Law Firm Website Reviews (1997-2000)

RedStreet (The Company)

RedStreet (the company, founded as RedStreet Consulting, later incorporated as RedStreet Inc.) was founded in 1997 by Erik J. Heels and Richard P. Klau. From 1997-2000, RedStreet provided consulting services to the largest law firms in the USA. Also from 1997-2000, RedStreet published five rounds of reviews of law firm websites. In 2001, RedStreet Inc. ceased operations .

RedStreet.com (The Website)

In 2007, ten years after the founding of RedStreet (the company), the RedStreet.com website was relaunched by its new/current owner (GiantPeople LLC) to preserve RedStreet’s historic law firm website reviews. RedStreet’s early website reviews document what the early web was like for lawyers. On 2015-05-31, a blog was added with additional historic content.

On 2017-11-19, RedStreet.com retired, after a 20-year run. Some content lives on in the RedStreet.com category on this blog, a few screenshots are included below, and many more RedStreet.com pages are archived in the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. Thanks for the memories!

20 years of gettin’ yo’ money!

Launched on 1997-04-01 and retired on 2017-11-17, the Russell & Tate website was meta: it was a parody of a satire of a law firm. Over the years, social media was added. And as time passed, fewer people got the joke, which is OK, because I know a couple of folks who thought it was funny. In any event, 20 years was a good run.

Here are some screen shots for posterity. Enjoy!

17 Seconds #41

The most important thing for startups to do is to inject IP thinking into their product launch process. Before any new product (or an improvement to an existing product) is launched (i.e. sold, offered for sale, publicly used, or publicized), you should consider whether or not to file patents. For patents, file before launching the product to preserve both U.S. and foreign rights.

After your first U.S. patent is filed, you have one year to decided whether to file foreign patents based on the U.S. patent. The most common way to do so is to file a Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) application before the one-year deadline, which then buys you 18 months (or more) of time before you have to file national application in the jurisdictions of your choice.

So a typical (and conservative) timeline for a U.S. provisional patent application filed today would be as follows:

• 2017-10-17 – file U.S. provisional patent application (filing/priority date)
• 2018-10-16 – file U.S. nonprovisional patent application (filing date plus one year minus one day)
• 2018-10-17 – file PCT patent application (filing date plus one year)
• 2020-04-17 – file EPO patent application (30 months from priority date)
• 2020-04-17 – file Chinese patent application (30 months from priority date)

A U.S. provisional patent application and a PCT patent application both buy you time – like filing an extension on your tax returns. And just like smart businesses take advantage of tax laws, smart businesses take advantage of patent laws.

So before you greenlight your next project, think about patents!

17 Seconds is a publication for clients and other VIPs of Clocktower Law. Email version powered by MailChimp and the beat of a different keyboard player.

17 Seconds #40

Intentional IP = Intentional Patents + Intentional Trademarks

Clocktower Law‘s approach to patent law and trademark law is to encourage our (mostly startup) clients to inject IP planning into the product launch process. The best way to prevent problems is to intentionally file patents and trademarks for the right products/services at the right time.

Our disciplined, structured, and semi-automated approach to delivering IP services includes writing and constantly improving several hundred patent and trademark templates. For example, on each spring and fall equinox, we’ll send you the USPTO’s first office action prediction dates for all of your (nonprovisional) pending patent applications. These two paragraphs appear in several of our templates and bear repeating:

PATENT PLANNING – FILE BEFORE LAUNCHING. U.S. patent law changed significantly from 2011 to 2013 due to the America Invents Act (AIA) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leahy-Smith_America_Invents_Act). The AIA was fully implemented on 2013-03-16, which made the U.S. a first-inventor-to-file country (and replaced the former first-to-invent system). The U.S. is also essentially an “absolute novelty” country. As such, you should file your patent application before you launch (where “launch” is defined as sale, offer for sale, publication, or public use) your product/service/improvement. This is the only certain way to protect both U.S. and foreign patent rights.

TRADEMARK PLANNING – FILE BEFORE LAUNCHING. It is much more expensive (by about an order of magnitude) to cure trademark problems than it is to prevent them. As such, you should fully vet any new trademark (for a company name, logo, tagline, product name, service name) by searching the trademark and (if the search is favorable to you) filing a trademark application. We have guided many clients through rebranding, which costs on average $50,000. In an ideal world, you would be the first to use, first to file, and first to register your trademark. Disputes with third parties can occur when one party is first at one thing and the other party is first at another. Registering your trademarks as soon as possible can also help you secure your brand on the Internet (including domain names and social networking usernames).

Intentional Marketing Of Said IP Services

Similarly, we take a disciplined, structured, and semi-automated approach to marketing our IP services. For example, this “17 Seconds” newsletter is sent out on the 17th of each month at 17:17. Also, in connection with an ongoing marketing campaign on Clocktower Law’s Facebook page, I’m going to be sending out friend requests to folks that Facebook suggests I know (fair warning). FWIW, you can “friend” me but not have to see all of my stuff by creating a custom friend list on Facebook and then bookmarking that page. This way, you can be friends with someone without having to see 100% of what they share.

After we deliver good news to you (such as an issued patent, registered trademark, or resolved dispute), you can expect to see some intentional marketing communications from us about our business relationship. Listed in order of perceived importance, here is where we share info about our business relationship:

* Website: Cool Clients
Clocktower Law’s website features selected client bios and logos. Feel free to email us additions/updates.
http://www.clocktowerlaw.com/cool-clients

* Facebook: Reviews
Clocktower Law’s Facebook page includes 5-star testimonials from past/present clients. From the “…” menu, select the “Write A Review” option to write/update.
https://www.facebook.com/ClocktowerLaw/

* LinkedIn: Recommendations
Erik’s LinkedIn account includes recommendations from past/present clients. From the the “…” menu, select the “Recommend” option to write/update.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/erikjheels/

* Google Maps: Reviews
From the left menu, select the “Write A Review” option to write/update.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Clocktower+Law+LLC/

Clocktower Law tries to help everyone who contacts us, whether or not they need IP help. We believe we can help you by proactively protecting your ideas (with patents and trade secrets) and brands (with trademarks, domain names, and usernames) from the competition. But we can also help in other ways, and continuous improvement is our goal.

So how else – today – can we help you achieve your business goals?

17 Seconds is a publication for clients and other VIPs of Clocktower Law. Email version powered by MailChimp and the beat of a different keyboard player.

Red Sox Nation should rally around its founding father, Carl “Yaz” Yastrzemski, and convince Boston Red Sox ownership to rename Yawkey Way to Yaz Way.

By Erik J. Heels

First published 08/22/2017; ‘Rename Yawkey Way Yaz Way’ Facebook Page; publisher: GiantPeople.

Welcome to Rename Yawkey Way Yaz Way! Here’s the story:

Carl “Yaz” Yastrzemski is the last great American baseball player. The son of Polish parents who grew up working on the family potato farm, Yaz played all of his 23 seasons with the Boston Red Sox, is an 18-time All-Star, 7-time Gold Glove winner, and first-ballot Hall-of-Fame inductee (in 1989), with 94.6% of BBWAA members voting to enshrine him, more than any other Red Sox player in the Hall of Fame.

Yaz is the father of Red Sox Nation. Without Yaz, there is no 1967, no 1975, no 1986, no 2004, no 2007, no 2013.

Yaz has never sought the spotlight and would not advocate for his number being retired (which happened in 1989), a statue outside of Fenway Park (which happened in 2013), or a street named after him. Which is precisely why we should advocate for him.

We all have our Yaz stories. As for me, I am Erik John Heels, a patent attorney, trademark lawyer, and the founder of Clocktower Law LLC (Clocktower Law), a patent and trademark law firm in Great Boston (not a typo). I’m also a lifelong Red Sox fan, thanks to my dad, Tom Heels. The cover photo is of me and my dad standing on the future Yaz Way outside of Fenway Park on 08/12/09. This was the one time I took my dad to a game. He took me to many as a child.

Red Sox Nation should rally around its founding father and convince Red Sox ownership to rename Yawkey Way to Yaz Way. There are certainly other deserving Red Sox greats. But Yaz changed everything. Ted has a tunnel, David has a bridge, Yaz deserves a way! Thank you for your support!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Yastrzemski

17 Seconds #39

Clocktower Law is committed to continuously improving its service. On 07/30/17 we launched The Sausage Factory^TM, a website powered by MAMP (open source software for the macOS operating system, the Apache web server, the MySQL database management system, and the PHP programming language) that now hosts the third generation of our IP law templates, which we use to communicate – in plain English – patent law and trademark law to our clients. For the curious, the first generation of templates were Eudora email templates, the second generation static HTML files, the third generation dynamic PHP files.

Converting our templates from HTML (a markup language) to PHP (a programing language) was nontrivial, because web browsers will render buggy HTML pages bugs and all, but a single error in a PHP file will result in the page not rendering, so zero room for error. Challenge accepted!

One cool thing about the project is that standard paragraphs (now called “includes”) are now automatically included in (i.e. linked from) multiple email templates. For example, if we change our address (as we did in 2016), then we only have to change one file (now called info-signature-informal.php), and all of the email templates that include the signature file are automatically updated.

There is a concept applicable to learning foreign languages and to marketing, namely the “seven times rule,” which states that a word (for language) or concept (for marketing) must be communicated seven times to stick. So we repeat ourselves a lot. It is intentional.

Here are the two new patent and trademark includes that are the most important for your business:

PATENT PLANNING – FILE BEFORE LAUNCHING. U.S. patent law changed significantly from 2011 to 2013 due to the America Invents Act (AIA) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leahy-Smith_America_Invents_Act). The AIA was fully implemented on 2013-03-16, which made the U.S. a first-inventor-to-file country (and replaced the former first-to-invent system). The U.S. is also essentially an “absolute novelty” country. As such, you should file your patent application before you launch (where “launch” is defined as sale, offer for sale, publication, or public use) your product/service/improvement. This is the only certain way to protect both U.S. and foreign patent rights.

TRADEMARK PLANNING – FILE BEFORE LAUNCHING. It is much more expensive (by about an order of magnitude) to cure trademark problems than it is to prevent them. As such, you should fully vet any new trademark (for a company name, logo, tagline, product name, service name) by searching the trademark and (if the search is positive) filing a trademark application. We have guided many clients through rebranding, which costs on average $50,000. In an ideal world, you would be the first to use, first to file, and first to register your trademark. Disputes with third parties can occur when one party is first at one thing and the other party is first at another. Registering your trademarks as soon as possible can also help you secure your brand on the Internet (including domain names and social networking usernames).

Everybody loves sausages but few like the inside of the sausage factory. We hope that The Sausage Factory^TM will be an exception to this rule!

17 Seconds is a publication for clients and other VIPs of Clocktower Law. Email version powered by MailChimp and the beat of a different keyboard player.

LawLawLaw #43: Technology, Law, Baseball, Rock ‘n’ Roll.

About LawLawLaw

My name is Erik Heels, and this is my LawLawLaw^TM newsletter. Since 2001, LawLawLaw has documented trends in technology, law (mostly patents and trademarks), baseball (mostly Red Sox), and music (mostly rock). Today’s disclaimer du jour of the day: Unauthorized vehicles only. Thanks for reading!

Actually, in terms of the typical startup exit timetable (5-8 years), most of Clocktower Law’s clients are still puppies. But dogs of all ages can learn new tricks!

Clocktower Law Trends

* Clocktower Law client Tamr Secures Investment From GE Ventures (2017-05-18)
“‘It is an honor to have GE Ventures as an investor, advisor, and partner in building our business,’ said Andy Palmer, co-founder and CEO of Tamr. ‘Like our other corporate investors, this relationship began with GE becoming a customer, and I’m delighted with this important step forward in our partnership together. Our goal at Tamr is to build an innovative and enduring company that is known for enabling our customers to transform and thrive. It would be hard to find a better role model for this than GE.'”
https://www.tamr.com/tamr-secures-investment-ge-ventures/

* Clocktower Law clients AppNexus, Monetate, Onshape, and Tamr make Jeff Bussgang’s 2017 “Winning Startups” list (2017-04-04)
https://seeingbothsides.com/2017/04/04/advice-to-grads-join-a-winning-startup-v-2017/

* Clocktower Law client Tamr Awarded Patent for Enterprise-Scale Data Unification System (2017-02-09)
“‘When my co-inventors and I began work at MIT CSAIL on what is now Tamr, we believed that traditional approaches to data integration had outlived their usefulness,’ said Mike Stonebraker, co-founder & CTO of Tamr. ‘Our goal was to build an end-to-end system for enterprise-scale data curation that leveraged modern machine learning techniques to radically reduce the time and cost of producing clean, unified data sets. Tamr’s growth has proven the commercial value of the many innovations in our software, and this patent now confirms the uniqueness of our invention.'”
https://www.tamr.com/tamr-awarded-patent-enterprise-scale-data-unification-system-2/

* Clocktower Law client Disruptor Beam raises $8.5M (2017-02-02)
“Disruptor Beam has raised another $8.5 million to turn some of the best-known entertainment franchises into mobile games. It released its first title, Game of Thrones Ascent, in 2013, with Star Trek Timelines following last year.”
https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/02/disruptor-beam-series-b/

* Clocktower Law client Monetate moves headquarters to New York City (2017-01-10)
“The move will put us closer to our clients, many of whom are in the retail and fashion industries, and our marketing partner network (including Oracle, IBM, Weblinc, and Magento). Monetate now has offices in New York, Palo Alto, London, and the Philadelphia suburbs in Conshohocken, and has employees spread across the U.S. and Europe.”
http://www.monetate.com/blog/monetate-hq-moving-new-york/

* State Of 3D Software: Interview With [Clocktower Law client] Onshape CEO Jon Hirschtick (2016-12-19)
“If you look around the country, almost every community has created its own makerspace in an old mill or warehouse. This is an encouraging trend for America’s innovation economy. Many of the seeds for tomorrow’s startups are planted here. At the moment when a maker decides his or her product is ready to make the jump from a hobby to a business, Onshape presents a tremendous and unprecedented opportunity. The huge investment required for traditional CAD used to be a deal breaker. Now, with a full-cloud CAD subscription costing about the same as a utility bill ($100-$125/month versus $5,000+ upfront), professional design tools are far more accessible to emerging companies.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tjmccue/2016/12/19/state-of-3d-software-interview-with-onshape-ceo-jon-hirschtick/

Tech Trends

* NASA Apollo Saturn V Lego set (2017-06-22)
Want for my builder boy.
http://kottke.org/17/06/nasa-apollo-saturn-v-lego-set

* If you can’t explain something in simple terms, then you don’t understand it (2017-06-15)
Richard Feynman (1918-1988) is still teaching us about physics.
http://kottke.org/17/06/if-you-cant-explain-something-in-simple-terms-you-dont-understand-it

Clocktower Law names its computers for the (original and best) 64-color Crayola crayons. I correctly predicted that “Dandelion” would be the name “retired” by Crayola, but I’m still using the 1970s list of 64!

* Crayola Has Retired Dandelion – Here’s What Crayon Artists Suggest for Coping With the Loss (2017-04-03)
http://lifehacker.com/crayola-has-retired-dandelion-heres-what-crayon-artists-1793950521

* Crayola is ditching dandelion yellow from its range and replacing it with a new one (2017-03-31)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/39452039/crayola-is-ditching-dandelion-yellow-from-its-range-and-replacing-it-with-a-new-one

* Clocktower Law completed phase one of its PDF improvement project (started Feb 2016) (2017-03-13)
All old image-only PDFs were re-scanned (electronically) and converted to renderable text PDFs. This makes key documents easier to search and find while also reducing file sizes. This phase covered 90,235 PDFs from the last 10 years (our document retention time limit). This means that Clocktower Law produces/consumes, on average, 45 PDF documents per business day. FWIW.

Law Trends

* USPTO Issues New Examination Guide for Section 2(a) Disparagement and Scandalousness Cases (2017-06-27)
In response to ‘Matal v. Tam’ case below.
http://thettablog.blogspot.com/2017/06/uspto-issues-new-examination-guideline.html

* Matal v. Tam: Only I Can Disparage You! (2017-06-19)
“The Supreme Court has affirmed that Trademark law’s restriction on registration of disparaging [trade]marks violates the free speech provision of the US Constitution.”
In related news, some vanity license plates, according to some states, are offensive.
https://patentlyo.com/patent/2017/06/matal-only-disparage.html

* Update on Global Trademark Harmonization (2017-06-13)
“Harmonization” is what broke US patent law (i.e. the AIA), so I fear trademark harmonization.
https://www.uspto.gov/blog/director/entry/update_on_global_trademark_harmonization

* Michelle Lee Resigns as PTO Director (2017-06-07)
As a result, we continue to recommend filing software patent applications as provisional patent applications, until the courts and USPTO come to their senses.
https://patentlyo.com/patent/2017/06/michelle-resigns-director.html

* Congress Creates a Copyright Office (2017-05-11)
Patent and copyright rights derive from the same clause in the Constitution, yet it is the Patent Office and Trademark Office that have been administrative siblings, while the Copyright Office has lived under the Library of Congress. Putting all three major flavors of IP under one roof just might make sense!
http://www.copyhype.com/2017/05/congress-creates-a-copyright-office/

Baseball Trends

The Red Sox are looking good in the dog days of summer! Here’s how the season has gone so far.

* Peter Gammons: 2017 ASG was fun and the way the event should be (2017-07-14)
“Baseball’s All Star Game decides nothing now; the World Series home field advantage probably should be decided by which league wins the interleague play series.”
http://www.gammonsdaily.com/peter-gammons-2017-asg-was-fun-and-the-way-the-event-should-be/

* Sox trio plays big role in AL’s All-Star Game win (2017-07-12)
“Starter Sale fires 2 scoreless, Betts shows off arm and Kimbrel earns victory.”
http://m.redsox.mlb.com/news/article/241777502/red-sox-troika-helps-al-win-88th-all-star-game/

* Benintendi’s barrage: Rookie does it all (2017-07-05)
“Red Sox rookie left fielder Andrew Benintendi turned in perhaps the finest performance of his young career in an 11-4 blowout of the Rangers on Tuesday, going 5-for-5 with two homers, six RBIs, four runs scored and a double.”
http://m.redsox.mlb.com/news/article/240459818/andrew-benintendi-hits-2-homers-leaping-catch/

* Mookie enjoys monster day north of border (2017-07-02)
“Mookie Betts was a one-man wrecking crew for the Red Sox on Sunday afternoon, belting two homers and tying a career high with eight RBIs in the first seven innings against the Blue Jays.”
http://m.redsox.mlb.com/news/article/240081640/red-soxs-mookie-betts-goes-wild-against-jays/

* Red Sox retire David Ortiz’s number (2017-06-23)
Here’s how he performed in walk-off situations.
http://joyofsox.blogspot.com/2017/06/david-ortiz-in-walkoff-situations-iv.html

* Sale dominates, charts course to first place (2017-06-21)
http://m.redsox.mlb.com/news/article/237603062/chris-sale-dominates-puts-red-sox-in-first/

* Kimbrel’s odd 4-strikeout frame gives Sox 20-strikeout mark (2017-06-15)
When a strikeout is not an out (because every out must end with a catch).
http://m.redsox.mlb.com/news/article/232512074/craig-kimbrels-4-ks-help-red-sox-tie-record/

* The Greatest Red Sox Outfield Ever? (2017-06-15)
Maybe. Rice, Lynn, and Evans were pretty good.
http://www.survivinggrady.com/2017/06/the-greatest-red-sox-outfield-ever.html

* Red Sox rookie Brian Johnson blanks M’s in 3rd start (2017-05-27)
The feel-good game of the season (so far). Eck said it felt like a no-hitter. Brian Johnson has publicly struggled with depression, helping many in the process.
http://m.redsox.mlb.com/news/article/232801736/brian-johnson-goes-distance-in-red-sox-shutout/

* Sale tested, but K’s 10 as 10-run 9th caps win (2017-05-07)
“Chris Sale out-pitched Ervin Santana, as Santana tied a career high by serving up four homers in the Red Sox’s 17-6 win over the Twins.”
http://m.redsox.mlb.com/news/article/228851952/red-sox-hit-five-home-runs-in-win-over-twins/

* Someone Finally Made the Home Plate Slide of Our Dreams (2017-04-06)
Not a Sox game, but a great play!
“If you’re like me, you’ve spent countless years watching players round third toward a catcher blocking home plate wondering, ‘why doesn’t he just try to jump right over him?’ Well, Chris Coghlan of the Blue Jays finally made it a reality. Dude went full Superman on the catcher, catapulting over him and instantly putting everyone who’s tried the old ‘I’ll just run into him and hope he drops the ball’ maneuver to shame.”
http://www.survivinggrady.com/2017/04/someone-finally-made-the-home-plate-slide-of-our-dreams.html

* Opening Day: Porcello leads way as Sox upend Pirates (2017-04-03)
http://m.redsox.mlb.com/news/article/222046734/rick-porcello-red-sox-beat-pirates-at-fenway/

Music Trends

* Why We PMC: The MCats Band Story (2017-07-17)
“On Sunday 08/06/17, my band will again be playing on the Pan-Mass Challenge party boat from Provincetown to Boston at the conclusion of the #PanMass2017 cancer fundraiser. Here is why we PMC. Cancer has touched the lives of many of us in the band.”
http://www.clocktowerlaw.com/3449.html

Random Stuff

* history of the entire world, i guess (2017-05-11)
“You may remember Bill Wurtz from his video history of Japan, which I called ‘the most entertaining history of anything I have ever seen.’ I still stand by that, but his new video on the history of the Earth from before the Big Bang – ‘a long time ago, actually never, also now, nothing is nowhere’ – to the present day is just as good.”
http://kottke.org/17/05/history-of-the-entire-world-i-guess

* The Benefits of Writing Your Own Weekly, Monthly, and Annual Reviews (2017-02-21)
I’m including this article because I write self-assessment “digests” monthly for Clocktower Law and have encouraged my children to adopt this habit.
https://lifehacker.com/the-benefits-of-writing-your-own-weekly-monthly-and-a-1792563528

P.S. LawLawLaw, available at LawLawLaw.com, is a publication written by Clocktower Law LLC founder Erik J. Heels and published by GiantPeople LLC. The opinions in LawLawLaw do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Clocktower Law, GiantPeople, their employees, or the author. If you don’t share this with friends and family, then who will? Thanks!

P.P.S. Erik claims to publish the #1 blog about technology, law, baseball, and rock ‘n’ roll at erikjheels.com. Brevity is not his strong suit.

17 Seconds #38

[Editor’s note: This edition of “17 Seconds” has been heavily cross-posted (on clocktowerlaw.com, erikjheels.com, giantpeople.com, mcatsband.org, Facebook, and LinkedIn) because cancer sucks!]

On Sunday 08/06/17, my band will again be playing on the Pan-Mass Challenge party boat from Provincetown to Boston at the conclusion of the #PanMass2017 cancer fundraiser.

Here is why we PMC. Cancer has touched the lives of many of us in the band.

Josh Stein, our band’s fearless drummer, lost his mother to cancer. Jon Oltsik, our band’s rhythm guitar player, and Paul Greenspan, our band’s lead guitar player and former PMC rider, both have friends and family members impacted by cancer.

Mark Wessel, the band’s original sound guy (and all-around good guy), rides for Team Lick Cancer. Mark’s PMC page (which is a great place to donate if you have not already done so) explains why he rides:

“The team’s 2010 pedal partner, Charlotte O’Shea, and our 2012 partner, Avalanna Routh, both died of atypical teratoid rhabdoid tumors (AT/RT), a rare pediatric brain tumor. They were each six years old when they died. We ride in their honor, and many of us are directing our funds to fight this particular disease.”

My kids’ Finnish grandmother contracted and beat ovarian cancer in the 1980s. Then in 1995 (a “cruel joke,” said her doctor), she contracted leukemia, succumbing to the disease in 2003. I have been supporting cancer-fighting causes ever since (including BeTheMatch.org and PMC.org). In the 1990s, Verio co-worker Tom Martin was one of my first friends to ride the PMC. In 2005, a bunch of Acton parents formed The MCats Band to raise money for our local elementary school, and we’ve been playing to raise money for various charities ever since. As soon as I lost track of how many folks I knew who were riding the PMC (including Vince Asbridge, Glen Glater, Mike Cavaretta, Mark Wessel, and James Markson, just to name a few), I started looking for other ways to support the cause. Then in 2011, Paul English introduced me to PMC’s Dave Hellman, and soon my law firm, Clocktower Law, started providing pro bono IP assistance to the PMC.

Eamon Tighe (the band’s bass player and lead singer) has also been touched by cancer. His sister died the day before the PMC last year. In Eamon’s words:

“For many years, I have supported a good friend riding the PMC, but it was not until this time last year that I was directly affected by cancer. It was the night before my band took the ferry from Boston to Provincetown to pick up and entertain the riders on the return journey. Sad as I was reflecting on my sister’s life, I felt a tremendous emotional lift as I looked out on a sea of riders and contemplated what they had just endured in the fight to find a cure for cancer. I believe in ‘closer by the mile,’ and with the resources generated by the PMC, one day we will find the cure.”

So ride on, riders! And DO rock the boat! Thanks for your support! One more song!

17 Seconds is a publication for clients and other VIPs of Clocktower Law. Email version powered by MailChimp and the beat of a different keyboard player.

17 Seconds #37

With apologies to my Canadian friends and family, Canada is the functional equivalent of the 51st state. Because Canada is so close to the United States, you should file trademarks in Canada for your top trademarks (i.e. your company name, logo, main product name, and tagline).

For most companies with international business, North America (United States + Canada) represents a market worth X, and North America plus Europe represents 2X. So if you have customers, investors, offices, or suitors in Europe, then you should file trademarks in Europe for your top trademarks (i.e. your company name, logo, main product name, and tagline).

But timing is everything. Clocktower Law’s hourly rate increases on 07/01/2017, but if you file foreign trademarks by the end of June, then we will lock you in at the current rate for those filings. This is our hourly rate increase in 3.5 years, and we flat-rate as much as possible while offering creative payment plans (such as smooth and lumpy pricing plans) to make budgeting for patents and trademarks easier. Our flat-rate pricing remains unchanged.

Finally, please consider telling your startup friends, serial entrepreneur types, investors, and board of directors about Clocktower Law because:

• Clocktower Law guides our clients into filing patents and trademarks only when it makes sense for their business. Which helps them spend less on IP and more on product. Which helps them have successful exits.
• There are good and bad patent lawyers at big and small law firms. We like to think we are good patent lawyers at a small patent law firm.
• We are LawyersForHumanBeings.com. We do not represent patent trolls, trademark bullies, or cybersquatters.

Thank you for your business, your referrals, and your friendship!

17 Seconds is a publication for clients and other VIPs of Clocktower Law. Email version powered by MailChimp and the beat of a different keyboard player.

Insert ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ here.

By Erik J. Heels

First published 5/31/2017; YearOfDisruption.com; publisher: GiantPeople.

When I came up with the idea for the Year of Disruption project (YoD), I was trying to figure out how 35-year-old me would have tried to disrupt 50-year-old me, and what 50-year-old me could do to get ahead of that. In other words, to paraphrase GE’s Jack Welch, I was trying to “change before I had to.”

I did not intend to do this project alone. I have two companies: Clocktower Law for the logical/left side of my brain, GiantPeople for the right/creative side of my brain. Under the auspices of GiantPeople, I invited others to join me in transparently pondering how patent and trademark services could be improved by providers and for startups.

The project was loosely based on former Clocktower Law client BzzAgent’s 90 Days of BzzAgent blog, launched in 2006 as an “experiment in organizational transparency” and later documented in the 2008 book Tactical Transparency: How Leaders Can Leverage Social Media to Maximize Value and Build their Brand by Shel Holtz and John C. Havens. But “Year of Disruption” sounds better than “Quarter of Disruption,” so I went with the school year model, because, as I said, we are going back to school.

In no particular order, here is what I learned.

Websites. It is very easy to launch a good-looking website, especially if you have experience with CMS platforms like WordPress. The YoD website used two themes: the default Twenty Sixteen theme in 2016, the default Twenty Seventeen theme in 2017.

Logos. GiantPeople spent $299 on an awesome crowdsourced logo from 99designs, and I would definitely use their services again.

Ads. From September 2016 through May 2017, the YoD website earned about $33.50, which means that the ads paid for the domain name for about three years. Not huge, but profitable.

Writing vs. Editing. I wrote on-deadline columns for the ABA for 15 years. I was very reliable. I would fill in with last-minute requests as needed. I valued skillful editors such as John Tredennick and Merrilyn Astin Tarlton. I figured it would be easy getting friends and colleagues to write for me. Not so much, as it turns out. Although I got a lot of commitments to write, I would have traded five commitments for an actual article at any time! Sort of like draft picks in baseball.

Piano Movers. You know who your friends are? Those who show up when you ask them to move your piano. So while the quantity of guest posts wasn’t as high as I anticipated, the quality was very high. Thanks to:

• Kelli Proia,
• David Leffler,
• Roger Glovsky,
• Anonymous, and
• Robert Plotkin

for moving my piano.

Stars vs. Treetops. We did not cover all of the topics in our ambitious editorial calendar, but we covered many of them. If you shoot for the stars, then maybe you’ll hit the treetops.

Sometimes I’m wrong. Not all of my ideas are great. I joke around that I have about one good idea per decade, and that this has been enough to sustain my career. I certainly thought a lot about how to improve patent and trademark services as a result of the YoD project, and I tried to translate that learning into action. I was certainly prolific during the YoD project, with almost 100 publications in that time. So discounts for minorities and smooth and lumpy pricing plans – good ideas. Blogging Trump’s first 100 days and outsourced trademark specimens – not so much.

Real life >> small stuff. Unexpected things happened during the YoD project, things that my family and I are still recovering from. But we’re getting there. Timing is everything, as it turns out.

Patent and trademark disruption. There are many law firms and service providers disrupting patent law and disrupting trademark law, a good cross-section of which were covered during the YoD project. And as long as there are incumbents, there will be disruptors.

In summary, the YoD may not have been a once-per-decade great idea, but it did help me focus professionally and personally on what matters. Will I do the project again next year? Probably not. Would I do it over again? Definitely. Glass half full. Thanks for your support!