TruPhone for iPhone

I read about an "app" for the iPhone called TruPhone. It allows you to make calls over the internet when you have a WiFi connection. We have a weak cell signal at our house. I downloaded TruPhone to my iPhone and tried it out using our home WiFi. The call was crystal-clear - far better than what I'm used to at home on the cell. Another plus is that we're going on a trip soon and may not be able

Partner Dossiers - Strategic Intelligence is Key to the Best Deals!

When a client looks to execute a manufacturing, distribution, or licensing agreement, we recommend that the client equip itself with as much useful information about its partner as reasonably possible in advance of the negotiations and certainly before any deal is inked.

PARTNER DOSSIERS are key to this valuable strategic intelligence.

The price of this strategic intelligence varies depending upon the client's budget, whether the prospective partner is a domestic or foreign company, how complex the partner's organization is, and the number and type of special reports that need to be purchased as inputs for the strategic analysis of the partner.

The benefits to being armed with strategic intelligence prior to negotiations, however, make the spend well worth it.

For example, a prolifically-innovative business was approached with a license agreement for a particular automotive invention. The pay-off for the business was $100,000 in an upfront royalty fee. The prospective licensee was a successful mom-and-pop towing business operating in several locations in the Midwest.

The business came to us to review the deal, already agreed in principle. To advise our client properly, we conducted in-depth research and compiled a Partner Dossier on the prospective licensee.

What we learned was a shock to the client! The licensee turned out to be a small subsidiary of a New York Stock Exchange-traded company worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Furthermore, the company had an exclusive contract for the Australian military and a similar contract in Germany to which our client's invention was perfectly positioned to contribute in a big way. Properly compensated, that deal should have easily run into the several hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not $1 million or more.

The proposed licensing agreement presented by the mom-and-pop business also attempted to exploit the kind of "aw shucks" ruse by which it had approached our client. The rights to be licensed by our client would, under than agreement, flow through the mom-and-pop straight to the NYSE parent company.

Fortunately, our strategic intelligence, along with the intellectual property rights flow analysis it enabled, helped the client have the information it needed to avoid a bad deal and put it on a more equal footing with its partner.

For more on how Partner Dossiers can assist you in getting the best possible deals for your business, please contact us at 208.939.4472 or info@TechnologyLawGroup.com.

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Licensing Software in a Global Market

Last week, I presented at ACI's 14th annual software licensing conference on this topic of international licensing.

My very knowledgeable co-presenters on the panel talked about licensing in India and in China. Both jurisdictions have licensing limitations and software royalties and other treatments and rules that are important to know before you enter an agreement.

For more on licensing in India and China, please contact me at 208.939.4472 or eloza@TechnologyLawGroup.com.

My presentation focused on three key cross-jurisdictional points:

1. The tactical advantages and uses of STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE in the negotiation and ongoing compliance and enforcement work for licensing agreements;

2. The GLOBAL HARMONIZATION OF LICENSING TERMS for greater efficiencies in terms of legal fees and contract management; and

3. The maximization of "home-bound" income using TAX TREATY-OPTIMIZED TERMS.

I'll spend the next several blog posts drilling down on these topics and telling some interesting "war stories" to illustrate them.

If you'd like to have a copy of my presentation or to discuss any topic in detail, please contact me using the information provided above.

Van Nuys Traffic Court and Britney Spears

Apparently Britney Spears had her day in Court recently. 10 of 12 jurors felt she was not guilty of driving with a suspended license, so she's neither guilty nor "not guilty." As best we can tell, the case was heard in Van Nuys Traffic Court.

Loza Presents on International Software Licensing

I will be speaking on Tuesday, October 21, 2008, at the American Conference Institute's 14th Software Licensing Agreements event in San Francisco.

My presentation will focus on licensing software in a global market. I will emphasize the analysis of divergent laws and best practices for achieving legally-sound software agreements across multiple foreign jurisdictions.

I will draw on my experience in licensing software distributed online to such diverse jurisdictions as Malta, China, and the European Union. In addition, I will address best practices for due diligence and enforcement in Taiwan, Korea, and Japan.

Attorneys from Baker McKenzie and from Mumbai's Thacker & Thacker will join me on the podium to discuss licensing in China and India, respectively.

For more information and copy of the conference program, click the title of this post. For more on how we here at Technology Law Group can support your software licensing business, please contact us at 208.939.4472 or info@technologylawgroup.com.

Federal PRO-IP Bill Enacted

President Bush signed the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2007, or PRO-IP Act, into law on Monday, October 13th.

The U.S. Chamber reports on the signing at its Global IP Summit. For more, click here.

TLG can help protect your intellectual property assets. For more, call us at 208.939.4472 or email us at info@technologylawgroup.com.

Why hire a traffic lawyer?

If you want a good reason to hire a traffic lawyer, watch this show of people going to traffic court by themselves. It's called Speeders Fight Back and it's on TruTV.The site also has a list of future episodes.The show is set in what looks like Plantation Traffic Court, part of the Broward County Court system.

U.S. Chamber Backs PRO-IP Act

United States Chamber of Commerce president, Thomas Donahue, writes about the importance of innovation in our nation's economic development.

He also rightly includes the protection and enforceability of intellectual property rights as a foundational requirement for that innovation-driven development.

Click here for the full article posted on the U.S. Chamber's Web site.

The article contains a brief note about Congress' recent passage of the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act (PRO-IP Act).

The House of Representatives passed its version of the PRO-IP Act in May 2008. (Click here for H.R. 4279)

The Senate passed its version of the bill on September 26, 2008. (Click here for a news report.)The Chamber sees this bill as a positive way to protect American-owned intellectual property rights and to elevate this protection in the Administration. Although the Senate bill is narrower than the House version, some regard PRO-IP Act as controversial, including for provisions that may require the Department of Justice to enforce privately-held copyright registrations.

The online Chamber article offers a comment function. Add your voice there.

Criminal Defense Lawyer Thoughts

It's a sad reality that hard economic times are not bad for criminal defense lawyers. Desperate people are more likely to commit crimes. Cash-strapped governments at all levels increase traffic enforcement and fines. All of this leads to a greater demand for our services.

Lawyer Thoughts

Having one of those pensive moments.- Sometimes being a lawyer feels like walking through a minefield. We have a map of all the mines, but the map is in the form of 10,000 large books. You can't carry them all with you, and it's kinda hard to remember everything.- When you step on one of the mines, your fate (or your client's) is in the hands of someone like a judge. Fortunately, most of the

Criminal Defense: Some of our clients are criminals

A few years ago I did a post about representing innocent clients in criminal defense cases.The other day I spoke to the Pre-Law Association at U Albany. One of the stories I told them (which I'll go into another day) involved the most criminal client I've ever represented. This guy was the opposite of innocent.Sometimes we represent innocent clients. They really didn't do anything wrong. It

Are police tougher on out-of-state drivers?

Just read an interesting statistical analysis about speeding tickets by Professors Michael Makowsky and Thomas Stratmann. They both appear to be economics professors at George Mason University.They analyzed a database of Massachusetts speeding tickets. Police there can choose to issue a fine or just a warning on the ticket. They found that police are more likely to fine out-of-town drivers and