Category Archives: High Technology Law
Startups and Trademarks
You and your friends have discussed, with increasing enthusiasm, your idea for a new business. Maybe you want to produce an app, or maybe a restaurant pairing different cuisines. You know what you are going to do, and how you are going to do it, but you also know that you will be cash-strapped, with […]
Way Ahead of You, Mr. President
A big drag on the health of the economy is labor mobility – or rather, the lack of it. People trapped in jobs that they don’t want to be in do not supply productivity and innovation. Non-competition agreements contribute significantly to that lack of labor mobility. Some employers like them because they suppress threats of […]
Now for The [Good] News…
by: Andrew K Jacobson The news has been dreary for some time now, and September has not been friendly in the recent past. Under all that gloom, it is easy to forget that there is a lot of good news out there: Lower Crime. Accounting for population growth, violent crime is down 48 percent over the […]
A Skull Full of Mush
by: Andrew K Jacobson The New York Timesrecently featured an article on Oakland’s own Sustainable Economies Law Center, which helps prospective lawyers apprentice with a lawyer for a few years while learning the law. Every law student who suffered “the ramen noodle and Contracts casebook at 12:30 am” existence finds it tempting. My publicly funded law […]
Foiling the Hyenas
The plunge from the easy money of the 2004-2008 era to The Great Recession hurt a lot of people. The easy credit of plastic morphed into a nightmare of bills and the inability to make even minimum payments. People who lost their jobs or were unable to afford finance charges that, in some cases, exceeded 20% annually, were saddled with debt that they couldn’t pay back, and no one game them a break. However, the banks that initially extended the bad debt, at worst case, were folded into healthy banks, and usually sold their bad debt at a deep discount – as low as 1%-2% of the total value – to companies that make their living suing those who can’t pay back their debt. How does someone in tough circumstances fight back against the hyenas?
Foiling the Hyenas
The plunge from the easy money of the 2004-2008 era to The Great Recession hurt a lot of people. The easy credit of plastic morphed into a nightmare of bills and the inability to make even minimum payments. People who lost their jobs or were unable to afford finance charges that, in some cases, exceeded 20% annually, were saddled with debt that they couldn’t pay back, and no one game them a break. However, the banks that initially extended the bad debt, at worst case, were folded into healthy banks, and usually sold their bad debt at a deep discount – as low as 1%-2% of the total value – to companies that make their living suing those who can’t pay back their debt. How does someone in tough circumstances fight back against the hyenas?
Employment Law Update – How up to date are you?
By Daniel Richardson Is your employee handbook up to date? An up to date employee handbook is important because it outlines for the employee the employer’s policies and procedures as well as establishing the expected standards. Using an employee handbook from the outset of the employment relationship to establish expected standards can be invaluable […]
Employment Law Update – How up to date are you?
By Daniel Richardson Is your employee handbook up to date? An up to date employee handbook is important because it outlines for the employee the employer’s policies and procedures as well as establishing the expected standards. Using an employee handbook from the outset of the employment relationship to establish expected standards can be invaluable […]
Game of — Pawns?
The FBI tells the story of Glenn Shriver, a former college student from Michigan who learned Mandarin and lived in China in 2004. He made some friends who encouraged him to find a job with the US government. He received some $70,000 merely to apply for such a job, but by the time the FBI arrested him, he realized that his friends were actually intelligence agents wanting to place a mole inside US agencies.
National agencies are not the only targets. US companies are also subject to foreign espionage. Just last month, the Justice Department announced indictments of five members of China’s military for stealing US companies’ trade secrets.
Scam Alert — Court “Notice of Appearance”
by Andrew Jacobson If you receive a “court notice” via email, don’t open it — it is a scam designed to add to your computer malware designed to get you to give over control of your computer to somebody else. We started receiving these a few weeks ago, but it may only just have started getting […]
