In a time of disaster or emergency, it can be difficult or even impossible to perform contracts that your business agreed to before the disaster or emergency occurred. What do you do if your business cannot perform its agreements?
While you and your employees are working remotely is a good time to work on some of those long-term projects you’ve been putting off—both personal and business. It may help your business emerge from this crisis in fighting shape. Part II of II.
While you and your employees are working remotely is a good time to work on some of those long-term projects you’ve been putting off—both personal and business. It may help your business emerge from this crisis in fighting shape.
We know this is a very scary time for many of our clients. We hope that you are staying home and staying safe. Small business owners are expecting to be particularly hard hit in this crisis, so here is a list of resources for your business and your personal life.
If you have ever signed an employment agreement, or asked your employees to sign one, it probably had a covenant not to compete with the employer if the employee leaves the business. These clauses are usually called “non-competes.” They typically limit the time and the geographic area within which the former employee can perform the […]
You are the CEO of a mid-size company. As you are going about your day, minding your business, you get a call from your security department. It’s a call you really didn’t want. Security has detected suspicious file movements and wants your directions about what to do next. You have likely suffered a data breach. […]
There are two main schools of thought about how to read statutes. One is that judges should read the words and apply them, period, whatever the result. The second school is that judges should read the words in the context of the problem the writers were trying to resolve and give them a meaning that the writers intended, or would have intended if they had foreseen the problem in the case before the court, even if the writers did not use exactly the right words. The Iowa Supreme Court recently looked at this question in the context of agricultural leases, specifically whether a single horse makes a farm.
The SEC has announced that it has adopted final rules (PDF) for crowdfunding, but that 1) the forms for registering as a crowdfunding portal are not effective until January 29, 2016; and 2) the implementing regulations do not go into effect until May 16, 2016, 180 days after they were published in the Federal Register.
Various sticky trademark disputes have been in the news lately. From the dispute between Apple and Proview Technology to the dispute between the United States Olympic Committee and the knitting website Ravelry over the crafters’ use of the term RAVELYMPICS to local news stories about how devastating a trademark dispute can be to small businesses, trademark disputes are everywhere.
So what can you, as a small business owner, do to protect yourself from a dispute with a trademark bully? Take some good old-fashioned advice!
I was recently interviewed for the Society for Human Resource Management article “Pinterest Might Facilitate Copyright Infringement.” Below for your viewing pleasure is the entire text of the email-based interview with Workplace Law Content Manager Allen Smith