Entrepreneurs: Protect Your Ideas, Brand & Business - Ask Us Anything About Intellectual Property

[00:00:00] David Postolski, Esq.: Hello, everybody. My name is David Postolski. I am a senior partner, IP attorney and patent attorney at Gerhardt Law, which is a small firm in New Jersey. I've been practicing for over 21 years and started my career really large law firms and really large companies and decided that I really wanted to devote my life to SARS entrepreneurs and emerging companies, which is why I kind of created this series as well, because I'm big on education empowerment. And so one of my colleagues is on the call here now. We've actually done this before. We're actually co authors of a book as well on employment issues as it relates to intellectual property. His name is Steven Frydman. I'm going to give him a chance to introduce himself, and then we'll get into the formal presentation as well. Go for it, Steven. [00:00:52] Steven Frydman: Great. Thank you, David. [00:00:54] Speaker C: Hello. [00:00:54] Steven Frydman: Good morning, everyone. As David said, I'm Steven Friedman. I'm also an attorney at Gearhart Law. I've been here several years now, and I specialize in copyrights, trademarks, different kinds of business agreements, contracts, formation, that kind of thing. I'm excited to be here. I've done this ESS a few times with David before, and we always get a ton of questions in the chat, and we never have time for all of them. So I'm happy to be here, and hopefully we'll be able to get a lot of questions, answer a lot of questions, give everyone some good information, and. Yeah, excited to. Excited to start. [00:01:49] David Postolski, Esq.: Awesome. Let's do this. So, yeah, so. So just so that, you know, we. We asked. When we. When we started to advertise this, which was like. Kind of like an ask, you know, ask us anything type of situation. We asked for some questions to be submitted prior. Some of you have submitted questions. I recognize some of the names, but we would love to hear you live ask them as well. So. So I'm going to kind of pick on Lucian, who kind of brought up the first one. And I know Marisol is also looking at Marisol, who's our intern at the firm. She's also created. No, she didn't. She didn't create it for you. But if you have questions, you can either reach out to. You can chat now with Marisol, myself, or Stephen, and we will ask it live. But again, we might ask it live. So if you want questions asked live, just put up your hand. But I'm picking on Lucian first, so, Lucien, go for it. [00:02:45] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:02:46] Speaker E: Amazing. Yeah, thanks for. Well, thanks for the opportunity to let me ask this question. So, basically, as I was mentioning earlier, I'm an associate professor at the University of Greenwich based in London where over the years I've developed an ethics game to make ethics much more accessible to business students. And ethics tends to be sometimes rather abstract but through this game it sort of turns it into a lived experience. It's a very low tech, very simple game but it's gaining a lot of traction. It's been developed further now also in commercial settings. So different companies are expressing interest and have piloted the game as well. So went to KPMG over the summer, another energy company earlier this month. So I'm starting to see the commercial interest in the game which brings into question, yeah, basically what do I do with the intellectual property ideally? So I was saying earlier I also run my own consultancy company. Ideally I would just trademark it under the company. But I also realized that part of this has been developed at the university and I don't know if I should, yeah, basically trademark it under or have the university register it in which case I lose the ip. So that's sort of the situation I'm in. [00:04:09] David Postolski, Esq.: Yeah, that's a very. Believe it or not, it's a pretty common situation that we get as IP attorneys, whether we're representing a university or professor or a student that goes to the university or a PhD student that goes to university and it usually, and so, so, so ownership of intellectual property, especially in this of situation, usually will hinge on the relationship that you have with the university. And if there's any sort of intellectual property agreements that you might have signed with them. And I, and I can tell you we draft those types of agreements all the time for universities. So usually a professor or a PhD student, maybe not so much a student in a random class but, but those, those types of individuals like yourself that are held to like a little bit of a higher standard, if you will, they usually sign something with the university in terms of employment and intellectual property clause, something that might give you some idea as to whether they own it or you own it. And it usually hinges on when you developed it and how you developed it. Was it during working hours? Did you use their computer stuff? Was it as a result developing the class that they paid you to develop for them, whatever the situation might be. So that's the first thing that I would do is go back to the university and say what is the intellectual property policy of the university? And did I sign anything? Like, because you sometimes you don't even know what you signed, right? You could have signed it, you could assigned it as a, you know, on your first day Meeting with hr, you know, with, with, with human resources or whatever. And so that's the first thing I would do. Once you get some understanding as to who owns it, then of course you can file a trademark in that entity's name. That being said, if it turns out that the university does own it, then maybe they have another policy that allows you to either license it from them so that you can now freely do what you want, or maybe they don't care, like, oh, yeah, we'll just give it to you, we'll, we'll sign a waiver and it's yours, you know, and, and you can do what you want with it. But I would button all of that up before you do anything, because we've been involved in situations where you file for. You file for intellectual property thinking it's yours, and then you have to hear from your employer or your, or the university or whatever that, hey, that was actually partially ours and you didn't let us know about it. Stephen, what do you think? Any other thoughts? [00:06:51] Steven Frydman: Yeah, a few more things. 100% agree. A lot of this is dependent on the contracts you have, the written policies of the university, because usually your contract would say that you kind of agree to abide by those written policies and things like that. Most of the time, these contracts, and I know you're in the uk, in the US and the UK treat copyrights a little bit differently. Really, the US treats them a little bit differently than the rest of the world, is maybe a better way of saying it in that the uk, a lot of European countries are a bit more protective of authorship on the part of the creators of these works. And really, when you're talking about a game, you're talking about copyrights. So that being said, these contracts, usually what they'll say is they'll grant the university ownership, or really any employer, they'll grant ownership depending on how the game was created, whatever the copyrightable work was created, the context in which it was created, the resources used to create it. That is, were you creating it on university time using university equipment? Did you do it for the purpose of the university? Like, did you create it for your class to use, or did you do it in your free time on your laptop? Right. So the law is going to treat these things differently and most contracts are going to treat these things differently. The other thing I'll say is a lot of universities, at least here in the us, have a dedicated office for these kinds of things and they'll have, you know, maybe it's an IP office and there's a policy where, you know, you, you can claim that you created this ip, you go to the IP office and they might formally sign off on you owning the ip. Or they might do the opposite. They sign off on saying, okay, the university is going to stake a claim here. So I would look into if your university has one of those and they'll be able to answer your questions pretty well. And then the last thing I'll say is that the uk, Europe, really a lot of places except the US have another bundle of copyright rights called moral rights. And whereas the US doesn't have these kinds of things, primarily United States copyrights are focused on economic rights. The UK and other countries have moral rights which on top of the kind of economic rights of who gets kind of the revenue out of an ip. Moral rights usually are separate from those economic rights and retained by the author wherein they keep some rights to credit publication decisions about the ip. And, but you know, even saying that some contracts contain moral rights waivers which waive those moral rights. So again, it kind of comes down to the contract. But I would keep in mind that, you know, it's not just the economic rights when you're in Europe or the UK that you're looking at, there's also moral rights. So yeah, those are, those are my points there, I think. [00:10:13] Speaker E: Great. Amazing. Yeah, thank you so much. If I can just give a follow up question then. Yeah. So basically, I guess the first point is indeed the contract and what did I sign? And I can say that in the contract it does say that anything I develop or invent during working hours I would be recognized as the inventor of that invention, but the IP would belong to the university. So it's pretty clear there. That said, I, I would say that our, we do have an IP office and I have actually tried to reach out to them. But I mean that alone already goes to show that they're not really on top of things. And I'm inclined to just sort of claim it under my company umbrella with sort of the idea that also it's, it's a very adaptable game. So there are, the idea is that there are sort of scenarios that are being developed for the game and some of those scenarios have been indeed created for the class and for, for the university. And I guess my, my question there, would it be possible to say, well, that is IP for the university, but any other scenarios that we create outside of the university, for, for example KPMG, that we're creating tailored scenarios for them, even though it shares the same game brand or name would be done separately from the university. I don't know. [00:11:38] David Postolski, Esq.: Yeah, I mean, all Lucian, all that is plausible and reasonable, but it all should really be in writing, especially in light of the policy that they, that you have there. And so the reason why I'm saying that is because what you don't want is to start, to start having a deal with kpmg. They're going to do their due diligence, they're going to see the clause that you just read, right. And, and, and, and, and, and they're going to question it and they're going to say, well, was this even yours to deal with? And so button it up. Just go, you know, track those people down, get an answer out of them saying, you know, under the policy, it seems that, you know, you might own this. Even though I'm not filing for a patent on it, which is what the word invention means, I am trying to do other stuff with it. And I want to know, and I want that freedom to do that. That's, that's what I would really recommend. Because if you don't go down that path, that it could just come back to blow up in your face, you know. [00:12:40] Steven Frydman: Yeah, I'd agree. I can give kind of the academic answer, which is, you know, you're describing an idea. You can't copyright ideas. You can copyright expressions of ideas. Right. So the idea of the game isn't what is being protected, it's the way the game was designed and written and the way it appears in a fixed medium. Right. And so in theory, you're saying, if I take the idea and apply it in a way that's outside of the context of the way I did it here for the university academically, I can see that argument winning out on ownership. Right. But like David was saying, at the end of the day, if the university is going to make a claim, you don't want to have to deal with this in a court. Right. When you want to be doing business, that's going to be a waste of time and money for everyone. So the best way of getting ahead of that problem is getting something in writing, whether that's, you know, a contract you draft or whether that's, you know, going to that IP office and getting them to sign off on it, or, you know, making some kind of agreement with them, that's, that's going to get ahead of the problem more effectively than, you know, having. Okay, I have this, you know, great argument at, you know, for my legal rights. Right. You could, you can make that. But if the university Decides that they want to stake a claim and they want to put up some money to do it. It's going to be more detrimental to you than getting out ahead of the problem like this. [00:14:11] David Postolski, Esq.: Yeah, great. [00:14:12] Speaker E: Yeah. But that's, that's very helpful. Yeah, thank you. [00:14:14] Speaker F: Yeah. [00:14:15] David Postolski, Esq.: And I think, I think it probably goes without saying, like, this is not necessarily advice of attorneys that you're hearing now. You should consult an attorney directly. We're happy to help. You can always call. But putting that out there for everyone. Lucian, good luck with it. Let us know how it goes. And we look forward to seeing the game. Maybe ethics game. Sounds good. Sounds a good idea. [00:14:37] Speaker F: Amazing. [00:14:37] Speaker E: Yeah, Happy to share it. [00:14:38] David Postolski, Esq.: Okay, great. I want, I want to, I want to bring up Richard's question because Stephen kind of, it's one of the first questions we got at a fifth grade level. What is ip? Steven kind of gave a definition there, which is usually that what we say ideas in of themselves are not protectable. Like nobody cares if you have a great idea. You have to take that idea out of your intellect and physically embody it in one of the four major forms of intellectual property. Patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets. Usually I hear people say, oh, I have IP and patents. You're saying the same thing, right? IP is the umbrella for all the forms of intellectual property. Patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets. So, you know, I think that's a great question because that's exactly why we have these sessions to make sure that people are educated about what intellectual property actually means. [00:15:39] Steven Frydman: I mean, yes, at a very high level you gave those four kinds of ip. Patents are inventions that are useful in some way, that have functionality, and you can protect those. Copyrights are our creations of expression, of art, of some kind of creative work by a human. Trademarks are source identifiers. Right. So commonly you would call them brands, logos, brand names, that kind of thing. And then trade secrets are kind of what exactly what they sound like. They are secret, kind of know how similar to patents. But patents aren't a secret. Right. You disclose your patent to the government, to the public, you do those things. A trade secret is something like the Coca Cola formula, right? Where they keep that exact recipe highly confidential and you lose that IP if it becomes public knowledge. So those are kind of the four branches of iPad. There is also some blurring in between those lines at certain points. And that's an interesting point of discussion when you kind of get there. But at a high level, those are kind of the four branches that we're talking About. [00:17:04] David Postolski, Esq.: Yes, let me go to some of the live questions I promised I would get to him. Dr. Marlon K. John. [00:17:12] Speaker G: Hi, good morning. So my question kind of piggybacks off of Lucian's, off of Lucian's scenario. I'm an attorney. Well, I'm currently practicing attorney down in Texas. I'm from New York, but I'm down in Texas. We are building a, I work for nonprofit and we're building a bail reform project down here. Part of what we're doing is we're creating a brand new, pretty much an AI bondsman that we're working with and creating down here. And we're doing it in conjunction with the local, the local law school here. So we kind of give the up and coming next generation attorneys opportunity to be sure how to incorporate and how to help build legal, legal products for services for businesses. Now if I am looking to get some IP on that, I guess my question for you guys are specialized in that field would be where can I draw the line in terms of what products can I myself put a, you know, get IP coverage for? And that overlap between what we're sharing with what we're doing with the, with the law school and the nonprofit itself. So how, you know, I guess how we divest that and. Because the huge question for me, which is kind of new is this emergence of AI and how those products are being treated for ip, for IP protection. So like, you know, I'm not a coder, but the product work, the work that we're doing is. And third, but not last, is moving forward as we do more projects kind of in that space that we plan on doing. How do we, like you just mentioned, you know, I guess it's what you have agreed to in the contracts already. So what sort of clauses should we look at? If we want to protect everything we've done so far with our nonprofit, we kind of make it so that the income streams comes back to the nonprofit and it creates a revenue engine for us. So how do we protect those, those revenue streams to ensure that the nonprofit gets the funding or revenue and we're not, I guess, leaving stuff on the table for somebody else to kind of swoop in and take. [00:19:11] David Postolski, Esq.: Yeah, there's a lot there. [00:19:13] Speaker G: Yes, sorry about that. Sorry. [00:19:15] David Postolski, Esq.: Yeah, that's okay. We should, we should break it down and a doctor. [00:19:17] Steven Frydman: That's what you get, I guess. [00:19:19] David Postolski, Esq.: Yeah, exactly. You know, I think, I think, I think this, this might help everyone to know that ownership of intellectual property you will rest in. Again, it depends on the intellectual property. But let's Take a patent will rest in the inventor. So if you're not the inventor, you're not the owner until that inventor transfers his interest to the owner. Those are two separate things. Same thing with a trademark. If you, if, if you technically did not create your logo, but you hired someone to create the logo for you, like the graphic designer that we have on the call, then it's possible that the graphic designer might be the owner of the logo under trademark law until they assign it to you, which is why you need a work made for hire, which is why agreements are so important. Ownership, it's almost a separate type of thing than the person that might have created it. So that. Okay, again, it could be the same thing. Right? It could be the same person. Right, but, but, but kind of, kind of. Fast forward to your question a little bit. If you want the not for profit to benefit from something you invented or created, then you need an agreement, whether it's a work made for hire, a license agreement, something that shares the or transfers the ownership. Okay, what, what, what we don't, what we see a lot of that we don't like that gets people into trouble is, is they don't have these agreements and they just make these assumptions that, oh, I paid for that, which means I own it, right? I have a coder. We have no agreement, but he's making something for me and he's inventing for me and I. No, none of that. There is no intellectual property is a federal right. It is a security interest in what you are, in what you've created. So it can be transferred via, must only be transferred via, you know, agreements. You can, you can, you can, you can try to rely on circumstantial evidence and emails and invoices and all those sorts of things, but the clearest way of transfer is to have some sort of agreement. But I'm going to turn over to Stephen to kind of add. But I think that, I think that kind of goes to everybody here, right? We kind of, this goes to Lucian too. It's kind of the same concept, right. Just because you created something might not. May not mean you're the owner because of Lucian situation. You're under, you're under a policy or because I'm a contractor, I'm under an agreement. You gotta, the context really matters. You can't make any assumptions based on this. [00:22:08] Speaker D: Yeah, [00:22:11] Steven Frydman: I guess, yeah. Short answer. We have all of these rules about who owns what by default or who, you know, the creator owns this and the employer owns this. You don't really Ever want to be relying on those default rules? Because you know that comes down to an interpretation. You have to battle out the facts in, you know, in a court or whatever dispute resolution you're using. That's not. It's timely and it's costly and it's not fun. And you know that as an attorney. So if you could put it in writing, everything about IP ownership, use of ip, how the revenue is distributed, who has rights to say what is being used, how it's being used, all of that, if you can put it in writing, that's the cleanest way. Like David was saying, between employees, work for hiring agreements or clauses in employment agreements. If you are a contractor, still work for higher agreements. Ironically, if you're doing work for someone and they hire you to create something, sometimes they want to own what you create. Sometimes you want to own what you create. And that's a point of negotiation, Right. Sometimes maybe you retain ownership, but you know, they want to have kind of an unlimited right to use it for their own personal use outside of your ownership. Right. Without revenue sharing. So all these things are things that kind of can be negotiated and should be negotiated, and it's easier to do it beforehand than it is to figure it out after. The other thing you mentioned, AI. [00:23:59] David Postolski, Esq.: Here we go, people. [00:24:01] Steven Frydman: And I think this will be a common thread maybe today, but certainly for the next several years or forever. Short answer is copyrights and patents. AI created material is not protectable by ip, by IP law in the United States. The Copyright Office and the Patent Office have said the authorship or invention requirement has to be fulfilled by a human. And if it's not, then it's out there in the public domain. Oh, wow. [00:24:45] Speaker G: I did not know that. [00:24:47] Steven Frydman: So you need to be careful about what exactly is created by AI, because there's some meaningful distinctions there. You are writing most of the code, and then AI is putting a little bit here and there. The AI is doing most of it, but then you're editing it after all of these things, you're going to be making copyrightability decisions at the margins. So if whatever you or a human generates, the that's protectable and whatever the AI creates, that's not protectable. And then if you maybe go and modify the thing the AI made, the modification is protectable, but the underlying AI generated content isn't. Right? [00:25:36] Speaker G: So you just hit the nail on the head. So like a big one of the. One of the blessings we've had so far because we're nonprofits, so we're always looking to like Bootstrap, or at least get things like you said, down to as close to, as close to the margins as we can get them or costs related. So vibe coding has been something that we started using more frequently to build these agentic workflows. And so with doing that, somebody still, usually myself, still has to go in there and give direction how you want it. Now the AI writes the code to make this digital product or the platform, but I'm using my work to pretty much instruct the AI. So it was my understanding that at least the AI at that point just becomes a tool that I'm using, but the work product is my ownership because I'm the one to work. But from what you're telling me, I guess the coding itself is not protected. Or could you give me some more guidance on that? [00:26:31] Steven Frydman: People have considered the prompt engineering argument that you're kind of making, right. Like I'm generating, I'm writing the prompt and I'm direct AI. So really it's a tool that I should be owning. So far that's been rejected. [00:26:49] Speaker G: Gotcha. [00:26:50] Steven Frydman: I don't, you know, things can change, laws can change, Congress can write a law that changes these things. But so far under the laws we have right now, that argument is being rejected. And so you're really not going to get protection even if the AI is physically writing the code. [00:27:11] Speaker F: Right. [00:27:11] Steven Frydman: Protection on it, even if you're kind of directing it. Right. The actual code that you write is what's going to be able to be protected. [00:27:18] Speaker G: So then how do we, how would we build or how does somebody who does do that work or gets products work products from that, from, from, from that sort of creation? How do we build protections around that? How do we establish IP or some, some kind of ip, whether it's through trade secrets or I don't know, is there any way in the, under the IP umbrella that we can use to protect that kind of work? As of right now, we have a platform and it's great for what it does. There is a little bit of trade secrets in there. There's stuff we can go and get a patent for. But the platform itself is used using an AI. It's AI generated code. So how would we go ahead to protect that? If somebody decides to just, I don't know, get a worst case scenario, you know, one of our interns or volunteers copies it and gives it out there. How do we protect that? [00:28:10] Steven Frydman: Well, so you know, we have two different kind of scenarios, right? In the scenario where it's a third party who you have no Idea, nothing idea about no relation. They create their own thing that is similar. Maybe they also use AI. It's going to be tough to enforce your AI stuff against them. If we're talking about, you know, people you're contracting with, employees, we're kind of going to go back to the contract world where even if you don't, maybe you don't have a copyright or you don't have the ability to copyright the whole thing, you do have the ability to write in a contract that they're not allowed to reverse engineer. Gotcha, not compete type things. [00:28:48] Speaker G: I see what you mean. [00:28:48] Steven Frydman: Yeah, those kinds of workarounds are probably your better solution. I mean that's kind of what I would suggest. I don't know. David, other ideas. [00:28:58] David Postolski, Esq.: Yeah, I do want to say also that if you're from a, from a patent, because I'm a, because I, I am a patent attorney. And so from a patent ability perspective, possibly your ux, you know, the actual design that you're, that you're, that, that you've created to enable the, the platform might be protectable. [00:29:22] Speaker G: Okay. [00:29:22] David Postolski, Esq.: So also one more thing. If you, you know that you, you've probably been hearing this, I think anyone in AI is hearing this a lot. Human in the loop. Right? That's a big thing. [00:29:34] Speaker G: Yes. [00:29:34] David Postolski, Esq.: And so if you, if have, if you have Vibe coded something and then you've given that to programmers and developers and again you probably won't in that situation where you're like on a budget. But that's usually our recommendation to people, which is, which is with any AI created anything, add the human in the loop. So from a patent ability perspective, take that Vibe code and give it to a programmer and let them program the out of that, you know. [00:30:06] Speaker F: Gotcha. [00:30:06] Speaker C: Okay. [00:30:07] David Postolski, Esq.: Further improve it and make that maybe that, you know, improvement is novel and not obvious and patentable. That's kind of what we're looking at. But if everything is just Vibe coded, then there's probably nothing there. Not only from a copyright perspective you just heard, but also from a patent perspective. So yeah, it's definitely, it's definitely a case by case basis here. There's not. Even though we're talking generally, usually we want to meet with the people that are creating, you know, that are creating things with Vibe coding and get a really understanding of like, like literally map it out who did what, where, when and how. And then we can kind of, you know, tailor, make Taylor, make your, you know, IP strategy, you know, okay, probably [00:30:51] Speaker G: link up with you guys then to kind of, probably sort Further, get some further advice on this. Perhaps create. Create a. An attorney client relationship with you guys. See if we can probably flesh this out some more. [00:31:02] David Postolski, Esq.: Sounds good. Let us know. Keep us posted. [00:31:04] Speaker G: Absolutely. [00:31:05] David Postolski, Esq.: Thank you. Thank you, Dr. John, thank you so much. Trevor, you've been waiting patiently. Hold on one second. Let me put yourself on video if you can. Hold on a second. [00:31:21] Speaker F: Trouble. Hello. [00:31:23] Speaker C: Hi. [00:31:24] Speaker F: I've been. I've been taking notes, so I kind of have some questions. Okay. I don't know how to get rid of this avatar, Harris. There you go. [00:31:32] David Postolski, Esq.: Okay. [00:31:33] Speaker F: All right. So really all I need is I need to know how to present myself to customers with an agreement. And how could I get that going, like, with you guys? [00:31:51] David Postolski, Esq.: Yeah, well, the best way I probably would do it would be to maybe contact us separately. Right. And then let's have like, you know, a consultation. It doesn't cost anything. So we kind of understand what. And this goes for anybody that wants to create any sort of agreement. We kind of want to understand. What are the terms here that you want to engage your clients with? Right. What type of responsibilities and liabilities do you want to. Do you want to protect yourself from? How does payment work? How does invoicing work? How we got kind of tape. We kind of go through any. We kind of go through the business relationship that you're proposing and then, you know, propose some sort of flat fee to cover that type of arrangement. [00:32:35] Speaker F: Yeah, I have all that written down in my business. I have that all written down in my business plan. So I got that figured out. But what does the contract look like? I mean, I guess I have to talk to you. [00:32:46] David Postolski, Esq.: How do I get a hold of you? [00:32:46] Speaker F: So I can't have that private consultation. [00:32:49] David Postolski, Esq.: Yeah, you should. You should. Because I think. I think there were a few other people that ask about contracts. Contracts are, you know, things that are highly negotiated documents. I mean, we don't want. [00:32:59] Speaker E: We don't like. [00:33:00] David Postolski, Esq.: There was a question here. Can you share a link to a robust NDA sample document template for the audience? Like, templates are not the best idea because the way that you construct your business and the way that you engage with your clients might be different than the template that you're pulling off. We might be able to create a template just for your business that you can then use over and over again. [00:33:25] Speaker F: Right, right. [00:33:26] David Postolski, Esq.: But there is no. There's really. It's hard to really create a, a kind of template for, for these types of things, which is why I'm saying, like, yes, get in touch and we could, you know, Come up with some sort of a flat fee for that. We can kind of create an agreement that, that works for your needs, for your specific needs. [00:33:47] Speaker F: My goal is to get in front of 25 potential customers. And you said something about helping us identify who our customers are. Is it the case speak on that like I, I, I got corporations and the recent research and development and whoever CEOs in charge of the growth of that company, those are, that's my scope. So that's what I'm speaking with. One thing, one other question is kind of real quick said AI work is unpatentable because of lack of human hands on it. But isn't AI the result of human props? And you know, isn't that therefore once you be able to patent it? [00:34:27] David Postolski, Esq.: Right? So right now prompts are not, are like you sitting down and prompting with the right question. That prompt is not patentable yet. It, we're just not there yet. What we. So, so, so how you ask the question that determines what that output was is still not patentable. If you took that output and again we're talking very generally here, but if you took that output and then you did further development on it, that's what could potentially be patentable. [00:35:02] Speaker F: And it seems like if we just paraphrase the AI work then we could get, we get agreements to protect our ip. [00:35:09] David Postolski, Esq.: Yeah, I mean I wouldn't want to use the word paraphrase, but yes, we, we, we for, for people that I'll give a much kind of different example, but kind of in the same strain, the people that use like Bing image generator to create a logo for themselves, clearly we don't want you to take that logo and now file it as a trademark or file it as a copyright because one, you didn't create it. The AI, you know, Bing created it for you. But if you took that logo and now to use your, your term to paraphrase it or change it or add something to it as a human contribution, that is what potentially could be protectable. That's kind of what we're suggesting. [00:35:51] Speaker F: Cool. Thank you for answering my question. [00:35:53] David Postolski, Esq.: Okay, no problem. Yeah, go for Stephen. Any comments? [00:35:57] Steven Frydman: Yes, I was going to say we probably have like 15, 16, like written questions in the chat. [00:36:04] David Postolski, Esq.: Let's get to them. [00:36:04] Steven Frydman: Okay. I was thinking maybe we could take some of them and kind of, they might be a little, a little quicker. Okay, before we take. [00:36:13] David Postolski, Esq.: Yeah, let's do that. Do you, do you want to pick some out and maybe bang some of them out? [00:36:18] Steven Frydman: Yeah, let's, let's, let's Pick some out. I've got. When submitting materials for trademark copyright, other forms of ip, should you file under a personal name or the name of a company? Pros and cons of doing either way. I mean, I'll start. Generally I would recommend doing it under the corporate entity. It's, it's a good idea as far as shielding yourself from liability when it comes to using that ip. You know, I think, you know, everything's going to be case by case, but if you build that corporate entity to own your IP and to do your work under that corporate entity, it's going to shield you and your personal assets from liability and it's going to make things a little bit more clear. If, let's say in the future you want an investor or you get a partner or, or something like that, it's going to make things more clear to them who owns the IP and how and what they're actually investing in. So, so there's a bunch of pros there. The con, it's not really a con. It's just you have to do the work of setting up the company and maintaining it. But I mean, generally that's what I would recommend. I don't know if. David, you have other thoughts on that? [00:37:33] Speaker F: No, no, no. [00:37:33] David Postolski, Esq.: I think we should try to bring some of them out. So go. So if you want to take another one, because I see some patent ones I can, I can talk about after. [00:37:40] Speaker E: Okay. [00:37:41] Steven Frydman: I have, I want to develop some products. I have a name for the business in mind. There's a business with similar spelling. There's also a Facebook with the same spelling, but no trademark on the Facebook page. Is this going to be trademark infringement? Trade name infringement, similar spelling, one letter off. Again, trademarks. In this way, it's pretty case by case. So if you don't know trademarks and trademark rights work on what's called the likelihood of confusion standard. And this is kind of a balancing test that's made up of a bunch of different factors. But the primary two factors. Are the trademarks similar in sight, sound, appearance, meaning. And are the goods or services sold under the trademarks also similar? And so the central idea of trademark infringement is if a consumer is familiar with trademark A and they see trademark B, are they going to think it's related to trademark A? Right. Are they going to be confused into confusing them together? And so that's the question you're really asking. If you want to make a company and you know you're going to sell phones and you know it's. Your company is Opal and not Apple. There might be some confusion there. Right. Especially with the kind of strength of the Apple name. Right. So on a case by case, you're going to want to consider that when you're coming up with a company name, generally, you know, when we advise people about coming up with a name and doing business under that, what we do is a trademark search. And that involves us kind of going into the federal database and searching for trademarks that are registered to find if there are similar ones to the trademark that you're proposing. We can also do a more comprehensive search with a different service that analyzes Internet usage. And not just federal trademark, but state trademarks, social media, all those kinds of things. And you know, the question of do you need it registered to be protected? And you know, if you're only searching registered marks, is that going to completely clear you? It's a whole other. It's a whole other beast. But hopefully I think that kind of answered the question. [00:40:03] David Postolski, Esq.: Okay, great. Let me just bang out a sum from GL. I have two questions. We already talked about one of them. Do VCs venture capitalists sign NDAs? Before pitch and investment discussions with entrepreneurs, usually the answer is no. Right? A venture capitalist does not want to sign an NDA because they do not want to limit themselves from hearing the ideas of others as well. Because usually NDAs make something confidential and they usually have some. They usually have like non competes and non solicits in them as well. And so VC doesn't want to be bogged down with all that jazz. And so usually we say to people, if you are not patent pending or your intellectual or your other intellectual property is not yet protected, and you are talking to investors that don't want to sign NDAs, then you need to, [00:40:57] Speaker E: you [00:40:57] David Postolski, Esq.: know, buy or beware at that point. You really need to go with your gut at that point because you technically could be, you know, exposing your idea to someone that has the means and the motive possibly to take it from you. And so without an NDA, you are in dangerous territory. So usually, you know, everybody should sign an NDA, but sometimes they don't. And if they don't, then it's a gut check. It's kind of also related to Rachel's question here. Who should I be speaking to first in my patent application process? Should it be a lawyer for advice or a design consultant to get the CADS and design specs done and then go to a lawyer? Well, a few things, Rachel. First of all, you are in the UK and you are in a country that is like over 160 other countries that says that if you made a public disclosure of the thing that you want to protect as a patent and you are not patent pending, nor. And again, what is a public disclosure? Public disclosure is an disclosure when someone doesn't sign an NDA. So if you talk to your design consultant and he didn't sign an NDA and you are not, and you are not patent pending in this hypothetical, then in the UK as long as, in addition to 160 other countries, you are then statutorily and legally blocked from filing a patent because you made a disclosure that was not under a non disclosure, you made a public disclosure. And so that's. So usually we say if you want to talk to anyone first about the thing that you want to protect and patent, the first person you should talk to should be your lawyer, because they don't need an NDA. Lawyers we don't sign, we don't have to sign NDAs because we have attorney client privilege, regardless of whether we had an NDA. So your disclosure to me is not considered public. And because it's not considered private public, then in the UK you are not statutorily and legally blocked from filing for a patent. So the order should be talk to your attorney first, get that advice. Let them recommend the NDA that you should then use with your design consultant, especially if you're not patent pending yet. And that should be the order of importance. Of course, the first thing, if you can be patent pending first, then it's then whatever you disclose after patent pending is not considered public. And then you're thus you're not statutory and legally blocked from filing in any other country. And so just keep that in mind as you move forward as far as who's the best person to talk to. You should probably talk to a design consultant that has experience in the materials or in the science or in the technology or the mechanics or the electrics that can make the product for you. And that should also be your lawyer too, right? Your patent lawyer should also have the relevant scientific or technological backgrounds so they can understand the invention that you're trying to create with the design consultant, who also probably has the requisite science background. And then the three of you, which we often do, often can work together, right? The attorney, the design consultant, and you as the inventor, so that we can really understand how your invention works, how it will be built and how. And what's the best way to protect it. Okay, go for it, Stephen. [00:44:30] Steven Frydman: Okay, I have a question Pat asked about kind of Her AI generated logo. We touched on it a little bit, but I think it's an interesting topic. Created an AI or sorry, I created a logo for her business. And then would it be necessary to hire someone to create a unique logo? Can they make revisions from the AI logo? What do they need to do? So here's, here's what I'll say. We talked about AI creating copyrights and patents, right? And that's not protectable because the idea of copyrights and patents is that if they protect human creations, whether that's an invention that's useful or an expression, some kind of original expression, a trademark is a little different, right? It doesn't protect human. The human creation of the mark, Right? Like the trademark on Coca Cola doesn't protect the idea that someone made up the name Coca Cola. What it protects is the connection of that name to the source that it identifies, right? So the protection is that when someone sees Coca Cola, they know where the bottle that it's. That it's attached to is coming from. So when you have an AI logo, if you're talking about trademark protection, what matters isn't that AI created the logo. What matters is that you're using that logo in a way that attaches it to the source that it's meant to identify, right? So if you're putting that logo on, you know, the bottle of, of whatever that you're selling, that that's going to work as trademark protection. Now, should you necessarily always do that? That's another question, right? Because when you're using AI to generate things, one AI is coming up with these things based on public. Right? So if an AI is generating a logo, you ask it to make something, it is making that thing based on information in the public sphere. And maybe it's making that thing based on another logo it finds, which does have trademark protection for some other company, right? So that's the real danger when you're using AI for trademarks is that it's using someone else's trademark to come up with it, right? And maybe that's a logo, maybe that's your name. So at the end of the day, you still want to be careful about using it. And you know, what you should still be doing is performing that trademark search to make sure that there's not an infringing mark, competing mark or logo, and then filing for trademark protection to protect yourself when you go and do use it. So that's my spiel about trademarks made by AI I think we could take a hand raise, David. [00:47:24] David Postolski, Esq.: Yeah, we can do that Mahmoud, do you have the or do you have the same question that you that you asked in the chat? [00:47:33] Speaker D: Actually I, I, I would like to add like more to the what I asked in the chat about if the patent bending is can like we did the patent here in UK and now like we are trying to commercialize and do marketing in Dubai. Many of the customer that can use our product in Dubai we are protected here in uk. Does the patent in UK binding by the way is protect, can, can it protect us like in Dubai and or other countries or it is just for uk? [00:48:06] David Postolski, Esq.: Excellent question. Actually Daniela who who emailed, she's on the call, she emailed us a call questions very similar. She said if I want to sell internationally, how does IP protection work across borders? Do I need to register in each country? So let's talk about that. Let's, we'll talk about patents and see if we can talk about trademarks in a second but because it's kind of a similar answer. So know that most all, not most all, intellectual property is what we call territorial, meaning if you want protection in a particular territory, slash country, then you need to file that patent, that trademark, that copyright in that country. So if you have a UK patent and only a UK patent, then your protection is just the UK territory, which means you can only stop UK infringers in a UK court of law. If you want the ability to stop someone in another territory, then you must take your UK patent and within a very limited time in patents, very limited time, you must take that UK patent and file it in another country. Every country is on its own. There's very few regions, right? There's the European Union, which covers 28 member states for patents. But every other country in the world has their own intellectual property system. Canada, Mexico, Brazil, you name it, every single country. If you want that territory, you must, you want Dubai, you want the United Arab Emirates, then you must take that patent and again in a limited time, file it in Dubai, file it in, file in the uae. It doesn't mean you can't sell in the uae. You can sell in the UAE without a UAE patent, but you will not be able to stop the UAE infringer because you do not have a UAE patent and you can't get into a UAE court. That's how it works. And so there is no international patent, there's no global patents, there's no people say all the time, oh, I'm protected everywhere. No you're not. You're protected in the countries where you file. And unlike trademarks which you'll hear in a second. In patents, if you do not file within a specific time, you lose the right period. There's no, there's no take back seats here, nothing like that, you know. [00:50:41] Speaker D: So, yeah, David, actually, it's like we just filed it six months ago and I think we, we will be able to do that worldwide after 12 months in UK. [00:50:54] David Postolski, Esq.: Correct. You have one year from when you start your process in any particular country to either file directly into the United Arab Emirates or file what's called an international patent application, which buys you an additional 18 months to then choose which countries you want to file in. But there is no global nothing. Right. At the end of the day, you want protection in this country, you file in that country, you know. [00:51:24] Speaker D: But do we have to wait after 12 months or. Because we now know you can do [00:51:28] David Postolski, Esq.: it now 12 months is your maximum, right, Your maximum time. You can do it. You can do it today if you wanted to, you know. [00:51:35] Speaker D: But this is like filing a new patent in Dubai is not like a link to the patent in uk. [00:51:41] David Postolski, Esq.: No, no, you are linking it to. That's the whole point, Mahmoud. You are linking it. You are taking your UK application and you are filing that UK application within the prescribed amount of time that you're allowed under law to do that and filing it in the uae. They are connected to each other. [00:52:04] Speaker D: So I have to file it there, not like in the UK office. [00:52:09] David Postolski, Esq.: You have to. Yeah, correct. You have to, you exactly. You have to file it with a local agent. That's why, that's why people use patent attorneys. Because we know who, we know other service providers in those countries that can help you file it in that country. But yes, you cannot, you cannot do it through the UK Patent Office. [00:52:30] Speaker D: Thank you. Thank you. [00:52:31] David Postolski, Esq.: But Stephen, I think this is, I think, I think, I think you should talk about trademarks because it's. It. There are differences for sure. [00:52:37] Steven Frydman: There are differences for sure. And I think this question kind of ties into Kat's question in the chat about whether this information applies worldwide or just US uk. So, so, so just at a high level, most countries agree on generally the scope of how IP is to be treated. Right. At a high level, they're going to have minute differences here and there. Right. So I would say the ideas that we're saying here probably apply to the other countries you're thinking of, but they'll probably have differences that are important on a case by case basis. But now if we're talking about specifically how to take your IP from one country to Another country. There's different ways of doing that depending on the IP you're talking about. Like David was saying, he gave the explanation on patents. Trademarks, copyrights are going to be a little different. Most countries have signed into some kinds of treaties that allow for cross cross protection, but only if you make those filings, right? If you don't make those filings, you're not going to be able to do it. So if we're talking about trademarks, it's a little different, right? If you say you file your trademark in the United States, you can then go file it in, you know, let's say Italy, right. And you can even link your United States trademark. Right. But, but here's the distinction from what David was talking about. In patents, you don't have a time limit per se, right? You can do that whenever you want to do that. That's a B. There is a six month window though from when you first file your United States application. You have a six month window to file in other countries under what's called the Madrid Protocol, you have a six month window to file. And if you do it within that six month window, essentially what you do is you can backdate your foreign application to the date of your United States application so you don't have that later date. Because what's important in trademarks is what's called priority, right? Pretty much all countries agree on the idea of trademark. You're protecting something that you're using and it's kind of a first come, first serve system, right? Whoever uses that brand name such that consumers understand it to attach to the source that it's identifying, that is who's getting protection, right? So once you start using your trademark in a foreign country, a lot of countries recognize what would be called common law rights in the United States, which is you're using the mark. So even if you haven't registered it, you get some protection, right? But what you need, what you really want to do is register that protection with the relevant countries IP office, because then that'll come with kind of a bundle of other protections that you get when you register, right? And you can relate that to your United States application, but you don't have the time limit. I was saying you could have that six month window to backdate it, which is important because if there's, you know, within those six months, if someone else comes up and your back date and you get to back date, that means you can get that priority date. Copyrights are somewhat, somewhat similar. If you want registered protection for copyrights, most Countries are going to have their own offices. There is what's called the Berne Convention, which allows for some international cross treating of protection in copyrights. It's a bit, I would say it's a bit stronger in copyrights than trademarks and patents as far as needing, not needing to kind of register in every single country. But you know, it's still advisable, especially if you're going to be targeting specific countries and doing business in specific countries. You should probably be filing in all of those countries. You know, if it's within your, your, your budget means, obviously. [00:56:37] David Postolski, Esq.: Okay, thank you, Stephen. That was good. Mahmoud, keep us posted, let us know how it goes and let's. Carol, we take. I think you might be our last question. Okay, thank you. [00:56:53] Speaker C: I'm so glad you discussed those international patents. In the early 90s, a company I was aware of was doing $30 million in revenue and spent $800,000 to protect their patents internationally. Yeah, so it is, it is not trivial. And if you, if you, you know, miss that six month window, you can be blocked by a significant amount of revenue. My question is, I had one of my logos designed by somebody who refused to pass on rights. She is, she is now deceased and her husband has destroyed all of her material. Do I have unlimited rights to use that logo? [00:57:47] Steven Frydman: So, so you had a third party kind of created the logo you wanted [00:57:53] Speaker C: to use that I've been using for decades. [00:57:57] Steven Frydman: Okay. [00:57:58] Speaker F: And [00:58:00] Steven Frydman: there, I guess there was no original written agreement with her prior to [00:58:03] Speaker C: creation that said she, I, I challenged it and she refused to give me the pass on the rights she made. She insisted on maintaining ownership. [00:58:18] Steven Frydman: So I mean, I think we kind of have two different questions here. You know, the, the trademark question is a little easier, right? When, when you're using a logo as a trademark, the rights attached to the person who's using it in commerce. Right. [00:58:35] Speaker C: Okay. [00:58:36] Steven Frydman: United States. Right. So, so if you're the one using the trademark for, for your business, you get those trademark rights, right? And, and that's the protection of the brand, right. The idea that this logo signifies you as a source for the services you're providing, the, the second question is a bit tougher. It's about copyrights, right? Now, logo, depending on the logo, right? Is a creative work, right? And so in, in theory, the creator of that work owns the copyright to the logo. Now here's, here's the catch is that a lot of logos are not treated as copyrightable because they don't possess what copyright law quantifies as the minimum amount of originality for a copyright to exist. So they're typically, you know, a lot of logos are going to be rejected as copyrights because of that. So if the logo is just, you know, the word in a nice font with maybe a simple geometric figure in the background or something like that, that's probably not going to be copyrightable. If it's a more involved artistic expression, we might have a different question. So, you know, the ability for, you know, the alleged copyright holder to prevent you from using that logo on the basis of a copyright claim probably depends somewhat on that. But she's now deceased, and that's another question. [01:00:26] Speaker C: And her husband has destroyed all the material. Because when I heard that she had passed, I reached out to him and he said he had just destroyed everything. [01:00:37] Steven Frydman: When you say materials, what do you. What do you mean? [01:00:41] Speaker C: Well, all, all the, you know, the electronic design that would allow me to replicate it. Now I do actually have graphical work that I have used since. I mean, this work was done in 1992. I mean, so we're talking about decades. And it's very distinctive. And everybody knows me in that business with that logo. [01:01:08] Steven Frydman: Yeah. So, you know, the destruction of the physical materials or the electronic materials, I, I'd say probably doesn't have too much of an effect on the legal rights either way. Copyrights, you know, that. That right would pass, you know, similar to other kinds of property rights after death. But. And the term of a copyright is. Is dependent on the author's life. You know, you get 70 years after the author of the copyright passes to. For the copyright's term duration. So, I mean, we're not talking about kind of an expiration date here, probably. You know, I think the exact nature of what I would be concerned about is a little context dependent here on what exactly it is. So, you know, it's hard to give you an exact answer without a closer look at those things. But, you know, at a high level, I guess kind of what I said is what applies here. David, I don't know if you have other thoughts. [01:02:19] David Postolski, Esq.: Yeah, no, I mean, Carol, I think anytime. I think. I think you first started out saying, do I have unlimited rights to it? I don't know about that. I mean, there's a lot of. There's a lot of different circumstances here that Stephen would. [01:02:33] Speaker E: That. [01:02:34] David Postolski, Esq.: That Stephen is referring to the husband who's probably, you know, who, Who. Who destroyed this, you know, what, what, what. What. The, the. The lack of original agreement. I mean, but let's face it, it doesn't. I mean, if, if if you, if you want to take these ch. He don't care and she's dead, then there's not much that's going to stop you at this point. [01:02:58] Steven Frydman: Right, okay. [01:02:59] Speaker C: That's what I've been assuming for. [01:03:01] Steven Frydman: Yeah. [01:03:03] Speaker C: Because I do happen to have all the original agreements. [01:03:06] David Postolski, Esq.: Yeah. As long as you have your chain of, you know, custody or, you know, control or whatever. But again, these are not situated. These are situations. The whole point of this session was to avoid situations like you find yourself in. [01:03:19] Steven Frydman: And, and listen, if there is a. If there are original agreements, that might kind of resolve the issue. Right. But, but I guess what David was saying is, you know, the academic legal answer and the practical legal answer are often different. I can tell you what, you know, might apply, you know, in theory, if we went to court, but, you know, are you going to get there in the first place? Right. Like, if you start using this, what are the odds? [01:03:49] Speaker C: Yeah, well, I've been using it, as I said, since 1992, so. [01:03:52] Steven Frydman: And that's another question about, you know, enforcing that or kind of an implied license that's been granted. But the point being is what are the odds that, you know, someone winds up suing you over it and you wind up having to dispute the matter in court? You know, that's an entirely different question. And practically it, you might be totally fine to just keep using it, even if the academic answer is, ah, it depends. [01:04:17] Speaker C: Okay, great. Thank you so much. [01:04:19] David Postolski, Esq.: Thank you. Final question is from Ernesto. I think you asked it in two different ways. Should the US Parent or the company, or the company ex subsidiary own the company's main intellectual property? It's a really hard question to answer without having having more context. But generally speaking, intellectual property, the patent, the trademark, the copy, the trade check is an asset. It is going to bring money into the company. It is going to be valued in a certain way. And so you must likely loop in not just an attorney to answer this question, but also an accountant. Right. Sometimes that asset might have a beneficial [01:05:08] Speaker F: tax [01:05:10] David Postolski, Esq.: liability or consequence for the parent company rather than the subsidiary or vice versa. You might, it might just be enough that you have an intercompany license that then allows you to take advantage of the tax consequences for that type of relationship. So, so there's no right or wrong here, is what I'm trying to say. A parent company can own it, the subsidiary company can own it, but you got to take into consideration taxes, who eventually will be liable, and then the overall kind of asset valuation of that. Go for it, Steven. [01:05:47] Steven Frydman: Yeah, no, it's just, I agree there's a lot of factors that might go into making this decision. Like you were saying, taxes, liability. Some countries are better at shielding liability for corporations than other countries. And maybe you want it, maybe that's what you're concerned about. You know, who, who is actually the owner of all of these different corporate entities? Who do you want to have rights to have a say in, in the ip? You know, are you, maybe you can set up a separate company just for holding the IP and have someone in charge of that or, or have them in charge of that and that company licenses it out to all the subsidiaries or parent companies. You know, there's a lot of considerations that are probably going to be made differently based on who you are, how you do business, you know, what, what your specific concerns are. So, yeah, it's hard to say at a high level. [01:06:47] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:06:47] David Postolski, Esq.: And Steven, that's actually all. I think the, Steven's answer also answers Rachel's question just now, which is how can a startup cleanly structure IP ownership in a, in a limited company or with separate share classes, that licensing rights remain unencumbered? It's the same type of concept. Rachel. At the end of the day, I think your attorney, your accountant really all need to understand what are you trying to protect yourself from, how you're trying to make money, how are you trying to take advantage of tax breaks in your particular country? And then all of what you know, the best way to cleanly structure it are these types of agreements. Intercompany license agreements, employment agreements, you know, future restriction agreements on, on other licensees that, that, that, that, that previous licensees don't have. It all kind of, it all kind of, kind of relates back to a much more involved conversation I think you need to have with your attorney as, and, and your accountant as to what exactly, exactly is the business. What am I selling? What am I doing? How am I making money? How am I licensing? Who am I? Licensees? Where are they located? What, like, are they in different countries? There's so much that goes into that, but no, it could be cleanly structured is what I'm trying to say. Yeah. [01:08:05] Steven Frydman: And you're using the term limited company, which clues me in that you're not American. [01:08:09] Speaker C: Right? [01:08:10] David Postolski, Esq.: Yes. Rachel's from the UK too. [01:08:12] Steven Frydman: Right. So you're talking about, and you're talking about separate share classes, which lets me think that you're thinking about investors, future corporate partners. Yeah, so, so other considerations. Right. Those future investors might want to see that the IP is owned by the entity that they're investing in. Right. Or at least that the entity that they're investing in owns 100 of the vehicle that owns the IP. So that's definitely a consideration. Right. They don't want to be investing in a company who, it turns out the IP that that company makes money off of is only 50 owned by the company, and it's 50% owned by another company or some individual or something like that. Or they see that the company they're investing in, you know, has shareholders, you know, has a, you know, a different shareholder structure than they. Than they're comfortable with. Right. So there's. There's all these competing considerations that are really going to be case by case if you're talking about kind of a complicated corporate structure like that. And, yeah, you kind of need to deal with them privately, case by case, depending on how you know how you want to do your business. [01:09:27] David Postolski, Esq.: So we are at time, unfortunately. But we want to tell you, Steve and I both want to tell you that we are here for you. That's the whole point of these sessions. [01:09:36] Speaker C: Sessions. [01:09:37] David Postolski, Esq.: If you want to get into some details with either of us, please reach out. We're happy to chat as long as it's scheduled. Doesn't cost anything. And we're really happy to kind of educate and empower. That's what this whole ESS is about. We really thank you for your time, for your questions, for your participation. Stephen, thank you so much for doing this with me. We will be back October 29th, the last Thursday of the month. We will be back with another ESS. You will all. There are about maybe 200 registrants. Everybody will receive a recording of this and you can then watch it on YouTube and. Or download it as a podcast. And you'll also get a recap from us and notification for our next ESS. Stephen, any final words? [01:10:27] Steven Frydman: No. Thank you for having me. Thanks everyone for your questions. I thought we had a lot of interesting topics that we got to discuss. And yeah, thanks everyone for coming out. Like, like David was saying, happy to kind of talk to anyone, meet with everyone and yeah, build. Build some connections out of this. It was great. [01:10:49] David Postolski, Esq.: Awesome. Thanks, Steven. Thanks, everybody.