James Hart - The Critical Legal Info Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know
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James Hart teaches valuable strategies on how to protect your website through trademarking, copywriting, accounting issues that may arise and the 4 STEPS you should be doing as an incorporation in this episode!
You have a copyright to whatever you do. However it is helpful to register your copyrights with the federal offices because it’s expensive to defend.
The Burger King story.
There was an old school Burger King store in Illinois that has block letters on the sign that says Burger King. This small mom and pop Burger King was able to trademark in Illinois and allowed to continue operating as a state trademark after the chain Burger King restaurant wanted to force them to close down.
Know the difference between state and national trademarking…when you go to trademark your business.
Be informed on where you should be registering your LLC
Accounting issues are always a huge issue when someone isn’t paying attention to where they are suppose to be paying their taxes. For example, If someone lives in Atlanta, and they want to file a LLC in Wyoming. The income tax you pay is in the state that you live in. You have to register it as a foreign office in Georgia.
Many states are very corporate friendly these days. Just make sure you are aware of the income tax laws state to state.
How to maximize legal protection
Step 1: Pick a name that is trademarkable. Ways you can do that is to pick a name that is unrelated to your industry like “apple” computers. You can’t trademark you name.
GET GUIDES on his website by visiting here!
Step 2: Do a common law search on google to see if anyone is using that name. Even though they’ve not registered it with the federal government, they could cancel your trademark.
Step 3: Search on the governments trademark website: http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=searchss&state=4807:lk2xtx.1.1
Step 4: Make sure the domain is available. Just because you’ve registered a domain name doesn’t mean that you have rights to the intellectual property on godaddy or namecheap.com, also look on social media profiles such as twitter and facebook.
Step 5: Then go forward and trademark the name. You can do it yourself or with an attorney. In 80% of the cases you will get a preliminary denial. That process takes somewhere between 6-9 months on the short end.
Step 6: Monitor your IP: You want to monitor your intellectual property. Lawyers have information that can monitor your information, poor man’s version of this is google alerts. Jim would certainly recommend it.
If you’re working with independent contractors or employees, it’s essential that they’re not putting up illegal images or content up on your website.
Incorporation:
Privacy Policy on website - don’t just steal it from someone else’s website.
Disclaimers as an affiliate links - If you have a resources page have a disclaimer that is prominently displayed.
Double Optin - Make sure you’re getting people who want to be in the email. Lead-pages and convert kit… “Click this link”.
Testimonials - If you’re going to sell supplements for example, you want to make sure that you have a proper disclaimer for the results. The FTC could get you in trouble if you’re violating the guidelines. You want to make sure that your testimonials are solid and not made up by having the appropriate evidence.
You can contact the domain name host to take a website down if they are stealing your intellectual property. Seth Godin doesn’t care if someone steals his information but you have to decide what is best for you and your business.
