California is a notoriously unfriendly state for business. This reputation extends to business entities for professionals practicing in the state.
California is a state with a very unique view towards business. Most business entities, for instance, are required to pay an $800 fee for the “privilege of doing business” in the state. This fee is in addition to any other fees charged in relation to the formation or maintenance of the business.
Once you form a new business entity, you need to come up with a way to get money into it. This concept is known as capitalization or funding of the business entity.
At first glance, funding an entity seems fairly simple. Don’t the officers of the corporation simply open a bank account and deposit some money? Unfortunately, it is not that simple. The money has to come from somewhere, typically the shareholders.
Funding a new corporate entity is obviously a critical step, but how is it done. There are three primary methods, although one should check with applicable laws in your state to delineate which are available. Regardless, let’s take a closer look.
As you know by now, the music industry aggressively pursues file sharing networks claiming that the exchange of music on them is a copyright infringement. Well, the industry now has a problem in France.
Unless you have been living under a rock, you are probably aware of the copyright wars on the net. Nobody has more aggressively pursued copyright infringement claims than the music industry, specifically record labels and their group associations. In the United States, the industry has had great success hunting down and suing defendants whether they be file sharing networks or those dangerous criminals known as kids.
Mechanically produced fonts and the characters comprising fonts are protected under UK law as typefaces. The legal definition for typefaces incorporates letters, numerals and ornamental motifs. Fonts and typefaces created for PCs, Apple computers and Linux systems however are protected are artistic works.
Electronically Created Typefaces
What is not made clear in the Act, but follows from basic principles of copyright is that electronically created fonts are protected by copyright, provided they are original. The protection is an indirect means of protecting the individual characters.
If a piece of work or something someone/some people have created then they should own the rights to it and therefore it belongs to them. There is of course varying degrees in how many rights they reserve and different countries more than likely have their own interpretations, but on the web this becomes a bit more of a grey area, with no-one to stringently enforce the laws, that’s not to say that if you do violate them you wont be caught.
Well, many of us have heard of the term “Google Slap.” That is when Google is the slapper. But now Google is the one that has been slapped.
Google, the Californian company that runs the world’s most popular search engine, lost a court case in Brussels Belgium on 13 February 2007 where it was found that Google had breached copyright.
Copiepresse, a copyright protection specialist, was representing a group of 18 mostly French language newspapers who complained that Google was using “cached” links to offer free access to archived articles from the papers that were sold on a subscription basis.
Online gaming has been incredibly popular, particularly the various forms of poker. That all changed in 2006 when the federal government effectively banned a majority of online gaming. The gaming industry is finally fighting back.
The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 was a shock too much of the gaming industry. Although it had been slowly moving through Congress, there was no indication that it would be passed into law without a significant amount of debate and lobbying. In a typically congressional move, all of the uproar about a ban was bypassed when the Act was attached as a rider to legislation detailing how to protect our ports from terrorist attacks! Terrorist and online poker – a natural mix if ever there was one!
For many businesses, establishing a well-known brand is the key to success. Of course, you need to protect that brand and trademarks are part of the process.
A trademark is a form of intellectual property. You can trademark words, symbols, names, sounds and even colors that distinguish a product or service. A classic example is the Nike swoosh, a symbol that is well known throughout the world. Unlike patents and copyright, trademarks do not expire so long as they are used and, of course, you pay the United States Patent and Trademark Office to renew them!
With the advent of the Internet revolution, the latest and greatest corporate war is clearly between Google and Microsoft. While that is no surprise to anyone, there are some interesting aspects of this battle.
One of the more humorous aspects of the war between Google and MSN is the concept of the favored party. Many people, particularly webmasters, view MSN as the evil empire. In contrast, Google is seen as the plucky new player on the block, who is rebelling against the Empire. While this classical Star Wars scenario sounds great at first, it simply isn’t very accurate.
For medical malpractice lawsuit’s outcome in your favour is dependent on concrete evidence in order to prove that wrongdoing was done by the doctor or the medical care provider. This is because many times the proper course of action is a judgment call by the doctor or the medical care provider.
However, if you are certain that medical malpractice can be established and you have the necessary evidence to prove it, then you should pursue the medical malpractice lawsuit. A point to remember is that even if the actions taken by the doctor were right, he should know about the adverse effect his treatment can have, and it is his responsibility to inform you and your family members of the side effects of the treatment.
