Episode 48: Trademark Attorney - Helping companies protect their brand with Binh Rey

Your brand is your business’s most valuable asset - but is it really protected?

In my latest podcast, I sit down with Binh Rey, Trademark Attorney & General Manager of Applied Marks, who has personally managed over 2,500 trademark applications. With 13+ years in trademarks and 15 years in marketing, Binh brings a unique commercial perspective to protecting brand names.

We cover:
✅ Why registering a company name or ABN does not protect your brand
✅ The difference between wordmarks, logomarks & what’s most powerful for SMEs
✅ What happens when businesses overlook trademarks (and the costly fallout)
✅ Expanding internationally - how to safeguard your brand in new markets
✅ Practical steps & costs for getting started

If you’re building a business with growth in mind, this episode is a must-listen.

Have you trademarked your brand name yet?

Email: binh.rey@appliedmarks.com

Website: www.appliedmarks.com

Connect

💡 Need help scaling your business from 7 to 8 figures? Get in touch jenny@jennystilwell.com.au

Remember: Better strategy, better business, better life! See you next time!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:01

Hi there, this is Jenny Stilwell and welcome to the 7% Club podcast. For the 7% of business owners who break through 2 million in sales and for those on track to join this club, this podcast is to help you upscale.

UNKNOWN: 0:19

Music

SPEAKER_01: 0:20

In this episode, I'm talking with Bin Rai, Trademark Attorney and General Manager of Applied Marks. Bin has over 13 years as a trademark expert and 15 years of experience in marketing. As a trademark attorney, she brings a rare combination of commercial insight and trademark expertise to brand protection. Her dual background allows her to support small business owners and startups, not just with registering trademarks, but with guiding them to trademark brand names, leveraging insights from both marketing and intellectual property. She's personally assisted with over 2,500 trademark applications in her career and is trusted by accountants, bookkeepers and boutique law firms to help their clients avoid costly mistakes with branding protection. Approachable and business-minded, Bin makes trademark protection accessible and understandable. Her personal mission is to ensure that small business owners launch with confidence starting with the essential first step ensuring their brand name is legally safe to use and promote Hello, Bin. How are you? Welcome to the podcast. I'm really good, Jenny. Thank you for having me. I'm so looking forward to talking about this subject because I think it's a really important one and I think there's a lot of misunderstanding around it. And certainly for businesses of all size, it's pretty critical, but sometimes smaller businesses don't pay as much attention to trademarking as they should. So can we just start with the basics and can you take us through what exactly is a trademark and why is it so important to think about it in the early stages of business development or product development?

SPEAKER_00: 2:07

The reason trademarks are overlooked at me by many small business owners is that they think it's really costly and it's actually not a big cost to their business, especially at the start. The trademark actually gives the business owner the legal rights to use their brand name. A trademark allows the trademark owner to continuously use their brand name in the marketplace without fear of trademark disputes and infringement in future years. And it can be a valuable asset able to be sold, assigned or licensed. So when you think about it, when you're starting a business, the current scenario is that they go to an accountant or they do it themselves where they go and register a company name or a business name if they're a sole trader through ESSEC and ESSEC affords them the company name or business name. However, what they don't realise is that those two registrations do not give them the legal rights to promote that brand name. It only identifies them for the tax and for how they run the business, but it doesn't actually allow them to use that name legally to promote in the marketplace. So that's the misunderstanding by small business owners or entrepreneurs.

SPEAKER_01: 3:27

So it could be used, it's obviously the entity name and it can be used for invoicing and for legal and commercial and tax reasons. But if that name is the front of the business and it's being promoted, then it can't necessarily be used.

SPEAKER_00: 3:46

That's correct. So you may have a company name that may be infringing on someone else's mark. However, if you are asked not to use it, you would not necessarily have to change your company name, but you just get a new trading name. But that's something that can be easily avoided. And not a lot of people take the time to think about whether the brand that they're starting up is trademarkable in the first place. They sort of get so excited about getting the company name and ABN and they're going, okay, that's great. Let's get started. And it could be a year down the track. It could be a couple of months down the track. It could be even 10 years down the track before they receive a cease and desist letter. And I've got many examples of clients that had to rebrand depending on when they were caught, I guess, infringing on somebody else's registered trademark. I think it's a really good

SPEAKER_01: 4:40

point because in my experience, just with the companies I've worked with, the businesses I've worked with, there seems to be this incorrect belief that once you've registered your company name, your ABN, as you said, then that covers everything. But it doesn't. It just doesn't. So let's talk about, is it equally as important to register product-based trademarks as service-based? So for example, I've got clients who have developed brands and they're stocked in major retailers around the country and they've trademarked those products. What about services? Is it equally as important to trademark services and in what circumstances?

SPEAKER_00: 5:23

Well, with trademarks, so let's just take a step back. So what is a trademark? Well, a trademark can be letters, numbers, words, slogans, logos, packaging. You can even trademark a scent if you wanted to. You can trademark a shape like the Toblerone chocolate bar, a color, the Cadbury's chocolate purple. Even Netflix has trademarked the introduction of each of their, the sound mark where every Netflix movie has the intro music. But the most popular, I guess, trademarks to be applied for and registered by a small business owner are the wordmark or the logomark. In most cases, we always recommend if you can own the wordmark because a logomark gives you the protection for the look and feel and partially for the word. However, the wordmark gives you the exclusive rights to that word so that even if you change your logo look and feel, you're still protected for that brand. And most of the time, logomark's are given if the logo is distinctive. To go back to answer your question, whether it's a service product or a product that should be trademarked, it really depends on the company. And it also depends on the business owner, their appetite for wanting to rebrand in future years. So I often say to people, I ask them this question, if someone down the track in a year's time, five years time, 10 years time, If someone came to you and asked you to change your name because you had infringed on their registered trademark, would you get upset? And if the business owner goes, oh, no, I don't care. If they came to me, I'll just change my name tomorrow. But then there are people that will go, oh, no, my brand name is going to be very valuable to me because I would have spent all those years building my reputation, building the product range, or building the service. I don't really want to change that name. It's something that is valuable to me. So those business owners will be the ones that will need a trademark if you do not want to have to be asked to change your name or your brand name in the future. In saying that, majority of business owners that sell a product, trademarks are very important because that is like your advertising, you know, your brand is your product range. And because it's business to consume You're always wanting to get the consumer's attention for that brand. It's really important that you have continuous use of that brand name to be able to build a great, sustainable campaign for that particular name of that product. And therefore, as you mentioned, in the supermarkets, most of those products should have a wordmark as well as a logo mark because it's highly visual and it's also highly compatible. that space for brand attention. In terms of services, not so much. For example, with Applied Marks, we have trademarked the name Applied Marks because we care that we don't want someone else to be pretending to be Applied Marks for trademarking services. However, we actually haven't trademarked the logo as yet. And we've been around since 2008. And partly the reason for that is that In services class, the logo mark isn't as important in our eyes because we've actually changed the logo three times since 2008. And we've just made a decision that it's nice to have the logo mark. So it really depends on the client's appetite for protection and whether they want to change their brand later on if they're infringing. So it

SPEAKER_01: 9:28

starts with... some careful consideration upfront from a strategic perspective. What are we really doing with this business? Are we being very intentional about growth? Are we intentionally growing an asset that we want to protect and build value into? Or we don't really know and we don't really care. You know, we're not going to go that hard that fast. What about like with services, so many service providers out there developing IP, you know, and writing book around their IP and using certain methodologies in how they deliver services and solutions to their clients. Can you tell me how the trademark is to be used versus being registered for, say, the name of a methodology?

SPEAKER_00: 10:17

Okay. First of all, you cannot trademark a methodology. That's sort of more under copyright. But the name of the methodology? Oh, the name. Okay. So you can trademark the methodology of the product that's being sold or the service. That is important because that methodology has a brand attached to it. In terms of when people come to me and say, well, you know, I've got these steps to get more customers for digital marketing, that's not possible because it's sort of more content that is being protected and that's actually under copyright. And copyright in Australia is automatic. And it's just another area of intellectual property. So if you do have a methodology or a process that you would like to promote, then yes, trademarking the name of that product or service is important because it gives you the, I guess, the exclusive rights to that particular name that you're promoting. And in many cases, sometimes it's like first to promote it and first to get people's, I guess, mindset around it is really important. So it's more the branding that you're protecting, not necessarily the content of that methodology.

SPEAKER_01: 11:40

Yeah. And what if you had, I don't know, two companies and they had the same name for their process or their methodology, hypothetically, and one has been writing the name of that process with a TM at the end of it for, say, 10 years. Another company has come along and they've actually trademarked it. Would it be possible for the company who's just come along and trademarked it to get that trademark approved, given that another company may not have officially trademarked the name of their process? They've just been using the TM. What's the difference? Which wins, using the TM or registering the trademark to legally use the TM?

SPEAKER_00: 12:28

Well, the TM. actually doesn't give you any rights. It just tells people that you're wanting to use that brand. It's actually the R symbol that gives you the legal rights. So a lot of people put TM just to say I'm wanting to use it as a brand or indicating it to others. And sometimes TM is there to bluff the other parties. You see, Jenny, not a lot of people know that TM doesn't mean that it's registered. It's only the R symbol that provides that prediction and many people say oh yeah but sometimes i see tm on a i don't know a new product from nestle let's say sometimes that happens because they might have trademarked it in another country but they haven't trademarked it in let's say australia or new zealand because it's a you know it does take eight months to be safe you know those big companies will probably just put tm but they've already got in place a plan to obtain the trademark because in um international trademarks. You can apply for one trademark in one country and you have six months to then apply for the rest of the world, but using the filing date of the first trademark in that country. So the big companies have these strategic plans of how they go and protect around the world. And that's why sometimes you will see TM, but TM actually doesn't give you any protection. It's just saying that you want to use it as a brand and you're looking to trademark it in the near future, and it's the R that gives you that protection. To answer the question about if someone started first, then someone came along and registered the trademark, there are a few options you can take there. If you've caught the second person registering the trademark or applying for the trademark, you can actually object to the application, but you actually have to catch them during that trademark application phase. But if you've missed it the first user still has another option where they can apply for their own you know the same trademark however it becomes more costly because you have to provide evidence of use evidence of prior use to the examiner and in many cases I mean I've done quite a few during my 13 years in trademarks where we were able to get it over the line with evidence of prior use. The only problem with that is that even if we were able to get past examiner, the other party that actually registered to trademark could object to it as well. So it's not a clear process. However, there is an avenue for the first user to apply and provide evidence of use and try to get the trademark themselves. And usually I think first use is possible to have two trademarks registered in the same country but there's a process involved and also it's unclear it's not basically it's not a smooth application so it's always good to be first to file and first to use

SPEAKER_01: 15:41

yeah which goes back to what we're saying about being intentional and building your your brand and your business intentionally yes register it from the get-go

SPEAKER_00: 15:50

that's right and thank you very much for inviting me to the podcast because I think there's just not enough education out there a lot of people don't do not think of trademarking when they start their business. And they really should because it's actually not a very expensive exercise at all. I mean, even with us, our most expensive package is$2,000 and a trademark is over 10 years. So when you think about it, it's like$200 a year of insurance to ensure that you have continuous use of that brand. And that's so much cheaper than going to court or having to rebrand in future years. So it is something that any new startup or entrepreneurs thinking about starting a new brand is really to step back and really think about the brand and whether it's trademarkable. And they're looking to go global. They actually have to even spend a little bit more time to make sure that the new brand that they're launching will be trademarkable potentially in all the countries they want to enter. So that's an extra step.

SPEAKER_01: 16:52

Can I just ask you about that, the companies that are planning to expand internationally? And I'm still talking about small So whether it's getting your physical product into retailers internationally, or actually, you know, delivering your services internationally, what's the process to go through? I mean, number one, which countries are we going to be into? But is that something you have handled here for clients wanting to expand internationally? Or is there, you've got to approach someone in the country in which you want to expand to help with trademarks. How does that process work for a company here that wants to expand internationally?

SPEAKER_00: 17:37

Well, we can assist them to apply for the trademarks overseas, depending on the country. So currently we service the US, the UK, New Zealand, and parts of Asia at the moment, and Europe as well. So those main countries we're able to assist. We also tell the clients only choose the countries you wish to enter because you can't trademark the world. You're just not going to be like a Coca-Cola or a Nestle where you just have the budget to do that. So be realistic. Don't conquer the world. Conquer Australia first and then maybe look at the next realistic country. But before you even do that, it's actually checking whether that name that you're wanting to launch. We get a lot of entrepreneurs that want to launch apps and that's an easy thing to check for us to check if that app name is available. All we really do, and the listeners can do themselves, is make sure you do a Google search for that name that you want and in that country. Do a international trademark search. Do a local trademark search. So there's lots of little checks that you can do first to see if that name is unique enough before you even consider launching the product because that'll just make it easier to trademark in those countries in the future. So even if you may not have the money now, but as long as you have actually done the research to make sure that name is unique, then you're pretty, you know, you're 80% there in terms of trying to get your trademark overseas as well. But it really goes back to the beginning where you have to research the name. We've helped this year a couple of clients with apps that want to go to Europe. And the first name they came with, we said, oh, You'll probably get it in Australia, but you won't get it over in Europe. And so we worked with them to make sure the new, like they were, because they hadn't launched yet, they were happy to have us help them find a new name. And we're not really a branding agency here. It just happens that I've got marketing experience before I became a trademark attorney. And those two skill sets, marketing, branding, and trademark knowledge has been very valuable for me in my role because I'm able to help small business owners rebrand at a low cost. And really, my aim at the end of the day is to ensure that the client can register their trademark, you know, the first time around if possible. And if I can avoid them getting a rejection by letting them know up front that that name, that brand name is not trademarkable, I'd rather forego the fee that they pay me than to waste their time and their money to proceed with their, you name that they've sent through. But that's not always the case because sometimes people have already started the process and we just have to work through it. Sometimes we'll just submit a logo or I might have to say to them, you may have to create a sub-brand to your main brand because as trademark attorneys, we can't perform magic. We've got a set of rules around the world that we've got to adhere to. And ultimately, if we find that the brand name is not trademarkable, then we tell the client.

SPEAKER_01: 20:58

What are some of the, I guess the, we've talked about the risks of not trademarking, but have you got any stories or a story that you could share of, you know, when someone's neglected to trademark their brand and they've had to stop using it and the impact to their business? Because I think this is really important for those people who still might be sitting on the fence saying, oh, we really don't need to do that. You do. So could you maybe share a story just to reinforce how important it is to do this?

SPEAKER_00: 21:32

Yes, I actually have a really recent one. The client actually is happy for me to mention the name of it, but I won't, only because I don't want to get him in trouble and I don't want, even though he wants me to mention it. But essentially what's happened is he had built a spare parts business over 10 years. He had basically, it was a distributor-manufacturer relationship and they had a very good relationship over 10 years. Unfortunately, something had happened and he didn't realize that because he actually had built the brand in Australia for them, but he didn't realize that without the trademark, the local trademark, he could have obtained a local trademark for retail and wholesale spare parts. But he just, well, first of all, he said he didn't know about it. He didn't know about trademarking. And the first time he learned about trademarking, was when the registered trademark owner, which happened to be the manufacturer, wrote to Facebook and Instagram, and overnight his business shut down. He had 45,000 followers or friends on Facebook page or the community page, and he had 15,000 Instagram followers. And essentially overnight, without any notice by those two platforms, they went to do a post and They were deleted off the internet. And when they approached the two social media platforms, they said, oh, it's due to trademark infringement. And if in that case, they actually have their own trademark, then maybe Instagram and Facebook might reinstate them. But because they didn't have any protection, legal protection, they couldn't do anything. So to this day, they're rebranding and they've got a new brand. However, now they're scrambling to try to find those 45 friends on Facebook and 15,000 Instagram followers. And I'm sort of helping them try to find them legally without them, I guess, using that brand and getting into trouble with the brand owner. But that just shows you that 10 years of building the brand has just gone poofed overnight because of a trademark infringement. And that's

SPEAKER_01: 23:58

something, it's not something you would see coming from social media platforms in the way that you've described, it's not something you would expect to happen. And that many followers, that would be a massive hit to the business.

SPEAKER_00: 24:11

That's correct. And I'll tell you another example, just to show you that if two parties have trademark registrations, they can reinstate their page. So maybe five years ago, there was a clothing company that had the same name as a deodorant company. So it was a children's clothing company. Her Instagram was shut down and she had, I think at the time, maybe 20, could have been even 20,000 followers. I can't recall now, but it was quite a big number and she had built it over a number of years. And she couldn't believe it that she was shut down for trademark infringement by a deodorant company with a similar name. or the same name. And so... They're in such different classes. They're in completely different classes. Well, not really, because the deodorant company actually had the trademark for deodorant and retail and wholesaling. Okay. So trademarks are made up of 45 classes. And so they are split up by products and services. So in the case of this client, if she actually had bothered at the clothing, she would have had a registered trademark. And then if Instagram at that time did shut her down because of the infringement of the retail class, because, you know, she's retailing and using the brand for retailing, but if she had legitimately had a clothing trademark, she would have been reactivated with no problem. But in that scenario, it cost her a lot of money. Instead of$2,000, it cost her close to$6,000 or even$10,000 from memory, because not only did she have to rebrand, trademark it, also pay for legal fees for us to negotiate with the other party to reinstate her handle. So what we did was we wrote to the other party and said, we've rebranded, the client has trademarked, so showing you that they're serious about the new brand. And then we just asked the other party to write to Instagram to reinstate or reactivate her handle for two days, so 48 hours. And within that 48 hours, my client had to change her handle. But the good thing about that was that she was able to get back her followers. But that whole process took three months. So she did not have access to her customers for three months. So that was a loss of income for her. So, I mean, that story had a happy ending because she rebranded and she was able to get her Instagram account back. But it took a long time and a lot of negotiation.

SPEAKER_01: 27:18

Wow. They're both very interesting stories that I think everyone would like to avoid. So let's just talk about marketing and brand value. So obviously when people start to think about selling their company you know there's a bit of planning that needs to go into that and that's what I always advise my clients don't just decide and then think it's going to happen we need to really start looking where the value is in the business and obviously brands come into that so would you advise someone who is thinking of building a company to sell it one day to trademark their brand because it's going to be more valuable for the person acquiring the business to know that they've got Yeah. It is very

SPEAKER_00: 28:13

important to trademark at the beginning, especially if you're looking to later on on sale because it'll add value to the sale value of your business. Not so in terms of brand valuation, but more so for the peace of mind that you're giving to the next owner. That you've actually spent the money to protect the brand and that you had built the reputation over the years and that reputation is locked in to that trademark registration so that when you sell it, they can safely continue to use that brand. Your listeners should look up Number 5 Chocolate. This was a case where the first owner of the business traded for over 10 years with Number 5 Chocolate. chocolate in Adelaide. And the second owner only just purchased the business of the first owner. And I think within maybe a year of owning the business, Chanel had sent them a cease and desist letter for the brand name because they said that it was infringing on their number five perfume brand. And unfortunately, it really is about deep pockets when you are talking about infringement, because even if Chanel didn't really have a leg to stand on. Technically, you know, what's chocolate got to do with perfumes? Well, they argue that chocolate's a luxury product and perfume is a luxury product. So the consumer in the marketplace could potentially have confusion between number five chocolate and Chanel number five perfume. It's a long, it's an argument that they ran. However, the small business owner just does not have the money to run a court case just to argue the point that chocolate is different to perfume so in the end they did a bit of publicity about we're not infringing but at the end of the day they actually had to rebrand because they didn't want to you know go to court but that's a good story for those who who are buying businesses that they should see whether they're actually that the company they're buying actually has a trademark because in that instant even though they thought they were buying number five chocolate they actually ended up having to rebrand due to trademark infringement. So yes, a trademark would add value to the business owner that sells the business eventually.

SPEAKER_01: 30:41

Yeah, absolutely. And I think with all these examples you've given us, anyone listening, I think we've made it clear there's a definite return on investment going down this path. It's something that should be a core part of setting up your business. Again, as we said you know if you're intending to grow grow your company but can we just finish off let's talk about the actual the process when we started you said that a lot of people probably avoid it because of cost but I think we've probably justified that expense through these stories but can you tell us for people listening who would like to you know get some advice from you what's the practical process involved what are the steps what are the options and you know a ballpark on cost so people can at least walk away from this podcast knowing how to get started with this process

SPEAKER_00: 31:39

sure we well with applied rocks anyway we've actually got three packages so we actually start as low as 7.95 however that package is diy through our online system so you're using our online system to guide you to trademarking your brand that is good for those who understand trademarks a little bit because that process involves you knowing who should be the rightful owner of the trademark which classes you should protect and also whether the word mark and the logo mark you know should be trademark applied for then we've got the middle package which is 1595 which where we give clients a little bit of help and making sure that their application is correct and then we've got as I mentioned earlier the the the$2,000 package where we do it for you and we actually do a brand audit of your whole business if you're serious about wanting to protect the whole business, whether it's you're running a maintenance service within that business or you're actually selling a product. So we do offer that. The client can also do research on themselves for themselves on Google to check if their brand is trademarkable. We use Google a lot to find out if that particular name is trademarkable and you need to actually do an intensive search on Google not just let's say if you're in building you just don't do let's say ACE building you might do ACE construction or you might do ACE renovation so you need to use descriptive words to check for that unique name and I'm also letting you know do not use ACE that is a very popular name that's just an example. Do not use ace. And made up names are really good as well, instead of trying to find a descriptive word. And also one key thing for business owners that are listening, try not to create a brand name that's descriptive because descriptive brands are not trademarkable in the word format. In the logo format, yes, but not in the word format. And descriptive words are really, I think, promoted by digital marketing agencies, because they say, oh, it's really good if someone knows what you do. But let's say, for example, if you're a Sydney town planner and your business is Sydney town planning, you're never going to be able to get a wordmark on that. And you're really just building the brand for all the Sydney town planners as well. And I'm assuming that Sydney town planner as a Google ad would be very costly to something else. So it's not very costly if you do it yourself. You just have to just make sure that the name is trademarkable in the first place. You should also look at trademark registers around the world if you're inclined to know how to do the searches. Because as I said, there's 45 classes of protection and depending on your knowledge, you could do that research yourself as well. So we do have services to cater for all different types of businesses, whether you're a startup or you're an established business. The main thing is since I've started at Applied Marks, I'm trying to bring integrity to the advice we provide. Even if a client comes to us with a brand name that has issues with it, we would rather tell the client upfront there's an issue and then we'll work around the issue if we can. Because the worst thing that can happen is that we just process the order and then in, you know, four months time when it gets examined, it gets a rejection. So it's probably better to know upfront. So the process is about eight months in Australia to get a trade or to register a trademark and a standard application, the application is examined at the four-month mark. You can expedite the examination for an extra fee, but that doesn't actually expedite the whole eight-month process. Overseas, it takes 12 months to up to three years. You wouldn't believe it at the moment. Canada is taking up to three years to register a trademark, but that's just how it is at the moment in Canada. I'm sure it's going to decrease in the next year or so because they're just upgrading their software, I think, over there in Canada. So yeah, it just depends on which country you want to go to. The period will differ, but the process is pretty much the same. You apply for it in one class. You have to wait for examination. Oh, actually, there's also a two-month objection period or opposition period where anyone can object to your application. And that happens because It's trying to avoid people from trying to steal multinational brands. So you could, let's say, go to America and maybe McDonald's is launching a new burger. Someone might be there and they might come back and they might want to start up that name that McDonald's has introduced in Australia. So practically stealing it. So that's why there's like this international thing where no one can really obtain a trademark for up to eight months because it The process has a two-month opposition period for anyone around the world to object to your application in Australia. And it's the same process in any other country where they do have objection periods as well. And it's really being able to find that application to object. And the big companies have law firms monitoring that brand. And they tend to object if they see that someone is applying for their brand in another country.

SPEAKER_01: 37:32

And that's the key thing, isn't it? I think people need to be aware that it's not just a case of, well, will I be unlucky or not? These companies have people monitoring it constantly, constantly. So it's not a matter of luck. If you're infringing it, they'll pick it up and you'll be in trouble. That's all fantastic advice. Have you got any final piece of advice for our listeners?

SPEAKER_00: 37:59

Yes. My final piece of advice is do not think that your company name, your trading name and your domain name and even trading history gives you any protection for your brand. If you don't own a trademark and you value your brand name, then it's probably time that you look at applying for a trademark just for your own peace of mind that whatever you've built to date, whether it's a startup and you're planning to make it a success or you've been around for a that the brand that you're building is protected. And you know what? Sometimes we go through this exercise with clients. I'm helping a few clients at the moment that are two years down the track with your brand. However, they are infringing and they've actually decided that they're going to rebrand because they don't really want to take the chance of being found out in the future for infringement. And part of the reason why you're found out is that let's say your product or service goes viral So right now you might be under the radar because you haven't actually reached that level of promotion or recognition in the marketplace for your brand. But once you do become viral, no one really knows when you're going to be successful with the brand. I mean, look at TikTok. Apparently TikTok spent many years not doing much and then suddenly it became an international hit with all the teenagers, I guess. And the thing is, yeah, you just don't know whether your brand is going to be successful. However, if you don't own the trademark, that's going to be a problem in the future because you're going to be spending a lot of money backtracking. And the worst case scenario would be that you would have to rebrand at the height of your success. So we have a slogan that I've created, protect your brand, protect your success. And that's really the essence of a trademark is really to try to protect your success.

SPEAKER_01: 39:58

Fantastic advice. This has been so interesting. Thank you so much, Bin. I think, you know, my advice to anyone listening would be to get in touch with you. And we'll have your contact details in the show notes so that anyone who does need to trademark anything in their business can get in touch. So thank you very much for this. It's been fabulous.

SPEAKER_00: 40:21

Thank you very much, Jenny, for having me on the podcast.

SPEAKER_01: 40:26

And that's all for today's episode of the 7% Club. Thank you you so much for listening and as always wherever you are in the world remember better strategy better business better life