What if you could immortalise your intellectual property forever?

This week, I’m joined by Ben Scott, Joshua Scott and Victor Caddy, the three innovators behind Etched Tech, a platform redefining how we protect creativity and ownership. From blockchain-backed IP management to closing gaps in legal protection, these three bring expertise from sport, tech and law to create something truly game-changing.

If you’re ready to discover the future of intellectual property, this episode is a must-listen. Tune in now to see how innovation meets protection.

So why should you be listening in? 

You can hear Rob, Ben, Joshua and Victor discussing:

– Etched Tech as a Powerful and Useful Blockchain-Powered Platform

– The Diverse Backgrounds That the Three Co-Founders Bring to the Table

– The Numerous Challenges with Copyright Protection

– How Etched tech and the Co-Founders Aim to Make IP Protection Seamless

– Coping with the Current Economic Climate to Secure Startup Funding

Connect with Ben here – https://uk.linkedin.com/in/benscott22

Connect with Joshua here – https://uk.linkedin.com/in/joshua-scott-839a04215

Connect with Victor here – https://uk.linkedin.com/in/victorcaddy

Transcript

Ben Scott  0:00  

By the nature of sport, you need to be resilient. In particular, cricket, as a sportsman, there’s various pillars that you generally have to make it. Getting that recognition from the IP lawyers has been the great thing for us.

Joshua Scott  0:12  

The big USP about what we’ve built is the blockchain element to it. What it enables us to do is to have an irrefutable timestamp of the evidence that you’re creating and that you’re putting an etched

Victor Caddy  0:23  

and obviously, you want to establish your rights and be able to enforce them as best as possible against other people. On the other hand, you want to be able to defend yourself when people claim that you’re infringing. But if you can record your creative process as you go along, you have a defence to infringement claims

Robert Hanna  0:38  

on today’s legally speaking podcast, I’m delighted to be joined by Ben Scott, Joshua Scott and Victor caddy. Ben is a former professional cricket player, having represented England, a fitness Nutritional Consultant and co founder and director of etch tech. Joshua Scott is passionate about using Blockchain technology as the co founder and director of etched and the CEO and co founder of spade tech, Victor caddy, the director of etched has 35 years of experience in intellectual property and is spearheading several projects to make IP services modern and relevant to today’s entrepreneurs. So a very big, warm welcome, gents. Thank you. Good to have all three of you with us on the show today, and before we dive into all the amazing things you’re getting up to, particularly in the world of legal tech. We do have a customary icebreaker question here on the legally speaking podcast, which is on a scale of one to 1010, being very real. What would you rate the hit TV series suits in terms of its reality of the law? If you’ve seen it on the scale of one to 10, coming to you first Ben

Ben Scott  1:40  

suits, right? We’re probably have to leave that one for Vic. I think he’s going to be the only one that may well have seen it. I’ve not really seen the show. I’ve had it on in the background. I can’t say that. I have too much to comment on that, other than just the whiny noises that come out of the TV when I listen to it. But yeah, other than that, not really seen it. I’m afraid, with

Robert Hanna  1:58  

that, a zero and over to you, Josh, what would you give it if you’ve seen it?

Joshua Scott  2:01  

Well, I’ve not seen it either, but I guess I’ll give it a five. I’ve seen some clips. The guys seem very smart, and all I can say is that lawyers are very smart people. So there you go.

Robert Hanna  2:10  

There we go. And Vic, because you sounds like you have seen it. What would you give it? I’m

Victor Caddy  2:14  

going to give it five as well. But actually, to be honest, I haven’t seen it

Robert Hanna  2:20  

either. Well, with all of that, we can move swiftly on. I mean, you’re working on some super cool stuff at the moment, but just want to kind of dig in to start with a bit about your background. So to begin with, Ben, would you mind briefly telling us a bit about your background and career, and then Josh, then Vic, yeah,

Ben Scott  2:35  

sure. So it’s not really a very linear path from from where I started into law tech, but I kind of fell into the realms of professional sport as a youngster. So I played cricket as a kid, and then followed in the footsteps of my dad and my brother, and by following the footsteps, I mean I surpassed them quite quickly and ended up playing, playing cricket at a young age. Got into Middlesex, like early London cricket teams, and then that steam rolled. By the time I was 16, I was playing for, you know, I was playing for the for the adult team at Middlesex, for the second team, and then ended up going to Surrey. So I played at Surrey for three years underneath some of the most incredible cricketers out there. I won’t go through too many names, but Alex Stewart and Graham Thorpe are pretty well known. And then I got poached back to Middlesex. So I spent best part of 10 years back at Middlesex before they realised how crap I was, and then piled me on to Worcester, and I played my last couple of years at Worcestershire, a beautiful, beautiful ground. And then, I mean, intermittently, I played, you know, don’t like to mention it, don’t like to talk about it. But I played a bit of England lion stuff in New Zealand as well. So I had a, I had a relatively successful, certainly a career that I was happy with by the time that I’d finished in cricket. And then I had a quite a natural progression into the wellness space in the city. I was quite lucky. And so as I was winding down from my cricket, I was coming back to London, because I’m a London boy and Worcester, you know, it’s a beautiful place, but it’s not where I thought I was going to end up. So I kept coming back down to London, and some friends of mine were setting up a sports conditioning centre, an S and C centre in the middle of town, so right in between bank station and St Paul’s Cathedral. So it’s pretty useful position in terms of starting a new career and and then, yeah. So I’ve been in that for quite a quite a while now, and just made some fantastic friends, some fantastic connections in, you know, law firms, hedge funds, banks, all of that kind of stuff, and then, and then it just kind of came out of nowhere. And I won’t ruin the full story, but me and Vic. Vic was actually one of my clients, believe it or not, and still is no look at the pure stature of the man and I. And then we just got talking. And we just got chatting about some stuff that he’s seen in the industry that have been really challenging for him and me, just being a bit of a sounding board and a bit of a chatter box. We just got talking and and then, and then it kind of exploded from there, really, I’ve, we’ve, obviously, we’ll get into this a bit more as we as we go. But the concepts around using Blockchain technology to secure intellectual property, I mean, it’s, it’s been around, really, since the inception of blockchain technology. It does, it does what it says on the tin. It time stamps and it authenticates documents or whatever it is. So I kind of thought, hold on a second. I know someone that’s pretty useful at blockchain technology, which is my nephew, Josh. And so we all got in a room, and then the rest was history. You know, like a couple of years later, we’re fighting, fighting to get, get some funding and really build out the, the full kind of capabilities of what this can do. So, yeah, I suppose, in a nutshell, it was, it’s, it’s been a bit of a curvy road, but it’s been one that I’ve enjoyed most of the time, but obviously there’s been some challenging moments as well. So that’s, that’s what’s really taken me from from there to here. Yeah, one

Robert Hanna  6:09  

interesting story as well. So I guess Josh beat that. Well,

Joshua Scott  6:15  

I didn’t go into the family business of cricket. Funny enough. Yeah, Ben was the only one that really, truly made it in that in that area. Now, my background is actually charity. So I worked, I worked in mental health charity for a good 10 years, building teams and putting people into schools and working with young people who are struggling with their mental health in various ways. So quite an interesting route into tech as well, but for a very different kind of way that bended. I got into the blockchain space back in 2017 just sort of dabbling with a little bit of investment here and there, and getting into some communities and and meeting people, meeting people that were sort of on the on the edge of this brand new technology that’s obviously kind of taken the world by storm, I guess, a little bit even now. So yeah, kind of moved into that space. And you know, I had a few small things that I was doing on the side. I had a tuition company. I was doing maths and English tuition. So I always had a little bit of an entrepreneurial spirit outside of what I was doing. And then, as I met some more people in the blockchain space, we decided to set up a small development company. So we were developing various products within within the crypto space, and defi, as we like to call it, decentralised finance. So, you know, we were building lots of different things, building products for people, but kind of was getting a little bit fed up of working and something so insular, you know, it’s a very much like kind of crypto bros type of atmosphere working in the crypto space. So we really felt like, you know, we wanted to do something that had real world meaning. We wanted to use the technology to actually expand, you know, people’s ideas of what the blockchain could do. And we were thinking of a bunch of ideas. And, you know, Ben and Victor came to me perfect timing, really, at the same time I was thinking about, what can we do? This kind of landed on my on my doorstep, and, you know, we kind of put our heads together, was like, Yeah, this, this is, this is a really good thing. We can really make a difference in in the IP industry, and much broader than that. I’m sure we’ll touch on that later. But yeah, that’s how I sort of got involved. And, you know, now gone into business with my uncle and I guess my new granddad got to visit my uncle. I say I’ve gone into businesses with my dad 20 years ago. So interesting, interesting to be doing that. But yeah, that’s how I kind of ended up here,

Robert Hanna  8:32  

loving it. And I guess Vic, the final piece of the puzzle. What’s a bit about your story The

Victor Caddy  8:36  

final piece of the puzzle? Yeah, my background feels really dull compared with, you know, just listening to these two talking away. But I actually started out in science. I did zoology, of all things, as an undergraduate, and then I moved across. I was at Cambridge, did natural sciences, but specialising in zoology, then I moved across to Oxford, because I’d started rowing in Cambridge, and I basically wanted to carry on after I graduated. So I went there to do a PhD, and then at the end of that, I didn’t have a clue what to do, because it wasn’t, it wasn’t something at that time, which was in mid 80s, that really led on to anything. And so I ended up falling by accident early into the intellectual property field with a firm of specialist trademark attorneys based up in Manchester, which no longer exists. But it was a, it was a great little firm, and I’ve just had a career in the IP space ever since then. So I joined that in 1988 and have many years. That is now, sort of 37 years or something. I just can’t believe it’s where all those years gone to. I just don’t know but, but I’ve it’s been, it’s been a few few different firms, and it’s been a fun journey working with lots of good clients. And at one point I had a little game I used to play when I was driving around visiting clients, which was on the motorways, called Spot the trademark. And you just used to look at the lorries and spot the trademarks that you’d actually registered. But, you know, that’s about as exciting as my. My COVID gets really

Robert Hanna  10:02  

very exciting, and all three different, you know, walks, walks of life, and coming together to build this team, which we’ll talk about. And funny enough, we’ve actually had, there’s a link we’ve had Elizabeth Rimmer, who’s the CEO of law care, the mental health charity for lawyers. She actually did a zoology degree. So there we go, a link there with with Vic and Josh a bit about your backgrounds, but let’s talk about etch then. So I’ll come to you, Ben first, because you you gave a little bit of way. But you know, from my understanding, etch tech is the modern way to claim, manage and immortalise intellectual property. So could you give us a bit of an overview of the platform and what problems does it ultimately aim to solve? I will do,

Ben Scott  10:39  

but before I do that, I’ll just say that going to Oxford and and Cambridge and Vic used to drug spiders to see what their webs do. You know, like, it’s not, it’s not as as far off a crazy intro, absolutely, yeah, sold himself short. There no etched is, yeah. Look, we, we’ve, we’ve identified this issue, and by we Vic and a lot of his colleagues, and that the the intellectual property space. And I gotta be careful. I say this, but it is effectively broken, all right? And if it’s not broken now, it will be very, very soon in terms of its inefficiencies, you know, the traditional way that people look after their intention in intellectual property, that the traditional ways are going to be redundant very, very quickly. The volume of data, obviously, the introduction of AI, the cost is going to keep rising, the complexities across borders, you know, as as we become, you know, more globalised, it’s just going to get more challenging to use the traditional methods of securing IP, plus the way that that most creatives actually or that their mindset to to looking after their intellectual property just isn’t there. You know, we’re on a conveyor belt of content, content, content, and that’s all people want to do. So they’re not, they’re not thinking particularly smartly, or, you know, in a consolidated way about how they’re going to secure their IP. So the problem, the problems kind of going in both ways. You know, the traditional method isn’t really, you know, good enough and and the way that people are doing it so, so with x, what we wanted to create was a more robust way of securing evidence to support intellectual property, who did it, when they did it, how they did it, show the creative process that goes on. And that’s obviously one of the, one of the big stumbling blocks. I mean, it’s all very well, getting to the end of a product and and throwing out of there and saying, This is mine, and that can be challenged, but you can’t really challenge the creative process if it’s been presented and it’s been, it’s in a digital fossil record, as Vic likes to call it. So, so yeah, we’ve built the we built the platform to to enable people to do that, and in terms of attacking the kind of mentality of a lot of creatives, you know, not really thinking about securing their intellectual property, and we’ll go on to this in a minute, but trying to make it as alternate automated as possible, so having a having a system that can plug into their natural flow or their workflow that they’re currently doing, and this is where Josh and his geniuses are going to work their magic. And it’s pulling all of that data out and securing it on etched so that they don’t even know, they don’t even know what’s going on, but they’re securing all of their evidence for that rainy day that you know, some of them hopefully won’t, won’t see that rainy day, but a lot of them do, and we know that, and that’s, that’s what’s really gonna really hurts if you’re not ready for it. So, so fundamentally, yes, a SAS platform. It’s nice and easy interface. Go onto the platform, drag and drop at the moment, but then in the future, it will be dragging out for you, securing your intellectual property to use as and when you need it, get people like Vic to use that evidence to fight whatever cases you need to fight.

Robert Hanna  13:50  

Yeah, really well said. And you know, in the age of the Creator economy and everything being online, this is just a great tool to help you sleep at night. And I think that’s, you know, ultimately, the way I think about things. And we’ve had lots of lawyers that have come on, you don’t instruct me to teach the law. So you know, as a business owner, or whatever you’re doing, if you have a legal challenge and problem, I am here so you can sleep safe at night. So I love what you’re building. Josh, you want to get into the tech side, because obviously, coming to your background, Ben was referencing then basically digital evidence of what you do when you did it. So by allowing you to create these etches, I love the name, by the way. So etch empowers you to claim and control your IP worldwide. So what technology is behind etched and how technological advances and get words out possible now and not previously? I know referencing blockchain,

Joshua Scott  14:35  

yeah, so obviously, I think the big USP about what we’ve built is the blockchain element to it. What it enables us to do is to have an irrefutable timestamp of the evidence that you’re creating and that you’re putting onto etched now in the past with web, two kind of interfaces, whether that be emails, whether that be photos that you take on. On iPhone, or whatever that might be, those dates are subject to change. People are able to go in and edit those kind of dates and edits those times and and, you know, we pull away even from technology, when people are taking notes, when people are writing stuff, you know, proving the timestamps of when you did those things is extremely difficult. And obviously that’s, that’s an issue, and that’s something that we’ve really worked on within etched and we’ve enabled people to be able to actually access the blockchain and access that irrefutability of the time stamping. So, you know, that’s, that’s a real key element to the product, obviously, doing that in a way that’s easy and everybody can use and actually attaching the metadata or the data. So whether that’s your JPEGs, your MP threes, your MP fours, whatever it is that you’re creating in text files, you know, attaching that to the timestamp gives you that intrinsic value of those two things being together. And it cannot be refuted like people cannot say, Oh, well, you know that dates wrong, or you didn’t do that right, or when did you do that? It can all be there in a row, easy for people to view. So I think that’s kind of the main, the main point of what, what makes etch so good and so valuable to creatives. And I guess technology advances so quickly, and the blockchain has advanced so quickly over the past seven years that I’ve been involved in it or eight years now, approaching that every year there’s a new thing. Every year, there’s something else that you can do, and there’s a new way of making things even better and even more efficient. So we’re looking forward to year on year, being able to make things more efficient and make it even better as we go along. But yeah, some of the advances over the last few years have really made it possible to do what we do today. And I’ll touch on some more of that stuff later, but I guess that kind of gives you a little bit of an overview of of what separates the platform from, you know, maybe what’s out there at the moment. Yeah.

Robert Hanna  16:54  

And, you know, the only constant and businesses change, isn’t it? I think, you know, we’re going to see that exponentially with what’s going on in, you know, the AI revolution. I remember we have piers Lily from dragons, Dan, come on the show, and said, it’s not an AI revolution. Is this is a once in a species time opportunity in this world that we’re living. And basically, what I love about that is it’s just pure transparency, isn’t it? It’s pure transparency. And I think that, like you say, it just makes people see it there and then, no, he said. She said, whatever it is. Said, love it. Okay, Vic, want to talk about sort of different elements of IP now and copyright. So can you explain to our listeners different elements of intellectual property and the issues facing copyrights in particular? Yeah,

Victor Caddy  17:35  

sure. It’s, I mean, I’m a traditionalist, so for me, there are really four types of intellectual property, patents, which protect inventions, trademarks, which are names and logos and things like that, designs which are designs of T shirts and things of that nature. And then copyright, which protects a whole host of things. And these days, there are various other things that get lumped in as well, such as confidential information or trade secrets and database rights as well. But for me, all of these things are intellectual assets, and the IP are categories of intellectual assets, basically. So really, I mean, etched is really an intellectual asset management tool, so it kind of apply and have relevance to all of those things, including the IP, plus also the confident information and the database rights and things like that. Now the thing with copyright, if we, if we concentrate on IP from the thing with copyright that it’s, it’s a different animal from patents, trademarks and designs, because, and we’re talking about registered trademarks and registered designs. With those and with patents, you get your rights by making an application to an Intellectual Property Office, such as the UK one in Newport. But with with copyright, it’s a different matter, because copyright comes into effect during the creative process. It’s a creative process that produces it, and you don’t have to register it. In fact, you you can’t register it in the UK because there’s no copyright register. So it’s so easy to overlook. It just happens, you create something and you move on, you create something else, and you you, you just take the copyright for granted. And so that’s, that’s, that’s a real problem. And when it comes to protecting copyrights, and you’ve got to be able to show that it’s yours. So really, what you need to do and also show that someone else has copied from you if there’s a problem. So the best that you can do is show an early date of creation. And in all the time that I’ve been in the IP profession, the way that people have said do this is put whatever you created in an envelope, send it to yourself by recorded delivery, and then don’t open it. And that’s so that’s so really archaic these days. You know, most things aren’t created on paper anymore, so you have to print it out. Then you have to go to the post office if you can find one, and often you don’t get. Very clear dates anyway, and if you’ve got a whole pile of envelopes, then you’ve got a trouble of identifying which ones which you know. It’s just problem after problem after problem with that approach. And yet, at the same time, as you’ve already intimated, copyright is becoming so much more important than it’s ever been. Because there’s so much more copyright material being created these days, there’s a really big need for custody of copyright works, and

Robert Hanna  20:23  

that’s why we’re super keen to have the conversation. Because, you know, the penny must have dropped now. So our listeners listening. Why this is so important? Because, you know, people put a lot of time, energy and effort into their, um, online, particularly content creations or products or services and things that they’re doing that, you know, like you say, without certain things available. This is the tool that can help you. And obviously you’re going to be continuing to build features. You’re going to be evolving. Josh was touching on there, but Ben coming back to you, just on sort of the journey, I guess, and raising money and building these features, you know, etch users and blockchain files, things easily. You know, you have the edge library. You have a dashboard. Love it. How did you raise money to build out the features and capabilities law firms are currently seeking?

Ben Scott  21:08  

It’s been a challenging journey. I mean, we’ve, we have, we’ve landed in probably one of the hardest times in the last 30 years to raise money, certainly in the UK, it has been very, very difficult. I mean, we spoke to people that said, Oh, had you ever been doing this in 2020 2021 you’d have raised within six weeks, you know. So we really have have landed, but that, you know, that doesn’t have to be a bad thing if we do, you know, if we succeed in getting what we need in the foreseeable future, then we’ve done it in the hardest times. Then, you know, there’s, there’s not going to be much more that’s going to challenge us in the future. He says, As a naive startup, but so no what we’ve done today. So we’ve got angels that have come in seen the value in this very early on. We’ve got some angels that are in the IP space as well, globally connected guys, which is fantastic, because getting that recognition from the IP lawyers has been the great thing for us. The The challenging thing, I suppose, is that the technicians within the law firm see this immediately, right? So you’re going, you know, like one of the one of the things we identified very early on is it’s only worth speaking to the people that will listen. So the moment you speak to someone, you know, fairly quickly if they get it or they don’t. And actually, we’ve not got time to waste trying to educate and convince people of this technology, of the use of cases and the value. So as soon as you hit people that get it, it’s great. And we, you know, so we started off by trying to go straight to the creatives and and, yeah, there was an education part that was needed, you know, there was, you know, sort of convincing them that this wasn’t a crypto project, you know. And that’s been one of the hardest things blockchain technology. The first thing they do is it almost shuts a lot of people down they don’t get it, or it scares them, yeah. So then when you get those people that do get it, which has been a lot of IP lawyers, it’s been fantastic. It’s been really good validation for Vic and us. But again, the challenging point there, and pretty much everyone’s you know, listening to this, will find it certainly that are trying to integrate law into, sorry, integrate tech into law firms, is it’s all very well the technician and the lawyer understanding it, but they’ve got to get it through those layers of the onion at the law firms to actually get people to adopt it. So in terms of, in terms of getting that adoption, that that’s been the main, the main challenge raising wise, right, wise, we’ve, we’ve got a handful of angels, as I said, and we’ve invested ourselves, you know, we’ve got, we put our money where our mouth is. We’ve, you know, got skin in the game, me and Josh, sorry, me and Vic and Josh, with his time sweat and tears and hair as well, as you can see, has all gone into this. So we’ve, you know, we believe in it. And we’ve really thrown, thrown the kitchen sink, so to speak, yeah,

Robert Hanna  23:50  

and you have to be passionate about these things. And you know, if it doesn’t break you, it makes you, and all of that good stuff. And, yeah, I love that you have skin in the game as well, because you’ve genuinely got to believe in it. You’ve got to be passionate about it, that you know you will go towards whatever it takes to make sure this is a success. And Josh, you were touching on some of the USPS before, but maybe if there’s like two or three things you really want people to sort of take away, in terms of the uniqueness of this platform, what would you say that is in terms of edge versus other tools out there?

Joshua Scott  24:18  

No, no, it’s a good question. So I think the first thing that Ben touched on is that we’re not crypto. So I think that is definitely something that makes people get concerned. We’re not doing tokens. We’re not doing any of that. We’re not having like tokens as part of the project. It is a normal tech company that is using Blockchain on the back end. I think that’s very important for people to understand. So, you know, they don’t, they don’t get concerned about that kind of element if they’re trying to or looking to use something like etched the other thing, I think, is really, is accessibility to the blockchain that really makes it unique from blockchain projects that have tried to move into the legal space. We. With new advancements. And again, I won’t go too much into detail on the tech side of things, but to access the blockchain, you know, there’s quite a steep learning curve. You need to know how to access on chain wallets. You need to know about having long keys with like crazy numbers that you have to try and remember, and you know, all these sort of phrases that you need to know to sort of keep your wallet safe, and then you have to know about gas fees and all of these crazy things that definitely scares people. We’ve removed all of those elements now. Those elements are needed for the blockchain because they are what make the blockchain tick. And, you know, in our case, what we’re what we’re using, but you know, we’re able to do it in a way that actually, yeah, just just means that anybody can access it. So I think that’s certainly a unique part of what we’ve done. And I think the other part as well is how cheap we’ve managed to make it to actually be able to do all of this stuff. We’ve optimised a lot of things, and over the last couple of years, there’s been a lot of advancements in the blockchain space, with blockchains that are now far cheaper to use, far cheaper to send transactions across. So it means that the platform and now allows people to etch at will, so you don’t have to wait until you’ve got, like, a final piece before you start etching. The whole idea of the product is you can etch your creative process. And, you know, the SAS model that we’re going to be using is going to be high numbers of etching that people are about to do, you know, unlimited kind of plans that we’re going to have so people can kind of etch as they go along, to show this creative process, to almost show their workings. I used to teach maths, and I used to say to my students, if you give me a final answer, that’s no use to me, because I don’t know how you got to that final answer. You could have copied it from anywhere. I need to see you’re working out, and we’re basically allowing creatives to do exactly the same thing show they’re working out in a way that’s irrefutable. So I think, yeah, you know, I think they’re probably the two main things that make it unique from potentially blockchain projects that have tried to do this, and then obviously, with the actual irrefutability of the timestamps, that also makes it different from maybe web, two platforms that are trying to manage. We kind of combine the two together. Today’s

Robert Hanna  27:05  

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Victor Caddy  28:40  

I definitely think that they are. The IP profession has a bit of a blind spot when it comes to unregistered rights. So copyright, unregistered trademarks and unregistered design rights. It’s easy to do the where there’s a filing system. It’s easy because you can just file, you can you can then liaise with the Intellectual Property Office and through to grant, and then you can deal with all the post registration or post grant matters afterwards, like licencing and infringements and so on. But there is this blind spot when it comes to helping clients to protect copyright and evidence of ownership of unregistered trademarks and also unregistered designs, because there’s no registration system, there’s no obvious means of custody, it’s actually quite difficult to work out what, what the IP profession can do in that respect, and obviously, Edge provides a means for them to provide that service for their clients. They can start protecting copyright and unregistered trademark evidence and under the design lights,

Robert Hanna  29:41  

yeah, fascinating stuff. And again, thanks for giving some some good detail around that. And we always like to bring people on who are walking the walk and talking the talk. So with its being an IP focused show today, we should talk about brands. And so your brand, and you know, etched coming to you Ben is a digital DNA. Would you mind telling us more about the brand, and in what ways are you building etched and protecting it as a brand?

Ben Scott  30:06  

Yeah, I mean the brand, the concept of etched, appeared very quickly, very early on. So in one of the first conversations, we got together at the NED in central London, and we just popped in for a coffee and and before we knew it, you know, we’re throwing up a couple names. And I think Josh just said etched. And we just went, Yeah, move on. That’s why. Because so many, so many starts out. I don’t say that so casually. I mean, obviously, like fundamentally, etched, has become really powerful for us, right? Because, you know, we’re going to that, but a lot of startups focus too much on what we’re going to call ourselves, what colour scheme we’re going to use, and all that kind of stuff. And and it is, it is valuable, of course, it is, you know, like, so I think we’re probably really fortunate that we, we came up with this, like, really, really quickly, and then it’s been one of the things that everyone said to us, you know, like, we’ll, we’ll go through this whole spiel about how valuable the product is and what it does, and it’s this, and the tech and and they just go, Oh, I love the name. We’re like, brilliant, okay, but, but there is power in that, you know, like the etching as a verb as a it’s a thing that you do. It’s, you know, crying out loud. Some of the competitors that we’ve got in the space, and they’re, like, not being, sort of throwing handbags around, but, I mean, like, so difficult to you, wouldn’t you were never you wouldn’t necessarily have a clue. But once you on, once you dive into the concept of etching, and we want to get to a point in the future where even, you know, when competitors are are out there, they’re still etching, as far as the clients concerned, you know what I mean, they’re still securing their property through that. So I think that that brand is going to be very, very helpful in getting us to market really quickly. You know, we’re, we’re speaking with a lot of very large law firms at the moment about integrating us into their systems. And once, you know, once that takes place, then we’re going to be really, hopefully that brand loyalty and that brand credibility that comes through them is going to be really powerful for

Robert Hanna  32:07 

Yeah, I mean collaborations, domination as well. And yeah, you’re absolutely right. Like, getting a brand that kind of clicks with people even, like, thinking back to when you’re saying there about etched when we named the show the legally speaking podcast. You know, we’re gonna be talking to people legally speaking. You know, people like, that’s a really good name. Like it associate, nice name. And I think it’s really important. You know, when things like just come to your head, like you said, it’s top of mind, Josh, it’s linked to your to what you’re doing. Love it. I think it’s genius, okay, but without any ideas, they die at the graveyard. They need action. So Dev is a big part of that. So Josh wants to come to you on the development side, who’s formed part of the development team. How did they build the platform from start to where it is today? Feel free to Blow Your Own Horn.

Joshua Scott  32:49  

Well, I will not blow my own horn, because I’m not actually a coder by a trade myself. Funnily enough, I’ve learned a lot about the coding kind of space and how things work, and I can sort of bring things together and work with people, but really, the real brains behind the whole platform are a handful of really top quality, full stack developers that we’ve had that have worked with us along the way, all around the world. We’ve got Lance, who’s in Dubai, we’ve got Farooq in Algeria and Michael in America. Those three guys have really been key in bringing everything together experts in the blockchain space and obviously being able to bring the blockchain elements to the platform, but also maintaining that sort of easy front end user experience. And it, you know, it takes me back to the very start, when we first started talking. We actually did a 90 page feasibility study into the feasibility of of actually building something like this, all the different technologies that we can use. And obviously, as time’s moved on, the technologies have changed, and we have to change with the technology. And we have to rebuild stuff. You know, within tech, you can’t, you can’t just leave stuff and it will work forever, like you’re constantly it’s not like a building. I you know, maybe it’s like a building, but, you know, 10 times that we’re a building, you might have to do maintenance every five years, every 10 years, and and we have to do maintenance every month on what we’re doing to kind of keep things going. So there’s some great guys there. And then, you know, we’ve got had some really good quality designer as our team as well, who’s been a big part of building out all the designs and and bringing all of that kind of stuff together. So yeah, it’s certainly been difficult, you know, we’ve worked on a shoestring budget for a long time to get to where we’ve got to, and I’m extremely proud and impressed to what we have got on the budget that we’ve been able to use to get there. And, you know, these guys have sacrificed a lot to build this platform and make it what it is. So, yeah, yeah, we’re really happy with how the team is that we’re a bit of a family really, either you kind of on calls, day in, day out, and even though you’re, you know, ones in one side of the world. Ones on the other side of the world. You come together for that hour every day, you know, we talk about what we can do next, how we can make it better, you know, all the kind of cool ideas that we’ve got to make the platform better in the future. You know, we’re already planning out those things and road mapping and making blueprints for for what we can do in the future. So, yeah, no, it’s been it’s been great. It’s been difficult, but it’s been great working on this as a team on the tech side.

Robert Hanna  35:22  

And I get that, and I always say, you know, energy is everything. And just sort of following the discussion, you can hear that everyone is passionate about that, and it’s how you capture that energy as a team, wherever you are, remote, globally, and come together to keep that kind of flywheel effect. For folks who have watched red, Jim Collins, Good to Great. It’s all about capturing that energy to keep catapulting you forward. Ben, want to come back to you then Victor, a couple of questions for yourself. But Ben, just on sort of sectors and market team. How have the sectors and market team contributed to ensuring etched is thriving?

Ben Scott  35:52  

Well, the set the sectors, the sectors really is, is Josh touched on it a little little bit earlier, was the versatility of what we’ve got, right? So we can move this into other sectors. So we’re, at the moment, obviously, we’re in the law space, in the IP space, we’ve identified this. And, you know, we’re like, we’ve been to, you know, various places where we’ve, we’ve met with startups, because obviously, we’re a startup, so we’re meeting with lots of startups. And one of the areas that startups really fall short is in securing their intellectual property, right? And it’s how they show their due diligence to investors. They want, they want to get investors on board. And the first thing investors say is, you know, is it yours? And can you prove it? All of those kind of things. So, so we do fall into really helping those kind of guys, as well as the creatives, because, you know, they’re creating a business and a brand. We’ve, we’ve also had, like, some a really nice, tidy market fit in valuation companies. So companies that value other other companies. So they look at the intangible assets, and they try and identify what they are, and then try and use that to create, you know, to give the company value, whether it be m and A’s or financing or whatever they need it for, and to have a mechanism that enables them to identify all of the assets, then consolidate them, and then make them far more tangible. I mean, there’s severe value in that. And we’re talking with some guys that like, like that idea as well. And then something that’s basically, you know, pretty much landed on our lap, as well as the construction industry, you know, like there’s other industries where, you know, you got health and safety that are very things like that, that are very time sensitive, you know, delivery disputes. So in terms of the versatility of the product, it is huge. So that’s what I meant by, you know, like the sectors expanding from a team perspective. Obviously, Josh and his his devs have been fantastic, you know, but my background is professional sport, right? And in particular a team sport, and in particular a team sport where you spend a lot of time with people, because, you know, let’s face it, when I was back and I didn’t spend much time on the field, right? So you spend a lot of time with people, and you so I understand the value of team. For me is, is right at the top, right, because you don’t, you don’t do this alone. I don’t know if anyone saw the the Arnie Arnold Schwarzenegger thing. And, you know, everyone will look at him the Netflix show that he had, and everyone looks at him and goes, Wow. You know, what a stature a person come from nothing, and got to where he got, you know, and everyone thinks he did it alone. But by his own admission, he said, No, I wouldn’t have that I wouldn’t have got anywhere if I didn’t build the right people around me. So I really believe in that. So we’ve got, we’ve got some incredible people, obviously, Josh and his dev side. We’ve got the three of us, but we’ve, we’ve got some finance help from one of the dads at my daughter’s school, you know, chatting, chatting at the gate. And all of a sudden, I really like this. He’s into AI. He’s into tech. He’s an ex, you know, financial director at a very, very large firm understand SAS platforms. He’s been invaluable for us, you know, because that’s one of the I mean, Josh is a, is a maths guru. I certainly am not. So when it comes to my, I mean, honestly, it’d be hilarious if we put up some of my early spreadsheets, you guys would laugh. But, you know, he’s come in, and he’s just made that far more accessible for us. And then we’ve got a marketing guy who’s experienced in selling VR and other tech products, and he loves blockchain technology. And, you know, as Josh said about like the family. I mean, these guys have, they’ve given us so much time, you know, and as startups, you really need that. So getting the right people on board, getting you know, relaxed characters, people that you can trust has it is going to be the most important thing for us. I think moving forwards. Yeah. And

Robert Hanna  39:29  

I always say, like NSN, never stop networking. I love that example of actually at the gates, they’re talking to someone. It’s almost like the the red car theory. If people aren’t familiar about being alive for opportunities, you don’t sort of have red cars in mind. Then when you’re actually out on the road, you start seeing all these red start seeing all these red cars because you’re alive for opportunities you never know you might be next to your next mentor, business partner, whatever it is. So it’s just having that entrepreneurial spirit. Love it. Okay? I want to switch lanes a little bit and come back to you Vic to talk about design disclosure issues. So what is an example of a simultaneous does. Design disclosure issue, and how does this link with etched particularly, and what is the value of independent creation? Some simple

Victor Caddy  40:12  

questions. This is a really good example, actually, of how etched is a game changer in a sort of commercially significant way for clients, the simultaneous disclosure issue related to unregistered design rights, and it’s actually a sort of a Brexit hangover. I always like to be the first person in a conversation to mention Brexit, although it doesn’t quite have the same effect it used to have. But basically with hundreds of design rights, you have to have novelty in order to have the right. And because of the way that plexit was handled, if you disclose, say, a t shirt or a soft toy or something in the UK, you simultaneously destroy your novelty in the EU, so you can only have design rights in the UK, and you leave yourself open with to competition, without any form of protection whatsoever in the EU. And then it works the other way around as well. So if you, if you disclose first in the EU, you can’t then have protection in the UK, unless you can find a way of disclosing simultaneously in both territories at the same time. And the best that people have come up to come up with hitherto has been to disclose their designs on the website that isn’t actually as simultaneous as you might think, the time lags and so on. But if you can disclose using the blockchain, then, because of the decentralised nature of the blockchain, what you’re disclosing isn’t disclosed in any one place before it’s disclosed everywhere else, so you do have genuine simultaneous disclosure, and that’s what you need in order to have your designs protected in both the UK and the EU at the same time. Genius,

Robert Hanna  41:56  

genius. Love it. Okay, let’s talk about independent creation. Then, what is the, yeah, what is the value of in the independent creation of action? Can you tell us about showing the creative process over a full term registration?

Victor Caddy  42:10  

Yeah, this now we’re into the realm of copyright, mainly. And there’s a couple of points, really, two sides of the argument, two sides of the coin, in the sense, because, on the one hand, obviously you want to establish your rights and be able to enforce them as best as possible against other people. And on the other hand, you want to be able to defend yourself when people claim that you’re infringing. So as far as establishing your rights is concerned, as we mentioned earlier, you need the earliest possible date for your work, and under all traditional methods, you you wait until you finished what you’re creating, and then you you find some way of proving that it’s in existence by sending it to yourself by record delivery, for example. But with etched because we’ve made it very simple and easy to etch as you go along, you can date stamp the bits you do on your creative work early on when you do them, and continue as you go along, you continue etching, so that your the earliest bits that you create have an earlier data protection than the finished work. You don’t have to wait until the finished work comes along. So that gives you a big advantage over the status quo as it is at the moment.

Robert Hanna  43:20  

Yeah, it’s just so many sort of safety layers in there, isn’t there? Ultimately,

Victor Caddy  43:24  

yeah, exactly. And normally, when you’re doing a creative process, the most important bits get done first, and then the other bits come along later. So So you want the earliest possible dates for those bits, yeah. And then the other side of the coin, which is something that Josh alluded to earlier, is this independent creation, or proof of independent creation, because copyright is a right to prevent copying. You know the clues in the name, basically. And so if you haven’t copied, then you haven’t infringed someone else’s work, no matter how close you get to them. But if you can record your creative process as you go along, you have a defence to infringement claims.

Robert Hanna  44:00  

Perfect. Love it Okay, and now we want to switch lanes now to come back to you Ben quickly, because you’ve had quite the quite the journey, as you kind of alluded, former professional cricketer representing England lines training private clients and major corporations as fitness and Nutritional Consultant to now co founder and director of a tech platform. What prompted this shift from sport to wellness to then ultimately, legal tech,

Ben Scott  44:30  

obviously, like some some things, you know, some personal things, once you reach that middle age, kind of 40, so certain things, you kind of think, right, where am I going here? What do I what do I want to achieve? And I think the startup life, I’m not going to say I sort it out, but, you know, as a sportsman, there’s, there’s various pillars that you generally have to make it. And you know, obviously you are going to say, thrive on resilience, but you are, by the nature of sports. You need to be resilient. In particular cricket, because by again, the nature of the sport, you you fail more than you succeed, right? Or I certainly did anyway. But you know what? You know what I mean like, but I think even, even the top guys, they fail more than they succeed, and it’s about coming back the next day and and just, you know that’s that you accept that you’re coming back the next day and you’re gonna go again, right? And I think that that’s the nature of startups. You You know, you get hit. I mean, we joke about this, but in the morning, we’ve made it. By lunchtime, we might as well sell up and move out, and then by the afternoon, we’ve made it again. And that is a day in the life of us at the moment, you know, like you get a phone call, yeah? Love this. I mean, I’ll, you know, I’ll give you, you know, X amount of money, and then I’ll actually know, you know, maybe, maybe I won’t. And then, no, no, back in again, you know, it’s that. Those are the kind of conversations we have. So I think resilience is one of the, one of the main things, understanding failure, discipline. You know, like you It’s all very well doing stuff when you’re motivated, and then you get two years into this, because we were super motivated at the beginning, you get two years in, and again, it’s that discipline. It’s I’m doing this regardless, you know, I’m going to do this. You wake up, and some days you are motivated, but others you’re not. And it’s just the key is doing doing the same thing when you’re not motivated, you know? So I think it’s just the nature of being in a startup kind of mirrors what it was like in professional sports. So see, I’m not, I’m not saying that I’m perfect for it, but it certainly helps drawing from those experiences into what I’m doing now,

Robert Hanna  46:29  

yeah, life, you know, ultimately, you know, no two days the same. And I think it’s very true, isn’t it? I think you have to, you know, build up this sort of resilience and this threshold to, you know, setbacks, whatever it is. Because when you go on the entrepreneurial journey, people use all these sexy words and things like that, but most days are bad days. I remember a mentor said to me, before I set up businesses, you know, Rob, if you have 30 or 40 good days in a year, you’ve had a great year. And you know, that’s kind of the reality of it. Most days, you are eating the frog. You’re taking setbacks, you’re brainstorming problems, trying to overcome things, you name it. Okay, just a couple of final questions come to you, Josh, and then a final piece of advice from you before we wrap up, Josh, what’s it been like working with your uncle? What have you enjoyed most? Feel free to take your shots.

Joshua Scott  47:13  

Oh, well, yeah, no, I think, I think I did mention earlier, it is like working with my dad 20 years ago. My dad, my dad and Ben are very, very similar people. But look, we have a great relationship. You know, we’re a very close family and and actually, one of the first things Ben and I said when we first entered into this is that family always comes first. So, you know, sometimes, and there have been times, and this is a Scott thing, we massively disagree on a lot of things, and we often have disagreed on many things, but we’ve always said at the end of the day, comes back to it, I’m his nephew, you’re my uncle, and we’ll have dinner together with the family or whatever, even if it’s been a difficult day. So you know that element of it, it’s nice to know that, that that family relationships sort of goes beyond the business. I know people say don’t go to business with your family, but honestly, I think it’s really good because we we have different skill sets, but we also think similarly in certain ways, and we’ve been able to utilise that together. So yeah, all in all, been great. But yeah, there’s still the times where you have to, you know, get, get through it.

Robert Hanna  48:13  

Well, yeah, and again, that’s, that’s just such as the the journey, shall we say? Yeah, exactly. It’s been fascinating conversation. So I’m a big fan of etch, love what you’re doing, I guess Vic, come to you just for some final piece of advice. So we have listeners at all parts of their legal journeys, people interested in law, but perhaps principally for those who are aspiring to go into profession and thinking about a career in technology and maybe IP. Would you have any words of wisdom for them to be thinking about given the times that we’re living in today,

Victor Caddy  48:41  

I think it’s a really exciting time to go into the legal field. Actually, I think, I think legal tech is, is transforming the landscape. So I would say, don’t, don’t think twice about it. Go in and do it. I think it’s really, really exciting area.

Robert Hanna  48:56  

Yeah, and we absolutely agree. I mean, obviously we’ve been partnering with, with Clio. They had a huge year last year with a Series F 900 million raise and doing some great things. I think it’s a real opportunity for those who have an interest in legal and tech to create a product and create a legacy. And I think absolutely what you’re all building, there’s a real chance to do that. So Ben, just to wrap up, if our listeners want to follow you, etched and the team, where’s the best place for them to find out more? Filter. Feel free to share any websites. Yeah, social media handles will also share them. This episode for you, too,

Ben Scott  49:28  

yeah, sure. Um, okay, the way, I mean the website at the moment is, is, is pretty much Holding, holding the space. And obviously everything’s happening on the back, back end of that. But, yeah, it’s etched dot, x, y, z. If you want to check that out, I’ve had to write down the handles, because obviously trying to trying to find out, like trying to get an Instagram handle and a LinkedIn handle and all that kind of stuff. We’ve got various variations of it, and I know you’ll put them in, but we’ve got etched it, which is on X, we’ve got etched on chain, which is on Insta, and then we’ve got etch tech which is on LinkedIn. So you. Nowadays. I mean, social media is, like, incredibly large now, trying to get one name across all platforms is really difficult. But yeah, that’s, that’s where you can find us. And then my emails, Ben at etched, dot XYZ, so if anyone wants to contact us and, and, yeah, be I’d be foolish not to let everyone go without saying that. You know we are still raising so if you know, we’ve got to build out these capabilities. So if anyone feels that they can help us both from a connection perspective, and also have the connections to put us in front of people that can help in various ways, we’re certainly open to that. So yeah, I’d encourage people to get in touch if they can.

Robert Hanna  50:36  

Awesome. Well, listen, thank you so much, Ben, Josh Vic for joining me today. It’s been absolute pleasure having you on the show, but from all of us on the legal speed podcast, sponsored by Clio, wishing you lots of continued success with etched and indeed any future pursuits. But from now, from all of us over and out, thank you for listening to this week’s episode. If you like the content here, why not check out our world leading content and Collaboration Hub, the legally speaking club, over on Discord. Go to our website, www.legallyspeakingpodcast.com, for the link to join our community there, over and out.