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Branding and business strategy from a trademark attorney and founder.

The Evolution of JPG Legal as a Website and as a Law Firm

Me editing an abandoned JPG Legal trademark page concept in late 2016.

A Good Small Firm Attorney Is a Good Web Designer

If you’ve been poking around here, you’ve probably gathered that I designed and developed JPG Legal’s website myself, using HTML, CSS, javascript, Adobe Photoshop, and some powerful platforms and plugins. Though I did not incorporate it until a year later, I was 28 when I started JPG Legal as a solo practice in the late summer of 2016, right after I sold ClintonKaine.com for $15,000.
 

Segment about my “Hillary Potter” fan fiction and comics on HLN’s Morning Express.

 
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The Future of the Trademark Business Model

The Trademark Industry Is a Racket

Sometimes people ask me how my business model is profitable, or what my edge is. I find it hard to answer them without making it sound like I’m cutting corners, but the truth is that JPG Legal’s edge is simply that we’re cheaper than all of the good services and better than all of the cheap services. We’re an actual law firm that performs actual legal work while still charging as little as or less than the online “legal services” factories like LegalZoom.
 
The two primary trademarking models — both the traditional law firm model and the online “legal services provider” model — are rackets.
 
Conventional lawyers are bad at client acquisition, so they tend to exploit the clients they do manage to get, billing as many hours to their clients as they can. In reality, it simply doesn’t take much time to perform due diligence on trademarks, or to file trademark applications.
 
However, on the other end, there are also all of these cheap, no-frills online service providers who don’t seem to be bound by any ethical obligations and who mislead people about their likelihood of success or the hidden back-end costs of their trademark applications. I’m trying to bridge that gap with my firm.
 
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Trademark Websites Are Lying About the Amazon Brand Registry

How long does it take to get on Amazon’s Brand Registry?

Disclaimer: This post arguably constitutes legal advice and in a way I am your lawyer now. At the end of this post, I will no longer be your lawyer, unless I already was before.

December 2020 Update: Amazon seems to have changed its policy on trademarks. Many clients of mine have been getting Brand Registry access only a few weeks after filing US trademark applications with us. Amazon has also slightly changed its wording on its US Brand Registry Requirements page to indicate that pending US trademark applications are acceptable. See my recent post about the new Brand Registry requirements.

It takes at least eight months from the time you file a U.S. trademark application to get on the Amazon Brand Registry. Apparently other online trademark services are telling people things such as, “As far as we know, Amazon will accept proof that you’ve filed your application”, at least according to some clients of mine.

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Should I Trademark My Amazon Brand?

What is the Amazon Brand Registry?

Disclaimer: This post arguably constitutes legal advice and in a way I am your lawyer now. At the end of this post, I will no longer be your lawyer, unless I already was before.
 
Amazon has recently changed its standards for becoming a member of their Brand Registry, which is the main resource Amazon sellers have for stopping people who counterfeit and infringe on their brands. In part because of these changes, I’ve been getting so many clients who sell on Amazon in the past few months that I’ve decided to make it a major part of my trademark filing practice.
 
Unfortunately, Amazon has made it much harder to get on their Brand Registry and stop other sellers from stealing your brand name. The roughest thing about it is that Amazon only seems to recognize trademarks that are fully registered, and not ones that are still in the process of being registered. The smallest amount of time you can hope for between filing of the application and registration of the trademark is eight months, and that’s when everything goes right.
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Are Negligence and Recklessness the Same Thing?

Negligence v. Recklessness

I frequently see people use the terms “negligence” and “recklessness” interchangeably, including people with legal training. The difference between recklessness and negligence — particularly criminal or gross negligence — can be subtle. While both terms refer to the accidental causation of harm, they are indeed different things.
 

Negligence

A negligent person fails to exercise the care that a reasonably prudent person would exercise in similar circumstances. The person does not know that their action is likely to harm somebody in that situation, but the accident is still at least partially the negligent person’s fault because a reasonably careful person would not cause the same result, or would make the result significantly less likely. Negligence can make somebody liable for civil damages in a lawsuit, but most negligent acts don’t warrant jail time in the US.
 
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Can a Restraining Order Affect Your Security Clearance?

As somebody who has held a Top Secret security clearance before, and who was worried about my own record when I got my background check five years ago, I became very familiar with the U.S. government’s security clearance adjudication system. In my case, I was worried about my past use of marijuana.

Because I’m an attorney and know how to interpret judicial rulings, I figure I can help a lot of people in the same boat I was, for a whole range of issues. This blog post is about restraining orders, also known in some states as orders of protection or protective orders. Specifically, this blog post is for people who have had restraining orders issued against them in the past and are now applying for a federal government security clearance. For people who have filed restraining orders against other people, I have a separate blog post here.

Read below for a summary of my findings.

Can Filing a Restraining Order Against Somebody Affect Your Security Clearance?

Initial Question: If I File a Restraining Order Against an Ex-Partner, Can My Federal Security Clearance Be Denied Because of It?

This post is for people who have filed a restraining or protective order. Have you had one filed against you? Go to my other post.

A potential client asked me if filing a restraining order against her former live-in partner might somehow affect her chances of renewing her Top Secret-level security clearance. She knew that an applicant’s clearance can be denied if the government believes they aren’t capable of making rational life choices, or if they’re vulnerable to blackmail or bribery.

My initial reaction was that the answer is almost definitely no, but the question managed to spark my curiosity about the idea of the filing of a restraining order impacting a person’s security clearance. I looked through the last ten years of DOD security clearance adjudication decisions — decisions that are made in cases ambiguous enough that they have to be decided by an administrative judge — and here is what I found:
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Why Are Dead Presidents the Only Dead People with Trademark Protections?

Initial Question: Is It Illegal to Trademark a President’s Name?

Disclaimer: This post arguably constitutes legal advice and in a way I am your lawyer now. At the end of this post, I will no longer be your lawyer, unless I already was before.
 
A client asked me to research this recently. One of her investors insisted there was a special rule against trademarking a president’s name. I told my client I was fairly certain that this wasn’t true, but if she really wanted to be sure, I could spend about thirty minutes researching it at my hourly rate. She said she considered it worth following up on and gave me the green light.

 
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