ESYB2 034 - Case Study My decision of Whether to Get a Trademark
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[00:00:00] In this video, I want to give you a real case study of how I went through the process of deciding whether or not to get a trademark and how I actually went about it. And I'll give you my full thinking about it for different platforms. Now, this is my website, waveifyoulike. com. The brand that I will be trademarking is precisely Wave If You Like.

You see how on this t shirt, it says Wave If You Like. Here it's cats, but here it's, if I zoom in, it says, wavy if you like SEO and on a different shirt, it would say like wavy if you like wine or something like that. Right? And so the brand is wavy if you like anything. Of course, here it's COVID, but wavy if you don't like, but everything else is wavy if you like, right?

And that's the whole brand. It's catchy. And this thing wavy if you like what I wanted to do, or at least what I was considering. Is whether I should trademark wave if you like so that nobody [00:01:00] can put that on a t shirt anywhere kind of like Nike only Nike can put that name on their clothing. No one is allowed to do that.

Now, maybe I'm the only one who would think of this, but once people see it, they might copy and. My question is, do I want to prevent them from copying? And the answer is actually yes and no. For example, if they start some small online store, like waveifyoulikecopycat. com, then in some way, if they sell a t shirt, they will kind of reinforce my brand.

Even though they're copying, they're still reinforcing that waveifyoulike. And wave if you like is getting branded. And if I'm the main wave if you like, ultimately, that has a way of helping me. So I don't have to be that strict about it. And of course, they're not going to steal my sales because I have a relatively small site here.

They'll have a relatively small site on their [00:02:00] own and our sales will never really interfere. We'll have totally different shoppers for the most part. Of course, maybe I'll go big. Maybe they'll go big. Maybe they'll run ads in some similar niches. Maybe they'll bid on some similar keywords. So we could compete with each other.

But generally, chances are that We wouldn't really hurt each other's sales, and it's not worthwhile to get a trademark just to discourage smaller sellers. Also, let's say somebody in a different country wants to create Wave if you like. Well, even if I have a trademark, can it really be Enforceable, like I'm not going to go and sue overseas.

It's going to cost me so much money to create a lawsuit and who knows how that's going to go. I'm going to waste a ton of time and probably not get my money back and probably not be able to stop them. And in every country, the laws are different. So it's really hard to enforce this defensive kind of a strategy [00:03:00] across borders, right?

Some countries will comply, but most won't. It's a nightmare. So that's one way of thinking about it. Now, So on the other hand, let's say we stop looking here, but we look on Amazon, you see a similar t shirt, same cat t shirt, wave if you like, it's under my brand, wave if you like right here with no spaces.

If I click on my brand, you can see a bunch of different t shirts. So The problem with Amazon, of course, is that anybody can put their t shirt on Amazon. They literally can copy and paste my design, like literally screen capture, copy my design, put that on their own t shirt and put, upload that onto Amazon, right?

And as soon as you're on Amazon, A whole bunch of people in different countries will do that to you. And there's a whole sub industry of people doing exactly that. So, what I wanted to do is make sure that no one can put wait if you like on [00:04:00] a t shirt. And if they do, all I have to do is email Amazon support and within hours or days, they'll take down any competitor because I'll be able to show that I have a trademark.

Boom! You see? So here, Because if anybody copies me, I'll be able to take them off of Amazon because on Amazon, if I'm on Amazon and they're on Amazon, we're going to be directly competing against each other. And a lot of people are good sellers. They know how to sell on Amazon. Especially if they're experienced in copying and selling.

So I wanted to make sure that no one can put Wave if you like on a t shirt and sell that on Amazon. And so for that reason I got this trademark so that I can sell on Etsy, Amazon, eBay and every other online marketplace that is not my site I can immediately get any competitor removed. So I actually got this trademark because of this.

Now, as your brand gets bigger, you want to get a [00:05:00] trademark so that no one can compete with you, even on your own site, like I showed you earlier. But I also explained to you my practical logic, why I don't really care that much as people competing at my site, but on the platforms where, by the way, clothing is a Multiple six figure or seven figure business.

Depending on the niche it's there's big potential. I don't want anybody to compete with me. I want to be the only one. So for that reason, I got this trademark and depending on where you are, trademarks will be between 500 to 700 to 1, 500. That includes checking. If a trademark is available, that's in the U S by the way.

So that includes if a trademark is available. And if it is available, actually getting that, registering that trademark. That's if you're going through a lawyer. You can do it on your own, of course, but most likely if you're like me, you're not a lawyer, you don't know how to do it, you probably make some mistakes.

So, even though it's [00:06:00] not rocket science, it's probably good to hire a lawyer to do it right. And if you're low on budget, maybe you take a risk that no one copies you. But if you have a budget for this, and you are in your business for the long term, You're really serious about it, then it's probably worthwhile so that you can have your designs and brand protected on these big marketplaces and wherever you'll need to protect it in the future.

