00:00:00 ◼ ► Welcome to Under the Radar, a show about independent iOS app development. I'm Marco Arment.
00:00:04 ◼ ► >> And I'm David Smith. Under the Radar is never longer than 30 minutes, so let's get started.
00:00:09 ◼ ► So today I wanted to very carefully and gingerly make our way towards topics related to legal
00:00:19 ◼ ► things, which is terrifying. Neither of us are lawyers, have any experience in the law or things
00:00:26 ◼ ► like that, but there's some topics that get into some legal situations that I think if you're an
00:00:32 ◼ ► independent developer, you just kind of have to get over the fact that it's a little bit intimidating,
00:00:35 ◼ ► at least for me it's very intimidating to go into this kind of thing. And specifically,
00:00:39 ◼ ► I kind of wanted to talk about trademarks and copyright and how they kind of can become either
00:00:47 ◼ ► things that if we don't take care of could come back to bite us and maybe from a proactive
00:00:52 ◼ ► perspective some of the things that we should be doing. Because I know for myself, I've done very
00:00:57 ◼ ► little in this realm, mostly because it's scary to me. And in the back of my mind, it feels like
00:01:08 ◼ ► this ticking time bomb that one day is going to come back to bite me. And I know that you, Marco,
00:01:13 ◼ ► have done, you've crossed over that boundary and actually done some work with trademarks and
00:01:19 ◼ ► copyrights and things to have the appropriate legal protections for your work. And so I thought
00:01:25 ◼ ► it'd be rather than, you know, it's like it's been meaningful for months to ask you about that
00:01:29 ◼ ► process and doing it on the show just seems to be a very efficient way to dive into that. And then
00:01:34 ◼ ► we can all learn from that. Because, you know, in general, like the situation that I usually
00:01:40 ◼ ► worry about is obviously, you know, somebody is trying to capitalize on, you know, the name
00:01:46 ◼ ► recognition of one of my products or on one of my apps. And, you know, on that side of things,
00:01:51 ◼ ► like I would like protection against someone else doing that. And then on the flip side is obviously
00:01:57 ◼ ► the situation that I've actually encountered a couple times and never been too bad, but is
00:02:02 ◼ ► someone who's claims that you are infringing on their trademarks on their copyrights. And
00:02:06 ◼ ► as a result, you know, like I had to make subtle changes to my branding or things like that,
00:02:14 ◼ ► which in theory, if I had the appropriate, you know, taken the right steps to protect myself
00:02:18 ◼ ► ahead of time, you know, I could say something back to. But first, it's probably a good place
00:02:24 ◼ ► to start is, can you explain to me like the difference between a trademark and a copyright
00:02:30 ◼ ► for the purposes of this kind of stuff around branding and things? Yeah, absolutely. And again,
00:02:34 ◼ ► keep in mind, I'll repeat it, even though you already said it, we are not lawyers, this does
00:02:39 ◼ ► not constitute legal advice. If you are doing these things, you should consult a real lawyer.
00:02:45 ◼ ► But what I can talk about is my own layman overview knowledge of these systems and that my own
00:02:51 ◼ ► experiences with using them as a customer of these systems and as a user of these tools. Anybody who
00:02:56 ◼ ► makes and releases anything to the public, this includes like even YouTubers, like anybody who
00:03:01 ◼ ► releases anything to the public, you should be familiar with these basic concepts. Copyright is
00:03:06 ◼ ► what protects the exact expression of something. So copyright protects like your source code, you
00:03:12 ◼ ► wrote that, like your software itself, like your app can be protected by copyright generally speaking.
00:03:18 ◼ ► If you make videos or podcasts, those recordings that you make, those are protected by your
00:03:25 ◼ ► copyright. Copyright in the US is automatic. You don't have to file for it. You don't have to pay
00:03:30 ◼ ► for it. It is automatic and anything you create that is a creative work is copyrighted generally
00:03:35 ◼ ► speaking. Again, for the finer details of this, you should definitely do better research and talk
00:03:40 ◼ ► to professionals in this field, which I am not. But copyright is, you don't really have to do
00:03:45 ◼ ► anything for the most part, for most forms to get copyright. It is automatic. Trademark protects
00:03:52 ◼ ► generally the names of things and it can also go into like logos and designs and trade dress.
00:03:58 ◼ ► Those are very complicated areas. I don't know anything about them. I only have experience with
00:04:02 ◼ ► trademark protecting names. So you can name your product, you can name features of your product,
00:04:07 ◼ ► you can name, I guess your company I guess could probably also be trademarked technically. I don't
00:04:12 ◼ ► even know how that works. My experience is in naming products and features. And trademark is
00:04:18 ◼ ► what protects you from other people releasing a similar kind of thing with the same or a
00:04:25 ◼ ► confusionally similar name and trying to capitalize on the name that you've built up. And then patents
00:04:32 ◼ ► protect a process or method of doing things. I personally have no experience filing for patents
00:04:42 ◼ ► because I kind of morally object to them. I don't think patents should exist and that's a discussion
00:04:49 ◼ ► for another day but basically in the world of software I think it's very unusual for indies to
00:04:56 ◼ ► file for patents. Filing for patents is either worthless or very expensive. If you want a patent
00:05:05 ◼ ► to be enforceable at all my understanding is basically you need to spend quite a lot of money
00:05:09 ◼ ► hiring specialists who know exactly what they're doing on how to file them and how to write them
00:05:13 ◼ ► and things like that to make sure that it's valuable at all and can't be easily worked around.
00:05:17 ◼ ► And then patents also have the other problem of they're fairly expensive to enforce. If you want
00:05:24 ◼ ► to patent the way you do something in your app, for example suppose I wanted to patent the technique
00:05:29 ◼ ► of removing silences or speeding up silences faster than the surrounding audio in a podcast.
00:05:35 ◼ ► So I'd basically be patenting my technique for smart speed. In reality this probably is not
00:05:39 ◼ ► patentable because people have done it before. But suppose I wanted to patent that, the process
00:05:44 ◼ ► of patenting that my understanding would be that would cost tens of thousands of dollars to even
00:05:49 ◼ ► get a reasonably written, reasonably enforceable patent filed. And then if anybody would actually
00:05:56 ◼ ► violate my patent I would have to then spend even more money legally threatening them and possibly
00:06:02 ◼ ► even eventually suing them to try to get royalties or to get them to stop or whatever the case may be.
00:06:08 ◼ ► And so it's a level of complexity and money that most indies don't have. I suggest you stay far
00:06:15 ◼ ► away from patents. Most people in our business don't file patents and it's generally fine.
00:06:20 ◼ ► You do have to worry about patent trolls hitting you, but that's something that again that's a
00:06:25 ◼ ► topic for another day. It's kind of unavoidable unfortunately. That's one of the reasons why
00:06:28 ◼ ► patents are so dysfunctional. Yeah and I think before we move on from patents I think the only
00:06:33 ◼ ► situation that I've ever seen or could imagine a patent actually being useful for an independent
00:06:39 ◼ ► or someone doing that kind of work is if you're starting a business for the sole purpose of being
00:06:44 ◼ ► acquired later. You have this idea for a technology and you're hoping to then sell that technology to
00:06:52 ◼ ► another company, in which case having that patented I imagine is very valuable in making that sale.
00:07:00 ◼ ► Because otherwise if it's an unpatented idea, well they could just do it in many ways. And so you'd
00:07:07 ◼ ► want to go down that road, but that's a very specialized thing. And in general I have the
00:07:11 ◼ ► exact same perspective as you. That it's just not worth the effort and pain of going down
00:07:16 ◼ ► versus the reward that you potentially could get by somehow potentially protecting yourself down
00:07:22 ◼ ► the road. That probably things like trademark and those types of protections are probably far more
00:07:28 ◼ ► useful and enforceable than anything you'd ever get from trying to patent an idea in one of your
00:07:35 ◼ ► apps. Patenting features and stuff is not usually likely to get you any kind of real competitive
00:07:41 ◼ ► advantage like in the world. The way the software business mostly works is features are basically
00:07:53 ◼ ► And the world of software has mostly worked that way for its entire history and it mostly works
00:08:00 ◼ ► fine and it's part of what makes software so fast-moving. It's part of why software has gotten
00:08:06 ◼ ► so far in such a short time relative to other previous industries is that we are largely
00:08:12 ◼ ► unrestricted by patents for most things we want to do. I didn't have to license any patents in
00:08:18 ◼ ► order to make a podcast player that plays files and that applies certain effects to them and that
00:08:26 ◼ ► arranges them in certain ways and downloads them in certain ways and plays them from feeds.
00:08:31 ◼ ► I did not have to license any patents to do that. Anybody can do that and that's part of what makes
00:08:35 ◼ ► your industry great. So let's skip patents entirely for the rest of the discussion again.
00:08:39 ◼ ► Like I don't think they should even exist and they are best stayed away from by indies.
00:08:44 ◼ ► Again to review before we move on, copyrights protect the actual expression of a creative work
00:08:49 ◼ ► or the actual instance of the work or your actual code. Trademarks protect names and logos and
00:09:00 ◼ ► unfortunately I don't have any experience filing trademarks outside of the US. Filing for a
00:09:05 ◼ ► trademark in the US is something that for most companies is optional but it's often a good idea.
00:09:12 ◼ ► There might be cheaper ways to do it online like through various like quick legal forms kind of
00:09:18 ◼ ► sites that exist out there for discount prices. I have only ever filed trademarks through a
00:09:24 ◼ ► trademark lawyer because I wanted to do it right. This is usually a good idea in fields of law.
00:09:31 ◼ ► Usually you want to hire a specialist lawyer in that field to do the thing for you because
00:09:35 ◼ ► there are ways it can be done poorly or ways that it can be less effective than you want it to be
00:09:40 ◼ ► or cannot account for things that you might not know about as the customer or layperson.
00:09:45 ◼ ► So I've only hired trademark lawyers to do it and I think a ballpark for the fee on it is usually
00:09:51 ◼ ► around $3,000 maybe. Again there might be cheaper places. This has just been my experience. So
00:09:57 ◼ ► you're going to spend around $3,000 maybe $3,500 to file a trademark. And because this is a pretty
00:10:03 ◼ ► big amount of money for a lot of indies, this kind of determines like part of like whether you should
00:10:09 ◼ ► do it or not. That's a very, very big question. So I have trademarked the word Instapaper when I was
00:10:16 ◼ ► running Instapaper as the name of the app and what it did. I've also trademarked the word Overcast
00:10:22 ◼ ► when I launched that and then I also trademarked Smart Speed and Voice Boost, the names of those
00:10:27 ◼ ► two features. And there were multiple reasons for all those that I'll get into. So when I trademark
00:10:31 ◼ ► Instapaper, probably one of the biggest risks that indies actually face, one of the biggest
00:10:37 ◼ ► annoyances and needs for intellectual property protection that we face as developers of apps
00:10:42 ◼ ► on phones is people uploading clone apps or people ripping off our assets and using them in their
00:10:47 ◼ ► apps or people using an app with the same name on a different platform. So suppose a popular app on
00:10:52 ◼ ► iOS doesn't have an Android version. There will be people who will create the same name on Android
00:10:58 ◼ ► trying to capitalize on that success and trying to confuse, trying to trick people into thinking
00:11:02 ◼ ► that it's an official app, stuff like that. If somebody just like rips off your icon, which is
00:11:06 ◼ ► extremely common, that's very simple. That's copyright. So that's automatic. You can file a
00:11:12 ◼ ► complaint with Apple or Google, whoever is the app store in question here. Or if it's on a website,
00:11:19 ◼ ► you can file a DMCA request with their host. Copyright is fairly straightforward to try to
00:11:25 ◼ ► enforce. All you say is, "Look, this person is ripping off my image or sound or whatever here.
00:11:31 ◼ ► This is my image. Here is where it actually lives. Here is proof that it's older than this,
00:11:36 ◼ ► whatever, or that I made it." And those are pretty easy to get taken down pretty quickly.
00:11:41 ◼ ► Trademark is trickier, and that's one of the reasons why it's less common and more expensive
00:11:47 ◼ ► to enforce. It's a broader enforcement. So when I trademarked Instapaper, that also meant
00:11:55 ◼ ► that somebody could not come along and make an app that was similarly in the web page or
00:12:03 ◼ ► reading business and call it something like Instanpaper. Even though it's not the same thing,
00:12:10 ◼ ► it's not the same word, my trademark would have protected me from anybody doing something that
00:12:15 ◼ ► close to it or Instapooper. They couldn't do things like that. That would be too close to
00:12:20 ◼ ► my trademark. One thing that's important to know about trademarks is that they're fairly broad in
00:12:29 ◼ ► you need to be pretty far from the word that is trademarked in order to be safe from it.
00:12:51 ◼ ► The trademarks do expire after a certain time, and if they're abandoned, then they're no longer
00:12:55 ◼ ► valid. And also, by the way, if they go unenforced, they're no longer valid. So if you get a
00:13:00 ◼ ► trademark, you have to enforce it. You have to actually police uses for it. I don't know the
00:13:06 ◼ ► fine details of that, so I'm not going to get into that. But anyway, I have the word trademarked
00:13:10 ◼ ► overcast for, if you look at the description, it's for a certain list of uses. So it's like
00:13:15 ◼ ► goods and services related to music and audio and podcasts and maybe video playback and podcast
00:13:23 ◼ ► applications for mobile phones and tablets and web and things like that. It lists a list of uses.
00:13:28 ◼ ► That does not include things like weather. So if you wanted to make a weather app named Overcast,
00:13:34 ◼ ► my trademark can't stop you from doing that. But it does stop you from making an app that's named
00:13:41 ◼ ► Overcast or anything very similar to Overcast in these areas. That's one of the reasons I got,
00:13:47 ◼ ► is because I wanted that. Now, Overcast is also a special case. One of the biggest problems
00:13:53 ◼ ► that a lot of indies face, as you mentioned, David, is that sometimes people release an app
00:14:06 ◼ ► anybody. You can go to USPTO.gov, you can search trademarks. Before you name anything you're
00:14:13 ◼ ► releasing into the world, go there and do a basic search. It takes 30 seconds. And just see if
00:14:19 ◼ ► there's anything kind of like or very similar to or exactly named that that is in any industry close
00:14:24 ◼ ► to what you're doing. If so, just pick a different name from the start. Because so often what happens
00:14:30 ◼ ► is people don't do that search. They release an app with the same name that's already trademarked
00:14:34 ◼ ► somewhere nearby. And then that company finds it and they get a nasty gram from their company's
00:14:40 ◼ ► lawyers and they have to rename their app. Don't put yourself through that. It's easily avoided.
00:14:46 ◼ ► Please search for trademarks at USPTO.gov before you name anything public in the world.
00:14:54 ◼ ► It's very, very fast, it's very, very easy and it avoids these problems. And again, so whatever word
00:14:59 ◼ ► you search for, whatever phrase you search for, you will probably find something that is named
00:15:03 ◼ ► that or name something close. If it's in a totally different industry, it doesn't matter. But if
00:15:15 ◼ ► pick a different name. And so I trademarked Overcast in part because I wanted to protect it,
00:15:21 ◼ ► but also in part because it was part of a more complicated deal. There was another trademark
00:15:34 ◼ ► and my trademark lawyer thought, that's a little too close for comfort. So I have two options
00:15:38 ◼ ► there. I could either pick a different name, which I tried. I went through so many names and
00:15:44 ◼ ► it was a big process and I hated every other name I came up with. I really wanted to use the name
00:15:48 ◼ ► Overcast. So I took option B, which was contact the trademark owner of the other Overcast trademark
00:16:00 ◼ ► negotiate with them for a coexistence agreement, which basically means that they would allow me
00:16:07 ◼ ► to use the name Overcast and to file my own trademark on Overcast within a certain way,
00:16:14 ◼ ► if I basically avoided stepping on their toes in certain ways and paid them a small amount of money.
00:16:19 ◼ ► So that's what I did. So part of, yeah, so there's all these complex arrangements you can have.
00:16:24 ◼ ► One of the reasons I suggest filing for your own trademark is that it makes it easier for you to
00:16:32 ◼ ► know that you can use that name. Because you can release something out there without having a
00:16:38 ◼ ► trademark on it and you might be fine. Most of the time that happens to work out. But if you're able
00:16:44 ◼ ► to file a trademark on a name, you can be much more assured, nothing's ever assured legally,
00:16:51 ◼ ► but you can be much more assured that you are actually allowed to use that name in that way.
00:16:56 ◼ ► Because not only will your trademark lawyer do a search to make sure before they even bother filing,
00:17:00 ◼ ► but then whatever the people are called at the US Patent and Trademark Office who actually
00:17:05 ◼ ► inspect and validate these claims, they are going to do their own search to make sure that they
00:17:15 ◼ ► So if you have your own trademark, it's much less likely that any company is ever going to come
00:17:21 ◼ ► bother you and say, "Hey, you can't use this name because we trademarked it." Because chances are,
00:17:26 ◼ ► your lawyer and the USPTO lawyers both looked to make sure that everything was pretty far away
00:17:31 ◼ ► from it and were pretty conservative in whether they'd issue that to you or not. So basically,
00:17:37 ◼ ► the reasons to do it are twofold. One is to make sure you can use the name you want. And then
00:17:43 ◼ ► number two is to then protect it so that no one else can use the name you want. So here's how that
00:17:48 ◼ ► works in practice. Suppose someone uploads an app called Overcast to the app store or they call it
00:17:56 ◼ ► like Overpodcast or something very close to Overcast. If I file a dispute with Apple over that,
00:18:03 ◼ ► if I just say, "Hey, I have an app named this and this person has a similar app with a similar name,"
00:18:08 ◼ ► Apple doesn't have much they can do with that. Because if they pull that app, what if the maker
00:18:14 ◼ ► of the other app sues them saying, "Hey, no, the other person had no right to ask to do that. They
00:18:20 ◼ ► had no claim to the name. Why'd you pull us off the store?" So Apple or Google or whoever else is
00:18:25 ◼ ► gonna be pretty careful and is probably not gonna pull an app off the store for a very similar name
00:18:29 ◼ ► as yours unless you have a trademark. Because then you can say, "Look, I have this trademark
00:18:36 ◼ ► registered, this number in the US. Here it is. You can see it for yourself. And it was registered on
00:18:41 ◼ ► this date for me and my company. This app is violating this trademark. It's too close."
00:18:46 ◼ ► Then the person you're emailing, Apple, Google, whatever, they have a leg to stand on to take the
00:18:52 ◼ ► other app down. It's much easier for them to know what the right move is. So it's actually very,
00:18:58 ◼ ► very hard to get an app pulled from an app store for trademark violation or for having a name too
00:19:08 ◼ ► copyright infringement pulled. Again, if somebody rips off your icon or whatever, it's very easy
00:19:11 ◼ ► to get that pulled down. But if someone just uploads a very similarly named or identically
00:19:15 ◼ ► named app, it's very hard to get that down unless you have your own trademark. So those are the
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00:20:02 ◼ ► Indeed Prime for sponsoring our show. So you make a lot of very compelling cases for using this. And
00:20:09 ◼ ► I've got to say it is kind of concerning to me that it's I've never filed for a trademark after
00:20:15 ◼ ► hearing through your whole thing. Like the extent of a lot of my searching, which is probably the
00:20:20 ◼ ► wrong way around, is that I go to the App Store, and I search for the name that I'm thinking about
00:20:25 ◼ ► and see if there's already an app in the store with the name. And if there isn't, then great.
00:20:30 ◼ ► And then I'll go into iTunes Connect, and I'll search there to see if I can create the name
00:20:35 ◼ ► because sometimes, you know, an app will exist in the iTunes Connect system but not be available in
00:20:41 ◼ ► the US store. It's like if in both of those places I come away clean, I'm like, "Great,
00:20:46 ◼ ► you know, good to go." But yeah, that's probably short-sighted on my part to have that kind of a
00:20:55 ◼ ► perspective. Because a lot of people assume that if a domain name is available or if the name in
00:21:01 ◼ ► the App Store is available, they just assume, "Oh, there must not be a trademark here. I must be
00:21:06 ◼ ► allowed to use this. No one was here, so I can use it." And that just isn't the case. And that's why
00:21:13 ◼ ► you see so many indie apps that launch and then have to change their name because of a trademark
00:21:17 ◼ ► dispute. And again, it's so easily avoided most of the time. I mean, not all the time. Sometimes
00:21:22 ◼ ► you'll have one come out of nowhere that you don't think is similar enough but isn't worth fighting
00:21:26 ◼ ► a claim. And that's a big problem with the legal system, unfortunately. But for the most part,
00:21:31 ◼ ► these things are pretty easy to avoid early on in the process. I also wanted to talk briefly about
00:21:37 ◼ ► why I trademarked SmartSpeed and Voice Boost. I did this right at the beginning with Overcast.
00:21:42 ◼ ► I didn't wait until six months in when I knew they were a success. I did it right up front.
00:21:47 ◼ ► And the reason why is that I was putting a lot of marketing behind these names. These were two
00:21:56 ◼ ► features that were very, very difficult to message to customers and to show their value. And so I had
00:22:03 ◼ ► invested quite a lot, both technically and UI design-wise, in making sure that these were
00:22:10 ◼ ► like branded named things. It wasn't just like a checkbox in the settings that said "Remove silences
00:22:16 ◼ ► from audio and boost the volume with a compressor." It wasn't just that. And the way I did them I
00:22:23 ◼ ► thought was very, very good. I thought I had very good implementations. So I both wanted people to
00:22:28 ◼ ► know these names and also for people to recognize that this was not just like a setting, that this
00:22:35 ◼ ► was something valuable, something special that I had created. They deserved their own brand for
00:22:41 ◼ ► something that I had put a lot of effort into. And what I didn't want was someone else to come along
00:22:47 ◼ ► with a really crappy silence skipper and name theirs and just have smart speed as their label
00:22:53 ◼ ► on their box. And then for someone to try that and say, "Yeah, well I guess silence skipping isn't
00:22:58 ◼ ► very good because this sounds like crap." And then that devalues the selling proposition of my app
00:23:03 ◼ ► if they came upon that next because they'd say, "Well, that doesn't matter. That feature sucks.
00:23:06 ◼ ► I'll never use it because I used it in this other app and it was crap." So I wanted to protect both
00:23:10 ◼ ► the value of these features and also to give them good solid names that I'd be marketing in the UI
00:23:16 ◼ ► and in my materials. And I didn't want someone else to come along and dilute their value.
00:23:23 ◼ ► So I also wanted to get some kind of reward for it. If I'm going to convince the podcast listening
00:23:29 ◼ ► world through all this effort that they need a silence skipper and a compressor and an equalizer,
00:23:34 ◼ ► then I deserve exclusivity on that, I felt. And I know this is kind of conflicting with my patent
00:23:40 ◼ ► argument earlier, but it's a lot easier to give someone a different name than to change the entire
00:23:44 ◼ ► method if you're doing something. So that's why I don't think it's the same approach at all.
00:23:47 ◼ ► So I thought that both I wanted protection from these ideas from dilution of quality from other
00:23:52 ◼ ► people and also I didn't want someone else to just be able to capitalize immediately upon the
00:24:02 ◼ ► because now whenever other podcasts have to implement these features, they have to give
00:24:05 ◼ ► them different names. And even though everyone knows it's Smartspeed and Voice Boost, the fact is
00:24:10 ◼ ► I still own those names and I still get value from that. So moving on, in the case of your trademarks,
00:24:32 ◼ ► Again, I'm not a trademark lawyer. I think those would be difficult to trademark. If you include
00:24:38 ◼ ► the plus plus, that probably makes it a lot better. But I think overall that might present a challenge
00:24:45 ◼ ► because you can't get a trademark if something is too generic sounding or if it's too descriptive
00:24:52 ◼ ► of what it does without much value beyond just a description of it. So that I think would be
00:25:02 ◼ ► whether you could get trademarks on a lot of your names. And this is a problem that a lot of indie
00:25:07 ◼ ► apps will have. It's really only reasonably easy to trademark basically branded names, not just a
00:25:15 ◼ ► description of like, "best note taker in the world" or like "voice recorder plus notebook." That's
00:25:21 ◼ ► hard to trademark. So you might have that issue with some of your names. Yeah. And I think in some
00:25:27 ◼ ► ways that's part of where I, when I was initially starting to make software, part of the struggle
00:25:33 ◼ ► was I ran into that initially for my first successful app was just called Audiobooks, which
00:25:43 ◼ ► Because there's a reason why a lot of my apps have these very simplistic, basic names. If you go into
00:25:49 ◼ ► the app store and you're interested in listening to an audiobook, you type in audiobooks and there
00:25:54 ◼ ► it is. And so it works well in that regard. And it's just one of the trade-offs that from a
00:26:00 ◼ ► trademark perspective that I can't take advantage of. Though on the plus side, it makes it also
00:26:04 ◼ ► harder for someone else to claim a trademark against me because they have the same problem
00:26:09 ◼ ► that like, you can, they, they, they, no one else could have trademarked that generic term in the
00:26:14 ◼ ► first place either. So yeah, but it is definitely something that is a trade-off that if you, if you
00:26:20 ◼ ► want to trademark something, you need to give it a distinctive name that is not purely descriptive.
00:26:35 ◼ ► like back with Instapaper, the back one pocket was called Read it Later. The guy who ran it
00:26:40 ◼ ► filed for a trademark on the phrase Read it Later long after we had both started and Instapaper's
00:26:47 ◼ ► button that it would install in the browser was labeled Read Later. And so long after this had
00:26:51 ◼ ► been going on for forever, he found a trademark and threatened me and said, you have to stop using
00:26:55 ◼ ► the phrase Read Later. And I showed it to a trademark lawyer and like two seconds of inspection
00:26:59 ◼ ► and the guy was like, yeah, he has no right to ask you to do this. This trademark does not give him
00:27:07 ◼ ► something you should ask a lawyer about really. But if you have a generic phrase like that,
00:27:12 ◼ ► your rights are much more narrow of what you can actually enforce. Like I couldn't then name a
00:27:18 ◼ ► product I launched Read it Later, but I can still use the phrase Read Later on my button because it
00:27:23 ◼ ► was, you know, descriptive in some way. And yeah, so consult a lawyer with all this stuff, basically
00:27:27 ◼ ► is the short version of this. Yeah. And I think as we wrap up, I think the thing that I in the back
00:27:33 ◼ ► of my mind as we talk about this, like this is all great advice and useful. The thing that I do
00:27:38 ◼ ► wonder about, though, is the degree to which if you're starting out and making your app for the
00:27:43 ◼ ► first time, like spending a few thousand dollars upfront to trademark something that may or may not
00:27:49 ◼ ► go somewhere is certainly a bit of an intimidating thing. And maybe and the nice thing is, I believe
00:27:55 ◼ ► trademarks are the kind of things that you can file for, you know, sort of retrospectively,
00:27:59 ◼ ► it isn't like if you haven't filed it before you launch, that it will, you know, like you lose the
00:28:04 ◼ ► ability to do that. And so it is certainly something that is like, this is the position
00:28:07 ◼ ► I find myself in now of, it's like, if some if something has traction, if it finds a market for
00:28:13 ◼ ► itself, then it can certainly something that you can retrospectively look at and say, you know,
00:28:17 ◼ ► I really need to take care of this and protect it. Now that it is something, you know, it isn't
00:28:22 ◼ ► something that necessarily that you just need to like view as the cost of launching an app for the
00:28:27 ◼ ► first time. Exactly. Like you can before you launch, do the search for trademarks to see if
00:28:32 ◼ ► you foresee any problems. That's free. And then yeah, once it becomes a thing that is successful
00:28:38 ◼ ► enough, if it does, that it might justify spending $3,000 to help protect it, then you buy the