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Dear Founders: Here Are Three IP Mistakes to Watch-Out For

Scott Edward Walker

Over the past six months, my firm has been engaged by a number of startups with significant intellectual property (“IP”) problems. In a couple of cases, the founders played lawyer on their own; in the other cases, the founders either used (i) a Web service that did not address IP issues or (ii) an inexperienced law firm.

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Startups and IP Ownership Issues

Scott Edward Walker

For many startups, intellectual property (IP) is their most valuable asset. Below are the three most common IP-related mistakes that startups make — the first of which I discuss in this brief video with Jason Calacanis. Mistake #2 – Not Assigning to the Company Any IP Created Pre-Incorporation. www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqL3Xm5iUCY

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Nuts & Bolts of Intellectual Property for New Startups

Gust

Having covered all the bases to ensure that your corporate name is available, the domain name can be acquired, and the name doesn’t infringe any existing trademarks (as we discussed last week ), now is a good time to look at the categories of intellectual property (IP) that are relevant to most startups. Intellectual property.

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Series Seed Financing Documents

www.seriesseed.com

Series Seed Financing Documents Blog. « About the Series Seed Documents | Main. Series Seed Financing Documents. Please note, these are the latest versions of the Series Seed Documents.    These are the original versions of the Series Seed Documents.  SeriesSeed.com. Blog Archives.

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Do It Right The First Time: Avoiding “Janitorial” Legal Work

Gust

Nevertheless, choosing to defer basic corporate housekeeping items can be disastrous in some circumstances, as when the failure to spend a few thousand dollars on legal fees to clarify IP ownership and equity arrangements comes back to bite a successful company to the tune of millions of dollars on the eve of a liquidity event.

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How to Work with Lawyers at a Startup

Both Sides of the Table

Shame about not getting it in legal writing that you owned the original IP. Forget to get around to setting up that Employee Stock Option Plan and want to be able to give the early guys their options at a low strike price? They usually ask for warrants (basically like a stock option) in exchange for taking a deferred fee.

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Legal Documents for Your Startup with Founder's Workbench

ReadWriteStart

Called Founder's Workbench , the site includes a variety of free, self-service tools for generating basic legal documents. Documents that can be created include a Certificate of Incorporation, Bylaws, Consent of Board of Directors, and Common Stock Certificates.

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