Nick Starr, doing business as Master Maintenance, hired West Central Ohio Internet Link, Ltd. to redesign and host the website for Master Maintenance’s janitorial services.
The redesigned website included four photos owned by, but not properly licensed from, Corbis Corporation.
In Fall 2006, Corbis discovered Master Maintenance’s unauthorized use of its pictures. On November 17, 2006, Corbis sent Master Maintenance a letter informing it of the infringement. Master Maintenance directed West Central to remove the pictures, which West Central did. On December 7, 2007, Corbis filed suit for copyright infringement against Master Maintenance and West Central (Corbis Corporation v. Nick Starr).
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In an article published yesterday (Start-Ups Will Keep Struggling in 2010), the Wall Street Journal reported that startup funding will remain tough to find in 2010.
The major problems:
- Most entrepreneurs use personal savings or contributions from friends and family, but personal wealth – often tied to the value of homes or stock portfolios – has not bounced back from the economic downturn.
- For both conventional bank loans and those insured by the Small Business Administration, entrepreneurs most show (a) that they have invested a significant amount of their own money and (b) solid cash-flow projections.
- During the first half of 2009, the total value of angel investments fell 30% compared to 2008; 2010 is expected to continue at the 2009 level.
- While venture capitalists are continuing to invest, they typically have been protecting later-stage companies already in their portfolios rather than funding startups.
The minor bits of good news:
- While angels are investing less per deal, the total number of deals increased during the first half of 2009 over 2008.
- Stimulus-related measures may increase SBA loans from 1% of all small-business lending to between 5% and 10%.
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Related posts:
This blog does not provide legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship. If you need legal advice, please contact an attorney directly.
Burton Lee, Director and Engineering Lecturer at Stanford University, recently posted informative slides from a presentation by Laurie Lumenti Garty of SVB Capital and Marianne Hudson of the Angel Capital Association.
The subject: Angel investment groups in the U.S.
Here is some of the most important information presented in the slides:
- There are more than 300 angel investment groups in the U.S.
- They tend to invest in companies that are in product development or are already shipping product.
- Major investment sectors include IT, health care, and business financial services.
- The vast majority of the investments are $500,000 or less.
- Groups tend to co-invest with, or look for follow-on investments from, other angel groups, individual angels, and early-stage venture capitalists.
If you are seeking angel funding, you should look at the entire slide deck.
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Related post: Realistic Financing Options for Startup Companies
This blog does not provide legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship. If you need legal advice, please contact an attorney directly.
Startup entrepreneurs always are looking for ways to save money. A question that I receive from time to time: Is it possible to prepare a website Privacy Policy without a lawyer’s help?
Simply copying another company’s Privacy Policy is a mistake, because two companies rarely want to handle all privacy matters exactly the same way. However, there are quite a few online Privacy Policy Generators (PPGs) – just do a Google search for “privacy policy generator”.
The user provides answers to a series of questions; based on the user’s answers, the PPG provides recommended text for a Privacy Policy. I have not examined the text that the PPGs produce, so I cannot comment on its appropriateness or legal sufficiency. However, the PPGs’ questions and choices of answers constitute a helpful checklist for thinking about privacy issues.
While I cannot recommend preparing a Privacy Policy on your own, if you must do so, a PPG can increase the likelihood that you will cover the right topics in an appropriate way.
Dana H. Shultz, Attorney at Law +1 510 547-0545 dana [at] danashultz [dot] com
This blog does not provide legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship. If you need legal advice, please contact a lawyer directly.
Dana Shultz is a business-savvy lawyer located in Northern California's San Francisco Bay Area (in the East Bay, near Oakland) who has in-depth knowledge of law, business, technology, and the needs of startup and early-stage companies.