Category: Corporate

Business Law: Leases and the Defense of Impossibility Due to COVID-19

Business Law: Leases and the Defense of Impossibility Due to COVID-19

Not every claim for breach of contract will lead to an adverse judgment. There are some legal defenses that can be asserted including a claim of “impossibility.” The defense of impossibility is potentially available in a public health circumstance like the current COVID-19 pandemic. As an example, assume a business has been declared by state […]

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Trade Secret Statutes Protect Information Held in an Employee’s Memory

Trade Secret Statutes Protect Information Held in an Employee’s Memory

Trade Secret Lawyer

Trade secrets are valuable business assets. Trade secret law in the US is relatively uniform. Under most statutes and laws, a trade secret is any information, like a formula, design, data, blueprint or customer list, that is kept confidential and that has commercial value from the fact that the information is not known. The form […]

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Acquiring IP Assets From Debtors in Bankruptcy Proceedings

Acquiring IP Assets From Debtors in Bankruptcy Proceedings

Corporate Trademark

When a business files for bankruptcy, all of its assets, including any and all intellectual property and licensing rights to IP, become subject to the jurisdiction of the bankruptcy court. In simple terms, all assets go into the bankruptcy “estate” and are subject to the control of the court. The purpose of a bankruptcy is […]

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Employment Law: Legal Concerns When Using Contact Tracing Apps for Employees

Employment Law: Legal Concerns When Using Contact Tracing Apps for Employees

Corporate Employment Law

In various parts of the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted the development and deployment of various contact tracing applications that are designed to help mitigate contagion risks and facilitate medical intervention. There are many variations in how the apps work, but, generally, the idea is that the software uses geo-location and user-provided data to […]

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Labor Law Considerations for Work-From-Home Employees

Labor Law Considerations for Work-From-Home Employees

Corporate Employment Law

Hiring (or converting) employees to work from home is really not that different than hiring an employee to work in a standard employment circumstance. A work-from-home employee is entitled to all the protections of federal and state labor laws. For example, the applicable labor laws related payment of wages and overtime apply with equal force […]

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Employment Law: Enhanced Cybersecurity Procedures Needed for Work-From Home Employees

Employment Law: Enhanced Cybersecurity Procedures Needed for Work-From Home Employees

Corporate Employment Law

The fact that employees are increasingly required to work from home does not obviate a company’s legal requirement to have reasonable company policies and procedures to safeguard consumer data and to protect sensitive company confidential information. Indeed, the dawning era of widespread work-from-home employment necessitates enhanced cybersecurity since there are enhanced data security risks associated […]

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As More Employees are Working From Home, Company Work-From-Home Safety Policies are Necessary

As More Employees are Working From Home, Company Work-From-Home Safety Policies are Necessary

Corporate Employment Law

Given the surge of employees now working from home and the uncertainty of how long the current circumstances will persist, it is essential for every business to have good policies and procedures for work-from-home employees. If your business does not already have such policies, these should be established as quickly as possible. Good policies can […]

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Business Law: Can Businesses Avoid Breach of Contract Claims Due to COVID-19?

Business Law: Can Businesses Avoid Breach of Contract Claims Due to COVID-19?

contracts

There are three main legal theories that might be applicable in a pandemic situation like COVID-19 which would allow businesses to defend against lawsuits for breach of contract. These are: Force majeure provisions in the contracts Doctrine of impossibility/impracticability and Doctrine of frustration of purpose Here is a general summary of how these provisions and […]

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Misappropriation of Trade Secrets May Also be a Tort

Misappropriation of Trade Secrets May Also be a Tort

Trade secrets are important and valuable assets for any business. In general, a trade secret is information that the owner has taken “reasonable measures” to keep secret and that has commercial value from the fact that information is secret. The information/data can relate to almost anything including information about Finances like the company’s profit and […]

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Protecting Your Trade Secrets: What Constitutes “Reasonable Measures”?

Protecting Your Trade Secrets: What Constitutes “Reasonable Measures”?

Trade Secret Lawyer

  Every business has valuable trade secrets which often make the business successful. Trade secrets can be something exotic like a unique business method, an unusual raw material or a long-held secret recipe. More often, trade secrets are mundane items like customer lists, monthly sales figures, and source vendors. Trade secrets are protected at the […]

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