Good morning, everyone, and welcome to protecting the health of your innovation. Intellectual property is vital. My name is Tamika Obishon, I'm the regional outreach officer at the United States Patent and Trademark Office, and today I'm joined by my esteemed colleagues, Elizabeth Dougherty, who is the Northeast Regional Director for the office, and also Kyle Ingram, who's the Now, I'm going to get to the heart of the matter, if you will, of intellectual property, but before doing so, please indulge me a little bit. Here's a little bit of factoid for today in history. So on September 7th of 1948, the patent for a television receiver was issued to Lewis W. Parker, who later on became a National Inventors Hall of Fame inductee in 1988. Some of his future inventions also included electrical instruments that were used for the Apollo mission and for NASA. So we're going to go ahead and get started with this session. First up, Elizabeth, Kyle, tell me a little bit about yourself. Why are you sitting here today on the stage, and what do you want the audience to know about you? Well, thank you, Tamika, and I'll jump right in. First and foremost, though, let me say thank you to our hosts here at HRX and HRS. It's been a beautiful opportunity for the USPTO to engage with inventors, innovators, entrepreneurs, people doing really remarkable, life-saving, life-altering innovations. So we're super pleased to be here and hope this is just the first of many future engagements with the Heart Rhythm Society. As Tamika said, my name is Elizabeth Dougherty. I am a 30-plus-year veteran of the US Patent and Trademark Office. She's been my one and only my entire career, having started there right out of undergraduate work where I got a degree in physics. Started at the US Patent and Trademark Office as a US patent examiner, the unicorn career of the STEM field, examining US patent applications. I was fortunate during my tenure as a patent examiner to go on and get my law degree, then doing legal policy work for the agency for about 10 years, but it's really been the latter part of my career that's been my joy and pleasure, and that is doing outreach to diverse audiences. My team and I currently engage with stakeholders throughout the entirety of the East Coast, Maine to Florida, and including the lovely state of Georgia, engaging with individuals from all walks of life, whether they are K-12 audiences, colleges and universities, small businesses, large industry, helping to have people protect and understand the role and importance of intellectual property, and also to help demystify the process. So I'm happy that our conversation today is going to focus on many of those things, and I'm going to turn the stage to my colleague, Kyle. Thank you very much. So I didn't find my home at USPTO quite as quickly as Elizabeth did, I bounced around a bit. I was in the military for a little while, Air Force for four years, went to law school out on the West Coast, came back, worked for the Department of Justice for a little while, did employment law, commercial law, worked for USDA for a little bit, and nothing was really sticking until I came to work for USPTO. I started off as a trademark examining attorney, very similar to the patent examiner, except on the trademark side, and that was interesting because the bulk of the work is going through kind of administrative process, legal analysis, but if you take a moment and you listen and you look at what's coming in, you're seeing these great stories of individuals, of businesses, of folks who have these dreams, have these goals, and I think that that's something that really stood out to me. So after six and a half years of doing the examining side of things, I switched over to the outreach side, and it was great because I got to be more directly involved with the folks out there at conferences such as these, one-on-one events, one-day boot camps, and sit down one-on-one with people who have great ideas for themselves, their family, for society, big dreams, and I got to help them to, borrow your phrase, Elizabeth, demystify the process of applying for trademarks. What a trademark is, how our process works, what it protects, what you can do with your trademark, and for me, the most rewarding part is just seeing their eyes light up when they realize everything they now have, or having someone come before you confused and frustrated and, you know, untangling all those knots and putting them in a position to succeed. Wonderful. Thank you, Kyle and Elizabeth. Now, Kyle, you've touched on some of the area of trademark outreach, but Elizabeth as well, on the patent side, so you each serve in equally yet different roles at the agency. Can you share with our audience here today those areas in more specific areas, in a more specific way in the value that are added in the benefit of IP services in both of those respective areas? Sure, happy to do so. I suspect this audience here today is more knowledgeable than most about what is a U.S. patent, what is the role and importance of a U.S. patent, but just to take it a step back in case maybe you're just dipping your toe in the waters of intellectual property, a patent is a grant, it's a property right granted by the federal government to an individual or a group of individuals or a business for bringing forward an invention, an invention that is novel, non-obvious, and has a utility, and it is what we call the grand bargain. It's the grand bargain that was created by the founding fathers of our nation, and in fact, intellectual property patents and copyrights and trademarks altogether are written into the U.S. Constitution. Our founding fathers recognized that in order for us to be a strong and industrialized nation, we needed to reward the work of authors and inventors for a limited period of time. So what we have done with our U.S. intellectual property system, which began in 1790, and in fact, the USPTO claims that we might be the oldest government agency. We have a friendly rivalry with our friends at the Department of Census. We issued our first patent in 1790, and the laws, while they have changed somewhat over time and the duration of a patent has changed somewhat over time, the laws have still at its very core remained the same, and that is we incentivize individuals to disclose their invention with such specificity that others can make and use it in exchange, and this is the grand bargain. By disclosing your invention, we will give you, give you, grant you the opportunity to preclude others from making, using, selling, or importing your device without your permission for a limited period of time. Currently for utility patents, that period of time is 20 years from the earliest date of filing. For design patents, it's 15 years from the date of issuance. So during that period, during the duration of your patent, you as the patent owner truly have control of that intellectual property, that property, that creative property of your mind, and why are patents so important? Because as anyone in this audience knows who has pursued creating an invention and perhaps trying to commercialize that invention, there's a lot of headache, heartache, and financial outlay in doing so. So by providing you with that exclusive period, that period in which you can exclude others from using your invention without your permission, you have the opportunity to hopefully successfully recoup some of your invention, your investment. Patents, just like every other form of intellectual property, are property that can be licensed, can be bought, can be sold, can be given away to your heirs. So inherently, it creates a value, a value that becomes part of the bottom line of your company, just as your hard copy assets. We also recognize that patents do help companies be able to be able to receive investment funding. Because again, it's an asset in your company that makes your company attractive to investors and buyers. Kyle, over to you. Excellent. So I think when discussing trademarks, and as we talked about, I'm on the trademark side, the first thing to establish is what exactly a trademark is. We've all heard the word, but if you're not involved in that world, maybe you don't understand the intricacies and nuance of it. So a trademark is any type of matter that identifies the source of goods and services and distinguishes those goods and services from those of other parties. A trademark has to be attached to specific goods and services. Think of it as a brand protection. It's not something that you can use to protect wording, designs, anything like that. Just in the abstract, it has to be used as a brand. So think about this example that I'm sure we've all encountered. You go to a restaurant with some friends, you sit down at the table, the server comes by and says, what would you like to drink? And you say, I'd like a Coke. And the server says, sorry, we don't have Coke. Is Pepsi okay? That's trademarks in action right there. You have Coke and you have Pepsi. Both of those are functioning to identify the source of specific soft drinks. Just using the words Coke and Pepsi, you know what the content is, what the character is, what the quality is of those particular beverages. Now you may have a favorite. You may think one is just disgusting and lousy. You might love the other one. I'm not going to complain about what your preferences are. Just note that this is Atlanta. It's a Coca-Cola town. But that's trademarks in action. You know what those are just by the words themselves. But more broadly speaking, in terms of what trademarks are for you and your business, a trademark is your presence in the market. It is the aggregate of your reputation, your goodwill. Every time you go out there and you sell something, you provide services, you interact with customers, whether it's customer service, whether you're repairing goods that you have provided, whether you're just talking with people, you're building up that reputation that's encapsulated by that brand. And as you build that reputation, that brand itself sort of becomes a shorthand for a conversation, for a sales pitch that you are making to consumers at large. As you build this, you eventually get to a point where when consumers see that brand name, they immediately know the quality, the caliber of those goods, the types of the services they're going to get. I mean, think about when you go shopping, if you see a display for athletic wear, and that's Nike or Adidas or Reebok or Lululemon or whatever those big brands are, you don't need a representative from that company to describe to you what those goods are or what their quality is. That brand name in and of itself does all the talking for you. So that is a significant value that a trademark can bring to you and your business. It would probably be a good idea right now to quickly discuss what a trademark is not, simply because there are some misconceptions regarding trademarks. So a trademark doesn't mean that you own a specific word or phrase. It doesn't mean you can stop people from using a word or phrase. It doesn't mean people owe you money if they use a word or phrase. So the trademark is giving you exclusive right to use a word or phrase when it's being used as a source indicator, when it's being used as a brand name for your specific goods. And we see that happen a lot at the agency where someone comes in and they go, you know what I want to do? I want to trademark the word barbecue for sauces. And then I'm going to own the word barbecue. And every time someone has a barbecue or makes barbecue sauce, they owe me money. Well, I mean, I guess it's a clever idea for a side hustle, but it's not how trademarks work and you're not going to get a trademark for barbecue. So that's something important to remember about trademarks is that they have to be attached to specific goods and services and used as that brand name or source indicator for those goods and services. And I think, Elizabeth, you spoke to the value of intellectual property in terms of being something you can use as collateral for loans, for getting funding. And trademark certainly falls into that category. I just wanted to highlight the tremendous value that a brand name can have. If you think about Coca-Cola, for example, that is a multi-billion dollar international corporation that at the end of the day, and I don't say this to besmirch Coca-Cola, I would never do that in my hometown of Atlanta, but at the most basic level, what they do is they make colored sugar water. So how are they so valuable? A lot of that is coming in through that brand name, through that intellectual property. So that's just sort of an example to highlight the value that your brand name, that your trademark can have to your company. And I have talked a lot, so I'm going to kick it back over to you guys. Kyle, it does always make me think about the importance of picking a strong trademark. And I'm sure you're going to get to that in your comments. Because it really can, I don't want to say make or break a business, but it can certainly elevate a business that's doing okay to being really remarkable. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Wow. I hope you all are taking notes. And feel free to put any questions that you have for us in the app. That would be great. But moving forward, Elizabeth and Kyle, you both spoke of the value of intellectual property. And we know that your intellectual property or IP strategy is your business strategy. And so can you just share a little bit, both of you, about how does one go about protecting their intellectual property as an individual or as a company, respectively, in both areas of patents and trademarks? Okay. I'll start off. So with regard to trademarks, this sort of breaks down into two questions. How do I establish my trademark rights? And how do I enforce my trademark rights? With regard to the latter, the enforcement of trademark rights, that's really not something we do at the USPTO. We just, the scope of our mission can't include that. That's a very labor-intensive process. So that's going to fall upon you as the trademark owners to go out there and enforce those rights. And when you see folks that are using trademarks that infringe on your IP rights, you're the one that has to go out there and stop them. Now, with regard to establishing your trademark rights, there's two primary ways to do that. There's common law, and then there's the federal registration process. Common law is very, very easy. You get trademark rights under common law as soon as you start using your trademark in commerce. Real easy. You don't have to file anything. You don't have to check in with any agencies. You don't have to submit anything. The downside to that common law protection is that it only extends as far as you're actually using your trademark in commerce, the geographic area in which you're using it. And as we'll see in just a second, there's a lot of rights you get with a federal registration that you don't have with common law protection. Now, with that federal registration, you have the presumption that you are the owner of that trademark, and you have the superior rights in that trademark in all 50 states and U.S. territories, even if you're not yet using your trademark in all 50 states and U.S. territories. So that is a fantastic tool if you're looking to expand your business, if you're looking to move into new areas. You also get the right to bring any infringement cases in federal court, which is going to be a lot more streamlined of a procedure. You're going to get a lot more subject matter experts in the judiciary there. And perhaps one of the most significant as it relates to medical services and medical goods is that you have the right to record your registration with Customs and Border Protection. And what that does is that gives them the ability and the right to seize any counterfeit goods right at the border as they're coming into the country. And counterfeiting is, it's a huge problem. It undermines consumer trust in brand names and in commerce. It diverts funds from the rightful owners of intellectual property. And as the years have gone on and counterfeiting operations have become more sophisticated, we're seeing that cartels and organized crime are largely behind counterfeiting operations. So it puts money in the wrong hands. And that's broadly the issues with counterfeiting. If you look at the individual harm with regard to counterfeiting, and again, not to diminish the harm that's caused by counterfeiting, but if you as an individual go out and buy a coach bag and it turns out not to be a coach bag, well, okay, you're out a couple hundred bucks, maybe a thousand bucks, maybe your friends realize you're not as bougie as you wanted them to believe, but you're not like truly harmed. Now, if you go out and you're buying heart valves that are counterfeit, if you're buying pharmaceuticals that are counterfeit, that don't have these quality controls, well, that's a whole different ballgame. So that is something that's hugely important when it comes to providers of medical services and manufacturers of medical goods stopping counterfeits. So I think that that's it for me. Let me jump in here on the patent side. And then I know we have some audience questions that we want to be sure and have an opportunity to get to. Kyle, I'm so glad you had the opportunity to bring up the scourge of counterfeit products and how a trademark can help to preclude those from being brought into the country, because it is such a growing area and it's such a concern both to our agency and our administration as a whole. In the area of patents, we don't have the concept of a common law patent. In order to get a U.S. patent, you have to, in fact, come to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. We are the only game in town. I think it's important to point out with respect to patents and with respect to all forms of intellectual property that they are territorial. They protect you within the country or region that issues you that right. So your U.S. patent protects you within the United States. With that said, if you are working across the globe, which many of you probably are, or at least contemplating doing, anecdotally, individuals say that you want to consider patenting in those countries where you are going to sell, where you are going to manufacture, and potentially where your largest competitors are. Again, that's just some anecdotal information that I can provide to you. But with respect to applying for a U.S. patent, you're going to file your application with the U.S. PTO, and 99.9% are filed electronically. It is going to be received by our office and assigned to a designated examiner. Now, we have over 8,500 scientists and engineers that serve as U.S. patent examiners. So your application is going to be assigned to an examiner who has a technological background that is best suited to review your technology. They are then going to pick up that application and examine it as a quasi-judicial official. They're going to look at it for its legal compliance with the laws and rules of U.S. intellectual property, and they're also going to look at it for its technical accuracy. Does it, in fact, operate the way that you say it does? They are then going to search the globe, the world over, for prior art that is pertinent to the patentability of your invention. Now, when we say prior art, we mean anything that is published and publicly available, again, that is pertinent to the patentability of your invention. Because as I said before, they are going to look to see if your invention is novel, non-obvious, and has a utility. Now let me take a step back to be very clear, right here and right now, we are the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. We are not the U.S. Rejection Office. This process of working with you, the inventor, the innovator, to seek a U.S. patent is a process of communication and collaboration. We want what you want, and that is to issue you a valid U.S. patent that you can take to the bank and not to the courthouse. So we are going to work with you to establish whether there is patentable subject matter, and if so, to help tease that out through a back-and- forth communication process to ensure that if we issue you a U.S. patent, that it has patent claims that clearly set forth the meets and bounds of your invention. Now, that process may take some time. We recognize that, and there's some complexity to that process. So that's why we do encourage people to use the services of an IP professional, whether it's a patent attorney or patent agent, because there is some inherent complexity to the process. It's not to say that you can't go the road alone and do it yourself, because people do successfully, a very small percentage, but there's also a number of resources at the USPTO to help you do so, and we're going to talk about some of those resources while we're here today. But, Tamika, should we get to some of those audience questions? Absolutely. Now, thank you, both Colin and Elizabeth. Elizabeth, you just really kind of touched on this first question about patents being something new, novel, and non-obvious, and so our first question is, can you talk a bit about what makes something patentable? Great question, and this is really something that only a U.S. patent examiner can determine on a case-by-case basis as they pick up your application, because they are going to read your application from start to finish, analyze it, decipher it, digest it, search that prior art that I mentioned, and determine, has your invention ever been seen or even alluded to before? Is your invention a combination of existing technologies? They are trained. They are trained from the minute they walk in the door till the end of their career to make these type of judgment and complex decisions. They are constantly being trained. They are constantly engaging through our patent examiner technical training program to be kept up to speed with the cutting edge of technology. They often actually, in fact, go on field trips, just like being back in school, right? We have site experiential education programs for our patent examiners, again, to keep them on the cutting edge of technology, but to the question of what is patentable, I oftentimes get kind of a corollary question, and that is, okay, Elizabeth, how different does my device have to be from something that already exists? Is 1% what's required or 10% or 50%? It all depends. There's no sliding scale of what is patentable and what is not patentable. It's a determination that the patent examiner is going to make when picking up your application. Again, they are going to look at it as to whether it is truly novel. Is it new, never heard of in the sphere of technology, in this landscape of the area in which you're working? They're going to see, is it an obvious variation? And this is where you have a lot of room for negotiation with the examiner in that area of obvious variation, because that's truly a subjective determination, and there's a lot of rebuttal arguments you can make to an examiner. Long-felt need being just one simple example. That bar of utility is a relatively low bar for an inventor to meet. Most inventions have utility. Even something that was patented nearly 40 years ago, yesterday, I happened to be looking through some clips of historic patents, much as Tamika was doing, and I have a dear friend who's now retired from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and he issued a patent. Are there any baseball fans in the audience? I know we're here at the home of the Atlanta Braves. My colleague worked in the original software art, really examining clothing patent applications software, and issued a patent for a baseball cap that has a glove built into the cap, so one could use the cap to catch a baseball. You know, probably not as valuable a technology as some of some of the other 12 million patents that we've issued, but my colleague, again, now retired, was able to determine that this invention was novel, non-obvious, and in fact, had a utility. Wow. Amazing. And speaking of software, Elizabeth, Kyle, I'm going to get back to you. Oh, that's fine. There's another question, and this is a different kind of software, if you will. Could you tell us more about software and software as a service features and functions? Patentability. I suspected this question was going to come up, because I know we have seen it back at our USPTO lounge, which I want to be sure and call out, because if any of you have a question that we're not able to get to during this session, or just want to have a further conversation with us, I invite you to the USPTO lounge following our presentation this morning. Software is one of these unique areas in which there's been a real pendulum shift over time. Sometimes in history, it's been unpatentable. Sometimes it's been patentable. The courts have really played in this area of intellectual property. Software is also unique in that it can be protected in a couple of different ways. Well, actually, three different ways. One, trade secret, which we're not going to focus on today, because we are the US Patent and Trademark Office, but don't ever put trade secrets aside as something that should be or could be part of your intellectual property portfolio. Copyrights are one way to protect software, keeping in mind that you are protecting the code as it is written. You are basically almost taking a photograph of the code, sealing it in time, and you can file a copyright for that code as it is written. Now, protecting it by a patent can be extremely valuable. However, again, this is one thing where there has been this pendulum shift over time. We currently do issue patents for software, but there's a lot of parameters that fall around that type of invention. And the question which really comes into play is, in part, something that's governed by 35 U.S.C. 101. What is that? Well, that's really what governs what is subject matter eligible. What can, in fact, be patented? So what falls within something that is eligible to be patented? For those of you who are working in this area, whether it's algorithms, software using algorithms, I would encourage you to visit our website and actually look for our subject matter eligibility guidelines, because we have a lot of really fantastic teaching examples that walk you through these steps of analysis that our examiners use in determining whether something falls within subject matter that is eligible to be patented or falls outside of the realm of subject matter eligibility, because it's a multi-step process. And I will say our examiners are highly trained in this analysis because of the complexity of this analysis. So again, if this is an area of concern to you or an area in which you're operating, don't hesitate to stop back at the USPTO lounge, and I can even lead you to where those subject matter eligibility guidelines are on our website. Excellent. And we do have a few more questions. Would you like to answer those questions before we go back into our discussion? Yeah, I'm good with it. Okay, great. Thank you. All right, the next question we have here. Oh, okay. Hmm, this is a hot topic indeed. Can you talk about AI and patentability? I saw this one coming too. You know, no matter where we turn these days, artificial intelligence is in everything we do. And we're seeing it now in more and more applications. With that, and its prevalence across all fields of technology, we as an agency, and we as an administration, are heavily invested in identifying artificial intelligence. How do we harness artificial intelligence? And how do we allow our inventors and innovators to use artificial intelligence in securing patents or those patents for technologies? I will say as an agency, to take a quick step, we are harnessing artificial intelligence being used by both our patent examiners and our trademark examining attorneys in the process of examining applications. Applications are being routed to our examiners using artificial intelligence. And artificial intelligence is also helping our examiners to do those prior art searches that I mentioned. It helps them to enhance the quality of their search, find prior art that perhaps they otherwise might not have been able to find, and really help to enhance the quality of the search. With respect to the use of artificial intelligence in creating inventions, this is another spot where I'm going to refer you to our website. And again, happy to have a further conversation, but I'll give you the quick and dirty on this one. One cannot set artificial intelligence to work and have it produce an invention and bring that forward to the US Patent and Trademark Office and seek a patent. Under the laws of the United States, we still require that there be human intervention in order to issue a US patent, because we do not recognize artificial intelligence alone as an inventor. So we have set forth some guidelines where we provide, again, teaching examples and clarification as to where we find it acceptable, the use of artificial intelligence. If you come up with the model and have the artificial intelligence conduct the research and testing to then help you refine the invention, is that something you can apply for a patent? Probably. Again, there has to be human intervention. There can't just be artificial intelligence churning out invention after invention. There has to be the mind of the human individual or team that is helping guiding, that is helping decipher and establish the parameters that that artificial intelligence is using. I will say at this time, we are not requiring as an agency that you identify to us that you are using artificial intelligence in the creation of your invention, which does differ from our friends at the US Copyright Office. And I would encourage you, if looking to register a copyright for material that you have used artificial intelligence to create, be sure and check their guidelines, because they have set forth that they do want you to disclose if you are using artificial intelligence. And they've set forth exactly how to make that disclosure. Lots of beautiful intellectual property gems being dropped today. I'd like to move forward with, we have a few more questions I'd like to share with you. So, curious about demographic diversity, equity and inclusion of inventors. Could you please comment on this for both successful and unsuccessful inventors? It's a great question, because it does allow me to shine a bright light on the work of our agency. We are very committed to diversifying those who see themselves as able to participate in invention, innovation and entrepreneurship. And we're doing so by providing resources and assistance, information, education to underrepresented populations through things such as our Women's Entrepreneurship Program, our military outreach to veterans transitioning military, military spouses, and also our work through HBCUs and a number of other programs. We would be the first to admit that if we look at the demographic of inventors, what little we know about the demographic of inventors. Certainly, gender is one we've been able to study more actively and more successfully. Let's keep in mind, when one files a U.S. patent application, we don't ask your gender. We don't ask your ethnicity. So, we truly don't have the data to be able to reflect what our demographics are. However, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, as well as other intellectual property systems, have tried to ascertain the gender of inventors using what are commonly recognized as male or female names. And in doing so, we have been able to decipher that only approximately 13 percent. It's really not even quite 13 percent, but we're going to round up to 13. Only 13 percent of U.S. patents have a named female inventor. Women make up 50 percent of the U.S. population. They make up 25 percent of the STEM workforce. Ladies, where are we? This has got to change, and we are working actively to change that. We have stood up the Council for Inclusive Innovation with our agency, and we also have issued the National Strategy for Inclusive Innovation. That rolled out of our agency on May 1st, and I encourage you to look for that because it provides several pillars and recommendations for how we can change the playing field. Now, with respect to ethnic demographics, that's a tougher one to decipher because, again, that's not data that we have in our records, but we're pretty confident to say that the numbers aren't great. But we are working to change that, and there's a number of organizations that we are working with to do that. If you have suggestions or recommendations how to reach into your communities, how to get the word out about the role and importance of intellectual property and encourage participation, we encourage you to reach out to us because that's what our primary jobs are. Tamika, myself, Kyle, is getting out into the community and empowering individuals to be a part of the intellectual property system, not only as creators, but users of the system and to be respectful and knowledgeable about the system. So we look forward to doing it hand-in-hand with all of you. Thank you, Elizabeth. So I'll ask this question, and then there's a question. Oh, another one just came up. So both Kyle and Elizabeth, can you just briefly highlight the filing process or application process for both patents and trademarks? And then I will go into the next two questions. I'll start this one off, give you a chance to get a drink of water. So Elizabeth already briefly discussed the filing and application process for patents. And I want to say for trademarks, it's not terribly different. What I like to tell people is that there is a step before you start filing, step 0.5, where you kind of do your research, where you go into our system, you look to see, OK, well, what is it that I want to register as my trademark? And has someone already registered that or something confusingly similar to that that would effectively prevent me from registering my trademark federally? Go out, do an Internet search, see if there's anyone out there who's using the mark but hasn't registered it federally yet. Get a lay of the land before you really invest in that application process, because I've seen it happen before and I hate to see it happen. Folks get really excited about their brand. They put all this time and effort into really establishing that brand and then they apply to federally register it. And then it turns out that's not going to go anywhere because someone already has that trademark. And then they're kind of at that crossroads of, well, do I give up on this brand or do I just kind of keep this brand secret and hope that that other trademark user doesn't find out about it? And then that's a very precarious place to exist from both a legal and a business standpoint. So I don't recommend that. You certainly want to know beforehand if there's going to be any issues with the trademark you would like to register. So that's step 0.5. When it comes time to file, you'll go to our Trademark Center system, and that's all online. If you go to our website, www.uspto.gov, we've recently cleaned it up, made it a lot more streamlined and easy to navigate. You go into our Trademark Center system, click on the type of application you want to file, and the user interface of this, we recently changed it. We hadn't updated it since, I want to say, 1998. And goodness gracious, it showed. Yeah, it's a lot cleaner. And as it asks you for different things like, hey, what is your filing basis? Well, what's a filing basis? It'll explain that right there in the application and tell you, okay, well, a 1A use in commerce means that you're already using this mark in commerce. A 1B intent to use means that, hey, I'm not using this mark in commerce just yet, but I do have a bona fide intent to use. Right now, I'm kind of getting the business spun up, I'm getting investors, I'm getting, you know, maybe I want my patent before I invest too much in this business. So, you know, you could apply with a 1B basis. You go through that system and fill out all the application requirements. And then when you hit submit, it goes to us. We have some folks who look at it just to make sure that everything came in the system okay and the application itself is intact. After that, it goes into a queue. Eventually, an examining attorney grabs that application and does the legal analysis. You know, does this application comply with all the statutory and regulatory requirements in order for a trademark to be federally registered? Typically, what will happen is you won't get your application 100% right on the first go around. Don't worry if that happens. Most people don't get every single little detail just right. You'll get an office action, you fix whatever needs to be fixed, and at that point, the examining attorney will approve the application for publication. And publication's a 30-day period where the public gets to oppose registration of your trademark if they think there's a reason you shouldn't be allowed to have that. You know, if they believe that your registration, your trademark, infringes on rights that they already have, that typically doesn't happen. And assuming that doesn't happen, your mark moves on to registration, which is the end goal for you. Excellent. Thank you. Now, I believe we are currently at time. However, we do have several more questions. Maybe we could encourage those individuals with questions that we didn't have the opportunity to answer to go to our USPTO lounge, and we're happy to take those questions there. Thank you for the robust questions from the audience, the opportunity to let us present, to engage with you this morning, and again, thanks to our dear friends here at HRX and HRS. It's been a pleasure being with you. Kyle, Tamika? Yes. Thank you all, and please visit us at the booth or right in the corner in the wing at the USPTO lounge. Thank you for your time, Kyle. Thank you. Hope to see you at the lounge. If not, have a wonderful day.

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