Business

Protecting Your Product Design Through Trade Dress and Design Patents

I’ve been asked about this often from clients in certain industries, particularly in the furniture industry: How can we stop competitors from copying our product design? Trade dress refers to protection for the totality of elements of a product – including size, shape, color or color combination, texture, graphics, etc. Trade dress is protectible if […]

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Get Some Template Agreements That Fit Your Business!

Regardless of what type of business you run, chances are you are entering into contracts all the time. Having a few model agreements for your company can save you a lot of time and resources in the long run. For instance, having a solid non-disclosure agreement that you can trust will give you the freedom

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How Can You Start to Reduce Risk?

There is always going to be some risk. Few agreements are ironclad, but it is helpful to conduct an assessment and build an internal portfolio of model agreements, such as non-disclosure agreements, master service and sales agreements, master purchase agreements (or PO’s), website terms and conditions and privacy policies, and, when appropriate, licensing agreements. I

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What “Benefits” to Society Does Your Business Provide?

For many business owners, the main goal of a business is to make money for its investors or principals. Everyone wants to increase their margins – for good reason – but many are starting to ask if a successful business can do more than that. Perhaps the true aim of a business is to generate

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Is it time to do a check up on your key corporate policies?

Corporate policies and procedures should be updated to reflect company culture and management goals, but also to comply with changes in rules and regulations. If you run a larger business, you likely have an employee handbook. Smaller companies may not have verbose handbooks, but should still have clear policies that are communicated to all employees.

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“I heard I can’t stop my former employees from competing with me. . . .”

Clients often ask me whether employee restriction provisions, such as non-competes, are enforceable. On a basic level, these provisions place restrictions on employees after their termination or resignation so that they cannot immediately begin working for a competitor, hiring away other employees of the company, or using customer lists. The keys to enforceability are specificity

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Is Your Website ADA compliant?

We’ve talked a lot about trends and upcoming changes in privacy laws applicable to most of our clients’ businesses. Next month, I plan to circulate more updates, since I think it is imperative that everyone keep these laws on their radar. In the meantime, some of our clients should also consider whether their websites are

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Final Post (this year) on the CCPA

The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) was signed into law in 2018, and goes into effect on January 1, 2020. In general (there are some nuances), the law applies to any business that collects or processes the personal information of California consumers and either (1) has $25 million or more in gross annual revenue; (2)

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Direct to Consumer (“DTC”) Opportunities and the Changing Legal Landscape

A friend recently told me about a new book, Billion Dollar Brand Club, by Lawrence Ingrassia. The book is about so-called industry “disruptors,” who are finding success through Direct to Consumer (DTC) sales, rather than traditional distribution channels. DTC is working well in a wide variety of industries — shaving (ex: Harry’s); fashion (ex: Stitch

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