00:11
Joining us on the Cago News Live line, the patent Professor John Rizvi, now is this essentially basically a free for all when it comes to theft and counterfeiting and using other people's intellectual property. Yeah, it is.
00:25
And I think people forget that patent, you know, patent rights are territorial. So there's no such thing as a world patent. So they're based on geography, and in times of war, like countries protect their own territory. And that's exactly what's happening with these two decrees that are in Russia, essentially allowing anyone to, to violate patents with no consequences.
00:51
So let's talk about companies like McDonald's like Starbucks, what does this mean for them?
00:57
So it's, first of all, it's a huge economic losses for the physical plants, like Coca Cola has got shadows, I think McDonald's has $50 million a month of losses, they have 850 physical stores. But from an intellectual property standpoint, Russia could reopen those stores without permission. And all of the money goes right into the oligarchs pockets.
01:24
Well, that doesn't seem good. So you know, I mean, what can be done? It's Vladimir Putin's world, the rest of us apparently are just renting.
01:33
It's, it's, you know, there's some steps companies can take, there are limited options, but certainly anyone with a bigger patent portfolio, they need to take an inventory, get a picture of what IP they have that's registered in Russia. Second, they can document exactly how the IP is being used. And for, for example, for software and hardware companies, they can look at methods of like trying to block reverse engineering, or piracy. It's it really is that a technology solution might be the best option at this point. Because, you know, in times of war, I guess they say always fair. So that's, that's unfortunately, the the options that are left is to try to find a technical solution, try to see if there's some way to at least document the piracy so that if they have to bring legal action in the future, they have the evidence and the documentation to do that.
02:30
All right, the patent Professor John Rizvi joining us on The Koga News Live line, thank you for your time this morning.
02:36
Thank you. Thank you. It's been a pleasure.
00:05
Take a quick look at the patent. And just like what a good what any good patent attorney will do is draft it broadly. So it covers much, much more than the actual product. And you leave off things like dimensions or colors or, or shapes that you have. So you had a patent search done. And because obviously, you want to find out if you're reinventing the wheel, or if your ideas actually original. So was that checking process? The Wait,
00:36
why was a well what was interesting, and I really credit our patent attorney for doing a really good job helping educate us around the process and understanding prior art, which is such a critical component to any patent submission, which basically, if you don't do that search and reference other things that have come before you that may have led to your development of your idea, then your patent can be denied. And so our attorney did a really good job. And we went through that search together. I mean, we would look up things and then, you know, of course patent patents go back to the 1800s in this country. So it's interesting, the things that you start finding, but I think, you know, he did a great job. And even when we were ready to submit, we had the engineering designs and the and the drawings and all of those things. We had references the prior art. So I feel like we were we were we were putting our best foot forward. And you do wait, you wait it for us. We waited about two years, I think before we heard our approval. So during that time, it is a little nerve wracking because you're out there, you're selling products, and there's a chance that you know, you would be denied. Thankfully, that was not the case with us. But yeah, it is a little bit nerve wracking, but I think it really does benefit you to have a very knowledgeable and experienced patent attorney because it's such an important part of the process.
01:54
In that it prevents you from having to compete against because you're not, you know, Walmart, you're not going to be able to compete on price against some huge multinational corporation. So just having the intellectual property is a key.
02:10
And we did file for a provisional so I remember so it was actually in business school. Monique and I both went to Columbia Business School. And that's when we first wrote the business plan for soulmates. And so when we were in school, somebody had said something about a provisional patent. And I always tell inventors or prospective inventors to look into doing that because then it gives you a one year period to file your your official utility or design patents and I like that idea because not only do you put yourself first in line or give yourself priority in line, but you also have that timer going so it really is kind of that push to get you going to to research whether or not you can actually move forward with officially patenting and the idea