Agreement titles are funny things. In their best use they
quickly describe the general subject matter of the contract.
For most situations a simple title is helpful. E.g.,
"Services Agreement" helps differentiate between a contract for
services and one for goods. That is helpful. Many
contract titles are more descriptive (e.g., "License Agreement",
"SaaS Agreement" or "Software Service Level Agreement" to describe
the technology nature of the agreement).
Where a client is using form...
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I know there will be an "official" congratulatory press release in
the near future, but I thought I'd take a moment to congratulate
the Alerding Castor Hewitt partners on being included in the 2011
Indiana Super Lawyers.
Brian Hewitt received the nod as one of the Top 50 Super
Lawyers in the state. This is, of course, a recurring honor
for Brian, who has been a Super Lawyer for the past several
years. Brian's practice focus is on business and probate
litigation and mediation.
The voters...
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I have said it a million times since learning the lesson myself in
a failed entrepreneurial effort a couple of years ago, the CEO of
any entrepreneurial venture must understand the importance of
managing cash flows and how to use cash flow analysis for the
strategic growth of the company.
Trust me, I am all into the Six Sigma approach of throwing a couple
of innovators together, rolling out a v1 product as quickly as
possible, and slowly scaling the company from hobby phase to a
successful...
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It has been said a million times already on this blog – a CEO,
especially one which is seeking funds from private equity
investors, needs to understand finance. Often a basic
knowledge of sources and uses and cash flow analysis is enough, but
in many early stage investment rounds, savvy investors expect the
CEO to know the company's internal rate of return (IRR) - and
why it matters.
I meet many entrepreneurs who have served as VPs or middle managers
before embarking on their entrepreneurial...
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Here at Alerding Castor Hewitt, LLP, one thing that we are called
upon to do as business law, SaaS law, and technology counsel for
our clients is collect on a judgment. I
have previously posted on other topics in the collections world,
which you can find here and here. Today’s topic
is in answer to the question we sometimes get: how long is my judgment good for?
A decision today by the Indiana Court of Appeals in the estate case
of In the Matter of the Unsupervised Estate of
Dwight M. Wilson...
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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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Next week I am moderating the plenary panel at TechPoint’s
Innovation Summit entitled
Funding Innovation.
Check it out:
TechPoint
Innovation Summit
Also check out the
sponsors page. I
counted today, and
nine Alerding Castor
Hewitt clients are sponsors of the Summit. That is
awesome.
This year’s panel members represent private equity investors, angel
investor groups, successful entrepreneurs and grant funding
organizations which look for funding and investment opportunities
in Indiana...
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Firm founder and partner, David Castor, is slated to host a
Compendium Webinar entitled "The Legal Landscape of Corporate
Blogging." The webinar takes place on November 3rd from
2:00p-3:00p EST.
Dave plans to address the do's and don'ts of online
marketing, how to protect your intellectual capital
and protect your company's bottom
line. Participants were asked to submit questions for
Dave prior to the webinar.
The firm has a strong SaaS law practice, SaaS litigation
practice as well as...
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So I have been a bit behind in blogging these past few weeks.
With the new addition to my family (my 3rd son), life has been
hectic. But, I am back and ready to role.
As a general update, Alerding Castor Hewitt continues expand as
technology legal counsel in SaaS law, funding law and
entrepreneurial law fields. We have some exciting new
Internet-based and SaaS clients. This month we helped a
client negotiate a stock purchase deal and have handled no less
than thirty SaaS or software licensing...
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Your friendly Indianapolis attorney at Alerding Castor Hewitt, LLP
here with some exciting news about a SaaS law client and a business
law client: ExactTarget and
O’Reilly’s Irish Bar and Restaurant. Once its build-out is complete, ExactTarget will
be moving some of its people into a new space across the street
from us in the Century Building. This
is a company that continues to grow, and we are excited to witness
it happen and wish ExactTarget continued success.
To help celebrate and...
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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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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 litigation associate at Alerding Castor
Hewitt LLP here with another blog post.
About a month ago, in an aspirational piece, I piggybacked off of a
post by Michael P. Alerding at Alerding & Co. on the importance
of words and how they should mean something. You can read my prior post here and the one by ACH’s Dave Castor
re-posting Mr. Alderding’s original post here.
Today’s post is to tell you about a recent victory that one of our
SaaS law clients achieved in a...
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I was reminded today of something told to me by a friend last
year:
Good people who are smart
ask good questions
Bad people who are smart ask bad questions
Good people who are not smart ask bad questions
In business we are always looking for answers – but what we
really want are good answers. Today the issue is never
whether we have enough data (we arguably have too much), it is
whether we can properly utilize that data to make better
decisions. I see this especially in my Internet Law /...
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I probably hate the word "policy" as much as any word in the
English language, but I think company policies can be helpful - in
both giving employees information on what is available to them and
what conduct is expected of them.
In the last couple of years I have noticed a rise of social media
policies in company employee handbooks. Most larger companies
have Internet use policies stating that employees may not use
company time or computers for personal Internet usage. The
main goal here is to...
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I recently caught a glimpse of the logo for one of our SaaS Law
clients, ExactTarget, while flipping
through the television channels. It was
an episode of TLC’s “American Chopper” that first aired last
Thursday for a bike built for Window World. The bike was unveiled during the ceremonies
surrounding the Indianapolis 500.
ExactTarget’s logo appeared briefly on the side of the pavilion and
again on one of the race cars.
As cheesy as it might sound, I was excited to see one of our
client’s...
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The ACH litigation team had its first ever (as far as I'm aware)
litigation retreat this weekend, and as I reminisce on our time, I
am struck by the realization that to be a successful business, you
have to allow your team to envision and strive for excellence with
you. This weekend we had some great discussion and
"vision-casting" on the areas of privacy litigation, Indiana
probate litigation, business law, Internet litigation, banking law,
SaaS litigation, and several other areas where we are...
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It’s not often that we at Alerding Castor Hewitt, LLP run into
issues regarding the payment of commissions for our business law,
SaaS law, and Indiana technology clients. When the subject does arise, however, it usually
occurs when an employee separates from employment and makes a wage
claim for unpaid commissions. The
debate about whether the commissions are wages centers on whether
the employee was entitled to the commission at the time of sale OR
when the client pays for the product,...
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Your friendly Indianapolis attorney and Partner In Success at
Alerding Castor Hewitt, LLP here with another post, this time for
both business entities and lawyers who find themselves in the
trenches of business law, SaaS law, internet laws, and privacy
litigation and probate litigation.
Partner and fellow blogger Dave Castor sort of beat me to the bunch
by pointing out a great blog post by Michael P. Alerding (ACH’s
Mike Alerding’s father) at Alerding & Co., LLC, which Dave
re-posted below. I...
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The post below is fantastic. It is by Michael P. Alerding,
CPA (my business partner's father) at his accounting firm's new
blog site. He gave me permission to re-post it here (thank
you Alerding & Co.). Check it out:
Alerding & Co. BlogWhat Happened to Business
Ethics?
By: Michael P. Alerding, CPA
Every time I get a contract to sign, I find it almost impossible to
spend the time reading the fine print and trying to understand all
of the future implications of the agreement. As my son,...
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