How Patents and Trademarks Can Benefit Toy Entrepreneurs: Insights from The Patent Professor, John Rizvi

EP067_09-30-24_John Rizvi

Intro: [00:00:00] Welcome to Toy Business Unboxed, your gateway to the secrets of the toy industry. Here, Jason Hsieh, a toy entrepreneur and expert in the field. “Every product we develop is really inspired by some of the real life experience that we have with our son.” “60 percent of all toys last year were sold on Amazon.”

“Be passionate about it. Because it’s a road. It’s a journey.” “Like when you have an idea that you think is gonna somewhat change the world, make things better, I’d say go for it.“

Jason Hsieh: Hello. Welcome to another episode of Toy Business Unbox, where we dive into the world of toy innovation and entrepreneurship. In today’s episode, we’re thrilled to have John the Patent Professor, a leading patent attorney over two decades of experience who have made his mission to protect the dreamer, the inventors, and [00:01:00] the change maker of the world.

John has dedicated his career to helping creator, especially those in the toy industry, secure patents and defend their IP or intellectual property, whether you are just starting out or have a growing toy business, this conversation will equip you with the right knowledge and key strategy to protect your idea from copycats and knockoff.

John, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today.

John Rizvi: Thank you Jason. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Jason Hsieh: Can you tell the audience a little bit about how do you start your journey working in specialized, especially because there’s so many different type of law practices. What make you want to decide on specializing, like on the patents?

John Rizvi: It’s funny, my journey started years ago when taking you back in time, back when I was 12 and it started in with a toy because my dream and soul ambition in life was to take a Rubik’s cube, which as is cubicle and I wanted to make it round really? A [00:02:00] Rubik’s spear. So day in and day out, I would have a sketchbook under my bed page after page of drawings and sketches of my design. And everything was going well except one day my mom brought me to the mall and there’s a store KB Toys. And I went to that aisle where they had the puzzles and games. I saw there on the store shelves like crushed me. Somebody had already made a round Rubik’s Cube and they came up with a better name than Round Rubik’s Cube. They called it the impossible. In my like 12-year-old mind, like they had stolen my idea. I remember being at the mall. I tried hard not to cry. Oh man. I looked up at my mom and my mom was crying and remember, like she’s the one that had seen this sketchbook and how much work I had put into it day after day. She’s the one that tripped over all the broken Rubik’s cubes in her house because screwdriver to it and break it apart. So I grabbed her by the hand and I dragged her out of the [00:03:00] store. The store clerks had seen plenty of parents dragging, crying children out, but never

Jason Hsieh: a crying mom. Oh, whoa.

John Rizvi: So children cry when they don’t get what they want. But something happens to us when we grow up, and that’s the thing, we stop thinking we can get what we want and we start dreaming small and dreaming safe. I never forgot that, that experience. And I always loved tinkering with things, taking things apart, figuring out how they work. And I became an engineer. And when becoming the inventor of the round Rubik’s cube didn’t work, engineering was my backup. And that’s when I got exposed to patent law ideas. And that’s what I’ve done the past 25 years. And in fact, I’ve been a professor, a teaching patent law to other lawyers. That’s where my law firm’s name, the patent professor actually comes from.

Jason Hsieh: I see. That makes total sense. I didn’t know that story. You didn’t mention that in the pre-interview, but that’s a very powerful story and I think each of us especially those entrepreneurs, we all have our [00:04:00] own unique story like I shared you with my son.

John Rizvi: But we all think that there’s somehow we convince ourselves that we don’t fit this perfect mold that we’re outside the industry and that we didn’t go to the right schools or have the right amount of capital to invest. Or we don’t have the right economic background or the right education, and we for stay in our comfort zone. And then people will keep you in that comfort zone if you let them And it,

Jason Hsieh: I agree.

John Rizvi: Leap of faith to go outside, like when you first decided to launch. There’s gotta be this voice in the back of your mind going, you know who bes eye to launch a toy company, right? There’s a lot of people playing small.

Jason Hsieh: I think that’s also society is giving entrepreneur a lot of pressure. There’s also a lot of naysayers, oh, this will never work. You don’t have the money, you don’t have the education. You never, you just don’t know what you’re doing. And there’s a lot of naysayers in

John Rizvi: Yeah. Or all the toys that could be invented have been invented.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Which is not true, by the way. [00:05:00]

John Rizvi: Not true. They saying that for hundred of years. In fact the commissioner of the US Patent Office in 18, in the 18 hundreds. Famous quote by him is just, he was suggesting that the patent office shut down because everything that has had to be invented was already invented.

Jason Hsieh: He invented what? That’s insane. Yeah. He underestimated the unlimited creativity that we have as a human being. That’s always something new

John Rizvi: and it’s still not stopping. Like we have, like the internet was like a huge boom and just when you think there’s as much innovation in the internet, this chat GPT has. So I don’t think we’re certainly not anywhere close to the end of innovation yet. Hundred percent. And absolutely not in the toy industry for sure is, and you know that industry sure back of your hand.

Jason Hsieh: And I think that’s also some common mistake that the toy entrepreneur or the inventor make when it come to protecting their creation. I think there’s a lot of urban myths about patents. Some [00:06:00] people say, oh, as long as I created it, I can just file for patent anytime I want, which I don’t think is true. And hopefully we can demystify or bust some of those myths today in the interview. So I guess one of the common misconception is. There is a timeline on when you can apply for the patent, and I think that’s only a year, but if you can educate the audience on Exactly.

John Rizvi: Of course. And the law has changed and that’s why there’s some confusion. Before 1990 before 2013 the US was on what’s known as a first to invent system. So as long as you invented first, you were fine. And how do you prove, you invent it first. You keep, receipts. You keep a notebook and you document your invention. You get somebody to witness your idea. All of these things were very useful, but in 2013, the law changed from a first to invent system to a first to file system. Today, the US is on a first to file system. Whoever files the [00:07:00] application first. Owns the idea. There’s still a major push. You need to move quickly and file the application first. what’s confusing is you hear a lot about this do it within a year.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah, that’s what I heard. That’s not true. Okay.

John Rizvi: Yes, you, yes, do it within a year, but that does not mean you can just sit back and take a year. What that means is that if you launch your idea or publicly disclose it or sell it. And you take 366 days to file a patent. You take one day more than a year than you can’t. That’s it. You cannot publicly disclose your idea and take one day more than a year to file for a patent. That doesn’t mean you should wait till. You shouldn’t wait at all. As soon as you have it, you should file for the patent right away. But the myth is a lot of people think, oh, I can relax. Let me see if it sells. So they wanna test the market. Let me see if there’s demand. Let me get a better version. This is the, like beta version of my product. Let me get a more [00:08:00] advanced version. All of those are mistakes. You need to get that pattern on the rough version as soon as you can.

Jason Hsieh: I see. So just to clarify, when does that one year start by the time you list it online, or when does start ?

John Rizvi: So any kind of public disclosure, you put it on Amazon, you list it online, you put up a website. In fact post it on TikTok, Instagram, Anything that’s public disclosure. Or, sale you sell one toy, you sell one and all of a sudden that year starts. So you have to be really careful not to do that. But I think it goes beyond that. You should not even want to sell until you have it protected. Because if it has potential. Somebody with a lot more resources is going to jump in and start selling the product.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah. But this is also a tricky problem for some of the startup entrepreneur because I remember when I first started my toy brand back in 2016. I don’t have the cash to file for a design and [00:09:00] utility patent. It’s just way, it’s very daunting on the cost, and I can barely pay rent when I start a company. I don’t have the time and the money to invest into something. Of course, maybe we can also touch about the cost because there’s also two type of patent when I’m talking to newer to entrepreneur, they don’t understand the two and the invocation about each and why is one is so much more expensive than the other. Maybe we can start out there first, then we can talk more about this like dilemma that the entrepreneur also.

John Rizvi: Yes. So of course, so there’s two types of patents. One is a design patent, and what the design patent means is that it protects the, just the look of an idea. And if it’s a new toy, it, and it doesn’t work any different than anything else, then it’ll protect the look of that toy. Let me illustrate that through. The Frisbee is of course, a patented idea. Now this one, for example, I’m gonna pull it close. You can see that there’s these little lightning boat type things, right? [00:10:00]

Jason Hsieh: Yeah, that’s good. Okay. Okay. Okay.

John Rizvi: Now, if those have no function and it’s just for beauty. You could file this with a design patent and that protects just the look. Just the look of it. So nobody else can create a Frisbee that has this particular look.

Jason Hsieh: Look okay.

John Rizvi: But it’s a very narrow patent because instead of having it look like a lightning bolt. They could have it look like, I don’t know, a ponytail or something.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah. They can just change it slightly to bypass the patent.

John Rizvi: Yeah. So that’s the downside of design patents. But as you can tell, it has it on that has a design on the back also, but on the other hand, what if this has an actual function? What if it provides a better grip? Or you can say it’s more aerodynamic or has some other than just pleasing to the eye. It’s some function. Now you can file a utility patent. A utility patent is that it’s useful for a function that it performs not just for the look. And that’s [00:11:00] the other type of patent. Now, you asked about cost.

In general design patents are about a third of the cost of utility patents. So I would say roughly, you may be looking at about anywhere from three to $6,000 for a design patent to protect the look. Now a utility patent on the other hand is, generally about 9,000 to $18,000.

Jason Hsieh: Oh, whoa. That’s a big range.

John Rizvi: Yeah. But it’s also a lot better protection ’cause you get a utility patent and now nobody can create something that performs the same function and pretty much the same way as your idea. Then they have much broader protection. A design patent is less expensive, but you might have to file more than one to protect variations of your idea. And you might not have to do that.

Jason Hsieh: Okay. Thank you for the explanation. That’s very helpful. But going back to the entrepreneur dilemma that I was explaining earlier, instead of putting $18,000 and buy $18,000 worth of product, should I spend 18,000 and work on [00:12:00] the patent? But I don’t even have the money to put in for the initial production run.

John Rizvi: Yeah.

Jason Hsieh: Very tricky.

John Rizvi: No, you bring up a great point. Now, the patent office realized this dilemma back in 1995. Because of a utility patent. The most difficult part and time consuming part one of is the claims of the patent. And for some, I know you’re familiar with this, but a lot of your listeners might not be. The claims are numbered paragraphs at the end of the patent that define how broad your protection is and how close competitors can get to your idea. Usually there’s 20 numbered paragraphs. They’re very time consuming to draft. They’re they’re very tricky and they require a lot of attorney hours to draft. So in 1995, the patent office came up with a new type of patent that doesn’t have to have claims. Thinking was, you know what? For a small inventor, individual inventor, or a small startup. They don’t have many times $18,000 to put into this idea. So why don’t we let them [00:13:00] protect it temporarily for one year? A type of patent called a provisional patent. So it doesn’t have to have claims. So it’s lower in cost. And then at the end of the year, if the inventor sees success, he sees interest. There’s demand. People are buying the product. Investors are interested. Now he knows it’s worthwhile to. Provisional patents many times can be about half the cost of a non-provisional patent. So

Jason Hsieh: can you do provisional patent for both design and utility as well?

John Rizvi: No, unfortunately, the provisional is only possible for utility patents.

Jason Hsieh: Utility. Okay. Okay.

John Rizvi: But those are the expensive ones, so

Jason Hsieh: Yeah true, It’s very expensive.

John Rizvi: It’s all relative, right? Like for some inventors, when they’re starting up, three to $6,000 is a big, But that’s the design patent. The utility is generally six to $18,000. So the utility patent is [00:14:00] more expensive, but the provisional is, I think, a great avenue that lets you temporarily protect your rights for one year, while you the market and see how things are going.

Jason Hsieh: And then at the end of the year, you can decide whether not to turn it into a regular, full on pattern or just you can abandon, I guess

John Rizvi: you can abandon it. It’s unfortunately if the year goes by, again, this 365 days are critical. If you don’t file the non-provisional within 365 days of your provisional, or exactly within one year, then you’ve lost all rights to the idea. These dates are super important. That’s why this one year keeps coming up. If you filed a non-provisional in three on day 366, then you’ve waited one day too long, and anybody that has filed in the intervening year, they can trump your rights. And they get superior rights to you. So it’s very critical if you file your design patent, sorry, your provisional patent. If you’re working with a law firm, it’s their job to keep this date and remind you, you [00:15:00] have to file the non-provisional within one year.

Jason Hsieh: I see, And what is your take for newer startup or inventor? Not just getting patent in US, but also internationally but it is also gonna be more cost, I assume.

John Rizvi: It’s more cost, but the beauty is that there are international treaties. The most well known and probably you’ve see, heard it abbreviated as the P ct. Treaty. Then the PCT stands for Patent Cooperation Treaty. Now this is an international treaty signed by and the number keeps going up. I don’t know, 150, 160 countries. Now all of these countries have gotten together and they’ve agreed that if any one of our any inventor in any of our countries files an application, yes, all of us have agreed to give him a one year grace period to file anywhere else. And as long as they file anywhere else international application within a year of their local filing the law will treat the, all the [00:16:00] applications as if they were filed on that first filing date. It’s a way to get international protection without spending a single cent on international patents. You just file,

Jason Hsieh: but you only last one year.

John Rizvi: For one year. Yeah,

Jason Hsieh: for one year. Okay. Okay. After that, what happened after one year?

John Rizvi: Yeah. Within the year you have to, first you file your local application, say in the United States, local is into your country, and then within the year you file a PCT application. So as long as you file that PCT within the year, then you are automatically protected in a hundred and sixty, fifty, a hundred sixty countries. Anybody that’s a signatory to this treaty. As if you had filed the international application on the date of your first filing. So it goes all the way back to your original date. It’s really a beautiful system to where an inventor, it’s still a lot of money, but you can have worldwide protection. For about $10,000. That’s what the PP application costs. So I see it seems like a lot of costs, but $10,000 for 150, [00:17:00] 160 countries worth of IP protection. That’s really a bargain.

Jason Hsieh: So I have a follow up question on the co down the country, everyone, I have the most concern with China. How is PCT going to protect people in China? Copying your ideas.

John Rizvi: Yeah one big myth and the sense you talk about myths is that if your market is the US market, then if all you have is a US patent, the US patent can be used against imports. You don’t have to file necessarily in China to prevent competition in the United States.

Jason Hsieh: Oh, okay. Good to know.

John Rizvi: You follow the United States, your US patent will protect you. Yeah. It prevents anybody from making, using, selling, or importing, competing products into the US. Don’t even necessarily have to have international protection, if you’re concerned, is just the United States. Now, if you want somebody in China, prevent them from selling it in Canada. Then you can either file in Canada or you file for protection in China. And then you have a Chinese [00:18:00] patent as well.

Jason Hsieh: Okay. Okay. Okay, got it. So for those of our listener who is really new to this whole patent processes how long does each patent usually take? Let’s just talk about design and utility for a minute here.

John Rizvi: Yeah. So there’s two dates to keep in mind. The first one is how long does it take? Patent pending. Once you know, once you’re patent pending, then you can sell the idea. You can market, you can speak to investors. There’s a lot of things you can do. Nearly for a design patent you can be patent pending in about four to eight weeks.

Jason Hsieh: Oh, that’s pretty fast. Okay. Okay. Pretty fast.

John Rizvi: Yeah. So if you’re, if you have a product, for example, even right now you wanna launch for the Christmas season, the holiday season, you can, you still have time to follow for a design. And maybe even a utility. A utility patent takes about 12 weeks. But even 12 weeks to be patent pending is relatively quick, compared to how long it takes to get the patent. Get the patent that next. So getting the patent could take for a design patent could [00:19:00] take up to a year. So that’s a long time. Utility patents usually two to three years. Much longer. So 12 weeks doesn’t sound that bad to patent pending. Once you know that it’s three.

Jason Hsieh: I see. I see. And the other thing, I think that’s also very important because I also talk to a lot of inventor and also startup, toy entrepreneur in the toy and game space.

For the new entrepreneur, how do they determine if the idea is actually truly unique and patentable to begin with?

John Rizvi: Yeah, so it’s a great question. In order to be patentable, the idea has to meet three criteria. It has to be novel, which means it has to be a new idea. It has to be useful. Which generally the useful, basically, you can think of it as meaning it has to work. It can, so the patent office doesn’t look at it and say like this, like a Frisbee, what’s useful about this? It’s a toy. Most, some people say toys are not like useful, they’re not like [00:20:00] machines for creating or doing work, but they serve a purpose. They serve a use enjoyment of that’s use. So the panel, they’re not too strict on the utility, like it moves to meet that requirement. The third one is, the one that’s the hardest is non-obvious. The idea has to be non-obvious. To answer that, the most common question is, okay, what’s an example of an obvious change?

Jason Hsieh: Yeah.

John Rizvi: Typical, obvious changes are just changes in color, changes in just shape like something the same and you change the shape or changes in size, like something is super size or it’s super compact. Those are considered obvious changes unless there’s some obstacle that makes it harder to make something super small. Which is why in the beginning when hearing aids started getting smaller and smaller. They were patentable because there was a, an obstacle, there’s a challenge to making them smaller. As simple as just, alright, let’s just put in a new decimal measurement and make it smaller. [00:21:00] It was challenging. So the size is a, it has some obstacle to make it smaller. That can be non-obvious. Color usually is not changing. The color is not a big deal. That’s not gonna make something, a new idea. Again, unless that new color provides some advantage,some really unique advantage. You come up with a color for a car that reflects all heat much better. Or it repels insects or doesn,

Jason Hsieh: you make it invisible altogether.

John Rizvi: Yeah, exactly. Invisibility cloak in Harry Potter or something. Now you’re talking something patentable, but otherwise red, orange, blue. If the color doesn’t do anything, then that’s not enough to make something protectable.

Jason Hsieh: Got it. Got it. Okay. Thank you for that detailed explanation.

And the other thing because the people I talk to, sometimes they get confused between whole kind of different IP that we need to know as an entrepreneur. That’s obviously patent that we spend a lot of time earlier on, but that’s also trademark and copyright as well. Can we also touch on the other [00:22:00] two and the importance as an entrepreneur to have all three?

John Rizvi: Of course. And going back to that story about what my dream of creating the round Rubik’s cube. The company that created it, they called it The Impossible. Now, the not name, it was a brand. And that’s what you’re talking about when you talk about trademarks. You wanna talk about the branding, and it’s important to protect the branding because sometimes consumers remember the name and they go into stores looking for the actual name of the product. I’ll give you an example. So this right here. What would you call, what, what is, do you know what this is?

Jason Hsieh: A Post-It. Post-it note.

John Rizvi: Yeah. A post-it note. Exactly. Now why did you call it a post-it note? That’s a brand name of course. But this is not the, this is no longer the only company that makes these, if you go into an office supply store. You wanted this, it’s very hard to think of another name. People call it a post-it. Sometimes they’ll call it a like it’s really removable paper.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah.

John Rizvi: Re with [00:23:00] removable glue.

Jason Hsieh: I actually heard the story behind the inventor of that product is actually a failure. They’re supposed to have the glue that is not separable, but, and the chemical like compound they made actually make it very easy to,

John Rizvi: yeah. So a lot of inventions are some would call them failures because they didn’t work the way they were designed, but the people found out that there’s a purpose and there’s a benefit to it not doing. Now for us lawyers in the now everything’s going to digital signatures, but I’m 53 years old. I started with real contracts that everybody had to sign with a pen and paper. to tell clients where to sign. When we mailed documents, we would stick post-its on the document post. So with an arrow so they know where to sign. The benefit of this removable glue is once they sign. You don’t rip up the contract, it doesn’t damage the age, it doesn’t do anything. You take it off. So there’s a huge benefit to the type of glue that’s used.

Jason Hsieh: So that’s an example of the trademark. Can you also give an example of like copyright as well?

John Rizvi: Yeah, so copyrights are great [00:24:00] for, generally for creative work. That’s not an invention and it’s not a brand. So you might think, okay, so what’s not an invention and not a brand. Oftentimes to sell toys, you have to create videos. The video is copyrighted so that a competitor doesn’t copy your sales copy. Sales copy. It can be copyrighted. That’s creative expression. So you write an amazing email or an amazing drip campaign for your list that those, things are copyrightable and you copyright them. Now authors are very familiar with copyrights. You write a book. That’s protect that with a copyright.

Jason Hsieh: That’s actually a very controversial topic. I dunno if we have time to dig into it today. How about AI generated copywriting?

John Rizvi: Oh I’ve done a lot of interviews on that. It’s really tricky because under the US Constitution, a copyright author has to be a human. It’s

Jason Hsieh: but a human put in the prompt and change the

John Rizvi: Yep. And that’s where it gets tricky is [00:25:00] the prompt a sufficient amount of creativity to be entitled somebody to a copyright. There’s a lot of of case law still not settled. In fact, the original cases have to do with. When I say it has to be a human, there was a several years ago a photographer accidentally left their cell phone in a site in the jungle, believe it or not. And monkey picked it up and took a bunch of selfies with a cell phone. Now those selfies became internet famous, like they went viral all over the internet. And the owner of the phone now people started publishing, doing all kinds of things with the, that photograph. The owner of the phone tried to get a copyright for the. And the court refused and said that the author is not the owner of the phone. The author is the monkey. It’s the monkey, and a monkey is not a human, and therefore a monkey is not entitled to a copyright and they lost copyright protection.

Those cases have now become [00:26:00] relevant again. Because proponents saying that AI generated images should not be copyrighted. Saying that the author is chat GPT. As an ai, it’s software, it’s a machine, it’s a robot, and it’s not a human. So therefore it should not be protected. Those that are, arguing that it should be protected are saying that the software is a tool, and a tool is no different than a paintbrush. Like you can’t deny somebody to be the author of a painting because they used a brush. The brush is just a tool.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah. But the brush is too powerful right now. That’s where the, that’s the problem. That’s the problem. The, other thing that, wait a minute.

John Rizvi: AI is not just a paint brush. AI is way too powerful of a tool. We’ve never had a tool this powerful before, so it doesn’t powerful of a tool is doesn’t count. After all photographers use a camera And the camera is taking the picture. But the [00:27:00] difference is the human being is deciding which direction to point the camera deciding the lighting, the timing. There’s a lot of decisions. The difference with AI generated, products, whether it’s artwork or essays or books, is that the human input is really tiny compared to the creativity that the software produces. It’s gonna be years before we have a clear answer on that. I’ve a lot of research on this, so we could have a completely separate

Jason Hsieh: Yeah, that’s a very controversial topic

John Rizvi: on ai generated intellectual property and how to protect that.

Jason Hsieh: Going back to our conversation earlier, are there any specific strategy that you advise your client for the inventor or the entrepreneur that they can use to monitor and enforce their ip like in a efficient manner? Because how do you know if someone just copy you different platform, either online or offline? Do you have any tool that you use to monitor that?

John Rizvi: Yeah Of course for images there’s like watermarks. Like a lot of [00:28:00] companies will put watermarks into their images. If it is text, like if it’s sales copy or whatever there’s plagiarism checking software that will identify when somebody is copying. Unfortunately for physical products, there isn’t a technology solution. The best way most companies find out is that their own customers come to come back to them and say, Hey, I found this somewhere else cheaper. And you say, wait a minute, this is not supposed to be anywhere else because I have patent on it. That’s not a high tech way of finding out. That’s very low tech, but that’s the way most toy entrepreneurs find out that the product is being stolen, or

Jason Hsieh: at least Amazon’s trying to make things a little bit easier for the entrepreneur. That’s a tool in Amazon to report validation as well. I don’t know, have you deal with any of the brand yourself that’s also selling at Amazon to help them to,

John Rizvi: and that helps with Like trademark infringement and Amazon’s got a great they have some great ways that [00:29:00] without spending a lot of money on legal fees inventors can try to police their mark. If they see something, they can bring it to Amazon’s attention without having to hire a lawyer. So it, is a great way to protect your intellectual property. And I think Amazon, but it’s this, there’s all kinds of other platforms that offer the same thing. eBay offers the same thing, for example. That Amazon does something.

Jason Hsieh: The problem we haven’t encountered with some of our client that does have IP is when you try to enforce the right with Amazon’s team, the team, the entry level people that’s in charge doesn’t know whether or not it’s really infringing or not. It’s ah, it look close enough, but is it really infringing? And we have issue with some of our clients, oh, I have a trademark and, oh no, not trademark. I have a pat, a design pattern that I design, and one of our competitor copied the almost identical design. But then the Amazon rep come back and say, this is not the same. It something is a little bit different. So [00:30:00] it’s technically not infringing on your design pattern or something similar to not nature.

What would you say in that circumstance? Is that a time to hire someone like you that specialize in it?

John Rizvi: Yeah, a hundred percent. Now the beauty is that most times Amazon is takes the position of finding the allegedly infringing product to be infringing and they, write to the other competitor and threaten to take the site down, down most of a time unless they can get a letter from an attorney, a patent attorney. Showing that there is no infringement. So a lot of times Amazon is in favor of the plaintiffs or the person that believes their idea is stolen. Amazon just says, okay, we’re gonna put the burden on the person, the other company that’s selling, and they have to prove that they’re not infringing.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah. That align with a lot of my experience, but that’s also some scenario that Amazon doesn’t do that. That’s where it get very frustrating. Try to communicate and convince the [00:31:00] whoever, the person that’s typing note after the keyboard. Maybe it’s ai, I don’t know. But that is doing it that doesn’t really fully understand the spec or the scope of the patent as in the level that you do as a professional.

So as well, winding down in today’s interview, the last question I have is. What advice will you give to a brand new, like a startup toy entrepreneur who is just getting started in their product or toy company journey? When you come to different, all the different kind of IP they should be considering. What is the right time and when is the right time for each different type?

John Rizvi: Yeah. So I’ll tell you, the biggest mistake I’ve seen toying inventors make is that they think they have to have something super complicated in order to get protection. They don’t realize, like I talked about the post-it note, this is not complicated. This is removable glue on paper. And they generated a billion dollars of revenues based on this. Another well-known patent is the sleeve [00:32:00] on a cup of coffee. This is just a cardboard. And, it’s patented. And the inventor made a million dollars a year for 20 years off of this idea. One other quick example, and this would be the last one, but I, think this is important enough. So many towing inventors are like, whoa, this is nothing. This is so easy. Here’s container where the label, if you look at it, it’s upside down, right? So if you store it this way. The human mind is not happy seeing this bottle in this

Jason Hsieh: Yeah. Yeah. Region. Yeah.

John Rizvi: So what do you do? You store it upside down. Now the benefit is now when you need catchup, the catchup because of gravity is already here. But some would look at it and say are you kidding me? An upside down label? How is that patentable? But you can take two or three different features and combine them, like in this case, a nozzle that is non drip. And and the fact that the bottle is squeezable and soft, these three features combined can [00:33:00] provide for a patent. So it goes back to if you’re a toy inventor. Don’t write off patents because you think your idea is too simple. Like some people think that to get a patent, you have to have a cure for cancer or you have to have a flux capacitor. Going back to the back to the movie. It doesn’t, it could be something really simple that’s one big a disadvantage. And another thing is don’t overlook your brand. Sometimes the brand is phenomenal. Like this, get the patent on the idea, but also get the name posted is an incredibly powerful name. So it’s good. They got the name protected as well. And then finally, the third area. Don’t forget copyrights. If you write an amazing email or you create a mar a great video, copyright it so that your competitors don’t steal that.

Jason Hsieh: I see. Thank you so much for piece of advice. And also the major benefit of having the trademark is you get into Amazon brand registry, which is very, important if. But thank you so much for being on today’s podcast. Where can people find you [00:34:00] online?

John Rizvi: my own trademark is the Patent Professor. So if you type in the patent professor that’s our website, thepatentprofessor.com. But type in the patent professor on any social media platform, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, it doesn’t matter. And you’ll find us the patent professor and that’s what I was known as when I, in my years of teaching as a professor, and that’s how I branded my law firm.

Jason Hsieh: I see. That’s a great trademark, by the way. Very memorable. Very easy to spell.

So for our listeners, thank you again for tuning into today’s episode of Toy Business Unbox podcast. We hope you have enjoyed the conversation and find it insightful, inspiring. If you like what you have heard, be sure to subscribe to our podcast on your favorite platform so you’ll never miss a episode. We really appreciate your support and we love that you can leave us a review or share the podcast with your friend and colleague for more resource tip and the latest update in the toys and game industry.

Visit our website at toy-launch.com. Join the conversation and connect with us on social media using [00:35:00] hashtag ToyBusinessUnboxed. We’d love to hear your feedback and suggestion for future episode. Until next time, keep innovating, keep creating, and keep bringing joy to toys. This is Jason hsieh signing off on the Toy Business Unbox podcast. I’ll see you in the next episode. Thank you everyone.