Your friendly Indianapolis attorney at
Alerding Castor Hewitt LLP here with a quick follow up on my first
blog regarding collections for our business law, technology law,
and SaaS law clients. A link to that
post is listed below for those interested.
One of our Saas law clients recently obtained
a favorable resolution in one of their cases to collect on a
contract from an out-of-state debtor. We had obtained a default judgment for the client and were pressing
forward with the proceeding...
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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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Be
prepared: I'm going to get on a bit of a soapbox. I
read a recent article at WSJ.com entitled "Using Social Networking
as Legal Tool" (
Linked Below). There is
nothing wrong with this article. It very succinctly and
pleasantly explains how certain law firms are using social
networking and the Web to find clients for high-value plaintiff
cases. And I don't disagree with that approach. As an
attorney posting on a blog, I too hope to use social networking to
get business, and would be...
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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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Every once in awhile, I have the inkling to make a blog post
that is not about developments in privacy litigation or technology
litigation or cloud computing law or foreclosures or any of the
other endless stream of ideas and legal thoughts that pass across
my desk. This is one of those times. Because, while I
think it is important for our readers to know that Mexico passed a
new data privacy law or that litigation related to CAN SPAM is
likely a rising field, I think it is equally important...
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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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You may have read that inaction by Congress is creating a lot
of uncertainty about the future of the estate tax. Unlike the
income tax, which is based on a year’s worth of activity, the
federal estate tax is based on a snapshot – the value of a person’s
estate at the date of his or her death. Unless Congress
acts, we are headed from having no federal estate tax in 2010 back
to taxing estates larger than $1 million, just like in 2002.
And, instead of the 2002 top rate of 50% on this...
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I am an Indianapolis Attorney here at Alerding
Castor Hewitt LLP. This is my first
blog post – so bear with me. As a brief
introduction, my role at ACH is working on our litigation team,
both at trial and on appeal if necessary, on issues related to
business law, probate litigation, SaaS litigation, and other
technology litigation – just to name a few of the areas.
One area often overlooked in the litigation
process is the area of collections. Some lawyers might look upon the collection process...
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If you are a founder of an emerging company looking to do your
first capital raise, consider talking to angel investors BEFORE
having your private equity attorney draft the organizational and
exempt securities documents for your private placement
offering. I meet a lot of business owners at this stage who
make guesses as to what investors are looking for and what the
market will bear. What pre-money valuation should we use?
What preferences (if any) should we include in the private
placement...
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Your
friendly neighborhood technology counsel here: As you likely
know, my goal is to become THE Indiana technology lawyer;
however, technology is not my only area of interest. Like
many of the folks at Alerding Castor Hewitt, technology law
is a passion, but we all strive to be a full service law firm for
all businesses. Thus, in addition to tech stuff, I also
litigate matters for several banking and business clients.
And, as any good lawyer does, when I see changes in the law
that may...
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I wrote a post a few weeks back on
B2B, B2C and C2C technology companies in
Indianapolis. Here are a couple of paragraph excerpts:
Indianapolis has done some amazing
things in SaaS technology markets. As many readers of this
blog know, much of my business law practice focuses on SaaS law,
Internet law and funding law. Most of this is in
business-to-business (B2B) SaaS markets. This week I was
thinking about how this is not just true of my practice, but it
also is true for Indianapolis as a...
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In my recent blog series,
Entrepreneurial Law - Developing a Good Business
Model, I addressed how an entrepreneur needs to work through
three prongs in order to develop a sustainable business model
developed for growth: Market Opportunity; Management Team; and
Capital Structure.
Private equity investors asses the same prongs when determining
whether to make an investment in an emerging company, but I find
that investors tend to set the prongs in their own priority
ranking. I think all three must...
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I must take a moment to open with a caveat. The study of
privacy and hence privacy law or privacy litigation is an analysis
that spans centuries. In fact, while it seems like privacy
issues have only recently come to the forefront with the advent of
technology, they have, in fact, been prevalent in ever major level
of recorded history. I put this point out there to help you
recognize that there are books and books addressing the issues of
privacy and my little foray into the issue is but a...
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You might wonder why an Indiana law firm with a practice
in several areas of technology (Indiana Internet
Litigation, SaaS Legal Consulting to name just two) finds
itself supporting a golf outing that raises money for
adoption? "As a firm that prides itself on supporting the
local community, we don't always align our charitable giving
strictly to serve our immediate demographic. There are many
organizations deserving of our support and Adoptions of Indiana is
certainly one of them," comments...
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Your friendly neighborhood technology lawyer here: Clients
and colleagues often ask me to explain what I mean when I say
"technology litigation". And, to be frank, that term is
really composed of several different subsets of the law. One
such subset is privacy law. Over the next several blog posts,
I will provide a general overview of privacy law and privacy
litigation to arm you, my humble reader, with the knowledge to
assist your company (as well impress your friends at
parties).
The...
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We all know the beauty of the SaaS business model: great cash flow
from up front payments, recurring revenue from clients that
renew, ratable revenue recognition that results in
smooth rather than lumpy revenue models, etc.
But what if during your licensing agreement
negotiations the client is pushing back and threatens some or
all of these SaaS model advantages?
This is when its great to work with attorneys that have extensive
SaaS legal consulting backgrounds; attorneys that not
only...
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Your friendly neighborhood technology lawyer here: As
you know, I'm a bit of a technophile and I've been watching the
iPad craze with interest. There are other similar products
that will be inundating the market in the near future (HP Slate and
the one that I'm watching with anticipation, Notion Ink's
Adam). As I watch, I've come to the conclusion that
tablet computers are the future of litigation, whether you're
talking privacy litigation, SaaS litigation, personal injury
litigation, or...
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Given the firm's
technology legal counsel and software litigation practice, it
only makes sense that the firm would support the prestigious
2010 Techpoint MIRA Awards Gala taking place on
Saturday, May 15th, 2010. It makes for a positive synergy
between the two groups.
The TechPoint Mira Awards, presented by BKD, is the premier
technology awards program in the state of Indiana. Since the
turn of the century, TechPoint has honored Indiana businesses,
schools and universities, and individuals for...
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I had the privilege of speaking
at the
Rainmakers Incubator event this morning. I
thought the Rainmakers team did a nice job organizing the event -
even with a last minute change in location due to factors outside
of their control. Thank you guys for the opportunity to join
you this morning!
The topic given to me was "Three Things Every Entrepreneur Should
Know." My legal practice focuses on entrepreneurial law,
funding law, SaaS business law and securities law. In these
fields I see a lot of...
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I love Indianapolis,
but I find it a difficult place for emerging companies to raise
capital through private placement offerings. More established
companies have less trouble, but earlier stage companies often are
caught in a chicken/egg situation – they need capital to move to
the next business stage, but private equity investors don’t want to
invest until they are through that next stage.
Part of what makes Indiana so great is that we are very fiscally
conservative. In fact we were one of only...
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