Everybody, Justin Recla here with Incorporating SuperPowers. I’m super excited about my guest today. This gentleman that I’m bringing on is just absolutely phenomenal and brilliant in his space. And if you’re a business owner and you have intellectual property, this is something that most people don’t realize that in business you’ve got intellectual property. You may not be thinking about it as intellectual property, but if you don’t protect yourself the right way, you can put your entire business in jeopardy and lose a lot of traction, a lot of ground, and it can end up costing a lot of money in the long run.
The gentleman that we’re bringing on today, his name’s Jason Webb. One of my dearest friends in the business world. We’ve known each other for so long and then every time we see each other it’s just like we’ve never left and it just is right there. He’s also known as the world’s sexiest man in some of our circles and it’s hard to argue at times. It really is. So Jason, thank you so much for being on the show today.
Thanks for letting me be here too. That’s awesome.
All right, so I’m just going to go, folks this is like our third take. I’m actually showing we’re recording this time. So, I like to be transparent, let’s just put it out there, okay? So the reason why I wanted to connect with Jason is there’s so much going on in the IP world right now. We’re seeing all sorts of things that are coming out. And Jason, most entrepreneurs, most business owners aren’t stopping to think about intellectual property, right? It’s usually something that they react to or respond to. But there is a level of importance on staying up to date with what’s going on in the IP world because otherwise you do put your business at risk. So what are some of the things that you’re seeing right now in the industry that regulators are doing that are having an impact on business owners?
So one of the key pieces about intellectual property is so much of how it goes at the end depends upon what you do at the beginning. And one of the things that we’re seeing in the world patents is there’s this subject matter eligibility problem that’s shown up where there’s a Section 101 of the Patent Code says that if you’re not trying to patent something that’s patent eligible, you can’t get a patent on it, even if it’s new, even if it’s not obvious, even if it’s useful. And what’s happening is things that are described in certain ways are being now, because of a court case that came up called Alice, they’re now being said, Oh, that’s not patent eligible because you didn’t describe it right. Or because it’s not even the right kind of thing that we get patents on.
But the problem is, is that it’s really vague and ambiguous about what’s okay and what’s not. Anyway, so there’s this big issue with a whole lot of patents being declared invalid and a whole lot of patents where who knows if they’re valid or not. So that’s something that people are struggling with, especially tech companies, especially people who do apps or software as a service. But we actually a couple of weeks ago saw this same reasoning applied to a device, a product that’s manufactured in a certain way and nobody expected that.
Congress is right now working on a fix to the law to try to make things better. But for a lot of people, if they would have described their invention in a more concrete way, in a more specific way, then they wouldn’t be as concerned about this problem. And that’s one of the things with intellectual property, like I said, what you do at the very beginning make a bit of difference.
And I can see how that could be confusing because if, as the owner, if you’re trying to file the patent on your own or you’re kind of going through the process, you don’t know about these issues, especially with like that Alice file there, that can prolong the case or be denied a patent and there’s so many complications that, especially if you’ve got a product, are you got a service or you’re manufacturing, it’s important to protect those ideas because then anybody else can come along and steal them and the longer you wait for that to happen in getting a patent, the more likelihood that, especially if you’re out there and you’re promoting your product and you’re marketing your product and whatnot, somebody sees it, checks that you don’t have a patent on it and now they run with it because they don’t do things the right way that can cause a lot of heartache for business owners.
So is this just applying to products and manufacturing or is this something that raises a potential concern for just stuff, soft ideas, and names of programs? Or is a concern from across the board?
Yeah. The Alice case only applies to patents. So it’s only going to apply the technology, but the overall concept of, make sure that you do the right things in the beginning, describe things in the right way from the beginning, also applies to protecting your branding. To protect, if you have a series of books, the branding for that. If you’ve got slogans, logos, all those things. It also applies to copy that you write, educational materials that you put out. If there’s webinars or if there’s a video series you produce, if you do coaching and consulting and there are educational materials that you provide.
Again, there are things you can do in the very beginning when you’re first building everything, that make a huge difference later on when you’re trying to license it. When you’re looking at valuing the company. When you’re looking at exiting the company. And when you look at someone starting to copycat. If you’ve got an employee who thinks, “I can do better than that,” and the first thing they do is start stealing things from your website. Stealing things from the materials that you give to customers. So doing the right things early on makes it makes a big difference in what happens when that kind of crap goes on.
Yeah, from a risk perspective that those are the things that most people aren’t thinking about all the time because again, it’s a reactionary type of thing and from a due diligence perspective it can be prevented. Having a single conversation with you is going to outline the steps of what’s protectable, what’s not protectable, what needs to be protected, what doesn’t need to be protected and so forth. And doing that work up front will save so much time and heartache for the business owner.
Jason, this is great information and I want to dive more into what are some of the things that people need to be thinking about, whether they have a product or a process or if they’re just getting started. What are some things that people can do to protect themselves, especially from this new regulation that’s coming down the pipeline afterwards. But before we do that, we’re going to go on a break, but first, where can people go find more information about you?
So I’m a partner at Pearson Butler, and their website is pearsonbutler.com and then you can go look at my profile there. I also have a personal branded website. It’s JPWebb.us. So those are great places to go find out more about.
Perfect, perfect. And folks, stay with us because after the break here, we’re going to go over some of the steps and things that you need to be taken into consideration that a lot of people don’t stop to ask them. Even if you’re just getting started in business or even if you’re seasoned, you’re going to want to pay attention to this. Because I know there are a lot of people out there that have been operating in business for five, six, seven, eight years, nine years, 10 years even, that have gotten lucky and they’re just waiting, it’s just a matter of time before something happens to your IP. So stay tuned. We’ll be right back. We’ve been talking with Jason Webb about defining your intellectual property. Stay tuned, we’ll be right back.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
Podcast: Play in new window
