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In the world of business, not all deals are what they see.
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Fortunes rise, empires crumble, all with a stroke of a pen.
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Mergers, acquisitions, and hostile takeovers.
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Welcome to Mergers She Wrote, where we examine strategies and stories behind the biggest deals in business.
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Because in MA, the real risks are the ones you don't take.
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Welcome back to Mergers She Wrote.
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I'm Paloma Goggins, your host and the owner of Nocturnal Legal.
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Today's guest is the owner of her own intellectual property law firm.
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And she's here to spill all the details as to how you can protect your intellectual property and how IP takes a big role in mergers and acquisitions.
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Michelle, it is so lovely to have you on today.
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Thank you so much for having me.
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It's a pleasure to be here.
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Yeah, so I Michelle Gross is the owner of her own law firm, but I would love for her to do her introduction because she's also an esteemed professor.
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So please introduce yourself for us.
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All right, so my background is actually in physics.
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Um and additionally, I also have a business degree in finance.
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So I have kind of a mixed background for an IP attorney.
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Um I've been teaching for uh over 15 years now at uh Arizona State and also at Washington University, um, directing their intellectual property law clinic, um, and in addition, obviously, to my to my law firm, which is uh a transactional intellectual property practice.
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Very nice.
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I I want to dispel one rumor right off the bat because a lot of people will ask me as a business attorney, can you do patents?
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And so I'll let Michelle explain it, but you need a patent bar.
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So explain like what's the difference between me and you in terms of patent bar and all of the licensing involved to be an IP attorney.
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Yeah, so in order to be a patent attorney, a person needs to have a minimum of a four-year science or engineering degree to be able to qualify to sit an additional bar exam, which is the patent bar exam.
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And so um, once uh a person sits that exam, then assuming that they also have a law degree, they will become a patent attorney.
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Um, but there are actually patent agents.
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So if a person passes the patent bar exam and does not choose to become an attorney, um, they they still can can actually represent clients and draft patents and and file before the patent office.
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Oh, good to know.
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I I didn't know that.
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So even a lesson for me today.
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I suspect I'll have more lessons today because I know I know a little bit about uh trademark and things like that, but I am uh I'm not well versed in the patent world.
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So I'm very uh interested and excited to learn from you today.
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So I'd love to just jump in.
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We'll start with uh the first question I have for Michelle today, and then we'll just take it from there.
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So when you're brought into diligence on an acquisition, so anybody who's looking to buy or sell a business, you go through the diligence process, which is really just a fancy way of saying investigating the business, making sure you want to buy it.
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Uh, what is the first thing to look for in a company's intellectual property portfolio?
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And can you share an example where that early review might have made a big difference?
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Sure, absolutely.
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So I like to think of it as kind of there, there are two prongs of topics that are of utmost importance when undertaking due diligence.
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So the first one is validity of the actual intellectual property.
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Um, the second one would be ownership issues.
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So let's dive into validity first.
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So when we're talking about validity, typically we're thinking about patents and uh you know what's going on in a company's patent portfolio.
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So um so there are a number of issues that can that can impact whether or not an issued patent is actually valid and enforceable.
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So the first would be there may have been issues that occurred during the examination process where potentially the examiner did not find relevant prior art and did not make the proper rejections that they should have, and then the patent ends up issuing when really it shouldn't have, if the examiner would have had everything before them that they should have been looking at.
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So that's issue number one.
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Um so if we're seeing patents in the portfolio that have claims that appear to be quite broad for the period of time in which the application was filed, we really want to dig into that a bit more to see you know, is should this patent really even have issued in the first place?
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Because if not, um and and if it turns out that um, you know, it really shouldn't have issued, if you go and try to enforce that patent, your your opponent is obviously going to find that same prior art that should have been cited, point that out, and you're gonna end up with the patent becoming invalidated at that point.
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So it's important to know those types of things.
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There are other issues that then after the patent issues that can lead to invalidity.
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So for example, um patents in the US have maintenance fees that need to be paid three and a half, seven and a half, and eleven and a half years after the patent issues to keep the patent in force.
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If you don't pay the fee, the patent lapses.
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Okay, so um it's important to check and see are you know, are there were the maintenance fees paid?
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Or potentially, you know, has something lapsed that you think would still be uh enforceable?
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Um in in the foreign patenting realm, um, annual annuities need to be paid to keep those patents in force.
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And so it's important to look into that to see, you know, has that actually occurred or not.
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It's also important to check the court records to see has has has this patent been litigated before?
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And if so, was there anything that, you know, were there any claims that were invalidated?
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What happened in that litigation?
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So it you really kind of have to, you know, to do some some real work to dig into that and make sure that what you have is actually valid.
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Now, ownership is another big issue.
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So very frequently, obviously, when companies are building a patent portfolio, you know, they've got a number of engineers and employees working on these things.
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Well, things don't always work out well, right?
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And so sometimes we end up with disgruntled employees who leave the company.
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And if they have not actually assigned their ownership back to the company, that can cause a problem.
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Because with a patent, all of the co-inventors that are present on an issued patent have equal rights in what they can do with that patent.
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And there's no requirement that they have to account to the other inventors.
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So let's say you had three inventors on it on a patent, and you know, one of the engineers becomes disgruntled, leaves the company, refuses to sign any of the documents, doesn't assign ownership to the company.
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That person then still has as much rights as what the company does that the other two have assigned to you.
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Interesting.
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So they can go out, they can license, they, you know, they can um you know do all sorts of things, and they and there's no requirement then that the profits from whatever they're doing to monetize this would have to be shared.
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So you can see where that can has potential to create some huge messes if you have those loose ends sitting out there.
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And it's not uncommon that you know you'd end up with the we call it a hostile inventor situation where the inventor just says, I want nothing to do with this, I'm not going to sign anything.
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Um, and so so really the way what you want to do to protect against that is to make sure that uh that as a company that your employees are bound by a good IP agreement, when which should just be part of the standard paperwork that they're signing when they come on with the company.
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Um additionally, if there are any independent contractors involved, you want to make sure that they have a good IP agreement in place where all of that is is basically obligated to be assigned over to the company because that way if this person refuses to comply and refuses to assign, you now have a contract that you can enforce against them.
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And I think that last point is is so valid, not just in the MA space, because for starters, if you're acquiring a business and we find out you don't have those contracts in place, the chance that you have a patent or some other, even just general intellectual property that could be there so that they can make a claim to impacting overall the the value of the assets you're purchasing, um massive impact, but also there's so many people, especially in the valley that I speak to that are starting their you know business with friends, with family, you know, business partners that they've met along the way.
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And everyone is so quick to trust.
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And I always say, okay, operating agreement, you got to get one of those in place.
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It's like the um I always say it's like the prenup of businesses.
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But also to your point, you've got to have if if the people are also contributing and inventing and doing things that are related to what is being produced by the company, that's gotta be factored into the operating agreement and also probably an employment document of some kind, whether that's a 1099 and an independent contractor agreement, or even just flat out assignment of rights, right?
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Um I always hate it when people come to me and they have, you know, they're like, oh, you know, I want to jump ship, you know, this big corporation that I work for and I want to go work with my cousin who's doing some really cool stuff, kind of related.
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Look at my contract.
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Can you like tell me, you know, is there non-compete?
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What was the restrictions?
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And they've got like that chunky, like giant one page of like all discoveries, inventions, thoughts, process, you know, and that that that's a good job on our part from an attorney's perspective, like working for the company, right?
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But um, sometimes it's so broad that it encompasses everything they do, even if it's unrelated to the business.
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And so I always tell people, I'm like, yeah, it goes both sides.
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Companies gotta protect what they're you know, making and and investing their money into from an RD perspective.
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But on the flip side, the employees too gotta also think about what's the longevity for them.
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Are they gonna be at this company forever?
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You know, let's not overstep the boundaries.
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So I love that you brought that up, the assignment of the IP part.
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Going back to what you said about the patent stuff, um, you know, so let's say you've got, you know, people that just you were talking about having a patent file, but it's not very enforceable.
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Like, how frequently does that occur?
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Is that something that's common?
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Does it happen when like corners are cut?
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Like, how does that happen in the first place?
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Yeah, that's a good question because there there are a number of instances where that that occurs.
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So some of it is just basically, uh I mean, some of it just falls on the examiner, how how good a job the examiner is going to do.
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But anyone who is associated with the drafting and filing of the patent, meaning the inventors, the attorney, the company that owns the patent, everyone has an obligation to disclose anything that's material to patentability that they're aware of to the patent office so that it gets before the examiner.
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Now, a lot of a lot of inventors are smart enough to realize, okay, this is going to be damaging and this might cause my patent not to issue, and they may be reluctant to disclose it.
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The reason that you actually want to err on the side of disclosing everything, I mean, not only do you have an obligation to do it, but if if the examiner actually considers those references, then they get printed on the front page of the patent that when it issues, and there's actually a presumption of validity over all of those references.
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Okay, so so basically, I mean, sometimes it can just be that the examiner doesn't do a very good job.
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Um, you know, other times it can be that someone was trying to hide the ball and you know, files on something.
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It's it seems to be very industry specific.
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I mean, I've I've, you know, for example, I had um a client in the um additive manufacturing, they basically made um industrial additive manufacturing, so industrial 3D printing equipment.
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And, you know, they had a competitor that was very, very big on enforcing and wanting to, you know, wanting to come after them for every little thing.
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And they had some patents that issued that were just incredibly broad that they were attempting to assert or threatening to assert.
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And it was really not very difficult to run a prior art search and find art that would actually knock that out and invalidate that patent if they wanted to pursue it.
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So I, you know, how exactly that went through got through, and the examiner didn't find any of these things, you know, that's somewhat of a mystery.
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Um, sometimes it'll be that there is um maybe there's a foreign reference that really reads on something, or there's a product being sold in a foreign country that would read on the client's invention, and the examiner just doesn't find it because it's the whatever describes it as written in a foreign language, or you know, they just don't, they're just not doing a thorough enough internet search.
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They're looking just at patents and publications, but really there's a product out there that would read on it, and therefore that would invalidate the patent.
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So there's a number of ways that things can actually get missed, just innocently, basically.
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So that's interesting.
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It's I feel like one of the things that's so common, and it kind of ties into the question I asked and the next question that was I was gonna ask, but when you see people really fighting over trade names that they've registered, um, I feel like part of me coming from a non-IP background, I you know, when someone gets sent a letter and it's a threatening letter and it sounds really serious.
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I think for most just lay people or the regular, the regular person who doesn't have a background in business law or intellectual property law, they look at it and it looks really scary.
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I what is really the difference for for anyone listening?
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Like, what is the difference between someone who's writing a letter and they really do have an enforceable right from a trade name or trademark perspective, versus someone who's really just, like you said, throwing their weight around and hoping that people comply, even though it's really not very enforceable?
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Yeah, so what you really need to look at there is first of all, I mean, there's a number of issues.
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So obviously, whoever's trying to enforce against you has to be the senior user.
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So were they actually using the mark first?
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Or, you know, do they even know when you started using the mark?
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Are they just taking a stab in in the dark to see if they can shake the trees and get somebody to comply who doesn't know what they're, you know, who isn't gonna get counsel and actually have this reviewed?
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But secondly, it's also from an infringement perspective, do the goods and services actually overlap?
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And is the name actually confusingly similar?
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Those are the things that you have to really look at because you know, somebody can have a similar sounding name, but if the if the goods and services aren't really related, wouldn't typically be sold in the same channels of trade, et cetera, then you know that's not going to be enforceable.
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So it really is important to have an IP attorney actually look at that and to and to determine the merits.
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Because I've definitely had a lot of small businesses come to me and because they've received a season-to-sist letter.
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And when you really look at the merits, there's really nothing here.
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And a good response letter back from an IP attorney will typically take care of that matter, unless for whatever reason, you know, the client is now has now started to tread into the territory of large companies that have very deep pockets.
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Those, you know, generally are going to create more of a problem.
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I mean, I've had clients who have, you know, come to me with issues, they've you know treaded into the territory of a major motion picture company, uh a major university, various things like that.
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So if that's the case, um, you know, now you you they have deep pockets and and you probably want to address that very differently because they are typically given a wider breadth of ability to enforce the their marks, if they're famous marks or if they're um basically, you know, large companies that have deep pockets that are gonna just keep fighting.
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That that's a different approach than if you just get you know cease and desist from someone that appears to be out there just fishing around to see, okay, well, we for whatever reason we woke up and we want to police our trademarks now where we hadn't been doing that.
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So it's unfortunate to hear.
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I mean, I know it's in practice, it's just what happens when it's big corp versus small private companies, but I think it's it's sad to always hear from from you know, someone who lives and breathes the intellectual property world to be like, yeah, you know, it's a different story when it's you know a big corporation that might be able to throw their weight around or bury you in legal fees or you know, do things to make your life miserable, even if maybe at the end of the day their their mark isn't, you know, isn't so similar or they can't enforce their rights like they claim they do, but they're going to make it difficult and spend your money and make you essentially submit to their will, right?
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Um did you see, and I think this is a while back now, but your your explanation of things brought it to the forefront of my mind, but that um woman who the Sprite uh name lapsed, did you read about that?
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No, I had I wasn't aware of that.
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So um, and I I might be misrepresenting this because I I read it quite while quite a while ago.
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So don't hold my feet to the fire on the details here.
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But um there was a woman who was like an artist or a singer or something like that, and uh her name is Sprite, and she had found that the I I don't remember if it was the the trademark or the trade name or whatever it was, it had lapsed or it was available.
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And so, you know, Sprite had been Sprite forever, and um they found out that she had essentially swooped in in this window, which like you were talking about this, like you know, there's maintenance fees and all these things to keep things going, and um it lapsed and she she swapped, you know, swooped in and was owning it.
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And so, of course, you know, uh I think Coca-Cola is like the big brand behind Sprite, and they like, you know, came to her with an offer, and the offer was pretty big.
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And uh she to my knowledge, based on what I've read, pretty much told them to pound sand, and that is now why we have Stari, because they never got it back, and so they had to rebrand.
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And um I think it was just a fascinating story because it it shows that even the big brands are susceptible to this idea that you know, even though they might be able to bully the smaller businesses with their, you know, whether it's in compliance or not and infringes on on a bigger mark, but they're just as susceptible to to lapses when uh you know something needs renewal or a payment.
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Um and whether she made the right decision, I think is to be determined.
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I think she I had found her social media account and she was posting like regret reels because they had, you know, she could have had a bunch of money in the bank and just used a different name.
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Uh and they carried on it without much uh damage to the to the brand.
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Um so I think from that perspective, I mean, are there, you know, I would think that there's people out there being just bad actors waiting for things to lapse.
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Yeah, there are.
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There definitely are.
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Um and and so it's it's really important that if you have a trademark that you're aware of when those deadlines are and that you're tracking that and that you're filing your renewal documents uh in a timely manner, it's also important that you're actually policing your mark.
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Because if you fail to police and you basically are allowing others to be out there infringing, just because you know maybe it's a younger company and they just say, Well, I don't want to spend the money on enforcement, okay.
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Well, if you're letting your mark be used out there and and it's being infringed upon legitimately, what happens then later when you wake up and say, Oh, I I I I want to shut this down now.
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I've got you know sufficient revenue in my company and I can go out and police this.
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If it's been too long, okay, you you've basically the the doctrine of latches applies.
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And what it means is if you've slept on your rights, you've lost them.
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So you basically could have a registration, but if you've allowed it to be trampled and be widely infringed, you're you're basically not going to be able to enforce that.
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The you know, the defendant can actually apply that and say, well, we thought it was up for grabs, we thought it was, you know, was perfectly fine to use.
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You we've been using this for five years and you didn't say a word.
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So that's something else to, you know, that if you have trademarks that you're concerned with protecting, you do need to actually, you can't put your head in the sand, you do need to be looking at what's going on out there and then getting those cease and desist letters out.
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A lot of it, if you can get um, you know, the infringer get to the infringers early, a lot of it is innocent infringement.
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And a lot of the times when I send a cease and desist letter, it the person contacts me back and says, Oh, I had no idea that there was someone had that mark.
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Okay, I, yep, you know, can you give me, you know, three months to be able to rebrand?
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And it was like, yeah, okay, sure, that's fine.
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That's workable.
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So you're shutting it down and and you know, making sure that all of that stays in check.
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Um, but yeah, you can't simply ignore infringement that's going on out there, or that can actually cause you to lose your mark.
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That's really fascinating.
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I I was thinking, you know, similarities that people might liken it to as a memory trigger to remember to keep track of your marks is like it when you were explaining it, I was thinking of an easement.
00:21:02.400 --> 00:21:11.680
You know, the old law school example of like, you know, the next door neighbor's kids cut across your lawn every day to go to the bus stop and you never stop them.
00:21:11.839 --> 00:21:16.640
And all of a sudden the kids can use your yard to cross for the bus stop legally.
00:21:16.880 --> 00:21:19.039
You've created an easement that is enforceable.
00:21:19.200 --> 00:21:22.559
Same concept, um, different, different, uh, different law.
00:21:23.119 --> 00:21:25.599
Um, but no, that's that's really fascinating.
00:21:25.759 --> 00:21:40.880
I so for someone who, you know, obviously hiring someone like yourself to do some digging and some real searching to make sure that no one else is utilizing a trademark is probably the best um approach.
00:21:41.039 --> 00:21:51.440
But for someone who maybe is a younger company and doesn't have the funds besides Google, like what else can they do to make sure that they're doing at least a little bit of digging here and there?
00:21:51.839 --> 00:22:05.519
Yeah, I mean, so so basically you'd want to go to the US PTO's records because for anything that's for a trademark that's registered or patent that's issued, you can, it's publicly accessible to see what occurred in the entire file wrapper of all the back and forth with the examiner.
00:22:05.759 --> 00:22:12.240
So you can look at that and see, you know, does it there are search records in there to see, okay, how good a search did the examiner exact actually do?
00:22:12.400 --> 00:22:24.079
Um, you know, did they, you know, come up with were the references cited, or does it look like they really, you know, they they they used a you know a three-word search string and that's all they came up with and they likely have missed things.
00:22:24.240 --> 00:22:26.720
So you can start to glean information like that.
00:22:26.880 --> 00:22:31.440
Um, and obviously the trademarks are publicly available as well, so you can look at all of those records.
00:22:31.599 --> 00:22:41.359
You can check to see if um the patent maintenance fees have been paid, you can check to see if um the renewals have been have been filed correctly on the on the trademarks as well.
00:22:41.680 --> 00:22:42.799
Okay, good to know.
00:22:43.119 --> 00:23:01.359
I feel like in my world, working a lot in mergers and acquisitions, you know, one of the things that's a key component in an asset sale where you're not just stepping into the shoes of the previous owner is making sure that all of the intellectual property gets assigned appropriately.
00:23:01.759 --> 00:23:16.799
I would imagine that finding out through diligence that the ownership isn't sound or the enforceability isn't sound could greatly impact the value of the assets that are being purchased.
00:23:17.119 --> 00:23:30.400
You know, from your perspective, if you were working with a client and your, you know, potential buyer, helping them through the diligence process, looking at ownership, making sure the intellectual property that's getting purchased is sound.
00:23:30.559 --> 00:23:44.000
And I think a lot of people they overcomplicate what intellectual property is because I think a lot of people when they hear those that phrase, they think, you know, widget or gadget or you know, watch or you know, uh something that's more technical.
00:23:44.720 --> 00:23:56.240
But in reality, IP can also encompass your brand, just generally speaking, and and with a lot of small, closely held businesses that don't have very many contracts, shame on you.
00:23:56.400 --> 00:24:05.440
Um, you know, the brand can be pivotal um to what you're purchasing because there's not much else left besides goodwill and the branding and the name.
00:24:05.759 --> 00:24:09.920
So, you know, what would be something that you would tell them if you found these things?
00:24:10.079 --> 00:24:12.559
Like, would you recommend that they not buy the business?
00:24:12.799 --> 00:24:14.160
Could that be some a path?
00:24:14.240 --> 00:24:27.680
Like, what would be your sort of, and and this is not legal advice, don't take this as legal advice, but um, you know, what would be something that you would tell them in relation to that so that anybody who's going through that process could be aware, like, hey, this is serious.
00:24:28.079 --> 00:24:30.400
Yeah, so so I mean that that definitely happens.
00:24:30.480 --> 00:24:47.759
Um, and it and it certainly impacts the valuation um uh uh on the acquisition because I mean I had a client that um has has acquired a number of different entities um in various product lines, and they were looking at acquiring an actual uh another entity.
00:24:48.000 --> 00:25:04.400
The entity claimed and gave us a list of the IP, which I did due diligence on, and then they they had what appeared to be a fairly significant foreign patent portfolio, and they were selling in foreign markets where my client was interested in in obviously maintaining that you those product lines there.
00:25:04.640 --> 00:25:11.759
And when we started digging into it, and and you know, to do the foreign research, I have to go through foreign counsel and have them dig into some of these things.
00:25:12.000 --> 00:25:21.119
But it it it became clear that there were a lot of the foreign portfolio had actually lapsed because the annuity payments, the the maintenance fees had not been paid.
00:25:21.279 --> 00:25:21.759
Oh shoot.
00:25:22.000 --> 00:25:31.440
And I I don't think it was actually a misrepresentation by the the company that that was you know trying to get the deal done because they seemed to be genuinely shocked at the fact that they didn't know.
00:25:31.599 --> 00:25:32.000
Yeah.
00:25:32.240 --> 00:25:32.799
They didn't know.
00:25:33.279 --> 00:25:33.759
Bummer.
00:25:34.319 --> 00:25:34.640
Yeah.
00:25:34.799 --> 00:25:37.680
But so that obviously, I mean, there was still value there.
00:25:37.759 --> 00:25:58.000
So the deal actually did go through, but it went through at a much lower valuation than what, you know, I mean, than what it could have had that, because I mean my client was still interested in obviously being able to sell those products, they were established in that market, but obviously, you know, there's a there's a loss of value there when you know that you can't actually enforce against competitors.
00:25:58.160 --> 00:26:03.039
So competitors can just come in and sell a competing product and there's nothing you can do.
00:26:03.440 --> 00:26:08.799
But yeah, that would be disastrous, um, especially if you're like you know buying one product.
00:26:08.960 --> 00:26:12.240
It's not like a product, a product uh portfolio.
00:26:12.400 --> 00:26:27.359
But yeah, I I was thinking the more you talk about the different ways that this can come back and bite someone as a buyer, was thinking about how like HVAC is a hot topic, is a hot, hot buy right now, right?
00:26:27.440 --> 00:26:31.440
Especially private equity buyers, they love the trades right now.
00:26:31.759 --> 00:26:37.680
And you know, thinking long and hard about how like there's usually not a whole ton of IP.
00:26:37.839 --> 00:26:40.559
There's, you know, the the branding associated with the business.
00:26:40.720 --> 00:26:49.279
Um, not very often that you find an HVAC company that also has an inventor of some special tool or piece that gets incorporated into like an HVAC service.
00:26:49.519 --> 00:26:51.359
Um, I th although it could happen.
00:26:51.519 --> 00:27:01.920
Um, but you know, one thing that has come up from time to time that I think is a complementary discussion to what we're saying is the the Google profile.
00:27:02.160 --> 00:27:12.319
Um, for a lot of businesses, people don't think too long and hard about the social media aspect of being part of the brand and that ownership.
00:27:12.559 --> 00:27:28.319
And if you buy the business and that profile isn't appropriately transferred, which Google is ultra sensitive, I've seen transfers go wrong where the Google profile gets frozen or temporarily banned.
00:27:28.559 --> 00:27:34.400
And Google's not as responsive, of course, as everybody wants them to be when things go wrong.
00:27:34.640 --> 00:27:48.640
And if your entire business livelihood is based on people calling your business by finding it online, having your Google profile either be bad or missing could be absolutely detrimental post-closing and your revenue just isn't there.
00:27:48.799 --> 00:28:06.559
So flip side and complimentary kind of buyer-beware story is if you don't have the proper rights to the the get the gadgets, the widgets, the products, you know, how how enforceable are your rights post-closing if someone starts selling an identical product?
00:28:06.720 --> 00:28:09.440
Um and and does that hurt your revenues?
00:28:09.519 --> 00:28:10.400
And same thing.
00:28:10.640 --> 00:28:18.640
If no one can find your number online, you're no longer in the Google Map Pack or however you want to phrase it, that's gonna impact your revenues too.
00:28:18.799 --> 00:28:24.000
So I think there's so much more to the IP conversation than people really realize.
00:28:24.319 --> 00:28:25.440
Yeah, there definitely is.
00:28:25.519 --> 00:28:36.480
And something that I'm seeing more frequently now that I've got clients who are using a lot of these types of platforms to create the big basically uh platforms like Canva, and there's a number of them out there.
00:28:36.640 --> 00:28:43.440
And they're they're great tools for people to be able to actually, you know, grab templates and and you know, get artwork and do things like that.
00:28:43.680 --> 00:28:49.279
But one of the things that Canva allows people to do is and encourages them to do is to create a logo.
00:28:49.519 --> 00:28:49.839
Okay.
00:28:50.319 --> 00:29:06.000
And so, you know, this happened when basically um, you know, a client came to me, um, their goal is to be acquired, and they're starting to really take off, and they have just been, you know, just been crazy with their branding and just really put really pushing that.
00:29:06.240 --> 00:29:08.000
And they knew they had a number of issues.
00:29:08.079 --> 00:29:11.440
And so among them was that they needed some trademark protection.
00:29:11.680 --> 00:29:23.440
So they had actually, they had they had gone on Canva and they had designed their logo, okay, which they were using on all of their, you know, they have podcasts, they have all sorts of branding that's using this.
00:29:23.759 --> 00:29:29.039
And when I saw it, I just thought this looks oddly familiar in some way.
00:29:29.359 --> 00:29:36.240
And so I ran a reverse image search uh on Google to see, you know, is this out there somewhere?
00:29:36.400 --> 00:29:38.559
And there were a bunch of hits of things that came up.
