Technology Transactions

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“Rather than rest our decision on formalities, our focus is on what makes our on-sale bar jurisprudence coherent: preventing inventors from filing for patents a year or more after the invention has been commercially marketed, whether marketed by the inventor himself or a third party.”  The Medicines Company v. Hospira, Inc., No. 2014-1469, slip…

U.S. Patent X000001 was granted on July 31, 1790 to Samuel Hopkins. The original document went missing for many years, only resurfacing in 1956.

The inventor named is Samuel Hopkins, but which Samuel Hopkins was much in dispute until fairly recently. For many years a small town in Vermont celebrated their local resident as the…

One of the first steps in the sale of your company will be entering into a Letter of Intent. In order to avoid drafting lengthy documents and spending time and money on attorneys unnecessarily, you should be certain that the primary terms of the sale are documented in a letter of intent. It is during…

One of your first tasks in financing your technology company is likely to be completing your initial equity financing with outside investors. Typically, these financings are done with a venture capital firm (“VC”), angel investors or “friends and family” and the company will sell Series A Preferred Stock. Some of the primary negotiating points in…

Take care when entering into non-competition agreements.

This post deals with non-competition agreements in Texas. These rules vary from state to state so if you are not in Texas, you should consult with an attorney in your state.

For many years, non-competition agreements have been notoriously difficult to enforce in Texas but Texas courts…

Often a young technology company will seek assistance from more experienced individuals, giving them the position of “Advisory Board Member” and giving equity to a person who agrees to serve in that capacity. This designation should not be taken lightly. There is no question that a young company can get tremendous benefit from having an…

Technology companies receive services from a variety of individuals and often use consultants, either for marketing advice, for software development or for other discreet tasks. It’s important to be sure the consultants are properly classified as such (in which case, they are “independent contractors”) and that they should not be classified as employees. If you…

When forming a new technology company, there are very few documents as important (and unfortunately, as overlooked) as a Shareholders’ Agreement. The discussion in this post is couched as an agreement among shareholders of a corporation but the same principles apply to members of a limited liability company and partners of a partnership.

The founders…

Information about patent and trademark applications, processes and maintenance requirements is much more accessible to the public than it used to be.  In particular, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has very good information available (www.uspto.gov).  Surprisingly, patent attorneys continue to find the same faulty understandings and confusion about the patent…

Forwarded by Robert Shaddox from the article of the same title. U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (08/26/14)

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced that it will host seven roadshow events across the country to increase public understanding of the First Inventor to File (FITF) provisions of the America Invents Act. The roadshow events, which…