Exactly one week ago today, I went public with the story about how our trademark was being infringed on by three “founders” of a project that is now named “nobeefwanted” on Twitter and Instagram. Here are the lessons that you can learn from what happened; entrepreneurially, ethically, and socially.
Entrepreneurial lessons:
- The most obvious lesson that you can learn from our story is the importance of protecting your intellectual property. In any other situation, if we were not already protected and had registered our trademark, we would not have been able to enforce any kind of action from the infringing camp. We would have been forced to try to retroactively protect ourselves and we would have failed because of their competing application. Protect yourself FIRST and include the cost of your trademark in your start-up costs. Shontavia Johnson, Esq has compiled some resources here for those who would find it cost-prohibitive. It is always more expensive to try to protect yourself after the fact than to do so beforehand. Someone assumed that we could be steamrolled, but because we were strategic in protecting ourselves and made that a part of our starting our costs- they were unable to.
- It is ok to stay quiet and strategic while you are building. Social media has made it so that if you…
