How Can I Switch from a Sole Proprietorship to a Corporation?
This post is based on (and is an edited version of) a Quora question and my answer. Q. How do you switch from a sole proprietorship to a corporation? You do, of course, want to keep all your intellectual property and brand and street cred and so on. Can you treat that as equity?
A. Yes, you can treat the assets of your sole proprietorship as the consideration for which your shares are issued. You need to create an agreement by which you (as an individual) assign those assets (including the intellectual property rights therein) to the corporation. This is, of course, a friendly transaction, so the assignment agreement can be simple – no need for endless pages of legal boilerplate to protect against litigation that never will occur.
Related post: How to Assign a Patent Application to Your Startup Company
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.
