Ep 38-IP Tracking for New and Existing Materials

Erin Austin: Hello, welcome to the Hourly to exit LinkedIn live broadcast. So welcome. I do these every last Wednesday of the month, and. I like to talk about the things that we cover on the Hourly to Exit Podcast. So for those of you who are new and we've not met before, I'm Aaron Austin. I'm the founder of Think Beyond IP, and the creator of the Hour to Exit podcast.

Erin Austin: I work with B2B professional services providers, those of us who are experts and use our intellect, and that our intellect is our major, our main inventory to help you create a business that is scalable and hopefully someday be scalable. And my angle as an IP lawyer is to make sure that you understand how to turn your expertise into intellectual property to create.

Erin Austin: To protect it, to monetize it through leverage strategies. And so at, in response to a number of conversations that I've had recently about, um, intellectual property and how to protect it, I created the IP tracker, and that's what we're going to talk about today. Now, what I am trying to do, let's see, is put a link to it.

Erin Austin: in the chat, but it doesn't let me do that. I wonder why, um, does do anyone who doesn't have it already, let me just see here. Um, how can I get you a copy of it? Um, I am going to, you

Erin Austin: put it, Hmm. I wonder if I.

Erin Austin: what we're gonna do is put a comment in the chat If you don't have a copy of the IP tracker and I will see about just emailing it to you because I thought I could put a link to it in the comments and I can't. And I am gonna see if my assistant is around as well. Um, can you put a link to.

Erin Austin: Okay, there we go. All right. So in any case, we will make sure you get that. I am going to go over it live on screen so you can see it as well. But I wanted to start with just some background about it, about why it's important and, um, what, how it can help you in your business. So, if. Or anything like me, I am a lawyer, but I'm also a major creator of intellectual property.

Erin Austin: I write a lot. I talk a lot. I do the podcast. I have a newsletter I post on LinkedIn, and so I have. Intellectual property everywhere. And as I, uh, like to describe, you know, intellectual property is the product of your intellect. So if you're an expert, you are creating intellectual property all the time.

Erin Austin: So I don't want you to think of IP as just things like books or courses or software. It's everything that. Uh, is the result of our intellect. Once we put something on paper, on video, uh, recording it, we are creating intellectual property. So yes, it is things like books and courses, but it's also, uh, the standards, uh, and uh, standards of procedure that you have inside your business.

Erin Austin: It is the framework that you use. It is the deliverables that you make for your clients. They are the deliverables that you're receiving from your subcontractors. And so all these things are intellectual property, and we want, in order to build a business, an expertise-based business that has those foundations for creating products, having scale, um, My dog is gonna join us.

Erin Austin: Uh, and having a business that is not simply in out selling our time, we need to make sure we are creating assets and that we're tracking them because we can't protect what we don't track. And so if you recognize that you. Lots of content, lots of intellectual property assets that are here and there, struggling to keep, um, track of them or not tracking them at all, or if you're worried about losing control of those.

Erin Austin: Thank you, Stacy. Um, if you're worried about losing control of your assets, uh, because you know, we have to expose them to third parties, we expose them to our clients, we expose them to our employees, we expose them to contractors. Again, we wanna make sure that we're tracking these things so we can make best use of them.

Erin Austin: So I'm going to. Um, an analogy to talk about why it is so important that we start today. I mean, just from a purely. Business building perspective. Every intellectual property asset that we create is another brick in our foundation for us to be building a high value business that we can scale and maybe sell someday.

Erin Austin: And those pieces are like compounding interest. We wanna do that, um, every day so that we don't lose any value. But my analogy for today is that of a retail. . And so what if we had a retail store where the inventory was just thrown in the back room? You know, no organization, everything mixed in together.

Erin Austin: You know, stuff in boxes, stuff in Shells, stuff in carts, and you know, how could we run a business that way? We couldn't run a business that way. We wouldn't know what we had in stock. We wouldn't know, um, you know, whether or not we're selling it for profitable, uh, amount because we're not tracking, you know, what it costs us.

Erin Austin: We don't know if some of it is walking out the door because we don't. Inventory of it. That's why when you're in a retail business, that inventory tracking is so important, but it's also very important in our businesses because our intellectual property is our inventory, so we need to make sure that we are tracking it to know that what we have, what we need, who's got it, what they're doing with it.

Erin Austin: This is how we make sure that we're keeping control of our most valuable. So the risks of not maintaining our inventory, tracking our inventory, updating our inventory, um, protecting our inventory aren't many. Here's just a few that, um, we'll talk about today. So, one. If you're not tracking your inventory, you could actually be in breach of your client agreements.

Erin Austin: Back to the deliverables, um, example, you know, there will be some of those deliverables. That are your preexisting materials and you're continue to own, some of those deliverables might be original and the client's gonna own them. But if we don't understand the difference between the two, one, we could be breaching our client agreements by using those deliverables that are a hundred percent.

Erin Austin: Theirs or we may be giving them too many rights and therefore they have the ability to use it without you Both are tragic, right? In addition, some client agreements may have restrictions on how you can use your own ip. We call those non-competes. Um, uh, if you follow me at all, you know I'm a rabid, an RAV, anti non-compete.

Erin Austin: No one should tell you how you can use your ip. That's yours. You have exclusive use for it. That's the value of it. Um, so, so, but we, sometimes we will have those non-competes in there. And so those put restrictions on how we can use our intellectual property. We need to make note of those restrictions so that we aren't actually dentally, breaching those client agreements.

Erin Austin: Uh, we, if we aren't tracking our ip, we won't know who else has access to it, who might be using it. You may have given someone the permission to use your IP in a very limited circumstance. Uh, But not indefinitely and not in other circumstances. And so we wanna make sure that we are tracking who's got what.

Erin Austin: That in that case, it's more like a library, right? Um, of, uh, understanding who has been lent your intellectual property. Uh, if we don't understand what of our intellectual property is confidential and that means that the value of it is that it is yours, it's your secret. Um, then we don't know when we need to make sure we're using non-disclosure agreements before we share it.

Erin Austin: And it's not just, you know, outside non-disclosure agreements, but it could be, um, just internally. Even, you know, among employees, it's not necessary, or you should not be sharing confidential business information with every single employee if it's not part of their, um, of their duties. Uh, so we wanna make sure that we're only sharing confidential information on an as needed basis, that we're using non-disclosure agreements when we do need to.

Erin Austin: Share it and that we are tracking it so that we're getting it back. If it's something that you need to, to give to some someone outside of your business, Uh, and then sometimes we simply don't own what we think we own. You know, things that we get from a certification program, things that we get off the internet, um, things that, um, we have access to because we're a sub subcontractor to somebody else.

Erin Austin: And so maybe we've been using these. inside of our business with our one-on-one clients, and so far it's not been a problem, but we need to make sure we understand that we have limited rights in those things. If we were to say, try to make our own training, uh, materials that incorporated those third party elements, we need to make sure we understand the limits of those rights so that we aren't breaching those agreements.

Erin Austin: So the IV tracker is designed to, um, help you track all these things. So create a one, one stop shop for creating the organized body of work. Um, you then you can access that climbing. For me, this is one of my personal problems is I've created a lot. Content I've written in different places, either LinkedIn or newsletter or presentations, and I create it in different places.

Erin Austin: You know, I'm an old school word, you know, outlook person, um, and Word and uh, um, Microsoft Office person. So I have some stuff in there, and every once in a while I'll try Google Docs and I never stay there. And so sometimes it's there. Sometimes I write something while I'm in my car and it's in my phone.

Erin Austin: And so having it all in one place, having it organized by topic, you know, this came up, um, recently I was talking to someone and I wanted to, uh, we were talking about ai and I'm like, oh, I wrote something up that's kind of analogous to this, and I. looked all over for it, and it was something that I had written originally in LinkedIn, so I didn't have a record of it in any of the places I was looking for it, and I finally found it on LinkedIn and, but it took a fair amount of my time to find that.

Erin Austin: And so having, uh, it tracked everything that you create tracked somewhere, uh, would've helped me in that instance. Um, creating, you know, everyone talks. repurposing your content. And that's not that easy to do if you don't know what you have, where it is, what you've already done, how to, you know, kind of, um, to massage it, to make it a little bit different or refresh it.

Erin Austin: Um, again, tracking those third party rights to make sure we're not accidentally tripping that up. And then it helps you understand what, how much you have actually, like when you use it as an IP journal, which is actually my next slide, which we're gonna talk. , it helps you really realize that you're creating how much intellectual property you're creating every day.

Erin Austin: You know, you know, even as you're taking notes perhaps, um, we we're always creating intellectual property, but you'll also see that. only. Some of it is really valuable. And so the IP tracker does help you distinguish between just all the stuff we have. You know, maybe a gazillion blog posts. Um, some of them may be real jams, probably a lot of 'em are, you know, , okay, but not super valuable, right?

Erin Austin: And so, which of those things do we need to protect or even get registration for, um, because it is so valuable. And then I think I'm blocking the last bullet there, but it talks about, you know, . If you, in the event you do want to sell your business and you have to go through the legal due diligence process, you know when you have this in place, you will sail through that, through that process.

Erin Austin: So if you have ever billed by the hour, Um, you know, how painful it is to not be tracking things daily, to not to have to go back and recreate things, um, after the fact. And, you know, I, when I started practicing law, um, it was pre, you know, app, you know, timekeeping, app time. She had to write everything down and it was very.

Erin Austin: If you didn't, uh, write everything down at the time. Now the IP tracker does require you to go in and, um, add your, uh, creations, uh, or the acquisitions because some things you get from third parties. You do need to make a habit of making sure you're tracking those things, but that's how you're going to have the most value out of it and the most confidence in the, in the, um, in the, in the materials that you.

Erin Austin: So we're gonna talk about the new materials and I'm hoping everyone has downloaded it by now. The um, there is a link in the show notes so you can get your free copy. Make sure you take it out of the Dropbox and download it because there are some dropdown menus in there. only works if you download it and it won't work inside a Dropbox.

Erin Austin: Uh, so we're gonna talk about, you know, using it as a journal so that you're adding your new materials on a daily basis or a weekly basis, so you're creating a habit and organizing it that way. But the thing. Uh, most people are worried about is what to do with all their existing materials. When I, uh, showed a draft of the IP Journal to some colleagues, and one of them described it as brutally comprehensive, because when you look at it, it's like, oh my God, this is a lot.

Erin Austin: Well, it's a lot because we have a lot of materials, uh, that we. Create, um, have created for us using our businesses that we, uh, re uh, acquired from third parties. That's the nature of being an expertise based business in the 21st century. The ip, it's everywhere, right? And so, but what I don't want is for you to feel overwhelmed by the process.

Erin Austin: So what we're gonna spend most of our time talking about is how to prioritize. Inventorying, cataloging your existing materials so that you make sure that you get those into your IP tracker. So I've put together a priority process. And so, um, and that way you can kind of, uh, attack this in, uh, a basis of priorities.

Erin Austin: So your first priority, the thing is you wanna get in there, um, At the first chunk, the first chunk of time that you take are going to be those things that you would hire a lawyer to protect in the event of an infringement. So for those of you who are trainers, you I'm sure have developed training materials.

Erin Austin: There are your proprietary materials. Those are the things that you go into your clients for. Um, Stacy, I. Uh, I think so. I'm almost positive anyone with Dropbox can, can do that. If you can't let me know and, um, we'll try to, uh, email it to you. Um, I, um, and so the things that you would hire and a, a lawyer to, um, To, to, to, to protect.

Erin Austin: So this is the essence of your business. This is literally like the revenue stream in your business. So you wanna make sure one, that you're tracking all the elements in it, and there may be multiple elements in a training, uh, in a training. Uh, materials. There may be some videos in there, there may be workbooks in there.

Erin Austin: Uh, there may be, um, you know, role playing exercises, things like that. And so you wanna track all of them, um, because, uh, and you wanna make sure that they are all, um, pro, uh, protected. Uh, one of the things about copyright registration, which is. I'm gonna do another one about this because I've just recently been learning more about the complications.

Erin Austin: When you're registering, um, materials that have different elements, like some stuff is in writing and some stuff is on video and some stuff is on audio and the complications of registering them. But you wanna make sure that you are tracking all the elements because there are different, different, um, registration issues there.

Erin Austin: So first priority, get in those things that are like, that's how you make money. Uh, second priority. So the other things that you use to create value for your clients. So maybe you have like a database of resources that you go to again and again, um, that, um, you have some models or some templates that you use as the starting point.

Erin Austin: Every time you. A certain type of deliverable for a client. You know, these are all things we wanna make sure that is an intellectual property and you do wanna make sure you are tracking it, um, because that is also one of those things that you wanna make sure are protected from third parties who may have access to it, either an employee, former employees, or sub.

Erin Austin: Your third priority will be your confidential information. So I think of the second priority, um, items as those things that you use to create deliverables and that your third priority items, the things that you use in your back office. Um, and obviously, These are not mutually exclusive. There will be confidential information that is, um, also what you use to create value and things.

Erin Austin: You create value. They're things that you would, uh, hire a lawyer to defend. Um, but as you think about them, because you can't do all this in one sitting, um, as you think about prioritizing them, uh, look at it this. So your confidential information would of course include things like, you know, customer information, price list, financials, um, you know, maybe you've done some market research, um, things like that.

Erin Austin: That is very valuable because you have it. And if you have to, uh, give access to it. Let's say you hire someone to, um, you know, do. Some sort of marketing, um, uh, uh, um, what do they call it? They're called, um, Uh, marketing the things where you have someone do a major mailing for you or do a major outreach for you.

Erin Austin: I cannot think of the word. Um, and they have access to your mailing list because they need it to do the outreach for you. You wanna make sure that before you hand that over, that you are protecting it with the non-disclosure agreement. Internally, if you have things like, You know, product development, you wanna make sure that you're protecting those things before anyone has access to it and making sure that it's shared only on an as needed basis.

Erin Austin: And then the fourth priority, publicly available information that hasn't been captured earlier. These may be your blog, post, website, content, webinars that you've, um, done LinkedIn lives. Um, so these are things. Um, you just wanna make sure you're tracking because these become assets that you can use in other ways for that content calendar.

Erin Austin: For repurposing. It may be things that you wanna create graphics out of, you know, that are, or that are value added, um, bonuses or incentives to help close a deal or to add to a digital. Maybe there's a white paper of that, you know, that can be become a separate asset. So these are other things that you wanna, um, to track.

Erin Austin: And so now we're gonna go to my, um, screen. I'm gonna share screen and this will be my first time doing it. So please be patient with me. Um, and we're gonna look at the. Uh, tracker. . All right. I think I did this right. So, um, of course it told me that this is better if I have two screens, which I do not. So now I cannot see my screen, my LinkedIn live, uh, uh, screen anymore, but I'm going to trust that you can see it.

Erin Austin: So, um, This is the IP tracker. So we start with a overview of how to use it, where we're gonna go through all of these. But basically it helps you determine, think about what all the assets are in your business, because there's a lot more intellectual property assets in your business than you think there.

Erin Austin: thinking about how you got them, how you acquired something, whether you created it or you got it from a third party, that will make a difference about how you need to document it, what rights you have in it. Or if you created it in connection with an engagement and a brief description, um, and the important parts are how valuable is it to your business?

Erin Austin: Is it something that actually creates your competitive edge? Is it the way you make money? Is it the thing that your competitors would love to have? Is it something that you invested a lot of money into create? And, um, how does it help you with your positioning, uh, in the market? and then, uh, next steps. So if it's something that we find out it provides a major competitive advantage and is a major differentiator and you haven't protected it in any way, then we need to have those next steps so you know what you need to do.

Erin Austin: So, as an example. So I, as I mentioned, uh, had a, I was having a conversation with someone the other day and I wanted to find this LinkedIn, uh, post that I didn't know it was LinkedIn post. Uh, regarding that was con tangential to the AI convers. . And so I had it and it was a LinkedIn Live. It was a LinkedIn post.

Erin Austin: And so I realized I don't have a LinkedIn post here, so I think I'm gonna add that. Um, so I'm gonna just create an anothering. It was a, a link fucking type linked in post. It was from and, and, This is something that I also discovered as I was going through this. Um, I'm going to add a, a column here. I, I think, and I'll re send this to you.

Erin Austin: That includes the date that it was created. Um, and it's owned, right? Oh, it has a dropdown, whether or not it's licensed or owned. Here. I acquired it. I created it. It doesn't have an expiration date if it's licensed. If you receive something, um, from a third party, let's say you, um, are using, uh, photographs that you received from a.

Erin Austin: Stock photography place, it'll have, you know, maybe you have it for a year or maybe you have something that you're using while you are a member of a community. I know that the, um, value builders, they have these assessment tools that you can use while you're a licensed member of their community, but you can't use it afterwards.

Erin Austin: So in that case, you would not be, you'd have a expiration date because I own, I created the, the Post and I own it. There's. Uh, it's not registered. Um, and, uh, I don't have not registered any of my LinkedIn, um, posts. Um, competitive advantage. Now, a LinkedIn post is, Intellectual property. It is protectable under copyright laws, and because I created it, I am the owner of the copyright in that LinkedIn post.

Erin Austin: So do I have exclusive use of it? Yes, because IP intellectual property laws give the exclusive. Right to use, to perform, to sell, to license, to make derivatives of your intellectual property asset. So by virtue of it being a copyrightable asset that I own, I have exclusive use of it by virtue of the intellectual property laws.

Erin Austin: So I have exclusive use of it that said, what is the business impact of it? So, , if we go back to my business impact, is it a differentiator that my business could not provide service without? Nope. Is it a differentiator that my business, uh, it's a differentiator, but my business could 

provide 

Erin Austin: services without it?

Erin Austin: Uh, nah. I don't think it's a differentiator. Um, if your business needs is asked to provide services but could outsource it or the asset is undifferentiated, I would say that, that this applies. It is. Part of my body of work and it adds to my own thought. Um, leadership, it helps me think through issues.

Erin Austin: When I, every time I write something I think about, I feel like I learn something new about what I'm writing about. Um, in the totality of my body of work, I think is a differentiator. Um, but no, I would say that this singular LinkedIn post is not a differentiator. And so I am gonna call this a two. . And when I look at my next steps, um, you know, these are generalities.

Erin Austin: there are subtleties, obviously, and special circumstances for everything. Um, so, but for something that is generally not a three or a four, that is not a high value asset. There's not much I need to do with it. And so there are going to be, uh, no, no, no next steps with that one. Now let's talk about. My IP tracker, which I just created.

Erin Austin: So this is going to be a product, so I'm going to put my IP tracker in here

Erin Austin: and I own it. It's because I created it. So, and again, no exploration. So is it registered at this time? It is not. Um, does it create a competitive advantage? So it is exclusive because the IP tracker is, even though I will back up and say, cause I talk about this stuff so much, I, I wanna make sure everyone's on the same page, that as soon as an IP asset is created, The creator owns it under IP Law.

Erin Austin: The fact that you haven't registered yet does not mean it's in the public domain. It does not mean that other people have rights to use it. When you create something original and you put it on paper, put it on canvas, you know, etch it outta stone, it. , uh, your, your original creation, it is covered by copyright protections.

Erin Austin: And so by virtue of that, even though I have not registered my IP tracker yet, I have exclusive use of it. So yes, exclusive use and then the business impact. So for me, that is a differentiator. , um, can I provide services without it? I can. So I also do one-on-one services with my clients. And so, um, it's not, you know, my business doesn't die without it, but it.

Erin Austin: Um, I could do, I, it is a differentiator though. It is part of the way people, um, will evaluate my expertise is my ability to help them, um, own, protect, control, and leverage their intellectual property. That is basically what I do. And so it is part of my differentiation. Um, and so, Consider it a three. So I'm gonna make this guy a three.

Erin Austin: And so my next steps for me are, uh, if I have exclusive use and I have a four, three, I need to register this thing. So my next steps are going to be, you know, register in the copyright office. Okay. And so that applies. , uh, the next page is kind. These are some things that may not be public. So that's the way I kind of have set these out.

Erin Austin: I use the term trade secrets because that's the way we probably think about the things that we use inside of our businesses that are confidential. Um, although trade secrets. Are intellectual property. Um, but I do, um, set them out separately here. And so this is, and then adding everything. So at the end of today, because today I'm creating this, um, webinar and I'm recording it and it will become a episode as well of the hour exit podcast episode.

Erin Austin: I will add this. as a, well, I guess we can go both places, right? It can be as be a podcast cast episode as well as a webinar. So I can add that, um, so I can track that as well. So I'm gonna stop sharing and let's see what happens. Oh, look at that, and then I'll go back to my slides. All right, so these are, uh, the priorities that we talked.

Erin Austin: And so as you think about your business, uh, as you go through the IP Journal and looking at those categories, you can do kind of a high level, um, uh, Where does it fall in the priorities? Is this something that I would hire a lawyer to, to protect? And if it's not, then skip on to the next one and keep going through it.

Erin Austin: And once you hit that, then those are the things you wanna pay attention to until the next time you can get back to it. But it'll always be there for you. But I do encourage you to try to build a habit, which is going to be, uh, a challenge for me as well, of recording things as we create them. And you'll be surprised to see how many things you create during the course of the.

Erin Austin: So with that, um, I encourage, so this is, this is also fun on my PowerPoint. This absolutely, this m which you probably can't see is up here. I have no idea why it changes it once it goes into, um, streamy yard, but this is think beyond. ip.com is my website. And, uh, and so you can go there and, um, and get a sign up for.

Erin Austin: Goodies I have. You can find a sign up for my website. Um, get access. I have a free resource library there as well. Um, podcast. And, uh, as well as if there's anything, any of the materials that I talked about today that you don't have access to, you can find them there as well. So I'd be happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Erin Austin: Oh, that's that one too.

Erin Austin: And so if you have any, as you have a chance to work with the IP tracker and you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me. And this is Think Beyond IP dot. Com. Um, and, uh, and just shoot me any questions that you have, any feedback, I'd appreciate it. Um, I am still, I just, uh, launched the product, so I, uh, am very, uh, open to any feedback.

Erin Austin: I want it to be as helpful of a resource as possible. Um, one of the things I know that I'm gonna be doing is adding that day created and make it easier to separate by topic as well, or two things I'm gonna be doing and. , uh, yes, please. Um, yeah, I, I will get it to you via, via LinkedIn. Um, uh, Lashelle. Thank you.

Erin Austin: I'm sorry that you weren't able to access it, so, all right ladies. Well, thank you so much and, uh, talk to you. I hope to see you again soon.