#254 Legal Strategies for Startups: Understanding Trademarks, Copyrights and AI with Karin Coger

0:00:02 - Mehmet
Hello and welcome back to a new episode of the CTO Show with Mehmet. Today I'm very pleased to have with me joining from New Jersey, from the US, Karin. Karin, by the way, it's the first time I have someone who is from your background with me. I would keep it a surprise and I will let you introduce yourself to the audience. 

0:00:19 - Karin
Okay, thank you very much everyone. My name is Karin Coger. I'm an attorney, as Mehmet said, out of New Jersey. However, I practice in all 50 states the United States, so my law firm is Coger Law Firm. We're a boutique firm that focuses mostly on intellectual property, any areas of trademarks and copyrights, as well as small business law, so we like to help entrepreneurs, small businesses and content creators protect their intellectual property in their content. 

0:00:49 - Mehmet
Great and, by the way, this is the first time I have someone from legal background. So, because we had marketing, we had sales, we had, of course, it's a city of Osho, it's a lot of people who are in the tech, but I thought that legal is also one important part of any startup journey, or even small medium business journey, and the topic that we're going to discuss today is also important. So let's start, Karin, from here. Let's put kind of an overview or definition of intellectual property and why it's crucial for startups and establish business alike. 

0:01:26 - Karin
Actually, no problem. So it's interesting that you mentioned that you already had people on that talked about sales and marketing, because when people start businesses, those are among the first things that they get into. They go out, they create a logo, they purchase a domain, they set up all their social media and a lot of times they do legal especially intellectual property legal last, and that is not what they should do as a matter of fact, people should actually consider their intellectual property first. So, in terms of intellectual property, like I said, I practice the areas of trademarks and copyrights, so a lot of people confuse the two. 

So I would say that, in the most simplest terms, trademarks they protect your brand and copyrights protect your content. So, for instance, if you were to trademark and I don't know if you've done that yet in your country or in the US the CTO show that is protecting your brand, is protecting the name of your podcast, is protecting your logo, and you would file registrations for that. And, like I said, a lot of people wait to the end to even consider trademarking their brand or their business. But what can happen is, if they do that, you're going to invest all this time in this money and supporting and building and marketing and sales, and then you might find out that A somebody you're infringing upon somebody else's trademark and they will come after you with a cease and desist and you might lose the ability to use everything that you've invested in. Also, you want to protect yourself so nobody sees what you're doing and copies what you do Without that. 

0:03:16 - Mehmet
Yeah, Now at which stage do you think because you mentioned they have to start early. So because you mentioned to think the trademark and the IP or the intellectual property, so do you think they should maybe start with a trademark, especially, for example, if it's a startup and you know they are coming up with a little bit different name than a traditional name in the market, so they need to first register that name, or maybe they need to wait a little bit to see some traction. So what do you advise? Usually you know your clients. 

0:03:49 - Karin
I advise that when people finally settle on that name and on that mark, that they go and follow their trademark registration right away. Again, you want to protect it so nobody else can use it. So even if you haven't even really started your business, you can file what's considered a 1B application, which is an intent to use application. So if you're already using your mark, you can file. You know, follow your name, show that, show proof that you're using it in commerce those are our technical terms but show that you're using it in sales. But if it's just an idea right now, go ahead and file it now so you have that protection in place. And once you do that, if you are granted the right to use that trademark, you have up to three years to show the trademark office that you're using it. 

0:04:38 - Mehmet
Okay, that's good to know. Now, I believe this could differ from a vertical to vertical, let's say. So maybe if they are doing e-commerce it's different than if you are doing you know, I don't know like maybe something else. But in general, after they do the trademark, like how do actually they monitor this? Is there any tools that allows them to monitor that? 

0:05:10 - Karin
Absolutely, so you can work with attorneys like me that do offer trademark monitoring services, but there are also online services that you can subscribe to that will monitor your mark either across social media or across the whole internet. So if you see anything similar to your mark or somebody is actually using your mark, it will get a hit. It will be able to let the person out. 

0:05:36 - Mehmet
Okay, that's good to know also as well. Now we talk a little bit about the trademark. Now I want to come back to the intellectual property. Now, in technology, you know source code, you know whenever they write code and you know their programs. So this is considered as an IP. How you know, how easy is the process. I want to ask you because maybe for especially first time, founders, and because we mentioned, yeah, sales marketing, so for them everything looks very complicated at the beginning. But is it really something complex to file for these intellectual properties? Like, if you can like walk me through the process, well, what happened? Like I mean, first they need to do that and then so on and so on. 

0:06:18 - Karin
Okay, so in order to protect code, that application would be with the copyright office. So that, well, I'll just. I want to back up a little bit when I talk about trademarks and the trademark process. 

One thing I want people to know is that it's actually a long process. Right now it's taking up to 18 months. However, when you file with the copyright office and again, these are two different pieces of intellectual property that you're filing the copyright office is a little bit faster. Typically, if you're going to be awarded registration, it will come through in about four to six months and you file an application on the. If you're in the US, on the US copyrightgov website. 

So the main issues with filing your copyright whether it is your written work, whether it's a book, a workbook, like you said, code, architectural designs is finding out or delineating who is the owner of the copyright versus who is the author, whether or not the work was a work for hire, and so you know really putting in place who is the owner of that work, because, just because you may be the author, if you're working for somebody else so let's say you are working for a startup and you've created a copy of that startup and you've created a code for that startup and you're an employee of that startup oftentimes people will think, hey, I created that code, it belongs to me, but more likely than not, in that circumstance, it will belong to the employer. 

0:07:52 - Mehmet
And I think this is where again, they need someone like yourself, Karin, where you know in the contract they need to mention you know this right. 

0:07:59 - Karin
Absolutely. 

0:08:01 - Mehmet
Yeah, because you know, I know from myself because I used to work for technology companies, although, like, I was not the coder but anything. It was mentioned in the contract that if I develop anything, it would be the ownership would be for the company, not myself, but of course they would recognize me as a contributor to that. So perfectly, it's good that you mentioned this, so this is again to remind the audience about that. Now, what are, like, some of the misconceptions you see sometimes when you do like consulting to your clients regarding the IP thing? 

0:08:40 - Karin
Misconceptions Again who owns the copyright or the trademark? So one of the common ones are a lot of times people will hire people to create their logo for them and you know, sometimes they're using sites like Fiverr or Upwork or they might go to design designs. 

I do not have any affiliate relationships with any of these sites. I just want you guys to know, and even though Fiverr and Upwork do have their own terms and conditions, I always suggest that the person purchasing the logo do a copyright transfer agreement that meet, because the copyright belongs to the person that created it. So just because you're purchasing it doesn't mean that you're the owner, so you also need that copyright transfer agreement or contract. So that's something a lot of people don't know. 

0:09:31 - Mehmet
You brought a very good point, Karin, actually, and I'm curious about it because sometimes we ask ourselves you know among friends, when, let's say, if I'm based in the US or I'm based anywhere in the world, right, but I have in my own country. Let's say, I'm in the US, so I have, you know, all the laws on my side, and then, but I need to sign a document with someone who is not resident in the same country, especially when it comes to trademarks, copyrights and you know these things that you mentioned, how, you know how, again, we can react if we get to know, for example, if one of the freelancers on app work or Fiverr, they took our same design and they provided to someone else. So what are, like, the actions that we can take in this case? 

0:10:17 - Karin
Well, number one like I said, it's important to get that copyright transfer. So if they made it for you, you know they're saying that they, they release ownership of it. You now own that design. So if they produce it for somebody else, you can now Take legal action against them because you're the owner of the design. Now One thing that can come up is because a lot of times when people are hiring for freelancers, they are from other countries. So you would have to consult either counsel if you're in the US that practice internationally, or I can refer you to International counsel in that country, because trademark and copyright rules are different in different countries. 

0:11:00 - Mehmet
Okay, that's also a good point to consider when someone decided to utilize, you know services of someone who are not I Mean, in the same country as themselves. So, like Now, we, we, we, you know, we, we mentioned or we touch base on this. I love, you know, to hear maybe a case study or anecdote from your practice. We're actually an IP management significantly benefit your client and there is no. I ask this because you know, I'm believer in you know people. Sometimes they say, okay, these guys are talking something I cannot relate to. So if you can shed some light using an example maybe From from a case that you want to, Okay. 

0:11:44 - Karin
So I'll give you a Kind of a worst case scenario case study, just as a warning to some of your viewers and your listeners. So I worked with somebody who's extremely intelligent the top of their field and they went and filed for their trademark registration on their own again, you don't do not need an attorney to do so, but it is suggested because of situations like this. So when you file your registration, you go through the process. Sometimes there's a back-and-forth with the trademark office if they feel inclined to reject your registration. But if you get through that entire process, they do something that is called they public, they publish your registration for opposition. That means the trademark office says we're inclined to grant this person their mark, but anybody has 30 days to oppose it. This person thought they were going to get their trademark. However, on the 29th day, another company came in to oppose their mark and unfortunately, what happened was she ended up Abandoning abandoning the mark and it actually kind of worked out in her favor because she's created a whole nother brand. 

But when you work with a trademark attorney, one of the most important parts of the process is the research that we do Before filing your trademark. So not only do we look and see if your mark is in use, whether there's somebody that's similar or somebody is using a mark that's similar, and also the people out there that have these marks Are they? Are they litigious? So, for instance, if the mark may have been similar to another mom and pop shop, there might not have been a likelihood that they would have opposed the mark. But this mark was opposed by a major international company so think Disney or Nike or something like that. So, working with a trademark attorney, they would have been clued in to to that type of a Problem, which again resulting in her abandoning, you know, her whole entire brand. 

So that that's a worst case scenario. The good case scenarios the opposite. You do go ahead and file your trademark and you may learn that and this hop happens pretty often that people are using your mark on social media. A lot of times people just go on Google and Google images and they don't even do it on purpose half of the time. You know they go ahead and copy and paste but it's somebody else using your mark that they don't own the mark. It's not what the mark was intended for, or it may be in connection with something that you don't want your mark in connection with, if you have that trademark registration that enables you to contact Facebook, twitter, all of the socials and file a Takedown form. I'm gonna use lay terms. File a take down form, you can send a cease and desist letter and you are also able to pursue litigation. 

0:14:47 - Mehmet
Great. Now, just out of curiosity and because you know again, it's a studio show. But I will ask you something related to the, to the IP space. Have you seen a rise in in in the cases where people start to complain because of? You know everyone is saying AI will cause big issues when it comes to IP. So have you seen any? You know, did your phone? They don't start to ring more because people are coming to you and say, hey, like because of this AI. I think how, how we can, you know, do this? Because they AI can create logos, to your point, it can create text and so on. So what are you seeing in this space, Karin? 

0:15:26 - Karin
So I'm seeing a lot of scrambling on behalf of the organizations and different Legislature and, in fact, I pulled up a couple of cases in preparation for us today. I need my glasses, so there was a case recently that was just handed down. A gentleman had filed for copyright registration that he indicated that there was no AI use. However, he created photos using mid-journey, which a lot of people are using for illustrations or photos now, and the copyright office did find that it was not. It was not authored by a human. 

So this is something that I anticipate there are going to be a lot of suits and a lot of matters before the copyright office, the copyright office. Right now they're holding forums, discussions, hearings to decide what to do, because with AI whether it's with the pictures, whether it's chat, gpt and it's text people are creating a lot of content now and claiming that it's theirs and it is not necessarily theirs. One argument that a lot of people are making are or is well, I created the prompt that I input into the mid-journey or another AI application, so shouldn't I be able to own that? And it's no, because the AI is trained based on what is out there already, so it's essentially pulling from somebody else's copyright work that has been registered by copyright, or once you put something into a medium, once you write it, once you take the photo, it belongs to you. Registration is the next and the best step, but AI is pulling from other people. 

0:17:19 - Mehmet
Fine. Do you think we're going to sue a lot AI companies also as well because of that? 

0:17:26 - Karin
I don't know about suits for AI companies but, like I said, right now there is a lot of proposed legislation in trying to figure out what to do, because I always say that law is always years and years and years behind technology. It does not keep up, it does not move as fast as technology does. So there are going to be a lot of issues. I do anticipate suits against the AI companies because of what I stated before. Ai is using what is out there. They're using other people's work to train the AI. So, yes, I do think there's going to be an uptick in lawsuits. 

0:18:10 - Mehmet
I think this is a space to watch, so it's going to be a hot thing to watch in the coming months, as I would say. Like one thing you mentioned now and again, it came spontaneously to my mind why law is so slow than technology. Because you have the background. Maybe you can tell me. 

0:18:35 - Karin
So there are many areas and aspects of law. So you have state law, you have federal law, you have law that comes out of cases that have gone through up and down the courts. So somebody might have a case that starts this year, in 2023. And if it goes all the way up to the Supreme Court, it might not be settled until 2030. So a lot of times when there are proposed changes to the law, like I said, there will be research, there will be hearings, they will ask for public opinion, there will be more research and then they will write the law and submit the proposed law and that will be voted on again and again and again until it's actually moved into law. 

0:19:33 - Mehmet
Yeah, and I think it's coming across the globe, not only in the US or many places. They have these. I've not called it complications, but yeah, it's not easy to change the law, because you need to do a lot of research, you need to have a lot of committees, so it's not an easy task. Now I want to shift gear on a topic which attracted me. Honestly, Karin, you are a lawyer, right, but at the same time, I discovered like you were doing side hustling. Actually, while doing this, and when I was reading the bio, I felt something like an excitement over there, like Can you walk me through this? Because it's, I think, something that all these should know about. 

0:20:13 - Karin
Absolutely so. I've always been a hustler per se, ever since I was a kid, so you think about the kids with lemonade stands or selling things door to door. That was always me. So my education process I went straight through from high school to college to law school. I graduated in May, took the bar in July and was licensed in December. 

But law was not my first love. I always had other interests so I always had other businesses. And when I started practicing, I initially let me back up I was always interested in IP. In college my major was mass communication, so I worked with TV and radio and newspaper. So this was my background. However, upon graduation, when I interviewed, I actually got a job at the public defender's office in the state of New Jersey. So when you are a public defender, you are counsel for indigent or lower class people that cannot afford private attorneys on their own. So even though it was a great job and I loved what I did, I still had other interests. So I had other businesses. I was in the Robits instructor. I had a business that was similar to Zumba, and then I got into e-commerce. So I started selling on Amazon in eBay and Shopify and those other sites like that. I'm sorry, amazon, dismiss. My words made my Alexa go off. 

0:21:58 - Mehmet
That's fine. 

0:22:00 - Karin
So while I was working in this capacity in e-commerce all of these issues that you and I have been discussing they came up. Right now. Amazon has what's called brand registry. So if you are a trademark owner, you can get special accommodations on Amazon. You can get your own page or your own site on Amazon, but you have to have a trademark in order to do so. So by day I was litigating, by night I was doing e-commerce, and when it finally got to the point where I was burnt out from litigation so I was the courtroom attorney that you see on TV trying cases, having depositions. I was tired and I said you know what? I'm finally at the position where I can kind of break out on my own and I made it a point to learn intellectual property law. So even though you study it in law school or you might study communications and undergrad, you actually have to learn how to be a lawyer in that area. So when I was able to do that, that's when I opened Cogrowall. 

0:23:09 - Mehmet
Wow, that's really inspiring, Karin, and I love to hear these stories to inspire others as well. And this is to your point. You touch base on the e-commerce and I see people do this mistake. They think it's something easy, especially when this drop shipping started to become very popular. Yeah, I would just buy a domain, I would connect my Shopify to something and boom, it's not like this, and I've seen a lot of. Maybe you can also enlighten us here. I've seen a lot of people who started to complain. Of course, they were wrong, because the payment gateway providers whether it's PayPal, stripe, whatever they were receiving complaints because either there was something not right with the product itself or because they received a complaint from the original trademark owner that there's an infringement there. So maybe you can shed some light on that part as well. 

0:24:13 - Karin
Yes. So for those who don't know, drop-sins shipping is essentially if you open a store and you have goods that you want to sell, you don't necessarily have to keep the goods in your home or in a warehouse. You can order them online from sites such as AliExpress or Alibaba, or you can go to individual manufacturers, and so when somebody orders on your storefront, you contact that website or warehouse, you make a payment to them and they then ship the product to your client. So that's just the basics in drop shipping. Another thing that people do in this space is white labeling. Where similar drop shipping, they go and they purchase the product from a third party site. However, they put your brand or your logo on that product, and so trademark infringement happens on a daily basis in the e-commerce world Org. 

It happens in terms of people stealing other people's brands or logos or having something similar, and maybe the infringement is they not only stolen your brand or logo, but now their products are not the same quality as your products are. So you know people are now looking at you and you're like wait a second, that's not me, that's not, that's not my product. Just recently, I have a friend who also happens to be an attorney and she's a model, and somebody stole one of her modeling pictures, I believe, off of Instagram and used it on Amazon to advertise some of the accessories that she was wearing. She was wearing in the picture. So in the world of e-commerce, infringement happens all the time. So you number one when to have your ducks in the row in terms of having your business set up properly, your trademarks registered and the watch service that you and I talked about at the top of the show, where you do hire somebody to watch what is going on on the internet, to alert you if somebody is using your brand. 

0:26:28 - Mehmet
Great insight again, Karin, and thank you for sharing that Now, as we come to an end. You know any advice you would give to entrepreneurs and you know investors that you can share, both from your legal expertise and entrepreneurship expertise. 

0:26:45 - Karin
I suggest that at minimum, have a consultation with an attorney before you launch. They can give you insight. If you come to them, you have your idea, you have your brand in your head. They will tell you, step by step, what you need to do in order to you know, open your business, but also these other protections. Like I said, most people think about trademarks and copyrights on the back end and they should think about them on the front end, or they do not have those contracts in place with all of the vendors that they're working with. So my advice is definitely have a consultation with an attorney. 

In the US, they do have programs such as scoreorg, which is free, and they do mentorship for entrepreneurs and business startups, or you can hire an attorney like me that does specialize in other areas, but definitely speak to somebody before you start registering your business. I would say buy your domain names though. Definitely do that. Those go really quickly. So definitely secure your domain names and if you don't end up using it like, you might have lost $10 or $12 or $15 in your registration. But yeah, come see one of us. 

0:28:04 - Mehmet
Yeah, sure, and where they can find more about you, Karin. 

0:28:08 - Karin
They can find me at wwwcoguerrlawfirmcom, and if you would like a consultation with me, you can also contact us at gocoguerrlawfirmcom and you can sign up for a free 15-minute introductory call so we can determine whether or not my office can help you. 

0:28:31 - Mehmet
Great, I will make sure that all the links will be in the show notes of this episode, anything you wished. I had asked you, Karin, before we close. 

0:28:40 - Karin
No, I think you were very thorough. 

0:28:45 - Mehmet
Thank you. So, yeah, I like to ask this question at the end. Maybe I missed something. So just to be in the safe side and, of course, to make sure that the guest mentioned whatever they had in their mind. So great that you shared. I think myself I learned a lot today about differences of trademarks and copyrights and why IP is important, especially in the startup phase and when founders they should think about it. And, yeah, like as Karin mentioned, if you have some doubts, reach out to her so maybe she can help you Really. Really, I enjoyed this episode today, Karin. I really appreciate it, and this is how I end my episodes usually. 

So, for people who are tuning in for the first time, thank you for tuning in, whether you are watching this or listening on your favorite podcasting platform. Thank you very much for the people who always keep following and sending me messages. Thank you very much for all the feedback that you provide. Please keep them coming. And if you have any idea, if you are in a position to share something that startup founders, tech people or anyone can benefit from it, because we have a wide range of audiences please reach out to me. We can arrange for recording an episode, doesn't matter where you live in the world, Karin, in the States, in the East Coast, I mean Dubai time zone is not a problem, so please reach out and thank you very much for tuning in. We will meet again very soon. Thank you, dubai. 

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