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Give us a little intro of who you are and what you do

Grant: (01:48) I’m happy to be here to talk about some creative law and considerations as I know it’s not the most exciting part of being a creative and an entrepreneur. So I’m happy to kind of talk through some practical tips that hopefully will be helpful to the people listening today.

Can you give us a rundown of sole proprietorship, LLCs, etc.?

Grant: (03:40) Yeah, absolutely. So when you are starting a new business, one of the things you want to think about is how are you going to be running this business? And there’s a variety of different ways that you can run a business. Some are more simple, some are a little bit more established.

What are the differences between corporations and LLCs?

Grant: (12:15) Yeah, absolutely. If you decide to make the leap from being a sole proprietor to forming a separate business entity, there are some different entity options out there. And it’s definitely always both a legal and tax question as to which entity is going to be the best for you.

What about intellectual property, trademarks, and copyright?

Grant: (20:50) So I can talk briefly about the different types of IP, what their differences are and how to go about registering them.

How do you register copyrights and trademarks?

Grant: (24:48) In terms of how to go about registering these, copyrights rates are probably a little bit easier to register. A lot of our clients do it themselves. Basically you can do it online.

Do you recommend going through an attorney with expertise for registering trademarks?

Grant: (29:25) Yeah. It’s definitely better than not going to an attorney. There’s certain pitfalls at each stage. First with the conflict portion, it’s important to accurately identify what a conflict is or isn’t, so you can make an informed decision there, which can get kind of nuanced in some instances.

What are the government fees associated with trademarks?

Grant: (30:58) So in terms of the government sees in connection with the trademark application, the government’s going to charge you $225 -275 for each class of goods and services that you file under. So, you know, books would be a class, creative services could be a separate class, apparel could be a separate class.