IP Law for Startups is a blog that gives general, educational information about intellectual property law and explains the most common pitfalls and missteps that entrepreneurs make. It gives clear, concrete ways to protect your IP and avoid legal ruin. It helps startups draw an IP landmine map and navigate the dangerous terrain. The biggest ...
Stock for Attorney Fees? This situation arises when a startup company offers stock to a lawyer in exchange for legal services. I’ve derived the following 2 postulates to explain why startups and lawyers agree to this setup: 1. Startups are broke. 2. Lawyers are expensive. For the same reasons that your startup lawyer should not ...
There are various things a potential founder of a new startup company needs to do before quitting their job. The article recommends:** Review all agreements with your current employer** Return confidential information to your employer** Limit pre-resignation activities** Prepare for the exit interview** Stay on good terms** Don’t forget about stock options and benefits** Consult ...
This tool will generate a venture financing term sheet based on your responses to an online questionnaire. It also has an informational component, with basic tutorials and annotations on financing terms. This term sheet generator is a modified version of a tool that we use internally, which comprises one part of a suite of document ...
When launching a startup, you want to make and keep your startup as valuable as possible. But in order to do that, your tech startup needs to ensure that (a) the intellectual property is owned by the startup, and (b) the co-founders who own the startup have proper incentives and rules to handle inevitable contingencies. ...
A buy-sell agreement is a document that preserves continuity of business ownership when specific events occur, such as death or disability of a business owner. It is a contract between shareholders or business partners concerning the future ownership of the business and can be drafted as part of the company’s shareholder agreement or as a ...
This is the blog og Yoichiro (‘Yokum’) Taku. He is a corporate and securities partner in the Palo Alto, California office of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. His WSGR web bio is here. “I represent technology and growth companies at all stages of development, through private financings, strategic transactions, public offerings, and mergers and acquisitions. ...
We are now going to look at some of the rules and types of offerings a company can make. From the point of view of a company issuing stock, the most important aspects of the rule are (1) how much stock can I sell, (2) what level of disclosure do I have to make, (3) ...
(This link is provided to give some idea of the nature of an NDA. Startup entrepreneurs should also get their NDAs from their attorneys, not from free sources!)Whether you’re an inventor getting ready to pitch a licensee, an attorney in need of a reliable software beta agreement, or a business person seeking to protect your ...
If you are or have plans to be an entrepreneur, then sooner or later you are going to have to disclose your ideas to someone if you intend to exploit them. And in so disclosing the ideas, without adequate legal protection, you run the risk of having those ideas freely taken from you and exploited ...