Tomorrow Might Be Too Late, with Andrei Mincov
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Legacy means a lot of things to a lot of people. To some, it's lasting integrity. It's building and maintaining a history of greatness. It's making an impact on people and community. For others, it's dependable security and assurance in an uncertain time. To us, it's all of that and more. It's a mindset, a brother and sisterhood of hardworking people dedicated to doing the right thing for you and those you care about. Of growing today for a better tomorrow. That's what legacy means at Southwestern Legacy Insurance Group. What does it mean to you? Let's talk legacy.
Welcome to Let's Talk Legacy. I'm your host, Gary Michaels. And today we have a real special guest. Andre Minkoff is the founder and CEO of Trademark Factory. He believes people who have created something deserve to not have that stolen from them. And hardworking entrepreneurs shouldn't be taken advantage of. That's why he founded Trademark Factory. And that's why he is passionate about sharing his experiences. And to him, this is legacy. So welcome to the show, my friend. Thanks for having me, Gary. Great to be here. So your career in this area, a really interesting start, actually beginning in Russia, where you bought a radio station that stole your father's music. Talk a little bit about that.
Yeah, I was born in Russia. You can probably hear it from my accent. You know, I try to not use it too much. But I was born there and I went to my first law school there. And I really didn't see myself as a lawyer. But one day, my dad was a famous composer there, Mark Minkov. He saw on the radio, and it wasn't just played as a song. It was played to advertise an event by Samsung. Nobody ever asked him if he was okay with that. Nobody ever asked him if he'd like to be paid for that. And so he called the radio station. And said, you guys can take my music and use it as you please. And they told him that they were making him even more famous and that he should just sit down and shut up. And, you know, if you knew my dad, you'd know very quickly that this was the wrong way for them to handle it. And so he said, OK, great. I'll see you in court. And that was 1996. When Russia has just transitioned from the Soviet laws toward more or less free market laws around IP. And so there weren't really a lot of lawyers who knew how this worked. There were no case, so there's nothing.
And so he said, he came to me and said, can you take this case seriously? and go against the radio station. Like you're supposed to know law. And I used to sing this song with them on like hundreds of concerts when I was a kid growing up, right? So it was personal. And I saw what it was doing to him because he was pissed. And I knew nothing about copyright. I knew nothing about what you do in the courtroom. But I said, sure, let's figure it out. And so I took them to court. First hearing, you know, I'm there with my long hair and a ponytail. And there's this other lawyer. And I ripped them apart. But they somehow got the postponement. Next time, they had four lawyers on the other side. The judge made the decision that was not in our favor.
I was sitting in my room reading that decision that made zero sense. And my dad came into the room and said, well, what are you going to do now? I did all the right things. I said all the right words. And I don't know what to do. So, well, if you're not going to appeal this decision, you should quit your law school and find yourself a different profession. And so I appealed it. We lost the appeal. At that point, I figured out what to do later. So we appealed it even higher, basically as high as it gets to the second highest court in the nation. And we won. And in the process, I got really, really passionate about helping people who created something that only exists because they created it to help them protect what's theirs and ensure that that doesn't get stolen from them.
So my dad was my first and favorite client, as I like to put it. Then I had a big career in Russia as copyright lawyer with the biggest international law firm in the world, you know, doing work for JK Rowling, Apple, Microsoft, DreamWorks. If you can think of a big business, I've probably done something for them.
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