From Patent to Payday: How Smart IP Turned a Purse Into $100 Million

What if the simplest ideas could lead to the biggest exits—if only you protected them the right way? On today’s episode of The Harvest Growth Podcast, we’re joined by Michael Frodsham, one of America’s top patent attorneys and an equity shareholder at Workman Nydegger. He's worked with major brands like Skullcandy and Traeger Grills, and now shares the real secrets behind building and protecting businesses that scale globally.

Mike breaks down how even low-tech or everyday inventions, like a purse with magnetic covers, can become nine-figure success stories if IP is handled strategically. In just five years, that simple product sold for $100 million. Why? Because it was protected early and correctly.

Mike also explores what every entrepreneur needs to know about the patent process, how to balance legal costs with growth, and when to expand internationally with your IP strategy. Whether you're launching your first product or ready to scale, this episode delivers practical insights you can use immediately.

In today's episode of the Harvest Growth Podcast, we'll cover: 

• Why simple products can become goldmines when properly protected
• The real costs and timelines for filing patents
• What "patent pending" actually means and how it defends your product before approval
• The difference between suggestive and descriptive trademarks, and which to choose
• How to decide when and where to file international patents

Ready to protect and scale your product? Visit www.wnlaw.com to learn more about Mike Frodsham's firm and how they help startups and established brands secure their IP early and affordably.

To be a guest on our next podcast, contact us today!

Do you have a brand that you’d like to launch or grow? Do you want help from a partner that has successfully launched hundreds of brands totaling over $2 billion in revenues? Visit HarvestGrowth.com and set up a free consultation with us today! 

Transcript

Jon LaClare [00:00:00]:
What if the right patent strategy could help take your startup to $100 million exit or even an IPO? In today's episode, I sit down with a top patent attorney who's helped brands like Skullcandy and Traeger Grills grow from scrappy startups to household names. He shares real stories, actionable tips, and simple, affordable ways to protect your product from day one. If you're building something worth protecting, you'll want to hear this.

Announcer [00:00:26]:
Are you looking for new ways to make your sales grow? You've tried other podcasts, but they don't seem to know. Harvest the growth potential of your product or service as we share stories and strategies that'll make your competitors nervous. Now here's the host of the Harvest growth podcast, Jon LaClare.

Jon LaClare [00:00:46]:
Welcome back to the show. I'm super excited to be speaking with a longtime friend of mine, but as you're going to get to know him in this interview, actually a great resource for all of you as viewers and listeners. He's one of the premier patent attorneys in the country. He works, he's an equity shareholder at Workman Nidegger. They're the premier patent law firm in Salt Lake City, but really a nationally recognized and really internationally recognized law firm across the country. Across the world. You'll understand why once we get into this story a little bit. But Mike Frodsham is his name. I'm going to go into our background a little bit in a second, but first I just want to welcome you to the show. Mike, thanks for joining us today. Thank you.

Mike Frodsham [00:01:26]:
Thanks for having me.

Jon LaClare [00:01:27]:
Absolutely. So I gotta explain our background, our connection a little bit. We go way back, so we knew each other in Cleveland, Ohio. Man, I don't want to say the year, but it's been like 30 years or something like that, right? A long time ago. And the most important fact I have to share about Mike is that he introduced me to my wife Julie on our very first blind date. It was for me a great story, kind of changed my life in many ways, obviously for the better. And I owe a lot to Mike for sure that the one fun story I'll share quickly about this is our first date was skiing night skiing in Brighton just outside Salt Lake City. And I grew up in Cleveland. I was a pretty good Cleveland skier, but by Utah, Colorado terms, not that good. And my now wife, this first date, Julie, she grew up in Colorado and is a Colorado skier. So I owe Mike for introducing us, but also for spraying his ankle that morning because we were only able to do two runs he was man enough to try it again. He's like, maybe the boot. If I do this, it'll fix it. But after that second run, luckily we quit and did something else. And I think if we had kept skiing all night, my wife maybe wouldn't have wanted to do a second date with me, but she would. I could hide how bad of a skier I was for a couple of runs, but I owe a lot to that. So that was a. A quick, fun story about how I was first introduced to Mike. But we've known each other for years since then as well, because our. Our careers are sort of overlapped. You know, him being a patent attorney and helping products get off the ground and also protect themselves along the way. He's got some great stories. So before I talk too much about it, let's get into your story a little bit, Mike. Let's. Let's talk stories of specific brands first. I think a couple that you helped from the early days of really creation on into going public. These two companies. One is Skullcandy Headphones. The other is Traeger Smokers, which I imagine most of our audience has heard about these. Now, you knew them in the early days, before people really knew about them, before they were internationally known brands. We'll get into a couple other stories, brands and products as well. But can you talk to us a little bit about the story behind those? How did. How did that work out? Let's start with maybe Skull Candy in the very early days. How did you help? And specifically, how did patents help these businesses to grow?

Mike Frodsham [00:03:48]:
Yeah, all these are multifaceted. I'll try to keep it brief. The Skullcandy one was just one of those ones where, as a young associate, a partner said, hey, I've got this group of guys up in Park City that are trying to file an application, and I need somebody to draft the case for me. Can you come up here with me? And I'm sure I was probably on the bottom of the list or something like that, and everyone else said no. But I went up there and I got to be friends with these guys. Rick Alden was the head of that, and some people may know who he is. I got to meet him. They had some interesting technology related to toggling phone calls with music. It really was born out of necessity because these guys were skiers and they wanted to go up on the ski resort and not have to change from an ipod to the iPhone and back and forth as they're listening to music and taking phone calls. They wanted to be able to Toggle back and forth without any of that. And so they developed some technology for it and it was really a bit of a long shot and we tried to find a way to make it so that we could protect it and at least get it pending. So we got it on file. In the process of doing that, we discovered a lot of. They were really brand intensive and they wanted to cover things like shape and, and really just kind of brand recognition type stuff and some technology. They had a bit of technology that they were doing, so we helped them out with that. As they got popular, we got that patent issued. It ended up being very valuable for them, even though it wasn't core to the company. We brought a lot of licensees to the table on that technology. And in the process they were also expanding internationally. And so we developed their, I helped develop their brand strategy and their patent patent strategy internationally. This took us to faraway places as Finland in some discussions, and Asia and South America and things like that. So it was quite a growth curve they went through and we helped assist them with that along the way. And a lot of times along the way you're coming into knockoffs. And so as part of that process, we had brands in place, we had patents in place. In some cases, some cases they were design patents. If people aren't familiar with that, that covers more the look and feel of a product as opposed to how it works. But some of the patents that we got were utility patents which cover the way things work and don't depend on the look and feel. So we had quite an arsenal that we had developed for them. And so as we were going through this, occasionally we'd run into little steps here and there where maybe a competitor had gotten there before us in a particular country. But we had a lot of success basically knocking out competition. And they, they were sort of a dominant player for a while. They had quite, quite a run before they went public.

Jon LaClare [00:06:49]:
So if you think back to those early days, you know, you and I were talking about before we hit record on this interview, some of the pitfalls that companies face or. Well, I wouldn't say, I guess you can solve them early on, but one of the pitfalls you mentioned is not having protection. So, you know, these are big brands that everybody knows, probably Skull Candy and, and Trager specifically, and get into others too. But, but before they were big brands, the important work had to be done, right? Otherwise they may not have never been big brands. You can get overtaken by other companies, et cetera. Can you talk a little bit about how with those specifically or maybe other examples, how important it is to get patent work done early, even when funding is sort of limited, before you're. Before your business really takes off.

Mike Frodsham [00:07:36]:
Yeah, it's a, It's a good question. It's. It's probably one of the biggest problems we run into with startup. There's two things that I find are very common with startups, and even a lot of seasoned business professionals will say these kinds of things. And it just, it's not super practical. Here's where it is. So you'll frequently hear people say, especially VCs, say things like, you really shouldn't spend money on legal when you're getting a product off the ground, because if you do that, you're likely to reduce your inventory and run into. It can spiral out of control. I can see the point. I can understand how people do. I have seen people do that. They'll spend a lot of money trying to protect everything before they even get off the ground. Another one that you'll hear is people say you need to really. If you're going to have a product that rings have some resonance with people, they need to understand it immediately from hearing the brand, which for a lot of people triggers things like, I want to do a descriptive brand. I want to do something like I want to say, I want to call myself the blue headphone people. Okay. And so we're going to do a blue headphone and you sell a blue headphone. Well, that might be a descriptive. That's probably a descriptive mark, unless you're selling a wide variety of colors. Maybe I don't want to get too into it, but you see the point. If you do something that's descriptive, the trademark office oftentimes won't protect it. They'll say that it is descriptive and you have to acquire some distinction or you might not be able to protect it at all. The biggest problem is you can't stop people from using that brand if it's purely descriptive or generic. So oftentimes this is what you see in the pharmaceutical industry, which is actually pretty good example. But they also have these names that are really sometimes impossible to pronounce. Right. And so those actually are the most valuable brands. They're really hard and I would say maybe weird sometimes, but if it gets that, if you have to think about it a little bit and remember it kind of. It creates an earworm, I guess, and it sort of stays in your head. And those are the most powerful ones. So on the branding side, that's a big one. People often Mistake that. And they want to name things very descriptively, and it's not a good idea. The other one is I would spend a little bit of money in the beginning. You don't have to blow your budget on this. There's inexpensive ways of dealing with protecting your company. You can file relatively inexpensive types of patent applications and you can have them, you know, you want to talk to an attorney, because some of them, sometimes you might be able to do the cheapest of all and do a design patent, because all that really matters is the shape of the product. In some cases, the function is important and they're cheap ways of doing that. But you could just get it on file. Get it on file before you go public is probably the most important thing. The reason is once you go public, you have about. You have one year to do a filing. And oftentimes what happens is you'll have people come to us and say, hey, listen, I've been killing it with this product. It's been out for about a year or two. And I'm starting to see competitors, and I want to know what I can do to stop the competitors. And oftentimes the answer is not much because they haven't changed their product. It's the exact same product they've been selling for the last year and a half. And unfortunately, in the United States and especially in other countries like Europe, they won't give you any grace period at all. You have to have been on file before you went public, so that creates attention. So you've got this budget issue and so you're gambling a little bit. But if you get, if you talk to a good attorney, they'll explain. Like there's, here's some bits and pieces. We can kind of step into this a little bit and at least give you some basic protection while you're going along the way.

Jon LaClare [00:11:17]:
And I do want to just clarify for our audience because we talked about these companies going public. Right. Being coming public companies. Right. Listed on the stock exchange later on. Just to clarify, Mike, as you're talking now, is going. When you say going public, I get these early patents done before you go into the public. Right. Before you market the product, before it's aware or something.

Mike Frodsham [00:11:35]:
When you make the offering of the product public, put it on Amazon, you put it on your website, things like that.

Jon LaClare [00:11:42]:
Yeah. So really, before it's launched or before it's out there.

Mike Frodsham [00:11:45]:
That's a better word.

Jon LaClare [00:11:46]:
So I want to talk. Let's talk about the provision. Provisional patents. Is that what those are typically called in the early days.

Mike Frodsham [00:11:53]:
Yeah. So there are in the utility space. So remember, there's really three different types of patterns. Patents. Almost nobody files a plan patent, but there are occasionally come through. But almost everything is going to come into two different categories. It's either going to be a utility patent, which is the way things work, or it's just going to be a design patent, which is the way things look. The utility patent has really two phases. You can do it as a regular utility patent, which is called the non provisional right out of the gate. That's the extra expensive one that people fret over. That's the one that gets examined by the patent, by the patent office and they'll tell you whether you're rejected or not and that kind of thing. There. There's another way of getting to that, that market without having to go through that rather higher cost. It's called the provisional application. Provisional applications are free, but they are oftentimes sometimes a half to a third of the cost. And they're basically a placeholder. What happens is you put a flag in the ground and say, here's my filing date. Now once you've got that provisional in place, you can freely disclose whatever is in that because you can now see your patent pending. And then within one year you then have to actually do a conversion. You either file a new case that claims priority to it or you convert that one in some way. But that's the rough idea is that you can file a provisional. And the provisional is nice because one of the reasons why it's inexpensive is because you can be a little bit casual and informal about it. You can take all of your CAD files and all your diagrams, give them the attorney and say, here, make something out of this. And they will, and they'll put in a bunch of figures and they'll try and write up a description for each one and try and even invent some things for you. Maybe a little bit. I shouldn't say that. That's not really what's going on. We're helping clarify what we see in there. Right. And helping verbalize what you probably are trying to express. And so we'll put all those things in there and then you've got a stake in the ground. So that is how the provisional works.

Jon LaClare [00:13:56]:
I think it's great advice to think about for any early stage listeners or viewers that are getting ready to launch, getting ready to go into the market. And we have had, as you mentioned, some people come across our desk and we're a marketing agency, right, to launch products and sometimes they'll come and say, hey, I spent all my money on patents and I have nothing left over for marketing. Right. That's a problem too. Right. So you kind of find that balance and the provisional patent can be a good balance where it's okay, I got to spend a little bit, I got to protect it to make sure it's safe when it does blow up and become this massive success in the marketplace. Because the last thing you want is for a competitor to come in and copy you and take over and they've got deeper pockets than you do and you're gone. Right. So that can certainly happen. So it is finding that balance, spending a little, you know, call it a little less. Right. So less money on a provisional upfront to make sure you're protected and therefore having money for inventory, for marketing, for, you know, the. What's it's going to take to really make it a success in the marketplace too. And getting that balance early on. So great. I think it's great advice to think about on the trademark side. Oh, go ahead.

Mike Frodsham [00:15:02]:
Yeah. One thing on that, just to give your listeners some perspective. Just the national averages and that's all I'm all quote now because everyone's case is a little bit different. But the national averages of a regular utility filing are about 10, $15,000 just to file. You can file them yourself without the attorney fees. I wouldn't recommend it because you're going to get into a big mess at office. You can file a provisional yourself that's a little bit more doable because it's not getting examined. But you have to be careful. You just want to make sure you stuff it full of all the information. But if you have an attorney drafted, you're going to be looking at something anywhere from 2,500 to $5,000, depending on how much you give them. We have turned paper napkin concepts into 30 pages. I don't recommend it. It's expensive to do that, but you can do that. So if that's all you have and you don't have any time, throw it at an attorney and I'm sure for a couple thousand dollars they can give you a decent provisional.

Jon LaClare [00:16:00]:
I'm glad you brought those numbers because, you know, it's hard to know because, you know, there are times you can spend six figures on patent work on something extremely complex, or by the time all is said and done, but it does not need to start anywhere near that, frankly, to have 3, 4, $5,000 in legal expenses is. Is nothing, you know, compared to the value of what you have. It's an expense you should absolutely. To plan for in the early stages before you get to. To launching, just to protect yourself and, you know, spend late, you know, spend the bigger dollars later when you've got money coming in and the business is generating revenues that. That now you got to protect going forward. Yeah. So thanks for bringing that up. On the trademark side. So you talk about how, you know, kind of descriptive versus fanciful. I want to give my opinion, and I'd love to hear yours, because from a legal perspective, maybe I'm wrong. Right. But I think there's like the very descriptive. You give good examples of those, right? The blue headphones onto the very fanciful words you can barely pronounce that are made up. And then there's kind of ones in the middle. I would almost put skull candy in the middle, maybe correct me if I'm wrong on this, but to me, it's fanciful because it doesn't. It's not saying blue headphones, but it's. You get it. Right. Like, I. What I love about branding, like that it's hard to do, but if you can come up with branding that infers what it is. Right. It's kind of like a decoration for your head. Right. Like the skull candy. It's. It's sort of in the middle. You know, you get the descriptive benefit, but it's still fanciful, so it's better protected. Is that a fair way to say that?

Mike Frodsham [00:17:32]:
See, this is why you're a podcast host, because you're a very smart guy. That actually is one of the important clarifications that's called a suggestive mark. So suggestive marks are slightly descriptive, but they're not considered descriptive, and they're registrable. They're not quite the level of fanciful, but they are considered distinctive, so you can actually get them registered. And they're actually a nice middle ground for people who want to have some form of description. So the way to think about that is if you have to. If the words make sense, but they don't automatically convey the product, but you have to take a mental leap or two through the words to understand the product. That's what. That's what a suggestive mark is. If you have to make a couple mental connections with things that are purely fanciful and arbitrary, there's no mental leap. You just have to learn it. But things like skullcandy, we actually ran into this problem. It was kind of funny. We had a examiner in. In Europe try to argue that the mark was. And this is going back. So they may have different philosophies now, but this is going back a ways that they try to argue that it was descriptive because the two words by themselves, Candy. I don't know how he thought candy was descriptive when it's a headphone, but nevertheless he did. And in the US it was an easy one. We just call it suggestive. But over there, we had to explain to him why candy kind of meant more adornment or something like that. And skull doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be covering the skull. It could be a helmet or something, but the fact it was headphones and earbuds. So we kind of worked through that. But that's an example of where people. That's a good middle ground. That's a great middle ground, actually, for people who want to have some sense of description.

Jon LaClare [00:19:24]:
I love it. I know with, with patents, I believe it's. If you want to go international, you got to get ahead of it. You know, just in very simple layman's terms is so be. Basically try to get as far and wide as you can quickly, because otherwise you can get knocked off in an overseas market, potentially. Is the same true, and maybe that's not the right way to say it, but it's the same true for trademarks as well. So skull Candy is an example. Do you need to start like before you're in the public marketplace, before you truly launch by having your trademark registered across the world, or can you start in one market like the US and then add them on later on?

Mike Frodsham [00:20:00]:
Well, there's the ideal and then there's reality. So the ideal is obviously before you go into a country, you've done some searching and you file all the IP that you need to in that country before you go in. And if you think about it from a pure numbers standpoint, there's some sense to that because you think about, say, doing some searching and some, let's say you have five or six trademarks that you just want, that you've already registered in the United States, but you want to extend over to this country and maybe a few patents you want to get filed that still have the ability to file over there. You might be looking at an investment of anywhere from 15 to 20, maybe $30,000, but nobody would go into those countries to make 15 to $30,000. You're presumably you're going to be making. You're looking at several hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue minimum. And so you're just on that alone, that calculus loan. It usually makes sense to think about this in advance. But in reality, budgets are tight, everyone's spending money on product and that kind of thing. So what I normally will tell people, as I would say, your core brand is usually your housemark, like let's say school candy, like for the name of the company or say if it was Apple, you would at least want to get Apple trademarked in the country you're going into. You don't necessarily need to have all the other Apple brands filed at the same time, but you want to. What you don't want to do is there's another company we represent that does a lot of work in the Caribbean and South America. They're in a lot of these cruise ports and things. Their problem is that if they don't file, they learned this early on. If they didn't file a trademark for say just the name of the company, if they go into that, if they, when they would go into those countries and somebody else had filed on that in that particular class, doesn't matter if they had it in the products, they would, they'd have to call their company something else. So you don't want to run into that. The biggest thing is you don't want to change whatever is the most important, whether it's your company name or the corporation core product name. That's I think one or two that are important before you go into the country and at least from a trademark perspective, make sure your name is captured. That that can be done for five or six thousand dollars at least to get on file for a couple of those things.

Jon LaClare [00:22:16]:
And it does avoid future problems as well. So many things with legal is getting protected for, to avoid problems. Right. That could arise in the future. You know, we saw that in my back, in my OxiClean days, there was a European country where we didn't launch to Europe yet. You know, we were a big and growing company but weren't in, in this particular market. And so Somebody launched an OxiClean product and trademarked it locally. Right. It was this big hassle then for when we entered the market. We were the copycat, right? We looked like the knockoff and it got sorted out. But it was expensive, right? It, it, it, it took a while and so for a while we list. We lost who knows how much money by not being able to really enter that market in the, in the right way. But just had. We spent a little bit of money up front and like you said, it's a balance. You can't do it all in the beginning. You just got to find the Time and you know, talk to smart, experienced legal counsel that has been down that road before to find out when is the right time and how is the right way to go into market like that. So we brought up the story of Traeger a little bit as well. Can you, can you help us understand that story a little bit? So, as some of the same people I know from Skullcandy, what happened with Traeger, how, how did the patent side or patent law or patents specifically help Traeger to become a big success that they are today?

Mike Frodsham [00:23:29]:
Well, as a patent attorney, I would say that all their success is owed to the patents. But that wouldn't be, that wouldn't be too honest. I think that they, they had some good management behind them. But, but some of the people that, that I was close with at Skullcandy went to Traeger and they went and bought the company. And at the time it was a bit of a regional company up in Portland. It wasn't super well known. I mean, I'd heard the name, but I didn't see them at the stores or anything like that. They had, they had a similar idea and said, hey, we need to blow this thing up because we think this has got some legs and it's going to go international, so let's get some filings on it. And when I first talked to the their guys, they said, hey, we've got this idea for Internet communication to control their grill. And you know, I had my doubts. I often do. And you know, sometimes you get this, your sense to you, you think you want to push back on this a little bit. But we described it as best we could and got it on file. And so for the Internet, control the grills in the meantime, they were doing other things too. So they had some shapes and they had some, you know, ways of directing smoke out and ways of heating more gradually. So there's all kinds of things they're trying to solve. That was one of them. And so we ended up getting all those Internet control patents allowed. And they even got challenged several times in various types of legal environments and withstood the scrutiny. And so, you know, to me, to take them, we took that international and we got patents for them all over the world and trademarks all over the world. And that was an important thing to them because one, at the very least, investors were very interested in the fact that they had protection, they had protection worldwide. Two, we were able to actually carve out a handful of very large name players that were very upset that we got these patents and it was really hurting their business because a lot of the business, if you look in the grill space, a lot of businesses trying to trend this direction. And so traders got a bit of the upper hand. I mean, there's, you know, with all things, there's. There, there are angles to pursue, but. But nevertheless, they. They had a really dominant position because they took the time to protect it. And I think an interesting take home from that is that it doesn't have to be core to your business at the time, felt like it might be, but there were a whole bunch of other things that they were trying to solve, and those also were very important to them. And sometimes you don't know what's going to be core in terms of, like, blocking out competitors. And this one turned out to be pretty key feature that people stepped into. I mean, Skullcandy had one, had a patent where it didn't seem like it was related at all to their business, and it made them a lot of money. So, you know, I think when people are thinking about these things, sometimes they get hooked into this idea. Like, well, it's got to be really, really key because I want to spend my resources smartly. And I agree with that. I just wouldn't get overwhelmed by it. I would say, look, if you've got a novel idea, I think building a portfolio and kind of working away from that is a good start.

Jon LaClare [00:26:38]:
I want to talk about another product, too, that you've been involved with, that you and I probably have no personal experience with. But it's purses, right? There was a purse. You were telling me this story again before we hit record. I think it'd be great to share how this business was built and, and sold in a short span of time. I think five years for $100 million, if I have the numbers correct. And there's, you know, along the way, you know, I think as you were describing it to me, Skullcandy Traeger, and a lot of the products and brands and businesses you work on, there's very, you know, they're complex technologically. This one is a bit simpler. It's almost an invention that a lot of people can see. Like, maybe I could figure out how to do that potentially. And still, protections are very important, right? Maybe even more so because it's easier. Something that's easier to do is also easier to copy in many ways. But could you share that story about this, this purse business? So how did, how did it get started? How did you guys help them to be protected? And how did they grow and sell their Business.

Mike Frodsham [00:27:35]:
Well, they, that was interesting. It was a group of guys, you know, and they had heard they'd gotten an idea from some girls in the neighborhood of an idea for a purse that would have magnetic attachments to replace the COVID so they could get different, you know, look and feel on the. On the purse. And they came to me and said, hey, this is going to go big. And, you know, being the, the person I am with no familiar with purses, I thought, this is crazy. There's no way. And I know I'm not gonna. I don't think we're gonna get any patents on this. And they said, well, yeah, but think about this. Think about this. I said, okay, okay. So. So we tried a handful of things. We tried both the utility for the way it worked and the way the magnets were positioned, as well as the, the design for the look and feel. And you know what? That, that, that product sold for 100 million. I mean, not the product, but the. The company sold for $100 million in five years. I still can't believe to this day. I mean, I, I think that's. I tell people jokingly, that's why I went to law school, because I can't pick the. These kind of success stories. Those same guys, on the other hand, well, a couple of them tried to do some really interesting technology related to 3D TV. And this is when the height of 3D TV was kind of going on. They were going to be able to turn old TVs into it, and they weren't able to make that product move at all. So sometimes you're just kind of catching lightning in a bottle, and sometimes you get a little bit lucky. But I think too oftentimes it's really, really about the plan and the passion. If they have a passion for the, for this, and they take the time to really understand marketing channels and how to sell and how to get out and meet the right people and move the product. You can see, for lack of a better phrase, some of the simplest. What some people might call a dumb product. I guess they're not dumb if they're doing well. But some of the simplest products can kill. Doesn't have to be really complicated. You don't have to be a genius. You don't have to have invented AI for the first time to have something that can be worth a lot of money. A lot of times it's really just the passion finding the channels and just having a group of people that you trust that you can work together with.

Jon LaClare [00:29:54]:
For sure. Mike, I got to ask you. My last patent related question is specifically about the patent process. So, you know, I think a lot of our listeners, myself kind of included, like even though we've had clients go through this a lot, I'm no patent attorney by any means. So for me the process seems like, okay, you write a patent, you submit it, they approve it. Right. It should be as simple as that. But I know there's thousands of steps along the way. Can you help us understand, like obviously there's reviews and rebuttals and all that kind of stuff. You know, in a 60 second or two minute explanation, describe the process from, if you could, from start to finish, from when you've got the, you sit down with a napkin ID or whatever until it's officially issued in a, you know, a registered trademark or I guess a patent. An issued patent was trying to think of the word for that. So an issued patent at the very end.

Mike Frodsham [00:30:42]:
Yeah. So the basic process is, is the company calls you and says, hey, we need to discuss this. And so it could be a teams call, it could be an important person meeting. You'll go in and they will push you really, really hard to say, hey, listen, why is this different? Why is this useful to you and what would hurt you if somebody copied it? What feature of this do you need to protect the most to keep somebody out of, out of your space? If you're not thinking about it in those terms, you're probably just generating a trophy. And trophies can be useful, but for people on a limited budget, you want to make sure that you're focused on what's going to stop a competitor. So we will write an application. It's usually going to be about 30 pages long, 30 to 50 pages long. And it'll have a section at the end called the claim section. And in the other sections before that we'll say here's the problem we're trying to address, here's how we solve the problem, and here are some ways that we would solve the problem. A lot of different variations in between. So we try and, you know, throw a whole bunch of stop at the wall. And then the end we have a claim section where we say we claim a method of manufacturing X or a product that has these features and that performs certain features. That's the portion of the application that is what you will enforce against others. And that's also the portion of the application that the examiners will spend all the time on. So that when I say examiners, these are the people at the patent office. So these are the people People who, they have technical degrees or they're very smart people and that's what they like to do. I mean, they go and they work, they're a government employee and they take your application in and they have all these art units, meaning that there's all these different divisions there, there's several, I don't even know what the exact number is, but there's a number of different divisions, I think several thousand employees, examiners across a lot of different divisions. But your patent application will be assigned to what's called an art unit, which is like a type of technology. And then it will go through all these different processes. In the meantime, you'll get these letters in from the patent office saying, here's your official filing receipt or the application's been published. It doesn't mean anything other than it's now disclosed to the public and it hasn't gone through examination, but it's gotten a formal looking document about two years into it. Usually unless you pay for extra expediting, which the government will always take your money. And there are ways of going faster. But let's say you go through the normal process, you will get almost always a rejection and the rejection will say your claims can't be allowed because they're too broad. And here are some references that we found that are like it, that are very close. And oftentimes you look at it and you go, oh no, the case is dead. But you look at it, you look a little harder and you say, yeah, they missed the mark on this and this and this and this. And I see why, because in our language we use this kind of broad term that really we meant to say this. And so you'll go in and you'll kind of amend those words a little bit and you'll have this kind of back and forth dance with the patent office. Usually about two or three responses takes about six months in between. And so the overall process is anywhere from two and a half to three years. If you file a provisional, you can add a year on top of that, but it's, it's about two or three years. So people get really frustrated by that and they say, what am I supposed to do in the meantime? Well, in the meantime, once you've got, you can always say patent pending. And if you have an actual direct knockoff competitor, you can send a letter showing a copy of your published application to them and say, hey, when this thing issues, we're going to come after you. And if you do that and the claims don't change much by the time it gets to the them, then you can have back damages going back to the time that it was published. So I wouldn't worry about the fact that it's pending for a long time. There are ways of dealing with that. And patent pending has its own deterrent effect for a lot of people. So I'd say when you do have something patent pending, you want to really market that and have say, patent pending underneath the product. So you at least flag that. But the process is about two or three years and then after that you've got maintenance fees. That patent, the uspto, they want you to get rid of your patent so that the public can have it. So they'll make you pay what's called a maintenance fee at certain like 4, 7, 11 year periods. And so that adds more cost. But presumably if the product is worth anything, that will be a drop in the bucket relative to the product revenue. And you just keep it alive that way. But that's the beginning to end of a patent and two minutes or three.

Jon LaClare [00:35:11]:
Well done. No, that was awesome. That was really, it's a great description of the process. I'm glad you brought up the fact that you know, you've got something, you're, you're still protected even though the process takes a long time. Right. Like anything with the government to get a formal patent issued and returned to you or, you know, finally approved, you are protected if you do the right things along the way. And, you know, legal counsel can certainly help with that. Mike, this has been a ton of fun. Is there anything I didn't ask you that you think could be helpful for our audience?

Mike Frodsham [00:35:40]:
I think we've covered the basics. I guess for some people, they may want to know, what if I go into Canada or what if I go into Australia or Europe? What do I need to think about with that? Just know that there are timelines along the way where you have to make a decision to then file an international case or file a priority case that goes into them. Usually your goals are within one year of filing. You have decisions you need to make and there's ways of dealing with it. So just bear in mind we've focused primarily on the United States. You can protect elsewhere. You do need to consider it. But talk to an attorney and they'll give you all the advice.

Jon LaClare [00:36:17]:
Well, thank you and again, I really appreciate the time. This has been super fun to catch up, but I know our audience is going to love all that you taught them today and shared some great stories as well. For our audience, please go to WN as in Workman Nidegger Mike's Law Firm. That's WN Law and it's WN as a Nancy Law.com to learn more about them. There's contact information on that website as well to be able to reach out and talk directly with Mike or anybody else at their firm. If you've got questions. If you if you're depending on whatever stage you're at, right you're launching or you want to figure out in a late stage business if you are protected or if there are other things you can do along the way, Mike and his team can certainly answer those questions for you. So wnlaw.com and and it's in the show notes if you're driving, don't feel like you have to have this. Remember, don't pull over to write it down. Always go to YouTube or any podcast platform. Or of course our website harvest growth podcast.com to see that URL. Also for our audience, thanks for tuning into today's episode where we uncover the stories and strategies behind some of the most successful product marketers out there. If you're looking to take your own business to the next level, be sure to visit perfect launch.com you can grab a free copy of my book, the Perfect Launch System. It's packed with the proven principles we've developed over the past 20 years helping hundreds of businesses launch and grow successfully. Plus you'll also get exclusive one page summaries of some of our most popular podcast interviews, real world insights you can apply right away. Head to perfect launch.com and start building your perfect launch today. Until next time, keep learning, keep launching and keep growing.