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I’ve come to realize that this whole mompreneur? thing is similar to playing dress up and living a double life.? Today I had a meeting with my trademark attorney and you would have thought I was dressed up for Halloween a little too early.? I left the gym today to drop the girls off at school looking very unlike myself.? Instead of the usual Old Navy T-shirt, board shorts and flip flops, I had on a black suit/skirt, a pearl necklace (not real, but it looks like it), matching pearl earrings (also not real) and a decent pair of black pumps.? The entire morning, you would have thought I had on a bozo the clown suit!? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining AT ALL about the comments; I actually think it’s really fun!? I feel like I’m living this double life.? I’m “Regular-Mom” most of the time, but every once in a while I change into “Super Mompreneur!”? Very few people (outside friends and family) know anything about what I do.? (IE, the people at the gym I go to, the people at the girl’s preschool etc…)? One of the teachers said as I picked the girls up today “I don’t know where you went or what you did, but I’m sure you did it well!”? I enjoy dressing up now just as much as I did when I was a little girl.? I LOVE being a mom more then anything, but I also get a big kick out of “playing dress up” and meeting with attorneys over French Vanilla Coffee in their big fancy conference room downtown and talking in big fancy words that I can actually follow and strategizing about courses of action to protect myself when larger companies try to infringe on my intellectual property.?? Now here I am, back to my t-shirt, board shorts and no shoes pounding away at my computer while the girls nap and have quiet time.? It was a ton of fun this morning playing dress up.?

Onto what actually happened at the meeting.? The trademark attorney what I found through my local SBA office, has been working with me via email and knew my case.? I had submitted my trademark and it was initially rejected.? This a very common, but I decided instead of trying to fight it myself and risk the possibility of losing, I’d just fork out the bucks and pay the professionals to fight my battle for me.? He said we have a very strong case and the USPTO’s reason for rejection (that my trademark name was too “descriptive”) was something that we can most likely overcome and is a rejection he gets a good bit.? Because I went to him through the SBA, he did not charge me anything for this consultation or any of the investigation so far.? He is even going to submit my response to the rejection for free.? The meter will start running for anything he does after that, but I am so appreciative that he is doing all this work now without starting the clock.? It was a really good meeting and I do feel like he will win my case for me.? Of course he could not guarantee anything, but based on his past experience, he thinks we are in the clear.?

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Leslie Haywood, Founder and President of Charmed Life Products, Inventor of Grill Charmsâ„¢? www.grillcharms.com