone has to have seen it to

to copy like it’s a necessary part is that it’s they’ they’ve seen it they’ve copied it so someone can come up with it

independently and they wouldn’t infringe copyright and and that happens from time to time you know people come up with

similar slogans and names um um next designs design registrations

or design pattern in some other countries they’re visual they protect the way um something looks not the way

it works uh great examples are in the packaging space you know bottles and things like that anything with a unique

appearance um know it might be a could be a jug for example that’s got a unique

shape to it jugs been around thousands of years but it’s the way this one actually

looks um and patents uh the way things work it’s conceptual it’s it’s

functional it’s a it’s a machine that does XYZ it’s um a website or or a bit

of code that does has a function that does something um and it typically takes something it does something else so

could be a product could be some software it could be a manufacturing process a drug um quite a large number

of things and that’s a a pretty complicated space um but you know um for someone

that’s looking at developing a product and bringing it to Market you know you you can invest tens if not

hundreds of thousands of dollars in getting a product to Market and having a pattern on it to stop people copying it

once it gets there is it’s a pretty valuable piece of insurance so without that then um you know you’re pretty

exposed and and the speed of copying now is is pretty phenomenal so it’s the last

thing you want is that getting to Market and having others being SP and I

probably think um around the the cost that you’re talking about there that yes the amount of money you put into it the amount of time the amount of thinking

space we always undervalue the amount what our time is worth in that Innovation process so there’s probably

it’s probably another 10,000 hours worth of uh of thinking and design which which makes the payon probably a worthwhile

investment for all of the time that you’ve spent thinking about it so no that’s good so absolutely and and it’s

not um it’s not uncommon for someone to come in and say hey I’ve got this product here’s my here’s my invention

I’ve spent 3 four five years working on it um and you can see you can look at the iterations and the development and

it’s hundreds of thousands of hours that have gone into creating something and you know there’s an opportunity cost

there um they could have been doing other things so yeah that’s good um

think about so obviously you’ve talked through um trade marks so I’m really interested in so of diving into that all of our businesses obviously we have a

logo we have a we have a um design that we use behind our name what happens if I don’t trademark my logo or my name

doesn’t my business name registration help with that understanding that yes you put your ation through there but

what are the additional Productions that um we should be probably seeking around our logos

Nam it’s important to to point out that the business name system um the domain

name system excuse me and the trademark system are three separate systems and they don’t talk to each other and

they’ve all got their own requirements if you’re starting a new business ideally you’re going to be able to have all three you’re going to be out

of a strong Dame name that relates to what you’re doing um and I’m sure we’ve all seen it where

someone’s you’re looking for a business and there’s a something Solutions Tasmania hyen lanest no you know try try

reading that out I F it’s terrible um they might have a business name the the

threshold for getting a business name is really low um and it you know might just

be a letter difference or a space or something like that it is really low um

and people that register their own businesses should pay attention into the note that you get when you’ve registered

that says that this is not necessarily free of trademark issues um a lot of

people ignore that that note it’s a very important note um and it’s really common

for someone to to start a business and they go and they register their name and um you know it’s a couple letters

different from someone else in the space and they think hey this is great I’ve got the business name asex given it to

me um I must be free and clear and I’m going to go and start using and

that is not the case at all I’m sorry um the trademark system um it’s

it’s there and it’s all about consumer protection and preventing consumer confusion so you should be able to go

into a shop or go online and see a name it’s the trademarks often referred to as

a badge of origin I go into the shop I see something labeled Samsung I know what Samsung is I know what they make I

know their sort of quality I’m going to buy that you know I don’t don’t know a lot about the product but I’m going to

buy it because it says Samsung um if there’s a product in there Samsung or s or we’ve all seen them you

know we’ve all seen them yeah yeah if you’ve ever been to um

C other countries yeah you’ve seen seen these things um you know You’ You’ might stop and

pause you might buy it and you realize pretty soon that it’s not what you thought it was and and that’s what these

laws are all about protect um so you know they are super important

um and the the test that you know IP Australia being the gatekeeper of the trademark system what they do is that

they examine a new application and they might have

um um you know an application come in they look at what’s on the register and they see well is this going to confuse

the public is it too close is it words that commonly people should be free to use and you know if you’re a hardware

store in lawest and you should be able to advertise lawest and hardware for example you know that’s the common words

that everyone should have and no one should have a monopoly over so those common words you know really struck out

they’re not not protected um it’s really about names um so yeah IP Australia do

that search um and it’s quite common that you know things don’t get through

they’ll say it’s this is too close to something else um you can’t use it um

and you know it it sends someone back to the drawing board and it’s a it’s a really good

process to go through and and I often encourage people even if they’re not interested in enforcing their trademark

is that it fleshes out issues so I’m launching a business um and it could be

called anything you know you might be a digital Solutions business and LA T you’re launching you’ve got a great

name um you could spend a lot of time and effort trying to find other

businesses online and make sure you’re not infringing their rights or you could just file a trademark and have IP

Australia Do It um you know and at the end of the day a trademark can be a

defense to infringement so if someone pops up six months later and says hey your name’s two too similar you’ve at

least got that defense to say hey IP Australia doesn’t think so I’ve got my own name you can you can go

away yeah it’s a valuable process it’s it’s and people don’t often see it for

that um so for all of those small businesses out there that have not

trademarked and I I feel like I might have a logo that I need to talk to you about now after this um quickly like at

Ballpark and I kind of put you on spot with this like amount of time to get through cost to get it done what does it

take to trademark our small business logo that we probably should have done by now yeah look IP Australia have a great

system um Head Start um and the way it works is that

you file sorry it’s TM Head Start um so TM for trademark the way it works is you

file um a preliminary application you don’t get a filing date initially but

they look at it within five days and they do this preliminary examination where they search the register and they

they let you know about any issues with it um it’s basically in examination I’m yet to

see a formal examination report differ from the preliminary report so it’s the same thing essentially it’s within 5

days it can’t be accepted for seven and a bit months anyway but you get this right at the

start you get this um bit of paper that says hey your trademark okay once the time frames are up we’ll allow it um so

the and there’s some some other great aspects of that that that system as well that one if

you if your name’s too close you can amend it there’s an additional fee um

you can amend the name you can put in a logo things like that so you can which you can’t do once you’ve formally filed

so you start out you name you know what I think this name’s not great I’m going to see how it goes file it the examiner

says no way mate you’re kidding yourself so that’s fine um what if I tweet this

what if I change that you can talk to the examiner you can file you can change the application um and get to a point where

they’re happy with and you can do this within a couple of days and it’s and it’s sorted out then it becomes you pay the extra fee becomes a formal

application um and and you know where you stands you know you’re not waiting four five months wondering how it’s

going to go um in terms of cost um you know with our fee and the official fees

it’s about $1300 um over $1,300 for the first class

they’re in the actual cost depends on the number of classes but um it’s not it’s not free it’s not cheap

um it’s a good bit of insurance if you have to Rebrand after three four five

years change your name change all your stationer change your signs change all your collateral all your website not

much in that scheme no it’s not it’s not and and you know we’ve seen customers that um might

be an IT company they’ve you know raised funds here and there and you know series a and series B and they’re starting to

look legitimate and successful and yeah it’s not a good look you got to

go to your investors and say oh I didn’t think about this at the outset change this thing change name and and yeah cost

a lot more so that’s good well it’s good to know though because you’re right like I know $1,300 wallet does sound a lot in

the scheme of things and when you think of maybe a company registration is probably a similar price in the scheme of that our business and registration is

quite cost effective but you’re right for probably what we want to take out of a business to pay at least a wage for

ourselves um it’s a smaller amount in the scheme of things so that’s good to to put that around it so think that’s

obviously the trademarking side so now we start to move down like obviously people that provide physical products and manufacture stuff understand patent

processes and things like that but what about services and I guess probably more intangible elements that we might

provide resources or education or or other things in that service space is there anything that a business should

think about in their IP protection yeah trademarks um in the

service space trademarks are incredibly valuable you know it’s all around your name um you know and we’ve we’ve worked

for various um doctors health clinics um

psychologist clinics and the like where people see your name they see your logo

and that’s um you know that’s what they recognize and and

it happens where you get somebody coming along with a similar name and and people get confused they ask questions they

might ring up your competitor looking for you um you know it can cost you business it can cost them business and

having those names registered is is is really valuable there are um there are

consumer protection Provisions um around misleading and deceptive

conduct um but they’re they’re a lot more difficult to use um and and that

makes it a lot more expensive if you ever have to use them whereas if you’ve simply got a trademark and somebody

comes along with with the same name and they’re in the same space you just write to them and you say look this is

registered Rebrand no no some BS Rebrand off you go

um and it’s it’s so much easier that’s good that’s good to know that um what

about obviously you come back to the product line of things that you’ve created something that you think is worthy of being patented but like

probably I don’t know if there’s that many people out there like me but I’m going to ask it from this perspective like I like to just tinker and and make

changes and amend things as we go through because you’re always in that constant improvement process how does

paint me work with that should I just paint at the start and just like be okay with that or should I be waiting to a certain point should I maybe just not

paint because it’s going to be too hard how how does that work for that Eternal tinkerer that’s got a really good thing

what what do we do with that I’m not surprised Adam I I picture you as a tinkerer that the sort of person that’s

always looking at something and always curious once to know how it works always I think there’s a lot of people like that out there like they just go ah does

it mean that I can’t ever change anything and it’s a good reason why we probably haven’t reached out

before yeah yeah and um yeah look it’s such a common problem uh or or an issue

to have and look the first I think the first thing you’ve got to overcome is

that you know is this a hobby or is this you know a commercial thing I mean patents are commercial tools are you

just tinkering in the shed because you like to do it and you want to make something or is this something that you

want to take to the world you want to you know turn it into a commercial

product you want to sell it you want it on Amazon you want to make a business out of it um you know patents are

commercial tools you know they’re business tools um they most places are going away from it

now but the the US PTR used to issue these really amazing patent deeds and they look great you know us

PTO us pattern and Tra trademark office just in case so yeah yeah from from the USA yeah

these beautiful certificates you know they look amazing and I tell you what they look great on your wall you know I

think um I can see why people want them but they’re expensive um and you know if

you’re not going to take what you’ve got and turn it into a business then you know there’s there’s no point um you got

to be realistic about it um you know if you’re um you know running a business

and this and that and you’ve got you know your you just have no space in your life for it well be upfront and honest

and that um if you are wanting to turn it into a um an actual business and a

lot of people do they they see something say hey this is something great I can sell this and some people do amazingly

well out of it um and you know others are in between

um with the pattern you have to describe what it is and what you’re doing and and

so to some extent you do have to lock it in and you can’t um after a certain

point you can’t change the patent and the reason is that you’re you’re getting

this protection you know this this barrier around what you’re doing and and

it needs to be defined so that other people know exactly what where where the

limits lie you know they know what they can income do and so it does get logged

in and it does come a point where you need to say all right um this is my product I’m going to go to market

and that has has to happen from a practical sense anyway you can’t just Tinker forever otherwise you’ll never

you’ll never launch but um you know you got to get this product and um and we Define it in the application

and and off you go and there are tools um to to capture improvements in

Australia we have a pattern of addition similar in New Zealand in the US they have continuation

in part um other countries have different things but you know it’s not that uncommon to have um we act for a

number of businesses where they’ve got some core technology that they patented and a patent last for 20 years and you

know they’re constantly developing you know they’re constantly doing things for new clients and customers and and it

changes and you know we might have various Milestones first patent

second patent third patent um you know it just goes on and on it’s it’s it’s a continuous development cycle and you you

try and um overlay that over the patent system and make it

work that’s good so obviously but I think probably underneath all of that probably come and have a chat to you is

probably the end outcome of that is is working where that sits and and where that goes because it is you’re right it

does it does sound like it’s kind of a yeah there’s a bit of nuance in that process so trying to get that right

absolutely and that comes back to my earlier point on strategy is you know what do you what have you got what are

you trying to achieve how does it all fit in and um I will point out that you

need to keep it confidential um you know if you’re putting it up on Facebook and

things like that they’re all public disclosures and that’s detrimental to your application so before you do things

like that um come and have a chat and you can get something filed if that’s if that’s where you want to go now right at

the start you talked about the different directories as well so obviously we’re probably going to look at trademarking

protecting from an Australian context cuz guess what we operate in Australia but what does that mean for the rest of

the world and obviously thinking small to medium businesses we may not be export orientated it might come up in

the future um but yeah what does what does that mean what should we be aware of even if we’re operating in our local

market yeah look overseas you need you need to be aware of it um IP rights are

jurisdictional so if you’ve got a trademark in Australia and you want to sell into another country it doesn’t mean you’re free to sell into that

country um I did some work for a client last year um they just picked up a a big

contract to supply a um a major department store in the UK and they

hadn’t done any trademark clearance and and they found that there was a trademark in in

the UK which was going to stand in their way and it was a massive issue for them they been given they’ been awarded the

contract of a lifetime that they couldn’t fulfill um and you know had they thought about it earlier on then we

know we could have done something about it and um a number of brands have

different brands in in a number of companies have different brands in different jurisdictions I think Breville

uses Sage or something like that in the UK for example you know these are big companies that just for whatever reason can’t have their brand um and it’s

really hard if if you were to come to me and say hey this is my brand um I want to be able to sell in 10 different

countries um you know we’ve got 10 different databases and there’s a chance that in one of those countries someone’s

going to have something similar it’s going to stand in the way and you know trying to find something that’s clear in

10 countries can be hard it might be that you need two separate Brands um so you need to be mindful of

that and also you know if you’ve got your your IP registered in Australia but nowhere else it’s it’s public domain

elsewhere so that brand that you’ve got in a in Australia that looks amazing

um it’s free to use in China unless you’re registered there so um you know

that’s a common problem in other countries people see something can start selling and doing what they want overseas if you haven’t protected it

there that that’s good to be aware of that and good to think about obviously it’s probably for many businesses it’s

probably like wait a minute I can see all of my customers down the street there’s only so far that I’m going but

it’s it’s good to have that orientation and thinking about that stuff and again knowing where to look and where to find that stuff and and where that support

can be in case that opportunity does arise and almost put it into the mix of hey we’ve got to do the logistics we got

to do we’ve got to think about how this works and then yes can we look at the IP stuff in that process rather than

probably leaving it out nicely it probably happens to op it yeah unfortunately it’s too often

um so um just thinking about that like we’ve talked a little bit about like people coming in too late all that sort

of stuff like if you’ve got a small business making something whether it’s a service or a product and let’s go with

that like what the what’s your dream client that we should all probably act like to make sure that we do all the

stuff that’s protected and and obviously reasonable and and understanding that we we like we’d love to pay you all of your

wage Michael but we probably can’t afford it so what’s what what would be that ideal way of a small business

interacting and thinking about all this stuff and and getting this stuff in place so that they’re not catching their

tail later or or chasing something like that and getting caught out but how do they do it well from your

perspective yeah look come in early ask the question um you know we give a free initial consultation um as to most other

firms um come in early and have the chat it it’s so common for us to meet with

someone and then it could be um well two years um before we actually

do any work for them so um that

that’s that’s a common thing um coming in having the chat just talking about

what what you’re looking to do um where how it’s going to play out um

and we can flag at the outset what the main issues are and then we can say look

um all right you’re interested in in patents or designs whatever we’ll um

you’re not there yet go do XYZ and then come back and we’ll talk further um

you’re not quite there on your branding um lock something in we’ll come back come back in 3 months we’ll do some

searching but that that initial meeting is really like the key to it all is um flagging

the issues and then setting a bit of a a bit of a rough timetable as to what to do and

when that’s good to think about that and obviously that opportunity just to to catch up with you um at some point and

just chat through all that stuff is really useful to know that’s sitting there um look I’ve only got one or two more that I was really interested in

asking around but um I guess one of the things that that might be interesting just to consider is that obviously if you

see if there’s a name out there that you like that hasn’t been trademarked and

you kind of go oh I wonder if I could name my business that and almost like like it’s probably a really weird

way of going about it but sometimes people look at stuff on on your socials and go oh that’s a really cool name maybe I can do it and kind of go how do

I jump on that and how do I protect it uh in a really nice way um yeah what’s

your thoughts on that how do you how do you how would you would be advising someone around that and potentially what’s their recommended

action yeah look um if that’s what they want to name their business

[Music] um the first thing is really to to to do

some searching and just make sure that others haven’t used it I I’ve um I’ve had some clients coming the door before

with great names and I thought gez that’s a great name what a what an excellent idea and we go to the register

and go oh yeah it’s such a great name that here it is 50 different

times yeah yeah and and look starting a business the name that’s similar to

someone else’s Is Not Great from either your perspective or theirs because they

um people are going to be confused you know you want to stand out in the marketplace and you think of the the big

companies that we’ve got around you know like telra um and IBM and and Tesla and all that they’re they’re quite unique

names they’re they’re memorable they don’t um know they don’t involve words

that others need to use you know they they stand alone clearly and and confusion is minimal so so you want that

great name um and if you do have that great name for your business it’s an excellent place to start but you know

you still need to check and see what’s there and and then um get something on

file and get get it filed and and start using it as well um trademarks need to

be used if they’re not used for three years they can be struck off um you know the owner of a trademark is often the

first to use it in business um and so we’ve we acted for someone last year

that came up with a great name and they registered the business um registered

the trademark and they didn’t start trading for two years um and in the

meantime somebody else started trading um and so it was sort of a difficult situation they didn’t register the

trademark at the outset sorry and that was what allowed somebody else to come in and you know they had products coming

in from overseas with their branding on it that they couldn’t sell and it just became a bit of

man so I’ve asked you probably what I think of some of the misconceptions and things that are going on um obviously

the terms you’ve already framed that that’s there like what what do you see are like and you’ve probably talked through some of them but like what are

some of the big things that people get wrong about this space that really with

your knowledge and your experience you help make sense of that but obviously they come in potentially with that wrong wrong thought process we talk a bit

about paintings and trademarks and things like that is there anything missed in those Mison conceptions that you commonly

see yeah um I mean one of the misconceptions is that what what somebody’s always done they’ll be okay

to do um and we see this a bit coming out of businesses coming out of Tasmania

um you know we’ve done a lot of work together in tazio over the years and it’s not an uncommon path for someone to

start a business down in Tasmania and and you know there is that of isolation

there they’ll you’re right that’s right and they’ll pick a great name and they’ll um you know start

out doing wherever they start and they’ll like a common example is in the food space someone will have a food

product they’ll grow they’ll grow they’ll grow um they never did some

research around their name and they they think two three years in they’re fine they’ll never have to think about this

um eventually they get to a size where they picked up by woolies for example um national chain and all of a sudden

they’re all around the country um trade Mar s are you know they’re National so someone

in Brisbane that has a trademark uh covering the name can stop that business down in tazzy and and the fact that

they’ve been trading for three years is is not of a lot of consequence really um

and so yeah that that’s we get that all the time that that issue which is

unfortunate so the assumption that what you’re doing or have been doing for a few years

will will always be okay is um is a common

misconception um what about just think another question as well so obviously

some markets and sectors can be a little bit loose um with around that first

mover in that IP space so just yeah thinking about um yeah obviously do you

focus on people trying to get in early to try and lock down and be defensive um

potentially not just in the trademark but in the general IP space would that be a a recommendation so they can protect everything can keep everything

safe or can it be a little bit looser if businesses are kind of just all sharing

and like yeah just kind of think is that sometimes we’re really collaborative and we just like to help each other out but then also we probably hand over a lot of

Ip so what would you be recommending should we should we move and be defensive but still be nice yeah yeah and look they don’t it

doesn’t have to be one or the other to be honest um you know often you know if

you’re you know we often work for companies that might be doing something with a university for example and having

a pattern application from one party or the other is is a great way to really know and

understand what’s what’s what who owns what at the outset um and there’s always

disputes around who came up with something and who did this and who did that and who owns that and having that

IP registration in place is a pretty good way to to clarify who owns what um

and then on top of that you know it might be the way you do business and the way you collaborate and the way that you

Share technology um you know is done by a different agreement whether written or verbal but you that that sort of worked

out through the process but having um having that sort of ownership defined

and and and documented is really really useful I’ve seen no ended disputes um

where collaborations have gone South and and one party says I want this another party wants that and they’d all kind of

had a a loose agreement or a a handshake or whatever and it it it becomes

problematic um whereas if one party owned the IP and um was allowing the

other party to be using it for the project for example then it’s it’s a much cleaner

process so with all of that said and we might sort of make this the final question of this process before we move

over to the Q&A um you’ve shared lots of useful insights I feel like that we need

to keep having conversation around IP matters Michael how do we do that and is it going to cost us a fortune to

no no look you’re right Adam um we just need to keep doing the conversations and um we love doing seminars like this just

to try and keep that topic um alive and now people know about it because I mean

I get it I run a business you’ve got staff you’ve got taxes you’ve got all sorts of issues day-to-day you just

don’t have you got limited head space to handle things and um you know IP really needs to be something that you needs to

be an important part of the mix and you need to have someone good that you can use to to guide you through that um as I

mentioned we do we give free initial consultations and and you know we’re down in tesy every month and and so

there’s no no excuse for not having that that chat really how do we find out

about those Michael how do we book in yeah go to our website there’s a there’s a page on our website there’s a specific

tazy page which has our dates um and our locations um and you can just put something in and and in person or or on

the front page of our website you can book in a video call any time you can run through and have that

that chat about what you’re doing or what you’re trying to do and um give you some guidance and and it all starts with

that initial meeting could go in any direction from there no that’s good but I think obviously it’s probably better

to go in the direction that you’re helping with rather than the direction maybe us as a small business owner might take it in any direction or any

different perspective so that’s that’s really great so thank you so much Michael for for joining um this conversation and those who have joined

our live stream um um and obviously thank you so much uh Michael for those insights as well we’re going to turn off

our Facebook and our LinkedIn streams in a moment so if you want to keep going down this obviously Michael has already raised there’s a tazzy page on the

Cooper IP website that you can reach out and talk to the expert in the space um so that you can get that there and then

through the van demon project in all your business areas we deliver the digital Solutions program and we’re eager to help make that opportunity

matter that you’ve got we’ve got a range of subject matter experts all across the state where you can help access 4 hours

of one-on-one advice for only $59 as long as you’re for-profit and got less than 20 full-time equivalent staff just

reach out to us and we’re happy to see what we can do to help you out otherwise thank you so much for joining us on our

live stream