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Download our free Go Forward Guide to Care and Feeding of your LLC
Earlier this year we put together a handy booklet that describes five simple steps that businesspeople can take to protect the limited liability status of an LLC. We've had a great response, but unfortunately people have had a hard time finding it on our site. For future reference, look for the bright orange button in the middle of our homepage (also on the right-hand column of our interior pages). But to make it even easier to find, I've also included a link below.
The guide is useful even if you have a corporation instead of an LLC (the same basic rules apply). If you don't have either but are thinking about forming a business entity, the guide will give you some background on LLC basics.
Download our Free Go Forward Guide to the Care and Feeding of Your LLC.
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Finishing your taxes? Time to solidify your LLC.
With just over two weeks left in tax season, many people and business owners are wrapping up their returns and starting to breathe a sigh of relief. But before you let down your guard, take a few minutes to review your practices for your corporation or LLC.
In our free Go Forward Guide to the Care and Feeding of your LLC, you'll learn five simple but important steps you can take to help preserve the "limited liability" nature of your entity. (It says LLC in the title, but the guide applies equally well to corporations.)
“Project Pricing” Article featured on Biznik
Looks like the Project Pricing article I posted earlier this week has become a featured article on Biznik.com. Follow the link to Biznik to see what others are saying and to add your comment or rating. Some of the comments so far include:
- I love John's model. Till date I was very afraid of even talking to a lawyer because I used to have an apprehension that his fees would burn a deep hole in pocket. This model is perfect for small business owners who may be in need of legal counseling but cannot afford the fees of a "mainstream" lawyer. --Marya Jones
- I love this. I have shied away from working with an attorney because I'm so afraid of the costs. [I]t's good to know there is a trend going towards the flat rate pricing model. I fully support it. --Arden Clise
- I have to agree with John completely on this model. I have a HUGE hourly fee that im currently paying off for one Lawyer and when I worked with John he came in UNDER his bid... Thats the first time I ever smiled when I got an invoice. --John Morefield
Nice to see such a positive response. To read more about the Imua price approach, check out our pricing page.
Project Pricing: A Better Way to Pay your Lawyer
Lawyers can add tremendous value to your business, but traditional legal pricing often leaves clients feeling helpless. Project-based legal services give you control over your budget and offer an improved and more transparent relationship with your attorney.
Benefits of Copyright Registration
While it is true that copyright protection for a creative work vests in the author of that work from the moment it becomes fixed in a tangible medium of expression, you shouldn't ignore the incredibly strong benefits of registering your work with the U.S. Copyright Office. This article discusses some basics of copyright law and why registration is such a good idea.
The Mystery of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement
Smart businesspeople know that outcomes are often uncertain. They encounter a constantly changing landscape of opportunity and risk. At Imua Legal Advisors, we work with our clients to maximize their opportunities not by eliminating risk altogether (truly an impossible task), but by helping them to get rid of as much unnecessary risk as possible.
That's why we've been following what little news emerges about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), a treaty being negotiated in secret . . .
Website owners liable for infringement by web designers
I've consistently warned website owners to be extremely careful with regards to content supplied by their web designers and developers. A recent ruling from a federal court in Ohio recently underscored that point by holding a website owner liable for infringement by its web designer.
In Corbis v. Starr, the court issued a summary judgment order finding that the defendant, who ran a janitorial maintenance service called Master Maintenance, could be held accountable for the unlicensed use of four Corbis photographs on its website. Even though there was no evidence that Starr or anyone in his company was directly responsible for the selection of the photos, the court determined that the company was joint and severally liable for the infringement . . .
The Magic of Metadata in Copyright Law
I've long advised my clients that one of the smartest things they can do to protect their work, after registering it with the U.S. Copyright Office, is to embed Copyright Management Information—especially proper copyright notice—into the metadata of any digital files of the work.
Metadata is an incredibly powerful tool for copyright holders in this digital age for loads of reasons, including . . .
How not to pay lawyers to debate arcane points of law.
An interesting decision came down last week from the Supreme Court of Indiana regarding the question of who owns the copyright in a custom-built website: the web developer or the company for whom the website was built? The end result: well, that isn’t actually important to the moral to this story, but read on to see what happened and why a little upfront legal work would have made a huge difference for everyone involved (everyone but the lawyers that is).
Amazon Relents on Control over Kindle Text to Speech
I just updated my earlier post to reflect Amazon’s recent announcement that it would give over control of the Text to Speech (TTS) capabilities of its Kindle 2 e-book reader to whoever holds the rights to the text of the underlying e-book.
I find it fascinating that the very first sentence of the press release is an unequivocal statement that “Kindle 2’s experimental text-to-speech feature is legal: no copy is made, no derivative work is created, and no performance is being given.” Why would Amazon give in if it were so certain of its legal argument? Certainly the cost of litigation wouldn’t scare it off—I’m sure Amazon has a substantial war chest for this type of thing. And, because Amazon controls a significant (and growing) portion of the audiobook market through its Audible and Brilliance divisions, a legal battle would in some respects be a no-lose proposition (a ruling in favor of TTS makes the Kindle more valuable, a ruling against it gives Audible/Brialliance a bump).
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