Energy for Entrepreneurs: Trademark Your Brand

“What functions of your organization ‘keep you up at night?’” I was recently asked this question during a virtual panel discussion for the University of Virginia-McIntire Alumni Leadership Speaker Series. My response had to do with how best to support our Brokers as they are working with the leads we generate to make deals to build wealth and provide for their families. I am challenged with all the changing jobs of supporting them as we grow strategically. My interest was piqued when another panelist Crawford Hawkins described the thought-demon that kept him awake was his fear that while he was coming up with his company concept and developing it, someone was going to steal his idea. He is pioneering a new “sustainable beverage” that will hit the market, December 15th. The drinks are called Husky.

There has never been a more fascinating time to be an entrepreneur. This is a world where to create a successful business you need good ideas, actually brilliant ones, and you need to forge ahead with more equally vibrant, new ones as you grow. The ultimate goal, I believe it is to develop a brand that can take you through the changes and iterations and innovations. And, to prevent others from taking them. During July 2020, we had a situation arise. Through a conversation one of our agents had with his client we learned that a real estate broker was using the terms  Live Water Properties , noticeably in his online advertising. After our agent brought it to my attention, I went to work researching exactly how the other broker was using the terms together and why he was choosing to use them.

To put it mildly, by using our name for his online marketing, the other broker had confused our client. Initially, the client wondered if this broker was part of our company. When our Live Water Properties’ broker said he was not, it became more apparent that the confusion would amount to trademark infringement.

It was easy to look up the term in a search engine and find the other broker’s website. Little did I know I was about to unravel more that just mismanaged marketing. Web domains. He harbored two that included “live water” paired with “real estate” and used “Live Water Real Estate” as a trademark, which was a use so similar to our “Live Water Properties” trademark that it was likely to lead consumers to wrongly believe we were associated with him.

I had been faced with this in the past. The last time had not gone well, and the other real estate professional responded by going on the defensive. Only later did I engage an attorney. For that reason, I decided to call up the same firm and explain the current situation, and we drafted an email letter requesting the “Live Water Real Estate” marketing be withdrawn as well as a transfer request for the website domains (we have been registered with ours since 2001.)

Then we waited. It was a busy summer with an unbelievable number of sales transactions. Respectfully from the other broker’s end, we didn’t have to wait long. Late summer in a casual explanation, he said that he’d seen other people using the terms and believed he could continue to use them. We thanked him for the response, yet told him we were standing by our brand; he did not have the right to capitalize on the goodwill in ours. We’d traced his time frame and did not find evidence of trademark use before 2010, long after we had been using out trademark.

This time he relented. During the fall we looked online. He had removed the language “Live Water Real Estate” in his web marketing. Next, the domains. For this, we could either wait until the web domains expired and then purchase them or force him to give them to us. In a manner I felt equitable we decided to offer him a fee for the purchase and transfer of both domains. In early November, I made the payment. The broker immediately released the domain authorization codes. I’m hopeful our tech team will process it so we have full ownership. And, this company issue will not be a reason why I cannot fall back to sleep at two in the morning.

Special thanks to Allison Haugen at Holland and Hart.