Entrepreneurs: Avoid the Mistake of Trademarking Your Market Description

Entrepreneurs: Avoid the Mistake of Trademarking Your Market Description

Know what to protect and what to share.

For consultants and entrepreneurs with marketing budget constraints, trademarking the name of a new market category may make it invisible and difficult to spread. Tip: share your market category names with your industry, rather than label them as proprietary.

An example of a market name is metaverse. Companies trademark and patent ideas that operate in the metaverse, yet the name is not protected as intellectual property (IP).

There are times when you benefit from a patent, copyright, or trademark of your work—products, company names, a unique process, among others. Yet when you create a new market category, consider the following scenario.

As a small business owner or solopreneur, you’ve come up with a new market category that doesn’t exist. You want to be the leader with this brilliant idea. Rather than share it with the world freely, you trademark the category phrase.

This will make your idea valuable, right?

When there is a trademark or registered trademark applied to a phrase, partners, competitors, and valuable members of your ecosystem are less likely to share your content.

When you hire PR or marketing agencies to help you sell your products within your category, they ask you, “who are your competitors?” You say, “well, there aren’t any – this is a new category.”

Yeah, right. That statement is usually not true. There are typically substitute products that solve a similar problem.

As you reach out to potential customers to sell your products or services, they are not familiar with your category. Trying out a new category is risky. That is why large companies who want to “own” a category, invest sizeable marketing dollars to build the market.

While owning a category can be a smart move, consultants and smaller entrepreneurs lack the resources to build a category in addition to making a market for their offerings.

?Here are three strategies for gaining acceptance of your category, while preserving your resources to market your company and products:

1?? Create an Industry Hub, Not a Private Island

The problem with selfishly protecting your new category by trademarking a phrase that describes your market is you create an island rather than an ecosystem of partners, clients, communicators, and idea spreaders.

The consequence of protecting your market name is you may smother the traction for your idea and eventually your offerings.

Consider building a market and co-creating an industry with others who also have products that are relevant for your market. Chances are the evolution of your market space—where your products will be promoted and discussed—already exist in universities, industry associations, industry analysts, and online discussion hubs.

Examples of market names in the tech space that are NOT trademarked include names like blockchain, metaverse, or artificial intelligence. These markets are analyzed and supported by robust industries and associations.

It’s important to know what is worth protecting and what is worth sharing.

If Apple had trademarked the phrase smartphone for the iPhone, other mobile device makers may have confused the market with their competitive offerings. Enabling others to join the industry resulted in exponential growth for the category.

You might be thinking, what about protecting your intellectual property? Your advisers recommended you protect your IP.

2?? Invest in IP protection for company and product names, rather than market categories

?Think about what you are trying to protect when you make it proprietary.

IP protection is a big deal on Shark Tank. Questions regarding patents dominate the conversations between the entrepreneur and the sharks. If your unique product does not have a patent, the sharks move away rather than swarm around you.

Yet you never hear them talk about trademarking names that describe your market space.

As a technology marketing executive making a market for securing mobile devices in the early 2000s, our company had limited resources to market the company and the products.

We came up with a few phrases for the category, yet it did not make sense with our limited resources to design and market the category.

We let the analysts and the markets define the category and chose not to trademark the category. With the goal of an eventual acquisition, the smart move was to register the trademark for the company name and focus on building value for the company.

So, how do companies with limited resources to build a category gain traction for it?

3?? Dominate the Category; Invite Others to Participate

As a small business, you will gain traction for your idea in clever ways by embracing the idea of open source. By making your content freely available, others can build out the concept and help your customers better understand your offerings.

Ten years ago, when typing career agility in my browser, there were zero results.

I knew I wanted to build a business around this mindset.

Researching how to apply agile principles to careers, I focused on seeding the market with content. Sample activities included writing a book “Activate Your Agile Career,” creating a career agility definition, designing a career agility model, and crafting a foundation article on LinkedIn.

I coined the phrase as a new category within the career development space and created the first definition for this category. My definition has been in the #1 or #2 spot on Google for several years.

What is career agility?

"An agile career is a self-reflective, incremental career path, guided by response to change, evolving job roles, and designed to optimize creativity, growth, and happiness."

Similar to how Seth Godin promotes spreading great ideas in his book, Unleashing the Ideavirus, the burden is lightened when you encourage others to spread the word and expand the market.

As awareness for career agility expanded, I built offerings around it such as corporate training, workshops, and speaking.

Rather than trademark “career agility,” I focused my resources on my company name, Konstant Change?, my book, and the career agility model.

Summary

Create intellectual property guardrails where it makes sense and within your investment constraints. If you want to contribute to the market space description, share it generously with the industry participants to advance your business and category.

  • Trademark company names and product names, slogans and logos.
  • Protect your products, inventions, and processes, with patents.
  • Copyright created work, original works of art, and literature.

----------------

Reach out if you are looking for a workplace futurist who can speak and train on the topics of mindset agility, career agility, and future of work in your organization.

Follow and click on the bell ?? in my profile for post notifications.

? Lynn (Ellen) Miller

Chief Facilitator for Authors and Experts Ready to Move From Being Ahead of Your Time | to Wanting to Impact Target Clients in your Industry

2 年

Thanks for your insights on creating an industry hub Marti. It's a great way to describe how I've continued to evolve the problems I solve. Product development is the market I'm in for authors, consultants and other experts. The category hub concept helps me put the work into a larger context of people who want to monetize their content and expertise in new and creative ways.

Nick Richtsmeier

Creator of the Trust-Made Growth?? Index | Giver of Damns

2 年

Category creation is a faddish topic. One that takes more than just a "we do stuff that no one else does cause we solve a problem no one else talks about????????????????" True category creation starts with deep thinking about what is wrong and why its wrong. It then creates solutions and pathways to solve that problem that break the molds of pre-existing categories. Category breakers create "yes" or "no" binaries around their solutions. In 2011 people didn't buy iPhones as one option among a menu of smartphones. You either bought an iPhone or you didn't. From that a category was borne later... Does Apple still protect it's IP? Of course. But isn't out here ??ing taglines and catchphrases. IP protection is real and important. But first you have to really understand what your IP is and what needs protecting. For people who are truly creating space for new opportunity, that list is not nearly as long. Because they know that the more people talk about the things they created, the more their thought leadership will shine through. True category creators aren't afraid to lose control of the words and phrases because they know they're always ahead on the ideas.

Diane Wyzga, Esq. / Story Architect

Mentoring women lawyers & professionals committed to shaping & sharing their story to unbalance the status quo.

2 年

So much chatter out there Marti Konstant, MBA about what to share, keep, offer, of value, to educate, and the rest. Good to have this clarifying perspective.

Anna Furmanov

Positioning and messaging for Seed startups | Host of Modern Startup Marketing podcast

2 年

Marti Konstant, MBA those that drive category creation share freely bc they know that the more ppl behind the build, the faster the category will grow. There’s no “let’s not put that on our website bc competitors will steal it” mentality. ??

Mizanur Rahman

Brand Consultation | Marketing Strategic | Business Advertising Expert|

2 年

Great. Its very useful.

要查看或添加评论,请登录

Marti Konstant, MBA的更多文章

  • Is 300 the Tipping Point?

    Is 300 the Tipping Point?

    The 300 Rule. Today marks my 300th Think Letter! subscribe here.

    10 条评论
  • A Day Without Wifi

    A Day Without Wifi

    You've likely experienced the void that "no signal" creates in your digital life. Image generated with Midjourney While…

    19 条评论
  • See Beyond the Ordinary With Your Vision

    See Beyond the Ordinary With Your Vision

    Vision is not only reserved for founders and CEOs. Creativity and significant contributions come from a variety of…

    3 条评论
  • Reduce the Distance to the Top with AI

    Reduce the Distance to the Top with AI

    Zig Ziglar was famous for saying, See You at the Top. As a motivational speaker, he encouraged everyone to achieve…

    7 条评论
  • How to Adjust When the Unthinkable Happens

    How to Adjust When the Unthinkable Happens

    Never think it can't happen to you. As an agility researcher, I suggest people fortify their agility habit to stay…

    12 条评论
  • 7 Strategies: Turn Your Fears into Action

    7 Strategies: Turn Your Fears into Action

    Have you ever been stuck in an elevator? Imagine you're trapped in an elevator. The fear is usually greater than…

    5 条评论
  • What is a Career Brand? Insights from 10 Career Thought Leaders

    What is a Career Brand? Insights from 10 Career Thought Leaders

    What's in Your Career Branding Stack? Your career brand is built on the shoulders of personal branding. The difference…

    44 条评论
  • What's in Your Resume Branding Stack? 8 Pros Share Ideas.

    What's in Your Resume Branding Stack? 8 Pros Share Ideas.

    What's in Your Resume Personal Branding Stack? The resume is the universal marketing and personal branding tool for job…

    60 条评论
  • What's in Your Branding Stack? Top Tips From 8 Pros

    What's in Your Branding Stack? Top Tips From 8 Pros

    You’ve heard the phrase, “you already have a personal brand.” Your personal brand is expressed by how you show up in…

    49 条评论
  • Return to the Office: Is Work a Place? Or is it an Idea?

    Return to the Office: Is Work a Place? Or is it an Idea?

    Return to the office (RTO) is in the headlines, yet the definition of the office is in flux. Since the pandemic…

    40 条评论

社区洞察

其他会员也浏览了