The recent fires and earthquakes in Southern California have caused many businesses to review their insurance coverage. Failure to carry adequate insurance, or carrying inadequate insurance, can result in an unanticipated loss, or even business failure. This Newsletter shall discuss the types of insurance carried by most businesses.
EVALUATE POTENTIAL FUNDING SOURCES Funds for establishing and expanding your business may be derived from various sources. These may include anyone from family and friends to a public offering. Focusing on the sources of funds best for your type of business and stage of development can be an arduous task. Targeting the right sources will be crucial to the success of your capital fundraising efforts.
Between the years 1400 and 1900 there were about a dozen inventions that changed the world. They include the printing press, steam power, the locomotive, the cotton gin, the internal combustion engine, the telegraph and telephone, and the automobile. Each of these inventions dramatically changed the way we do business. Just think, if you had been alive in 1945 and been able to predict everything from television to the microprocessor chip.
Capital has been plentiful for startup companies for the past three years. However, with changes in the international marketplace, particularly the recent collapse of the Far Eastern banking system, the availability of funds has been shrinking. With this in mind, companies looking to raise capital for their emerging, expanding, or in some cases, weakening businesses should take a long look at how their efforts are focused.
A company’s trade secrets are valuable assets. Under California law, a “trade secret” is information that is not generally known to the public or to other persons who can obtain economic value from its disclosure or use, and which is the subject of efforts that are reasonable under the circumstances to maintain its secrecy. Thus, unless a company takes affirmative steps to maintain the secrecy of its information by adopting a trade secrets protection program,Read More…
This Newsletter shall discuss the procedure under California and Federal law for protecting trademarks and servicemarks, the protection afforded by registering a trademark or servicemark, and how a trademark or servicemark is maintained or abandoned. Definitions. A “trademark” is any word, name, symbol or device, or combination of these items, used by a manufacturer to identify his goods, and distinguish them from those manufactured or sold by others. A “servicemark” is used in the saleRead More…
The United States Customs & Border Protection (“CBP”), a bureau of the United States Department of Homeland Security, now maintains a trademark recordation system for trademarks currently registered with the United States Patent & Trademark Office (“USPTO”). The CBP’s aggressive intellectual property enforcement program devotes substantial resources to target, intercept, detain, seize, and forfeit shipments of goods that violate USPTO trademark registrations on the principal registry.
On April 30, 2018, the California Supreme Court, in the c a s e Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v. Superior Court, adopted a new, stricter test for determining whether workers are employees or independent contractors under California wage orders. Under the new standard (the “ABC test”), workers are presumed to be employees unless the employer demonstrates each of the following factors:
A California employer who terminates an employee may face, among other things, a lawsuit from the terminated employee in the form of an action for libel or slander, or for violation of the California Labor Code. Libel and Slander. In the employment context, “libel” is a false and unprivileged writing which has a tendency to injure the person in his occupation; and “slander” is a false and unprivileged oral statement which imputes a general disqualificationRead More…
The right of an employer to conduct lie detector tests is controlled by the federal Employee Polygraph Protection Act of 1988 (“EPPA”) and by the California Labor Code. Since the EPPA generally imposes greater obligations on employers seeking to engage in polygraph testing than the California Labor Code, this Newsletter shall focus exclusively on the EPPA rules. The EPPA makes it unlawful for an employer to require, request, or suggest that any job applicant orRead More…
