Myth 10: IP is for tech companies only 

Continue reading “Top Startup Myths #10: IP Is For Tech Companies Only”

Busy CFOs, CEOs, and in-house counsel cringe at the thought of preparing for due diligence. Creating and maintaining a deal or data room is of course now a virtual exercise. Gone are the days of inviting auditors and attorneys to your office to review files. However, the initial set-up can be daunting!

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Intellectual property is the most valuable asset for all businesses. But too many startups incorporate and hit the ground running without first identifying and taking proactive steps to identify or protect their IP. Without the right coverage, your brand, your name, your slogans and anything else you create is vulnerable to theft.

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The business world is a rough place. It’s a hyper-competitive ecosystem, and just as animals in the wild will fight tooth and nail to protect their territory, so to must businesses fight to protect what belongs to them. While the actual physical property of a company may seem the obvious example of a business’ property, their intellectual property is even more important to keep safe.

In the fight for investment and consumer dollars, many businesses can be ruthless in trying to get the advantage on their competition. And while not all would go so far as to steal from other businesses, it would be foolish to assume your company’s assets are safe. After all, we go th great legnths to protect not only our personal possessions, but all of out passwords and PINs and anything else that we think can be used to steal out identity; why not use as much, if not more, care to protect the business that you’ve poured your time and energy into? Here are some tips to help keep your IP secure.

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Risk is something of a mature subject. That’s not to say that risk is solely the providence of people past a certain age, but we become more aware of it as we age and mature. As kids we don’t ponder the idea of our own mortality or the possibility of failure; it’s less that we think that somehow everything will work out than we just don’t think. And we’re fortunate to have relatively low stakes at that age. Our bodies and our pride bounce back rather quickly. 

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On the surface, the job description of a marketer is to help their company or their client raise awareness of their brand or educate customers in the hopes of generating sales of whatever product they have to offer. So while it’s logical to view marketers as an extension of sales, they’re every bit as inventive as the nerds that developed that product (all due respect to nerds). When marketers do work for clients, such as creating any sort of customized material, that work is intellectual property, which has many nuances in the legal sphere. Marketers will be better at their jobs when they know about those nuances and apply them to their day-to-day client interaction, especially when signing new contracts.

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Is your small business on track to succeed? How do you know? How do you communicate that knowledge to stakeholders? It turns out that the answer is found in how well you understand your business’s intangible or strategic assets—those assets which you cannot see or touch, but are powerful enough to trip you up if you miss them.

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I recently had the pleasure of presenting a webinar with Kelly Pacatte, Senior Employee Relations Consultant at TriNet and learned about some new HR risks.   We learned that ignoring these risks, like other business risks, is catastrophic.

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If you’ve read our latest ebook on HBO’s Silicon Valley, you know the perils that can arise from issues of ownership and work created while otherwise employed. While a creator can easily separate in their mind the work done for each separate entity and see no contradiction or overlap, the law is less forgiving of such indistinction. Hooli’s case against Richard and Pied Piper works so well because we’ve all seen cases in the news where a entrepreneur has created a product or company in their spare time, only to have the ownership of said creations disputed by their current employer. At the very least, we’re familiar with David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin’s telling of Facebook’s sordid origins in The Social Network, embellished as it likely may be. So we shouldn’t be surprised to see new cases pop up all the time, even here in the Valley of the Sun.

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This is a guest blog by Mark Oblad, founder and principal developer of Valcu

Continue reading “Incorporating Your Business: Corporation vs. S-Corporation vs. LLC”