[00:00:00.130] - Andrea Sager
As a writer, everything you do is intellectual property. Everything everything you do is intellectual property, and you have to do what you can to protect it in order to avoid the next person coming along and stealing everything you have right from under you.
[00:00:21.270] - Clarissa Moll
As a writer, those words made me cringe a little. We invest so much time and energy into our writing, and it's hard to consider it might be taken from us. That's why I'm so excited about today's episode how to Protect Your Writing If copyrights and trademarks and legal things make your head spin, never fear you're in the right place. We're going to break it down and help you determine some clear next steps to take good care of the words in which you've invested so deeply. Hi, I'm Clarissa Moll.
[00:00:51.360] - Clarissa Moll
And welcome to the Writerly Life brought to you by Hope Writers, the most encouraging place on the Internet for writers to make progress here at the ride. Early Life we help you expand your creativity, explore new techniques and express your hopefilled words in a world that needs them. We'll help you learn to balance the art of writing with the business of publishing and learn to hustle without losing heart. You have words and your words matter, and as you write them, you can be you boldly, bravely, maybe even a little scared.
[00:01:25.800] - Clarissa Moll
Sometimes you can be you in your writing life. Welcome to the show Friends. Lean in, grab a pen. Let's chat. Whether you have a thriving writing business, a multibook deal, or you just hit publish on your first blog post. It's important as a writer to understand the legal side of the writing life. While this episode doesn't substitute for specific legal advice, I hope you'll find encouragement as we talk together about how you can steward your writing and protect it for misuse. Our guest today, Andrea Sagar, is a small business attorney for entrepreneurs.
[00:02:04.630] - Clarissa Moll
She helps them protect everything from their brand names to their courses and blog posts. And she's the perfect person to guide us as we determine how best to protect the words we've published. Lean in as Andrea tells us more in this Hope Writers Tuesday teaching with host Brian Dixon.
[00:02:21.460] - Brian Dixon
Many of our writers are coming from sort of the inspirational, faith based space. They don't love the idea of having to protect their intellectual property. They just want to write. They just want to write. So what would be like, the first thing that you'd say to them? They came up with a Bible study or like, home schooling tips for moms. And they just started a blog and they just got going. What would be like, one of the mistakes maybe they've already made when it comes to protecting their own intellectual property?
[00:02:52.690] - Andrea Sager
That's a loaded question. First, if you have a unique name to your blog, to your brand, whatever it is, it needs to be protected with the trademark. Even if you're conducting business with your legal name. So if it's a personal brand, guess what? Just because you have a legal name doesn't mean that you're legal to conduct business with that name. So especially if you have a common name, guess what? You really need to get on protecting it with a trademark. And it may sound silly. It's like, well, this is my legal name.
[00:03:24.920] - Andrea Sager
Well, think about Calvin Klein. Calvin Klein is obviously the namesake of the world famous clothing brand. He's no longer the CEO or really the visionary behind the company. But he can't go and start any new business related to the fashion industry whatsoever with his name. Or that would be trademark infringement, even though it's his legal name.
[00:03:48.610] - Brian Dixon
So what do I do? How do I trademark my name? If I'm writing books and I have a blog and Instagram following all those sorts of things, what do I do?
[00:03:57.100] - Andrea Sager
Yeah. So the first step is the trademark search. And that's not just searching Google, not searching social media or the trademark database. It's a comprehensive trademark search with an attorney to make sure that there's nothing similar out there. Because trademark infringement doesn't just occur when it's the same exact name. It occurs when there's anything similar. And that means any name similar to yours that's doing similar things as you so selling similar goods or services. For example, my full brand name is Andrea Sager Law. If there is an Andrea Sager legal, that's trademark infringement.
[00:04:38.250] - Andrea Sager
If it's the Andrea Sager law firm, that's trademark infringement. If it is Andrea Sager spelled differently, that's trademark infringement, Andrea Sager, anything like that, anything similar to where my clients may be confused, not even if they are confused or not. But if they might be confused, that's trademark infringement.
[00:04:59.930] - Brian Dixon
I love it if they may be confused, that's really the point of this whole conversation, right? Is like, for example, one of our co founders, Emily Freeman. She goes by Emily P. Freeman because there's another Emily Freeman. And there's some overlapping content. But there's some divergence as well. And there's things that the other Emily has said that our Emily would never say people will get them confused. What would be like the long term danger of that if you didn't trademark your name? What's the worst case scenario?
[00:05:42.270] - Brian Dixon
Because I know some of the writers are going, Come on, can I just write words that matter? Why do I have to think about all this stuff? What would be like the worst case scenario?
[00:05:51.810] - Andrea Sager
Not that it may be the worst case scenario, but you may have to use a pen name. Maybe you've created this whole brand after. So just an example. I have a client. I've had clients at every stage of business have to rebrand because they didn't trade Mark. Worst case scenario was one client who had been in business for ten years, never trademarked. Then she came to me because somebody was using the same name as her, and it was causing confusion. I said, okay, no problem. We'll get started and come to find out there was a third party that had the name and they trademarked it.
[00:06:28.140] - Andrea Sager
And even though my client was in business first, they completely lost the rights to their name because they never took the time to trademark until ten years later. And by that time, it was entirely too long. So think about the whole business that you have after ten years, you have the client, you have the audience, the email list, all the things after ten years. And you essentially have to start from scratch because people don't know if they're going to trust your new brand name. If you have a new pen name, trust me.
[00:07:00.860] - Andrea Sager
I've done rebrand a million times, and no matter what, they suck every single time.
[00:07:05.900] - Brian Dixon
Right. Okay. So hope riders, we're not here to scare you. We are here to help. Yeah. We want to inspire you and encourage you to move forward. And we also want to make sure that we educate you. And that was the number one reason we reached out to Andrea just to say, help us clear up some confusion so that you can move forward in confidence. We believe clarity is kindness. And so we want to provide some clarity for you when it comes to intellectual property.
[00:07:32.330] - Andrea Sager
Today, everything that you create on a day to day basis that is protected with the Copyright. And you do have Copyright protection the moment it's created. So you don't have to have the registration. But having the registration up front is very beneficial.
[00:07:49.480] - Brian Dixon
So Copyright and trademark. We've kind of talked about that Copyright. It's automatically copywritten because you wrote it, and it's your own original work. Trademark. Just to clarify trademark is you go through a process and it's registered.
[00:08:04.080] - Andrea Sager
Go ahead.
[00:08:05.110] - Brian Dixon
Yeah. Trademark. You go through a process, it gets registered, and then therefore you have the right to use that name or that brand within that industry. And if anybody else starts to try to use it, or there's confusion in the marketplace, you can actually have your attorney sent a letter to say, Take that down. Don't do that. And even say this has cost our client money. And so therefore, we are requesting the settlement. That's a nice way to say we're requesting, because that could get pretty ugly, too, I'm sure.
[00:08:36.230] - Andrea Sager
Yes.
[00:08:36.940] - Brian Dixon
Okay.
[00:08:38.250] - Andrea Sager
Yeah. So just get your registration. It will feel weird, right? Just getting into that practice. But once you get used to it, it's a no brainer, because if you DIY, the filing fee for a Copyright is $55. So it's very low cost, takes 20 minutes to file the application. And then the Copyright office is very random, anywhere from a month to seven months later, you'll receive the registration as long as it's an original work. Now, you said there's a lot of bloggers as well.
[00:09:19.440] - Brian Dixon
Yes, that's right.
[00:09:20.400] - Andrea Sager
So if you're a blogger and you have quite a few blog posts, and I'm sure you're sitting there and you're like, oh, my gosh, I don't want to file every single blog post. Well, the good thing about blog posts is you can file those in bulk, and you file everything up until maybe you go to file today, and you file everything published up until today. And for our clients, we'll do it every six months, every twelve months. And between that window, we file everything they've published. So you don't have to file every single blog post.
[00:09:54.450] - Brian Dixon
Okay, so looking to the comments here, there's a little bit of confusion about the difference between Copyright and trademark. Can you just kind of break down? What's the main difference between Copyright and trademark, for sure?
[00:10:07.850] - Andrea Sager
So trademark is your branding. Think anything that identifies your brand. So your brand name, your logo, your slogan? Those are the big three. Now you can have a podcast name the name of a service within your business. Hope writers. I'm sure there's more branding in there. So my brand name is Andrea. Say your law. Our all access program is the legal preneur that's protected with the trademark, anything that identifies your brand. So product names, product lines. Think about McDonald's, McGee and McNuggets. All of that is protected with trademarks.
[00:10:47.850] - Andrea Sager
I don't know if any of you ladies go to dry bar at all. I was just there last week. So this is why it comes to mind. But dry bar is the place where you go and get your hair blown out. Well, they have a lot of products, and every single one of their products has a unique name to it. Every time I go in there, I love it just because it's like a trademark Attorney's dream. Every product has this very unique name has no meaning to it until it was on that product.
[00:11:19.910] - Andrea Sager
I'm like, oh, this is awesome. So think about everything you're creating within your business. Hope writers. If it was called the Writing Mentor or something like that, that's very generic in regards to what it is. So that probably can't be protected with the trademark. That's why you want something unique now, different products and services within your business. You want to be able to protect that with trademarks. So your blog posts, even if you have your business name, then you have your blog. You can have a unique name to just your blog, and that can be protected with the trademark.
[00:11:59.650] - Clarissa Moll
Is your head spinning a little so that's okay. Taking stock of the legal implications of your work can take some time. That's why this episode is a great first step toward that longer conversation. But protecting your work is about more than copyrights and trademarks. If you're a writer, you're most likely also a reader and collector of great quotes. Have you ever come across the perfect quote from another author that you'd like to include in a piece of your writing? Maybe you'd like to share a quote on social media or include it in a newsletter for your readers before posting or hitting send.
[00:12:35.450] - Clarissa Moll
It's important to understand the legal implications when quoting other people's words. It's not as simple and clearcut as it may seem to avoid unintentional plagiarism. Andrea Sager offers this helpful advice. Number one, a tribute. We've all seen short quotes from books or articles make their way across the internet. If there's a quote you'd like to include in your writing, Andrea says. The rule of thumb is that the quote must be short and it must be attributed to the author. As long as you properly cite your source, then you don't need to seek permission before using a brief quote from another writer.
[00:13:14.830] - Clarissa Moll
However, Andrea notes that there are important exceptions. For example, song lyrics and poems have different rules regarding fair use in Copyright infringement. Often, permission is required to use them in any capacity, so be sure to check with a legal expert regarding their use. Number two, get Permission If you'd like to use a section of an essay or a longer excerpt from a book, you'll need to get permission from the author, Andrea says. If that quote falls under Copyright protection, then you have to get permission. You need to have a license to use that quote.
[00:13:51.610] - Clarissa Moll
If an author grants permission to use their quote, it's important to use it exactly as requested. The license only grants permission for the exact request being made. Number three, do your research. It's likely safe to use a few short attributed quotes within your work, but make sure that it falls under fair use, especially if you're using the quote in a product you're selling like a book or a course. It's wise to research the potential legal issues by consulting with a legal professional before including another author's words within your own writing.
[00:14:26.470] - Clarissa Moll
Navigating the legal waters of your writing life can feel like crossing the Atlantic in a rubber raft, but while the ocean may feel wide and deep, it doesn't need to overwhelm you. You can take steps to protect your work and yourself as you invest in your writing and seek to reach your readers with your messages of hope. As you take charge of the business side of your writing life, I'm convinced you'll see the value of your writing more clearly and you'll be empowered to share your words more boldly.
[00:14:55.750] - Clarissa Moll
Let's listen to Andrea one more time.
[00:14:59.350] - Andrea Sager
I may sound scary, but the thing is, don't let this scare you and run away from doing the legal things or run away from doing your business or whatever. You would much rather find out now that you need to rebrand because you're being Proactive than finding out that you have to rebrand because somebody is threatening to sue you with a federal lawsuit. So it may sound scary right now. It's not as long as there's not an issue, and that's why you want to take care of it upfront because you want to avoid any issues.
[00:15:34.390] - Clarissa Moll
If this episode was helpful to you, just imagine how helpful the entire hour long interview with Andrea Sager would be every week. Hope Writers members have access to a new 1 hour Tuesday teaching with agents, publishers, social media, strategists authors and business professionals like Andrea Sager. Hope Writers helps you make progress in your writing life, whether you're writing blogs or articles on social media or in a book. If you want to be serious about your words and your reader, we're here for you for writing tips and encouragement.
[00:16:08.410] - Clarissa Moll
Find us on Instagram at Hopewriters or at our public Facebook pagehope, Writers Community. Last A final word from author Stephen King. Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work here at Hope Writers. We're committed to helping you navigate the art of writing and the business of publishing. Talent may take you a little ways, but hard work will always win the day in our writing lives. This means dedication to the nitty gritty, the less than glamorous the business and legal matters that provide foundational security to the words we put on paper.
[00:16:49.930] - Clarissa Moll
As you engage with the sometimes hard work of protecting your writing, we're convinced even those seemingly mundane tasks will make you a better writer in the end. Thanks for listening, writer Friend as you step into this week, remember to keep writing your words matter and we can't wait to read them. If you found this episode of the Writerly Life helpful, be sure to hit subscribe and tell your friends rate and review the show and like and comment. If you're tuning in on YouTube, your reviews help others know you found the content helpful.
[00:17:24.950] - Clarissa Moll
We'll see you next week.
