"The power of a Mastermind group goes beyond the simple exchange of ideas and information. The outcomes achieved by its members attests to the synergy that is constantly being created by the processing of those ideas as a group. You can use the mastermind principles to achieve goals in any area of your life." Heidi Richards
In late June, I mentioned a new network on RYZE that I recently had the privilege to lead. It is a network for Women and when I took it over changed the name to one I thought was fitting and available. What do I mean available?
Glad you asked! Apparently the name I chose was being used by another group who recently (about a month after I purchased the URL - during our redesign phase) applied for trademark. It never occured to me to apply for a trademark simply because my network on RYZE is free to members and because I had used the term before when I wrote an article on the topic of Masterminds and the title was "MastHERminding for success."
That was at least five or six years ago when I was involved in my third or fourth mastermind - it was with six other women and because I was describing my experience with an all-woman group, the title fit.
Trademarks are granted on a first use in commerce and based upon the time stamp of application (as well as many other factors). Since I am not using the word for monetary gain and did not make a claim to it, I am no longer able to use the name (and rightly so) since the other group who has "staked their claim" is using it on their site as a fee-based mastermind program for women.
When I got the letter from their attorney I immediately went to check our their claim and it appears to be an excellent program for women. As the owner of several Trademarks I know what is involved in applying and keeping a trademark. It isn's cheap, in terms of time or money. I don't have anything to gain by challenging their claim since I don't "charge" to belong. However, I did invest some money in the design of the network home page which will cost me to redesign.
The whole point is that if you plan to use a word or combination of words for anything you might later want to monetize or stake a claim to, be sure you do your due diligence beforehand and not go off "half excited" and create something you may later have to change (oftentimes at great expense). And if it is a great "new word" be sure and get it trademarked. You never know when someone will come along and claim it as their own.
We have since renamed our network and are calling it HER Mastermind Network. Feel free to check it out and if it appeals to you, JOIN! As of this posting we have 373 members and have grown tremendously in the past month. I am posting the network name here before we change it online so that we can have a time log of who used it first :)
BTW, in case you are uncertain how RYZE works, RYZE has 3 levels of membership - a free level and two tiers of paying memberships. If you are a paying member you can start your own network. And other RYZE members can sign up to belong to your group for free.
Feel free to comment on this post and share your thoughts about Trademarks.
Warmest regards,
Heidi
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