Starting a new business is an exciting time. Up until now, you and your partner may have been treating it as a side hustle, but now it is time to make it more official. Your new enterprise may stay a side hustle, or it may become your full-time occupation. As your business grows, establishing it
Our Virginia Business Lawyers frequently get asked as to what precisely constitutes trademark infringement. In order to answer that question, you need to know when something can be trademarked in the first place. Exclusive Right to Use – Exclusive Right to Prohibit Use The owner of a mark has the exclusive right to use that
Our Virginia Business Lawyers are frequently confronted with the following scenario: You want to sell branded clothing, or other branded goods that you buy from the original or post-original owners and don’t want to be sued by the original makers of the goods. In the United States, trademark law includes a fair use defense, sometimes called “trademark fair use.”
For small businesses, using independent contractors is a smart way to hire skilled workers without all the costs of a full-time employee. Even larger companies often use contractors to help with temporary work projects. Hiring an independent contractor allows you to avoid many of the complications and costs of an employee. However, do not just
One problem with tenants is that they sometimes leave the premises before their lease is up. They might do so because their business is such a success that they need more square footage, but often they break the lease because their business is failing and they have run out of money. This is a bad
A lot of questions surround defamation, particularly about how it applies to businesses. It a nutshell, defamation is communication with the intent to damage another individual’s or entity’s reputation. To legally qualify as defamation, the claim(s) must be false and expressed to a third party. There are two types of defamation–libel is defamation in the
One of the primary areas of our practice deals with partnership disputes between and among business partners of across a variety of industries, including co-owners of real estate brokerages, title companies, restaurants, hair salons, technology startups, and retail companies. Here are some of the most common scenarios why business partners end-up parting ways: 1. Your
Statutory citations have been updated to reflect changes enacted in October 2019. Can a tenant break his lease due to mold in the rental property? This is one of the most frequent queries we get whenever a landlord or tenant (L/T) finds mold in the leased premises. There is no simple answer to this question.
Have you ever used a boilerplate LLC Operating Agreement for your business? Have you ever wondered about some of the drastic legal consequences that the boilerplate language in such operating agreements can have for your business? Consider the following hypothetical, which pertains to the economic structuring of an LLC. Most operating agreements have standard boilerplate
Business contracts are legally enforceable agreements that help businesses run smoothly. Creating and using contracts during transactions is a smart way to go, especially when disputes happen regularly. A breach of contract happens when one person accuses another of failing to follow the terms of an agreement. While courts and lawsuits are not the only