Even the most successful business can be undermined by poor legal arrangements. Failing to plan for the possibility of lawsuits or other problems may come back to bite you at the worst possible moment.
Here are seven tips for reducing your odds of hitting a legal pothole. 1. Avoid loose language and understandings. Doing business with friends, family, and lovers is a common practice for small-business owners. But the strength and depths of those relationships should not prevent you from signing a detailed yet flexible partnership agreement. With other types of partners, the need for such agreements is even greater. All owners of a business should agree in writing on such issues as:
Before you sign any agreement, run through a wide variety of scenarios in your mind. For example, consider what might happen if outside forces turn against you, your partner has a change of mind, the business becomes wildly successful, and so forth. Evaluate how well the agreement protects everyone’s interests under those circumstances. Read Entire Article: http://quickbooks.intuit.com/r/money/7-tips-for-avoiding-small-business-legal-potholes/ Does your smartphone spew a relentless stream of text messages, push alerts, social media messages and other noisy notifications? Well, experts have developed a novel model that can predict your receptiveness to smartphone interruptions. It incorporates personality traits and could lead to better ways to manage a blizzard of notifications and limit interruptions - if smartphone manufacturers get on board.
Read Article: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170306092728.htm This article will explain the basics of both Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 bankruptcy.
Bankruptcy is a generalized term for a federal court procedure that helps consumers and businesses get rid of their debts and repay their creditors. If you can prove that you are entitled to it, the bankruptcy court will protect you during your bankruptcy proceeding. In general, bankruptcies can be categorized into two types -- "liquidations" and "reorganizations." Among the different types of bankruptcies, Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 proceedings are the most common for individuals and businesses. Chapter 7 bankruptcies normally fall in the liquidation category. This means that if you own property, it could be taken and sold in the process of liquidation in order to pay back your debts. Conversely, Chapter 13 bankruptcies generally fall under the reorganization category, meaning that you will probably be able to keep your property, but you must submit and stick to a plan that will allow you to repay some or all of your debts within three to give years. Read Entire Article: http://bankruptcy.findlaw.com/what-is-bankruptcy/bankruptcy-definition-what-exactly-is-it.html Starting your own business is exciting. Thinking about the legal aspects of how to do it, less so. Nonetheless, firming up the nuts and bolts of structuring your new venture, protecting it and coming up with money to launch it are vital.
There are dozens of legal issues to pay attention to, but here are a few of the most crucial ones. Choose a Structure First, you must determine the best legal structure for your startup – that is, how it will be organized as an entity in the eyes of the law and the government. The three basic formats (for private for-profit entities) are: Which you choose depends on three things: the nature of your business, your business's funding needs and the risk of liability involved in your products, services or transactions. If a startup needs liability protection – and many businesses do – LLC or corporation status can provide that. Whether an LLC or corporation is a better fit depends on how the business wants to be taxed, who the owners will be and what form of internal governance best suits those owners. See Should You Incorporate Your Business? for details. By default, if you don't designate an entity for your business, you're operating it as a sole proprietorship and don't have to take any formal action to create it. The debts and obligations of the business are your personal debts and obligations. Read Entire Article: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/021216/top-legal-tips-starting-business.asp Under current U.S. law, being a “monopoly” is not illegal; nor is trying to best one’s competitors through lower prices, better customer service, greater efficiency, or more rapid innovation. Consumers benefit when Apple disrupts the market with iPhones and iPads, even if this means RIM sells fewer BlackBerries or that Microsoft licenses fewer desktop operating systems. Antitrust law only springs into action against a monopoly when it destroys the ability of another company to enter the market and compete.
The key question, of course, is whether a particular monopoly is harming consumers – or merely harming its competitors for the benefit of those consumers. Read Article: https://www.wired.com/2012/10/antitrust-is-supposed-to-protect-consumers-not-competitors/ Engineers in upstate New York have invented a folded paper device that looks like a decorated art project. But don’t be fooled. This is actually a paper-based battery. No, it doesn’t look like any of those metal batteries running flashlights or smartphones. This alternative to electronics is based on paper. It represents a step forward in the field of papertronics (short for paper electronics). In these systems, the battery can be printed on a page. Well, most of it can: The battery’s power consists of living bacteria.
Read Article: https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/germs-power-new-paper-batteries https://www.facebook.com/charleskseavey
https://twitter.com/charleskseavey https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlesseavey/ https://charleskseavey.wordpress.com/ https://charleskseavey.tumblr.com/ https://charleskseavey.weebly.com http://www.charles-seavey.com/ http://www.charlesseavey.com/ http://www.charles-k-seavey.com/ http://www.charlesseaveyinfo.com/ Free and open markets are the foundation of a vibrant economy. Aggressive competition among sellers in an open marketplace gives consumers — both individuals and businesses — the benefits of lower prices, higher quality products and services, more choices, and greater innovation. The FTC's competition mission is to enforce the rules of the competitive marketplace — the antitrust laws. These laws promote vigorous competition and protect consumers from anticompetitive mergers and business practices. The FTC's Bureau of Competition, working in tandem with the Bureau of Economics, enforces the antitrust laws for the benefit of consumers.
Read Article: https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws Humanity has a data storage problem: More data were created in the past 2 years than in all of preceding history. And that torrent of information may soon outstrip the ability of hard drives to capture it. Now, researchers report that they’ve come up with a new way to encode digital data in DNA to create the highest-density large-scale data storage scheme ever invented. Capable of storing 215 petabytes (215 million gigabytes) in a single gram of DNA, the system could, in principle, store every bit of datum ever recorded by humans in a container about the size and weight of a couple of pickup trucks. But whether the technology takes off may depend on its cost.
Read Article: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/03/dna-could-store-all-worlds-data-one-room By Charles K. Seavey
Contrary to the mistaken holding of Judge Furman, the facts described in his Order Granting Motion to Dismiss, In Re: Barclays Liquidity Cross and High Frequency Trading Litigation (SDNY, Case 1:14-md-02589-JMF Aug. 26, 2015) (“Flash Boys”) easily pass the primary liability test in Stoneridge. In Stoneridge, respondents Scientific-Atlanta and Motorola entered into sham business transactions with Charter for the purpose of enabling Charter to cook its books and thereby mislead its auditor and investors. Stoneridge Inv. Partners v. Scientific-Atlanta, 552 U.S. 148, 154-55 (2008).The Supreme Court held that Scientific-Atlanta and Motorola made no direct statements to investors as part of the scheme and that therefore investors’ reliance on their misconduct was too indirect to qualify for primary liability under 10b: Here respondents were acting in concert with Charter in the ordinary course as suppliers and, as matters then evolved in the not so ordinary course, as customers. Unconventional as the arrangement was, it took place in the marketplace for goods and services, not in the investment sphere. Charter was free to do as it chose in preparing its books, conferring with its auditor, and preparing and then issuing its financial statements. In these circumstances the investors cannot be said to have relied upon any of respondents' deceptive acts in the decision to purchase or sell securities; and as the requisite reliance cannot be shown, respondents have no liability to petitioner under the implied right of action. Stoneridge at 166-67. The precise element that the Supreme Court said was missing in Stoneridge – publication to investors – is present in Flash Boys. Order at 8. In Flash Boys the deceptive conduct largely consisted of direct communication to investors by the Exchanges. Id at 6-9. They published or caused to be published two sets of information regarding stock transactions: (1) an advance feed published to select market participants (the “tippees”); and (2) a version of the same information published slightly later to the public. Ibid. The Exchanges led the general public to rely upon the second feed to their detriment. The public was led by the Exchanges like financial sheep to slaughter at the hands of the tippees. Judge Furman’s treatment of Stoneridge instead revolves around a proposed rule (unsupported by Stoneridge) that anything short of making the specific trades that change the price of the mispriced security is aiding and abetting. Order at 27-28, 31. He writes that “without the trades, there would be no effect on the market at all.” Id. at 28. But that’s true of any stock fraud and says nothing. Instead the question is whether ordinary investors rely upon the communications of the Exchanges. And obviously investors rely exclusively and completely on the truthfulness of the Exchanges every time they see a stock quote and place a trade. Judge Furman’s proposed new rule is that even such direct deceptive communication is too indirect to create reliance. Order at 27-28. He declines to follow Stoneridge, which draws the line between aiding and abetting and primary liability at the point of direct deceptive communication to investors “in the investment sphere” by the defendant. Compare id at 27-28 and Stoneridge at 166-67. Independent of Stoneridge, the Exchanges are plainly the primary violators here. With a vague blessing from the SEC, the Exchanges as SROs sell information that allows to tippees to front-run the general public. They encourage the tippees to believe, and now strenuously argue, that their “product” is perfectly legal. The tippees act rationally; they aren’t publishing anything. Their role is slightly analogous to that of Motorola and Scientific-Atlanta in Stoneridge. The Exchanges, by contrast, are the beginning and end of the fraud. They tip the tippees on one side and lull/set up the general public on the other. They are primary violators whose conduct is an abomination; it offends any duty that they have as quasi-regulators; it completely violates the most basic concepts of perfect information and honest markets, as well as the purposes underlying the exchange acts and the creation of the SEC. |
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