When considering entering into a partnership or making a private
investment in an early stage company, beware of the “idea
guy”. This is a title sometimes used by entrepreneurial
minded individuals who don’t contribute to the growth of the
company through development, sales or management but develop
concepts (ideas) for products or services for some market
opportunity.
From my experience, idea guys often have little ability to manage
cash flow or people. Without the proper partners in...
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There is a new Seventh Circuit Court of
Appeals opinion that is likely to have a significant impact on SaaS
providers. In Digitech Computers,
Inc. v. Trans-Care, Inc. (link
here), the 7th Circuit focuses on a SaaS agreement
for Digitech to provide certain management software licensing
components for Trans-Care (an ambulance and medical transportation
service). The Court ultimately upheld a
breach of contract claim in favor of Digitech, significantly
reduced Digitech’s damages award, and...
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Your friendly neighborhood litigation attorney at Alerding Castor
Hewitt, LLP with a final post for the year to all of our business,
Indiana internet litigation, and technology law
clients. Saturday, December
25th will no doubt be a date of celebration in many
homes. As you spend time with your
family, remember how special the day is and all of the changes that
have taken place in the last 20 years.
Some of you might wonder what I mean exactly. I’m not referring to Christmas. And for those...
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“What are you doing with my money?” No, it’s not your mom or
dad asking or your friend you lost a bet to on a college football
game – it’s your potential investor and they’re asking one of the
most fundamental questions in a capital raise. Why?
Because you forgot to answer it ahead of time! You’re not
alone, though, too often a sources and uses statement is
overlooked. Many entrepreneurs simply rely on the financials,
general statements in the text of the business plan or...
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I can read your mind. You are thinking, "oh, great and
insightful technology legal counsel, what do you mean by a 'legal
landscape' and what does that have to do with blogging?" My
initial response is that, (a) you've asked two questions and (b) if
you plan to use blogging as a component of your business model, you
need to know what potential pitfalls exist. That is the legal
landscape of blogging. It is made up of the hills and valleys
that must be overcome or avoided to reach blogging...
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Thanks to the wonderful folks over at Compendium Blogware, I
presented a fun webinar last week on the Legal Landscape of
Corporate Blogging. Don't fret, dear reader; I intend
to put together several posts over the weekend that hit the
highlights of my presentation. Overall, I discussed topics
like privacy litigation, copyright, defamation, Section 230
protections, etc. The fun stuff of blogging.
One area that I discussed and have had several questions about is
Creative Commons. For those of...
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Alerding Castor
Hewitt, LLP is a business law firm that works with many
technology start-ups in their formation stages and in assisting
with the legal aspects of dealing with private equity
investors.
The entrepreneurial spirit of our clients is inspiring, and I am
looking forward to attending
Techpoint's 2010 Innovation
Summit that will be held in downtown Indianapolis today.
An annual event that Alerding Castor Hewitt is proud to sponsor, it
will feature keynote speaker Nicholas Carr who is a...
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In the spirit of entertaining legal stories like the one below that
Chris recently shared with our Alerding Castor Hewitt, LLP
audience, I thought I would share a story I ran across yesterday
about a trademark dispute. Also,
because Chris is a connoisseur of fine comfort food, I’m sure that
he will enjoy it.
A restaurant in Bellevue, Washington, John Howie Steak, has come up
with a caloric-intensive burger that starts with grilling a
12-ounce ground chuck patty and then tops it with Kurobuta...
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Your
friendly Indianapolis attorney at Alerding Castor Hewitt, LLP with
a brief overview (not an in-depth analysis of all of the legal
issues) of some recent Seventh Circuit decisions involving internet
litigation, trademark disputes, and anti-cybersquatting that could
affect technology, software, and business clients maintaining
websites and engaging in cyber-marketing.
Last Friday, October 1, 2010, the Seventh Circuit upheld the
dismissal of a suit for lack of personal jurisdiction...
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I guest lectured at Purdue’s Entrepreneurship Capstone course again
last week. I love it – for an hour I talked about my
experience in entreprenuerial law, business law and funding law to
Seniors in Purdue's entreprenuership concentration program on
issues consider when structuring a new company. Honestly, I
thought I had them bored out of their minds (yes, there was that
one Greek letter wearing frat guy who was asleep about 10 rows
back), but I was impressed when we got to the Q&A time...
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Your friendly Indianapolis attorney at Alerding Castor Hewitt LLP
here with a history lesson and tie in to business law. Most
of you have probably heard the term “gerrymander” and know that it
refers to a process of dividing a territory into districts in order
to give one political party an advantage over another by
concentrating the voting strength of that party in as many
districts as possible. Fewer of you
probably know the origin of the term, and I imagine that even
fewer know much about...
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Your friendly neighborhood technology counsel here: A couple
of recent state court decisions are going to start personal injury
attorneys frothing at the mouth, and might render some sleepless
nights for defense attorneys. Both Ohio and Florida recently
issued opinions in which they applied their state's respective
long-arm statutes to garner personal jurisdiction over an
out-of-state resident for tortious conduct that transpired over the
Internet.
First, you need to know what a long-arm...
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I'm going to cheat a little on this. I read a great blog post
by Jeff Ready over at the McStartup blog (www.mcstartup.com).
The blog post is all about the importance of radical
innovation. I have a place in my heart for radical innovation
because I believe that in the legal community, we are the radical
innovators. ACH strives after its goal to be an information
technology law firm, a venture capital law firm and a business law
firm, but we go about it in a way that is radical to many...
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Your Indianapolis Attorney at Alerding Castor
Hewitt here with another litigation post for the business and
technology world, this time regarding preliminary
injunctions. What is a preliminary
injunction? In simple terms, it is an
equitable remedy that you can seek asking a court to order someone
else to stop doing something or cease threatening to do something
that is causing or is likely to cause you irreparable
harm. It is another weapon in the
litigation arsenal, one to restore the status...
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Your friendly neighborhood technology counsel here: So,
Mexico recently passed a new data protection law. On April
27, 2010, Mexico passed the Federal Law for the Protection of
Personal data, which is likely to be signed into law by the
President in the near future. This law not only allows for a
mind-boggling $1.5 million penalty for violation, but it also
applies to the private sector. Private and public entities will
need to protect themselves from privacy litigation.
This law is much akin...
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Working
in the area of
Indiana entrepreneurial law,
I see dozens of business plans that are incorporated into the
equity raise documents of budding new companies.
With those business plans are financial projections that are based
on newly formed companies with limited operating histories,
unproven track records, and often times plans for entry into a
mature and highly competitive marketplace.
Needless to say, it can be daunting as an entrepreneur to come
up with a compelling reason why investors...
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Your friendly neighborhood technology counsel here: The
Indiana Supreme Court recently discussed the ability of a lay
witness to provide "expert" opinions in
Sibbing v.
Cave, 922 N.E.2d 594 (Ind. 2010). In that
case, counsel asked the plaintiff what she believed caused her
pain. She responded something to the effect of "the bulging
disc in my lower back", and the opposing party objected based on a
lack of expert foundation. The basic argument to the trial
court was that this lay person...
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How
many times have you signed up for a service on-line, scrolled past
all the legal jargon, and clicked "I Accept" or "I Agree"
without taking the time to actually read the terms and conditions
you're agreeing to?
Admit it. We all do it.
But, just as a warning to be careful the next time you're
purchasing that new mp3, or
more importantly signing your
company up for something on-line...
those shrink-wrap and
click-wrap agreements have been held by the courts to be
binding.Contracting in...
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Something crossed my screen today that piqued my interest.
That concept is competitive keyword advertising litigation.
The case that sparked my curiosity is Fair Isaac Corp v. Experian
Information Solutions, Inc., 2009 WL 4263699 (D.
Minn. 11/25/2009) (
www.jurisnote.com/Cases/fair6411.pdf). For a
good analysis of the ruling see Eric Goldman's blog (
blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2009/12/competitive_key.htm).
Interestingly, the case law to date on this issue has found for the
defendants in...
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I am speaking this afternoon at the
MBO Conference on the Legal Landscape of
Corporate Blogging. It was an honor to be invited to
participate in this year's conference, and I am truly looking
forward to the time.
As an Indiana technology lawyer I monitor areas of law that impact
my clients' business worlds. My colleagues and I monitor
Internet laws, privacy laws, ASP law, SaaS law, cloud computing
law, and various other areas of business law to best advise our
clients on how to navigate the...
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