Posts Tagged: "entrepreneurs"

Don’t Let the Pandemic End Your Startup: Tips for Shoring Up Agreements Among Business Partners

Starting your own business is exciting. Finding the right partner to share the same vision is vital for the company’s future success. However, people don’t always see eye to eye when it comes to important details like finances, marketing, and a strategic business plan. Throw in a global pandemic to turn the economy upside down, and things become even more complicated. Lately, business partners have had to face unusually significant challenges due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on business operations and revenue. With uncertainty continuing to loom over our economy’s future, those challenges are likely here to stay for a while. Fortunately, some companies have been able to find relief during this stressful time through government stimulus checks, insurance claims and other types of aid. On the other hand, many have faced roadblocks, causing disagreements between partners and their visions for the future. The added disruption brought on by COVI9-19 has led some to a business divorce, which is more easily managed when there are clear contractual agreements in place. Without such comprehensive agreements between owners, businesses are in danger of failing.

The Problem of IPR Infringement in India’s Burgeoning Startup Ecosystem

For a country of 1.3 billion people who pride themselves on ingenuity, entrepreneurial spirit, and innovative thinking, a significant percentage of the Indian population is woefully unaware of trademark infringement and intellectual property theft. At the beginning of 2010, the Indian e-commerce scene was still in its nascent stage but within the next five years, the growth was unprecedented. This was a result of the rapid internet access proliferation combined with the telecom boom. The budget phone segment and the affordable data tariff pushed the tier-II and tier-III cities into the fore. Just to put things in perspective, according to recent studies, there are close to 600 million phone users in India with over 300 million smartphone owners, which is just 20 million shy of the population of the United States (as per 2018 records). With a sizeable portion of the population heavily consuming online media and transacting digitally, there is a huge market for service providers and aggregators. Leveraging the demand for such service providers, startups from all over the country have mushroomed in a frenzy. Under the current government, initiatives like “Make In India” and “Startup India” have further bolstered the growth of these SMEs.

Adding a Cybersecurity Plan to the Business Plan: Cybersecurity and IP Considerations for Startups

Imagine the following scenario: You have an idea for a new mobile application. As adoption of the app picks up, so does your business, and you hire more employees to provide sales and support assistance. You are on your way to transforming your startup into a successful business. Needing additional capital to scale the business more quickly, you identify a strategic partner interested in investing in your business. Before you can close on the funding, several employees report that they did not receive their paychecks through the direct deposit system. The investigation reveals that several months ago, your organization received a series of spear phishing emails. You learn that multiple employees opened the email and its attachment giving the cybercriminals access to your systems. Not only are you out the payroll money, but you also learn that in addition to your employees’ banking information, the criminals had access to your customer contact information and the source code for your app. A cyberattack is an unwelcome event for any company, but the effects can be especially detrimental to a startup, with 60% or more of small businesses that experience a data breach going out of business within a year of the breach. It is impossible for any size business to guarantee a system that is fully secure. However, not all companies have millions of dollars to invest in cybersecurity and by allocating even limited funds to assessing your data privacy risks, implementing a protection plan and creating an incident response plan, a startup can significantly improve its chances of surviving a cyberattack.

What Every Patent Attorney Should Teach Their Entrepreneur-Inventor Clients About the Patent Process

Navigating the patent process can often be challenging and filled with subtleties and nuances for the entrepreneur-inventor, especially for first-time filers. Having a trusted patent attorney who can not only help guide you through the process, but help inventors learn about it is truly invaluable to new entrepreneur-inventors. However, for many inventors, understanding what patent attorneys do and why they do it does not always come as second nature. Over the course of my career as both an inventor and entrepreneur, I’ve had the pleasure of working with many excellent patent attorneys on my companies’ patent filings. The best attorneys I’ve worked with have played an integral role in educating me and my colleagues on the patenting process, what makes a good specification and claim and how infringement lawsuits work should we ever pursue them. I’ve also learned that inventors and patent attorneys often have different visions for what the final patent will look like. As someone who’s been through the process a few times now, here are the four things patent attorneys taught me that I think would be useful to entrepreneur-inventor clients.

Another PTAB Casualty: Emmy Awarded Wireless Microphone Technology Could Be Invalidated

On October 25, the AIPLA Annual Meeting will host a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) Inter Partes Review (IPR) trial to determine the fate of a pair of patents issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to Zaxcom for a Digital Recording Wireless Microphone. Zaxcom is a U.S. manufacturer of high-end, specialized wireless microphones and recording equipment for the film and television industries. The company was founded in 1986 by Glenn Sanders, the named inventor on the challenged patents. The Zaxcom case caught my attention for several reasons. First, this was not a patent troll asserting a stack of vague, overly broad patents, but was an inventor-owned company that was producing the invention. Second, Glenn was manufacturing his invention and creating jobs in the United States. Third, the technology has won Engineering Emmy Awards and has been honored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with a Technical Achievement Award. Finally, Chief Administrative Patent Judge Scott Boalick was on the panel. How could the USPTO grant a patent, the claimed invention earn Emmy and Academy awards, and then the USPTO decide the patent was likely to be invalid? Especially when Director Iancu is traveling throughout the country and testifying in Congress that it is a new day at the USPTO and that he has restored balance at the PTAB?