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Nasir and Matt kick off the week by talking about the newly introduced legislation that will require California employers to give all employees paid sick leave. They then answer the question, "Can someone claim trademark infringement if my name is similar to theirs but I pronounce it differently?" Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is your host and co-host, Nasir Pasha. MATT: And your other co-host, Matt Staub NASIR: Yes, and welcome to our business legal podcast where we cover business in the news and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter at @askbizlaw. Just follow us there and you can also ask your questions there. MATT: It’s the Monday following the first weekend of the NFL which I know you actually watch from time to time. NASIR: Yeah, I missed the Thursday night games but I do plan on catching the Sunday games that have already occurred by the time of this listening. MATT: We should have some sort of side proposition where I’ll take San Diego even though I’m not really a Chargers fan but I’ll take San Diego and you can take the Texans and we’ll see who gets more wins. NASIR: Neither of them had a good season last year but I’ll watch the Chargers game tonight – or Monday night, I should say. MATT: Oh, yeah, I forgot it is on Monday night. This will be airing the day of. NASIR: I am a Chargers fan. Speaking of the Chargers, San Diego, huh? And California, doing some crazy stuff with paid sick leave. MATT: I should probably be the one that sticks to the tie-ins but that’s okay. NASIR: I know. MATT: But, yeah, this is pretty big. I mean, we typically don’t talk about these sort of things unless they’re really big and they’re going to have a big effect. This is going to have a big effect. NASIR: Huge. MATT: But the actual number of sick days that people are going to get isn’t that many but it is going to have a huge effect for employers. Basically, starting July 1st 2015, employees in California are going to be entitled to up to three paid sick days per year. And so, I believe it can start accruing now, right? NASIR: Oh, that’s a good question – whether it starts accruing. I’m not even sure. I didn’t even think it would. I thought the law doesn’t go into effect until next year. MATT: I thought I read that it starts accruing some time this year but I guess I said it wasn’t a huge effect necessarily but, you know, looking at the stats, 44 percent – this basically is going to affect 44 percent of employees in California. I guess those are the ones who are not getting this paid sick leave. Let’s think about the number of employees in the state and 44 percent of them. That’s a huge number overall. NASIR: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is actually pretty huge to make it a state-wide law. I think there is one other state, I think it’s Connecticut, that would be the other state that has a state-wide sick leave and I mentioned San Diego because they just passed their own which was back this last summer and I think that paid sick leave goes into effect April 2015 – a little bit earlier – but I think their sick leave Is not dissimilar to this. I think it’s the same amount of accrual. I think there’s a different cap on it but, other than that, it’s very, very similar and, just to mention it, that was also the same provisions that also increase the minimum wage in San Diego above the state minimum wage starting January 1st in 2015 to $9.75. This is pretty big, I think. I think this is, again, another trend that will go across from California to other states as well – Connecticut being the first and San Francisco and other cities have already had local laws for that but I can really see this spreading to other states as well. MATT: It definitely will and I don’t want to downplay that it’s not significant because it obviously is but I think,