AP 0580: How Do I Deal with Competition Who Has the Same Name?

AskPat 580 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 580 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions five days a week.

We have a great question today from Glenn, but before we get to that I just want to give a shout-out and thank you to everybody out there who had purchased the audio version of my book, Will It Fly? It's doing really well, and a lot of people are really enjoying it. Especially some of the off the script stuff, and the bonus section at the end of the book too. If you want to check it out, go to WillItFlyBook.com, or you can check it out on Audible.

Get this, if you are not on Audible yet, if you subscribe to Audible, you get one free credit that you could use to download Will It Fly? Essentially, you can get Will It Fly? for free if you subscribe to Audible. Go ahead and check that out, it's an amazing offer, and I am sure that you will enjoy the book if you haven't yet already. Again, WillItFlyBook.com, or just download the Audible app and get it from there.

Thank you so much. All right, here's today's question from Glen.

Glen: Hey, Pat, my name is Glen. I'm the host of the Maple Trainer podcast, which helps people train their Amiibo by answering their questions five days a week. They can head to AmiiboTrainer.com for more information.

And there in lies the question there that I have for you today, there's another person out there who has a YouTube and a Twitter that is called Amiibo Trainer. Now, I have the Twitch account name and the name of the website, which I just mentioned earlier, and the podcast, which is on iTunes, Stitcher, and SoundCloud.

So, what do I do in this situation? Do I switch my name and still call myself an Amiibo trainer, or do I keep going as is and hope people don't mix me for the guy that's on YouTube and Twitter? Or, do I make an offer to buy out the YouTube and Twitter names? Or, do I just use something else entirely?

I do have to say this, we're not the only two trainers out there. There are other people with websites who are trying to stick their claim as the best site to train Amiibos. I've looked at these other sites, I've looked at YouTube, I've looked at Twitter and I think the one advantage that I have is that I put my Amiibos to the test by other unknown competitors. I have my Amiibos compete in tournaments, and I'm not sure whether these other trainers have. They haven't made it known that they compete even though they offer tips.

So, Pat, I don't know if you've been through this before where you have a name and someone else has the same name but if you have been through this situation, I would love to hear what you think. Thanks for your help!

Pat Flynn: Hey Glen, thanks for the question, I appreciate that. Now, you're kind of in a weird situation here…I mean the first thing that came to mind was what is an Ameibo or Amiibo. So, I looked it up and then I was like oh, those things. I didn't know they had a name. My son is more into Infinity characters.

So, for those of you who are listening to this, an Amiibo is sort of a character, a Nintendo character that you can sort of then level up and train and it's actually really cool. I might introduce it to my son, actually. But, beyond that, it's interesting because I see when I type in Amiibo trainer you are number one in Google. However, number two is the YouTube channel, which is for another person and it's very confusing. It could be very much confused…people could be confused of whose who and it's tough.

The best advice I could give you is you'll want to hook up with a professional, or an attorney or a lawyer. Somebody who can help you figure this out because I am not of that level to be able to tell you exactly what you can do. But, that is one option that I think is worth exploring and especially when this involves your brand and your livelihood and stuff like that. You want to make sure that you approach it the right way and the safe way.

The other thing that comes to mind is Amiibo, if that is trademark then I would also worry a little bit because I've been sent cease and desist letters before for my hard work for having a trademark in my domain name. Now, for that being said Nintendo they may be fine with it, some companies are not. But, you may also just want to look out for that too.

Now, you had mentioned potentially reaching out to the other people who own the YouTube channel and some other things and pitching them an offer, and I think that's something that you could also do. That's something I know a lot of people have done when other people have sort of reserved their social media names and YouTube channels before they've reached down, they've offered to pay to get access to and have and just have it be switched over to their ownership.

But, the other thing you're going to have to worry about is well, who used it first? I think that this is where really the lawyer and the attorney's going to help you but there is a right of first use. I think the first person to use it, I mean, they're going to have a lot more leverage. But, of course, if you have it trademarked yourself then it would help you in the best sense because then there'd be something on paper that said you were the first kind to do it.

I've run into situations before in my app company where I had a name of an app that was then copied and somebody with a very similar name used the exact…you know, sort of format of the app and the application of itself was very much copied. But, they said that they actually had the domain name for that app years earlier before we even created the app. So, there was like okay, we were the first to actually put the product out there but they were the first ones to own the domain but they didn't do anything with it.

So, there was a sort of crazy legal thing that happened for about six months when we were both just finally like, “Okay fine, this isn't even worth it. We'll just go our separate ways.” And so that was that. I haven't heard from them since and we've kind of just left each other alone even though we both have the same names of these apps and we're both competing against each other, we just left it alone. That may very well be the best thing to do after you do the research and you see what your options are out there.

I mean I've had opportunities too for websites that have copied my own and given my stuff away for free. I found a website out there that was actually giving away my book for free, which was quite sad, but then I realized that it wasn't even worth trying to battle them and doing a DNS sort of lockdown with their domain host because a lot of times these people who do this, they have access to a lot of other things that can really hurt you in terms of…this was essentially on a black hat kind of website that found my book. And, I've heard horror stories of people who, when they try to reach out and they try to stop that and if they do, well then they retaliate and it's just not good.

So, it's kind of a crazy world we live in in that way but you also have to ask yourself what's hurting, if anything is hurting you out there by having these other people out there who are taking your name and using it and who have the same name. Again, Glen, the best advice I could give you is to figure this out with a professional and a legal person. It will cost some money but you might be able to see that you can own that YouTube channel at some point or maybe it just makes sense and the person who's the professional will give you the advice that you know, nothing's hurting and you can just keep doing what you're doing.

So, I apologize Glen, but if anyone out there has any advice I'd love for you to chime in on this too. Use the hashtag #AskPat580 and hopefully this just shows you that, you know, I'm here on AskPat and I answer a lot of questions. This is the 580th question, but I don't know all the answers. I think that's one important thing you have to know as an entrepreneur, you might not know all the answers.

So, Glen, I think it's cool that you're asking me but I am also open and honest in saying that I don't know what the right answer is in terms of how to handle this. But, I would recommend talking to an attorney or a professional who could help you through this just to see what your options are and then go from there.

So, Glen, thank you so much for the question, I appreciate it. I'd love to hear what happens as a result of this but I checked out your stuff, I think it's great, keep up the great work. For those of you who are listening, Glen gets an AskPat t-shirt because his question was featured here. So, Glen, we're going to send that to you free of charge of course.

For those of you who are listening, if you have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com and you can ask right there on that page using the record button that is right there. And, of course, for some of you, you've might have not been to the website for a while. Check it out because it's brand new! It's totally redesigned and I think you're going to be very impressed.

Lastly, as I said at the beginning of the show, check out my audiobook. WillItFlyBook.com. It's also available on Audible and a lot of bonus content in that audio, too. 6 hours and 24 minutes of content to help you validate your business idea so you know that the thing you're working on is actually going to pay off for you in the end.

So, check it out. WillItFlyBook.com or on Audible, and if you are signing up for Audible for the first time, you get your first credit free so you can download the book for free. Awesome. Thanks so much, I appreciate you and here's a quote by Leonardo da Vinci. He said “I've been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Being willing is not enough, we must do”.

Cheers, take care and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Bye.