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Have you invented something useful or do you have a product idea that competitors may want to steal? How can a patent lawyer help you with Federal Patent Protection?
Hiring an intellectual property attorney can help you get a federal patent grant, that’ll allow you to have a legal monopoly over a product or method lasting for approximately 20 years. It is not a right to make or use an invention but rather a right to exclude others from making or using (in addition to other infringing conduct). In this country, an original inventor is the “first to invent” rather than the “first to file.” Therefore, you can protect yourself from a later inventor gaining patent rights by signing and dating your invention description and preferably having an uninterested witness sign as well.
Part 3 of a 3 Part Series
What is a hedge fund?
A hedge fund is a fund, usually used by wealthy individuals and institutions, which is allowed to use aggressive strategies that are unavailable to mutual funds, including selling short, leverage, program trading, swaps, arbitrage, and derivatives. Hedge funds are exempt from many of the rules and regulations governing other mutual funds, which allow them to accomplish aggressive investing goals. They are restricted by law to no more than 100 investors per fund, and as a result most hedge funds set extremely high minimum investment amounts, ranging anywhere from $250,000 to over $1 million. As with traditional mutual funds, investors in hedge funds pay a management fee; however, hedge funds also collect a percentage of the profits (usually around 20%).
Part 2 of a 3 Part Series
What exactly is an “angel investor”?
Entrepreneurs who launch smaller-scale enterprises know that commercial banks generally don't lend funds to ventures with little or no assets, customer base or sales track record. And venture capitalists typically work with business concepts that are already up and running with the potential for multimillion dollar revenues. Many of the owners of smaller firms have heard that “angel investors” can provide funding and even some much-needed expertise and referrals for these in-between business deals. So who are these people and what kinds of investment terms can owners expect?
Part 1 of a 3 Part Series
As a San Diego lawyer, I am frequently asked questions regarding funding and how to get it. Below I have written out some definitions and explanations that I think will be useful in regards to funding.
Protecting your Brand, Boosting its Value, Including Guidelines for Sound Brand Management.
What is a Trademark?
A trademark is a word or design that identifies and distinguishes products or services in the marketplace. Sounds and combinations of words, symbols, letters and numbers, in addition to smells and shapes of packaging can also be distinctive marks. In short, a trademark is a brand. For example, if you were raising cattle you would want to design a brand from iron and use it to place an indelible mark on each or your cattle. Further, you would want to promote and advertise your brand and boost its reputation every way you knew how to increase the value of your cattle.
This slide show is intended to provide a brief overview of a proper business executive summary as seen from the point of view of prospective investors. Catalyst Law Group is a dynamic San Diego business law firm that is uniquely positioned to serve domestic and international business clients. We hope you find these slides helpful for business planning purposes.
Over the past several years the IRS has had several high profile victories in cases involving taxpayers’ use of family limited partnerships or LLCs as vehicles to achieve valuation discounts to reduce the tax upon transfers of wealth to their heirs. Many of these rulings have come out of “bad facts” cases where the taxpayer either did not respect the formalities of the entity or there was no real purpose to the entity except to achieve tax savings. However, in the recent case of the Estate of Mirowski v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, T.C. Memo 2008-74, the Tax Court issued a favorable ruling to the taxpayers and rejected many of the arguments the IRS.
Let’s face it everyone needs legal services even in an uncertain economy. We seem to be in this uncertain and scary time right now with rising prices of every commodity. Under these situations what people tend to do is to hold on to their cash as long as possible and spend only when necessary, or fall back on the “I can do it my self” theory.
My name is Michael Lane, and I am an associate with Catalyst Law Group, APC, in San Diego, CA, and a member of the Urban Land Institute’s Young Leaders – San Diego Chapter. In a past life, I worked as an assistant project manager for two real estate development firms of varied size on several residential and commercial projects of varied complexity. Currently, I head Catalyst’s Sustainable Building initiative.
“Catalyst” - a substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction without itself undergoing any change: somebody or something that makes a change happen or brings about an event: a means, a channel, a medium for change. Catalyst Law Group was created to fill this role for the San Diego business community – a law firm that increases the rate of success without compromising integrity, a business that makes change happen, and serves as a channel and medium for change and prosperity within the technology business world.
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“Tom has been a tremendous help to us as our outside corporate counsel. His strategic and tactical insights regarding intellectual property protection and investment have been crucial to our success. I sleep better at night knowing that Tom's watching our back.”
Michael Fry |