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Why AI Can't Replace A Patent Attorney – And Other IP Secrets · Pitch to Product

• Stewart: And you guys are now where I'm going to be sending all my clients who say, I need to get this made, how do I do that? Because I've never had in my toolbox of of kits of how to help people a better answer than what 52 Launch provides. for that question of what do I do now? You know, it it's it's you're the perfect solution for the for the end of my IP pipeline and getting things out there. Jack Dalton: Welcome back to the Pitch to Product podcast hosted by 52 Launch. I'm your host today. I'm back, Jack Dalton, Business Development Manager at 52 Launch. And today I am here with Stuart Myers. Stuart, I'll let you introduce yourself for all the people watching. Stewart: Hi there, I'm Stuart. I'm a registered patent attorney as well as an Oregon state attorney. And I've been working in the IP sphere for about 23, 24 years. I started off my professional life at Intel, and then after working in their corporate licensing group, I moved to a wonderful little town in Oregon called Corvallis. And I opened my own private practice there. I had a private practice for about 12 years where I dealt with A lot of solo inventors, small businesses, entrepreneurs, startups, angel inventors, that whole sphere. And that was the vast majority of my practice while I was there. Then after Corvallis, I went up to Portland, Oregon, where I was a partner at a boutique IP firm for a little while. And then I just recently took a little while, a little time off to raise my son, who's now three, and I'm getting back into the IP game and restarting all everything that I'm doing in Southern Oregon, where they have a vibrant entrepreneur ecosystem. There's a lot of resources, a lot of support down here. And I'm just really excited to be here and talking to you, Jack, and excited to, as we discussed beforehand, dive into some of the higher level questions that you have. Jack Dalton: Absolutely. Yeah, that wealth of experience is why I reached out in the first place and why I have you here today. So I'm excited to get into it. As you mentioned, we're going to be covering some more in-depth, slightly higher-level topics. So we'll kind of assume that people watching know what a patent is, what a trademark is, kind of have a basic understanding of the IP landscape. If you do not, Go check out one of our other videos on the channel. They are adequately titled. You will be able to tell which ones are about IP basics. and then hop on back here to get into some more details. On that note, let's start with one of the questions that I have been getting more and more as people are becoming more familiar and comfortable with using AI tools and their capabilities are becoming more robust. nope. The question is, why shouldn't I just file for a patent or a trademark myself? Why should I go pay an attorney to do this on my behalf? And there are a whole bunch of answers to that question. but I'll I'll let you give your thoughts, Stuart. Stewart: Okay, no problem. You know, and in this day and age especially you can. You can load up your favorite AI model, you can go submit something to the patent and trademark office and come away with the filing. In fact, there's no longer a barrier of entry when it comes to the actual paperwork. That's the easy part. The problem is I like to tell people that AI is kind of like a coworker who's your best friend but shows up every day drunk and you have no idea If they're telling you the truth or they're just flat out lying to you with a smile on your face. So you really kind of have to ride herd on what it's telling you. And unless you've been in the trenches, you don't know what it's not telling you and what it's leaving out. Now, more specifically, when it comes to IP filings, the biggest danger is leaving something out that's critical to protect your business model. Now, specifically with patents, let's say a provisional patent, it can give you a wealth of information about what you're doing, and that's fantastic. But unless you know where to look for the negative spaces and the holes, you're gonna run into problems down the road. Now, technically speaking, a provisional patent must serve as the basis for any upcoming or future utility patents. Now, utility patents are the 20-year standard patent. That's the the gold standard for protecting what it is that you've come up with. And every element in that utility patent, if you file a provisional ahead of time, must be fully supported in that provisional. If not, you don't get the same priority date, and that that's a huge problem. So you can perhaps not have and f as much enforcement, you can have not have as as strong of a utility patent. That causes a lot of problems. Then on the trademark side, well. You can spend a lot of money if you don't do the proper background searches and see if there are already existing marks out there. And AI is going to tell you this mark is great. Let's go ahead and proceed with it. But it's not really going to understand the the rejections based on similarities of other marks in the trademark database, unless you specifically tell it to go look for that, which you can. But it's not something that most people just know right off the top of the head. So in summary, you can leave a lot out and not realize it, and that's the huge problem. Jack Dalton: Right. Yeah, absolutely. And I think based on my understanding, you could potentially, especially on the patent side, go in the other direction. Maybe not the other direction, but you could ask AI to draft a patent for you, and it would go so broad that your chance of or so narrow, I should say, on what it's protecting that your patent would probably get approved. It just wouldn't really be worth all that much because it would be so narrow that you'd have a hard time, you know, using the patent to prevent other people from creating and selling your idea. Stewart: Exactly. And this falls into the category of enforceability. Yet you can have an AI draft a a patent, but like you said, the scope could be so far narrower than it should be, it wouldn't be enforceable or even defensible. Now just and and this harkens back to another broad strategy problem with AIs is they really don't understand the concepts behind why you file for IP protection. It can do the mechanics, Jack Dalton: Right. Stewart: it can do the fine tuning. But it's not going to understand that, say, for example, a good drafting strategy is to purposely leave your patent overly broad, even if you know it is, and let the examiner define where the hard lines are in terms of scope. That way you can trim back your application through an office action response to tailor your protection to exactly what the examiner allows. And that's going to give you the broadest pot possible protection you can get. Whereas an AI is gonna say, okay, I've got this invention, it's very narrow, here you go, you've got a patent, but you or it doesn't really know what you have or how much better it could be if you've you know consulted an expert. Jack Dalton: Right. And actually this is are you allowed to deal with office actions yourself as a solo inventor if you file on your own behalf? Like do you need Stewart: absolutely. Jack Dalton: you can? Stewart: Yeah, you're allowed to do what's called a pro se application, which means you're representing yourself. And in fact, the USB TO really tries hard to support individual inventors. The the examiners Jack Dalton: Right. Stewart: are so much more kind and so much more forgiving to a pro se applicant than they are to a patent attorney. I've I've read some of the letters that people have gotten from the examiner. in office action and they're so polite and kind and they kinda gently nudge them to seek professional help when they can. Whereas an experienced patent attorney or patent agent gets a letter and it's like, Now here's how you messed up. We're not even gonna tell Jack Dalton: Yeah. Stewart: you how to fix it. Good luck. Jack Dalton: well, I'm glad to hear that that's how they do it. That's that's pretty nice Stewart: Mm-hmm. Jack Dalton: of them. But you we got back to that point of they're generally pushing people towards an IP professional in their feedback. And so that kind of leads me into my next question, which is if we've convinced people, you know, all right, maybe I should think about seeking professional help for my patent or trademark filing, how can people go about identifying an IP professional that's a good fit for them, for their brand, for their product, and that's just, you know, somebody that does good work. Stewart: Some of this is going to fall into the same category of why wouldn't you use an AI? And it really comes down to strategy. The nuts and bolts of patent law is about 25% of what makes a patent professional a good patent professional. Anyone with enough learning can sit down and just get the mechanics right. But what you want is you want someone that really understands your goals, what you want for your business as well as for yourself, and understands the long-term strategy of what you've come up with. And you can figure that out. You can ask them questions like, show them what you have, show them all the material, and ask them, what do you think is the inventive portion of what I've created? And it may not be obvious in some cases. Then you can also ask them questions like: if I make a change to this, what flexibility down the road do we have to incorporate that change? So really quiz them and beforehand, let me back up just a bit. Come in. knowing what you want out of this and quiz them on how they're going to get that for you and just ask them questions and and evaluate their responses. The more thought that they put into it and the more strategy recommendations that they have for you and giving you alternatives, generally speaking, the better practitioner they're going to be. Jack Dalton: Yeah, that that's a great answer. I would absolutely second that when you talk to a patent attorney, a patent agent, or 52 launch. Have an idea of what your goals are because if you don't know where you're going, how are you supposed to get there successfully? So yeah, I I think that's great. we've touched on patent attorneys and patent agents briefly there. We've never addressed the difference on this podcast. So wondering if you could kind of explain maybe the definitional difference between the two and then the practical difference between working with a patent attorney and a patent agent. Stewart: certainly. So the definitional difference is when it comes to patents they're identical. Both a patent attorney and a patent agent have to have a hard science undergraduate degree in order just to get into the field, and that's something like physics, mathematics, computer science. There's a whole list of degrees that allow you to be edi eligible to sit for the patent bar. Both attorneys and agents have taken and passed the patent bar and it's really the only area of law Patent law that requires you to take a separate bar just to practice it. And as far as ability goes, there's no difference either. Some of the best practitioners I met have been patent agents, especially if you get someone like a doctor to spend several decades working in the field, they can be extremely knowledgeable about the subject matter. So for pure patent law, you're not going to go wrong with either one if you click with them and if you feel a connection that like you can work with them. Now the difference is that a patent agent can only help you with patent-related work. And when it comes especially to startups and small businesses, there's a lot of spillover into other areas such as entity formation or licensing agreements or infringement detection or just anything. So anything out of that patent sphere, you're going to need a patent attorney if you want a unified source for legal experience. If you're just looking to get a patent, agents are great. They're and a lot of times they're lower cost too, to be honest. But if you need more of a holistic, general type of of counsel that can navigate you through a myriad of legal choices, including even trademark or copyright law or even recommending general IP strategy, then you're going to need a patent attorney. Jack Dalton: Gotcha. Yeah, that certainly makes sense. We've we've had excellent experiences with clients working with patent agents in the past, but that's a good point that attorneys can support inventors and entrepreneurs on kind of a wider range of of services. Stewart: Well, you know, one of the really nice things is either an an attorney or an agent can recommend to you to go to fifty-two launch to get a prototype or to get your model built or to liaise with companies overseas, especially Chinese manufacturers, because that's not really a legal area, that's more like a business decision. And Jack Dalton: Right. Stewart: I would say in about eighty percent of the cases I work with, that's always the question that comes after now that I've protected it, what do I do? How do I get this made? and that's hard. it's really hard to contact those manufacturers overseas. I'm working with several people right now that are coming up with like say an improved dog harness and they've spent months just trying to contact one manufacturer overseas to give them a prototype. And that's always a huge holdup. So I'm glad you guys exist to lead entrepreneurs and vendors through that process. Jack Dalton: Yeah, it is it is certainly quite the process for somebody doing it for the first time. yeah, a production negotiation or manufacturing negotiation is is a tough thing to navigate as one person, especially if you don't have any relationships around that. So certainly that is one of fifty two launches' greatest assets, is our some of our manufacturing relationships. are 30 years old. and because we give them quite a bit of business, we're able to g negotiate initial order quantities down to as low as 500 units. Whereas if you're one person approaching a a manufacturer, they're probably gonna want you to order at least 10,000 of them if they're gonna devote a a production line to making your product. And that's a lot more capital expenditure up front that Maybe people would have to go fundraise as opposed to being able to fund it themselves. So certainly I think that's something that we do exceptionally well is sourcing and getting those relationships set up and then managing the process. We have team members go to our manufacturing partners overseas. Actually, we have two team members in China right now doing quality control and just making sure those relationships are as strong as ever. so that's a great point. Stewart: And that that's huge. Jack Dalton: I'll jump. Stewart: That's something that a lot of businesses can't even do. They don't I would love to see your knowledge stack sometime of the entire process because I have no idea. And even if a company or an individual would know what to do, which is usually the huge stumbling block, they just simply don't have the resources, the abilities, or like you said, and this is so often, in so many cases, the most important thing, the existing relationships. That's fantastic. Jack Dalton: Because especially as a first timer, if you don't have any IP in China, and I've heard maybe sometimes even if you do, you can contract Stewart: Yeah. Jack Dalton: a manufacturer to start making your product. and then you see an identical product on Timu or somewhere, and you're like, wait a minute, this timing is a little bit suspicious. so we've never had that happen, which I think is a is a positive indicator. Yeah. Stewart: Yeah, I I have never heard of any problems with Chinese and IP protection. Never. Jack Dalton: Never. Stewart: Just Jack Dalton: Yeah. Stewart: just kind of joking with you. They're pretty notorious in not respecting other countries IP rights. And we could talk about strategies Jack Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. Stewart: on how to enforce in China sometime if you wanted to get into some really high level stuff, but probably outside the scope of of this conversation. Jack Dalton: Yeah, if we have time at the end, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on that because I I haven't heard a lot of strategy around that in the past. Stewart: Yeah, for sure. Jack Dalton: Before we get into that, I'll kind of jump to a different topic. And it's a question that I actually got this morning. and that is when should you trademark a product name as opposed to a brand name? Stewart: In a perfect world you would do both right away, as soon as possible. But the reality is, especially in the startup phase and the earlier phases of business, lim resources are very limited and you don't have the money to go out and do both of those, so you have to make a strategic choice. And it comes down to what do consumers associate in their minds with you? Do they associate a product name or do they associate a brand name? Whatever creates that stronger connection for the source of goods or the source of services, that's what you're want going to want to go after first. And it could be you have an amazing can opener, and they all know it by the 52 launch can opener. And if that's the name that people think of the most, protect that first. But if your business happens to be sunny Oregon weather business, because I'm in Oregon and sunny right now. then you would want to protect that before anything else. So really focus on where that connection between you and the customer lies and start there, then branch out afterwards, depending on you know how much money you have. Jack Dalton: Right. Yeah, that's certainly a there's some nuance to that answer. and Stewart: of course, yeah. Jack Dalton: probably that strategy should be informed by a conversation with an IP professional in most cases. But yeah, that that makes a lot of sense to me. Stewart: And and it's sorry to jump in, but just to expand upon that, you also want to think about your future planning as well. Like again, goals and having your goals set ahead of time before you start trademark registration is also critical because let's say right now you've got a strong connection with a product that you know isn't going to be your bread and butter, you might want to even begin with something that you have planned for the future that's going to be at the core of what it is that you're doing or providing. And again, I'm sorry for the interruption if I've got a thirty second memory. If I don't say it in thirty seconds it's gone. Forever. Jack Dalton: No, absolutely. yeah, continue to jump in. But wait. Stewart: No. Jack Dalton: I was gonna say we we've we've touched on this in the past, but to that point, you can trademark a brand or a product name even before you're using it, right? So if you you know know you're gonna start with one product and then you're gonna move on to another product, you could do all the trademarks at once if you had the resources available and file an intent to use, right? Stewart: absolutely. In fact that's a strategy that I recommend to most people, unlike patents, and please don't take this advice and transfer it over to patents because it's completely wrong, but just for trademarks, I recommend you get out there with the name even before registration and start using it as quickly as possible. The reason is once you put something into commerce, you do have some common law rights depending on the state you're in, that will help you assert ownership over that name, even leading up to registration. And if you're not using it in commerce yet, you can file under the section 1a intent to use, as you mentioned. And what happens is once your trademark has been essentially approved, not registered, but approved, you are given a six-month window in which to follow up with a statement of use. In other words, you send to the patented trademark office a statement of use saying, No, I'm actually using it, and here's a specimen. of whatever it is in use. It can it be a product name on a product, it could be packaging, it could be they've gotten a lot better about allowing screenshots for websites. And if you don't Jack Dalton: Yeah. Stewart: use it within that six month period, you can file for an extension. You get another six six months. And you can do that for a total of about three years before they say, Okay, you just can't have this anymore. And so the sooner you use it, the more likely you are to get that name to be yours because you're establishing ownership rights from the moment it gets out the door and you put it on something. So yes, please, if you're gonna file for trademarks, do it right after conception of the idea. Jack Dalton: Excellent. So I'm gonna ask a totally loaded question here and we can we can unpack it and maybe several ways. Stewart: I love it. I'm excited. Jack Dalton: I'll I'll rephrase for how I was going to ask initially, but how should people prioritize which IP they're going to obtain first? No, maybe what can people think about pre-launch as opposed to post-launch? Is it should you just do everything up front? Are there some things that you can kick down the road, maybe until you've just made your first couple of dollars or you right after you become profitable? Yeah, I guess what's the the order of importance for the diff for trademarks versus patents? And does it change based on the type of product or what you're thinking about doing with the thing? Stewart: file everything all at once. Okay, I see it. No, I'm kidding. Jack Dalton: Yeah. Stewart: again, in a perfect world, if resources were unlimited, you would want to file everything as soon as you can. But that's not where we are. really what you want to do is you want to sit down and you want to figure out what the core of your business is and figure out the best type of protection for that. Again, patents relate to inventions like products or business methods, trademarked relate to names, slogans. colors, those sorts of things. like color schemes. You can't really trademark register a particular color. But and what I would say is protect what you would lose if you didn't protect it. So for example, if you've come up with a fantastic new AI process, AI driven process these days, and you want to go out and talk about it at a trade seminar or put it into a white paper, you would lose patent rights after one year after public disclosure. So you might want to focus there before going out and making that public disclosure. If you know you're entering into a field that's going to become crowded with other people perhaps doing the same thing soon because this AI is, I mean, my goodness, AI revolution is still going on in terms of what people are creating and developing. And if you've got a great name that you think someone else is going to take, then start there. But protect first What it is that you would lose if you didn't protect it right away. Jack Dalton: Yeah, that answer makes makes perfect sense to me. And again, I'm gonna keep coming back to this, but that's a pretty hard thing for most people to determine with no background in intellectual property. So you should probably Stewart: Mm-hmm. Jack Dalton: have that conversation with somebody who knows what they're talking about. with Stewart: That that would be the strategy component of things that the AI simply can't help you out with. And and like I was saying at in the beginning, at least three quarters of patent and IP laws really understanding strategy is it's what should you do and what should you do it versus how can you do it. It's just that's what it comes down to. Jack Dalton: Perfect. So staying on that strategy line of of intellectual property. How can you know, and there's this is another question with a variety of ways to answer, but how should people think about IP from a business standpoint? You know, how does it factor into early thoughts on fundraising, valuation, exit strategy, licensing? Stewart: goodness. Wow. How much time do you say we have? Whoa, wow, you've really Jack Dalton: This Stewart: hit the core of why IP law exists. And feel free to cut anything out you want, because this is a huge answer. IP protection isn't architecture for your business. It really is creating a structure through which you can be profitable from what it is that you've created or what is it you that you're doing. With patents, they're not trophies. They should serve as building blocks for your business to help you to regain monetarily the amount of time and effort that you've put into creating what it is that you've created. The whole reason the patent exists is it's essentially a 20-year limited monopoly where you're allowed to exclude others from manufacturing, importing, selling, or there's one other negative limitation that I'm just not quite remembering right now. But you're essentially the sole provider for what it is you've you've created. And the reason why the government has done that is to allow you that time period to recover your investment in the hopes that you will go out and create something new to further society and to benefit our our country. That's why patent law exists. Now again, it comes back to what have you created and how can you use that as the building block for your business? You want to create with patents hopefully a portfolio with overlapping coverage. So if you go out and say you want to find an investor, they're going to look at what it is that you've done and they're going to have the security and they're going to have the comfort of knowing that you've locked down your IP. No investor is going to want to give money to a company that there's a risk, that there's a huge risk that they're going to lose. The ability or be the sole provider of that technology. It's a risky investment. They're just simply not going to do it. As well as for licensing agreements, a licensing agreement is a contract between two entities saying, I will provide you the rights to use my technology in exchange for money. Well, why should the licensee do that if There's a potential that someone else can do the same thing or provide the same sources. Or they could do it themselves. It's a non-exclusive right. And unless you've locked it down through trademarks or through especially patents, there's no incentive for s for someone into to enter into a licensing agreement. There's no reason they should. They why spend the money if they could just do it themselves. So you're giving people, especially outside actors and and outside parties. motivation and leverage to do business with you by creating solid IP portfolios. That's kind of it in a nutshell. Yeah, I know, I just sort of stopped suddenly there, but that's really the whole idea is to protect and secure what it is to get other people, force them and leverage them into dealing with you and and giving money from their efforts. Jack Dalton: Right. Yeah, certainly a lot of our audience also watches Shark Tank. That's kind of Stewart: Mm. Jack Dalton: you know, it's it's probably the best known product. New product, you know, you know what I'm saying. We all know what Shark Tank is. But Stewart: sure. Mm-hmm. Jack Dalton: what I'm getting at here is a lot of times on Shark Tank, one of the sharks will ask, Do you have a patent on this? And there is a huge difference in the response to the answer, whether it's a yes, overwhelmingly positive response, or a no, where often one or more of the sharks will just be like, what I'm out. Why? If anyone can do this. Then why don't I just go do it myself? I've got way more resources than you do. So absolutely, I see positive impact on the fundraising side, clearly on the licensing side, it's almost a must-have. and then in terms of exit strategies, which I would say personally, if you're starting a business, really no matter what it is, there should always be an exit strategy in the back of your head of. If this thing blows up faster than I can manage it, and there's a giant corporation that this would be useful to, how am I gonna potentially sell out? And I would think that if you have a a developed IP portfolio, that's gonna do wonders for your valuation upon exit. Stewart: tremendous. I mean, really, you may not be able to exit if you don't have a solid IP strategy or a solid IP portfolio in place. it's interesting, I was looking at some graphs the other day, and the minimum difference in exit valuation for companies with established IP is at least a two to three fold increase in price for what they can get out of it. We're talking orders of magnitude higher. So so for example, if you don't have any IP in place and a company you if you get offered a million bucks, that's great. But if you do have IP in place, the very least you can expect is two to three million you know mu more because of that IP. Now realistically, you're gonna get much more out of an exit if you decide to sell your company to another company or, you know, try to divest your company in some way. You're I would say Just looking at my experience, it's it would be around a factor of ten, ten times more lucrative. And again, the reason is you know I've got a two-year-old and a four-year-old, and they love to run up to each other and take whatever the other one is holding. The patent is the parent saying you can't do that. That has to stay there, and you can't just grab it and run away and do your own thing. You know, it it the the patent is so elementally necessary. to keep your property with that company, that to not have it, you would be I hate to say this literally stripped of all your IP by everyone else out there that can reverse engineer it or that can acquire it through whatever means. There's no purpose for anyone to want to give you money if you don't have something in place to protect what it is that you've done. Jack Dalton: Yeah. Yeah, I think a lot of people, especially that are, you know, maybe bringing a product to market for the first time or starting their first company, are a little, it's easy to understand some of the importance of IP, but I don't think most people are aware of how powerful it can be downstream five, 10 years later. A 10x multiple invaluation upon an exit, like. The patent has paid for itself a hundred times over, if not more, in a lot of those scenarios. So Stewart: Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. When I was in Intel Jack Dalton: Yeah, well I know it's Stewart: around you know two thousand one there was a patent family of three patents that Intel had licensed to AMD. And this had to deal with the X eighty six CPU technology. And just in royalties from those patents, not not like total market volume, but just in royalties, Intel was getting around fifty million dollars a year. And for I mean put that in today's dollars, but in computer related architecture, a standard royalty rates is a half percent to a quarter percent of gross profits. So that gives you an idea of just how much money having a patent can funnel into your business if you start doing the math on all this. It's just it's it's unbelievable. You may not have heard about this, but Apple recently had to change how their watches operated in terms of blood oxygen, because an Italian company had a patent on onboard device blood oxygen monitoring. And for about six months, Apple, the three trillion dollar company here in the United States, one of the largest you know like valuations for a company in the world. stopped offering blood oxygen monitoring on their watches until they figured out how to work around that. So talk about the power behind a patent and and what they eventually ended up doing is and now your watch sends the information to a phone. The phone does all the computations and then you know what your blood oxygen is. And so that just gives you an idea of the power as well as the potential monetization that a patent can do for you. It's it's huge. I can't state the importance that having a patent or patent portfolio more preferably is for your business in terms of future monetization as well as leverage against other companies that may be using what it is that you're doing. Jack Dalton: Right. Yeah, that is I'm surprised I hadn't heard of that. That's a that's a pretty big one for Apple to to lose a feature over an Italian. Yeah. Stewart: They didn't advertise it very much. They yeah, you have to go through the third parties to hear about that stuff. Apple doesn't put it on their home page of we just lost an infringement suit. Jack Dalton: so did they lose a suit over that? Yeah, I'm sure. Stewart: yeah, yeah, they lost. They were forced to change their ways or face an import ban of their of their watches. They offered that feature. Jack Dalton: Huh. Wow. Well, I think we've covered the majority of the scattered topics I wanted to discuss today. Is there anything you think we we should cover that I've left out here? Stewart: Yes. I would say that a lot of people ask when should I talk to IP professional, whether that be patent or a patent agent or a patent attorney? And it would be a lot sooner than you could imagine. And even if you decide you don't want to do anything at that time, they can help you develop the framework and understand the pitfalls of what it is that you may encounter if you don't act and give you certain check checkpoints. That when you reach that, you need to make a decision. Because really the biggest detriment or the biggest, I would say, pitfall, hate to use the word pitfall because it's such a cliche, but it that's truly what it is. the biggest risk to a company's IP portfolio is not doing things at the right time. You can lose a lot of rights by not acting when you should. And even if you just have an introductory phone call with someone early on. You'll at least be aware of what it is that you're facing and know when you should do things so you don't lose the rights, or at the very least, you don't lose the option to act on those rights and take advantage of them. So if you were to say to me what the biggest I would say piece of advice to a company is is talk to an IP professional as soon as they possibly can. You may have to pay for like an hour of you know introductory consult, but it's well worth it. in terms of what you'll get out of it from the knowledge, as well as not losing patent or trademark or any other sort of trade secret protection going on down the road. Personally I don't charge for introductory phone calls or meetings. I'm at the point in my career where I would love to see people reach their goals and any sort of fee for an initial consultation stifles innovation and it keeps people from having that knowledge that they will need to go out and just reach their dreams and and see the company go as far as it possibly can. So pick up the phone, send a text and an email to someone as soon as you possibly can. Jack Dalton: That is great advice. that's something I have taken to heart more sincerely in the last couple of months. just learning more about the IP world via these podcasts and talking to attorneys. On that note, what types of ideas are you kind of equipped to protect? And where can people find you if they'd like to have that conversation with you? Stewart: Certainly, thank you so much. And my business name is Cognivito. It's sort of a blending of cognition and vitae, the you know, like you know, thinking about life. And yeah, back about a year and a half ago when Chat GPT was still king, I asked it what I thought a good name would be, and it said cognivito, and it said sure. it turns out that a lot of people ask me how to spell that. And Jack Dalton: Yeah. Stewart: Generally speaking, from a trademark point of view, the best trademarks are always two syllables with repeated letters. If you think about Exxon, Yahoo, Google. And the reason is it's easy to remember, easy to spell. So two letters, two symbols, if you want to come up with a business name. I did not follow my own advice. Yeah. Exxon, Jack Dalton: Interesting. Stewart: for example, was completely made up. That word does not exist in the English language until the the board of Exxon or the founders sat down and said What's a word that is gonna be easy to remember and easy to spell that's unique? And it was Exxon. Okay, completely made it up on the spot. And since then a lot of other companies have followed that lead. Meta. I mean, we don't have the same two letters repeated, but we get the same two-syllable approach. So yeah, my business name is Cognivito. My formal training is in computer science. So right now I'm dealing with a lot of AI related inventions. As well as I have a ton of experience just with mechanical inventions like hardware. for example, a portable bottling machine for small businesses that want to do bottling on premises. This guy invented one, went around to people and did bottling on their on their on their lots and properties. It was fantastic. And really Those are the areas that I excel in, as well as just general IP strategy, and that comes from, you know, the Intel work as well as the boutique IP work is helping companies develop a roadmap to first of all, a lot of times people don't even know what their goals are. So I help them identify those goals and then map out a large roadmap to get to that and navigate them through the processes as well as answer the forty seven thousand questions around IP, because it's such a nebulous and confusing field. I mean Patent law requires its own bar exam because Jack Dalton: Right. Stewart: it doesn't make any sense to it to most people and it it shouldn't. It's counterintuitive in most cases. So I know that's a long answer for for what you asked, but that's that's how I help people is software, mechanical inventions, roadmaps, those type of things. Jack Dalton: Excellent. Well, we will have the Cogavito website linked in this video description. you mentioned AI and mechanical products. We don't do AI at 52 launch, but we do do pretty much anything mechanical, any consumer products. Even if it's not a consumer product, give us a call. We'd be happy to point you towards resources that will be a good fit for your product and your brands. Give Stuart a call. As he said, it's it's a free consultation. So what do you have to lose? And excellent. It's it's one day or day one. So get started and and do it right. It's my mom's had a couple of ideas that she's seen other people invent eighteen months Stewart: no. Jack Dalton: or bring to market, I should say. Eighteen months after she first started talking about it. I think that was like the worst day of her life. So she's Yeah, don't let someone else knock the wind out of your sails. Just give it a try. Stuart, it's been great. I've learned quite a few things. very much appreciate you taking the time to record this episode. Hopefully everybody listening has learned something as well. Any closing remarks? Stewart: You know, j just a couple because of course when was the last time you met a lawyer that didn't talk too much, but just tell your mom that she is not alone. That happens a lot more than you could possibly imagine. Of course that's not gonna help your mom out at all, but it is very true and it reiterates the need to act quickly and move. I in this day and age if you're thinking about being a startup with the same model as even a startup was five years ago, you're already losing. of what you think of the person, he does have some business knowledge. And he was commenting that startups two years ago even look different from startups right now. And then the second thing is, you know, this is not at all a a pitch or or a you know there's there's no paid sponsoring here. But truthfully speaking, in my 20 plus years of experience I haven't met a more convenient and consolidated pipeline from idea to actually getting a product in hand than what 52 launch offers. And I've done a lot of investigation on your site, taking a look at it and just interacting with you know you, Jack, and and the company. And you guys are now where I'm going to be sending all my clients who say, I need to get this made, how do I do that? Because I've never had in my toolbox of of kits of how to help people a better answer than what 52 Launch provides. for that question of what do I do now? You know, it it's it's you're the perfect solution for the for the end of my IP pipeline and getting things out there. Jack Dalton: I am happy to hear yet. I appreciate you saying that. yeah, we've got the system down pretty good. Seven hundred and thirty-ish products have gone through our accelerator so far. couple of big, big hits. Stewart: Yeah. Jack Dalton: Absolutely. I appreciate it. If you're interested in learning more about either fifty-two launch or cognivito, the links will be in the description below. Otherwise, thank you for watching another episode of the Pitch to Product Podcast. We'll hope to hear from you.