Legal Question in Intellectual Property in California

Re: Copyright, NDA, Business- Start up, Filing for Coroporation

You have asked very good, pointed, intelligent questions. I'm sure it does not escape you that clients pay money for a lawyer's services for help structuring a start-up business. That is what you must do. Even if a lawyer was willing to write you a 50 page how-to guide for free, it would likely be practically useless to you. For example, I could read a "How to perform brain surgery" book, but it would be practically useless to me if I actually wanted to perform brain surgery.

You really must work closely with an attorney in this stage of developing your business to have it structured legally from the ground up. May I suggest that rather than paying a lawyer an hourly fee, you may retain one as 'in-house' counsel on salary. In this way, you would have an attorney's full attention to this project, s/he will spend as much time as it takes and answer as many questions as you have -- without billing you for time or per question/issue. The going rate for an in-house attorney will vary by geographic area, level of experience, etc., but I think you will find it is FAR more cost effective than paying hourly for an attorney to work on a large on-going project.

Best of luck.

Re: Copyright, NDA, Business- Start up, Filing for Coroporation

Your needs are so many and diverse that counseling you on a bulletin board is inappropriate, except to say go get a local lawyer to assist.

I would say, however, that NDAs are about as good as is the integrity of the party asked to sign it, unless you are IBM and can throw a dozen high-priced lawyers against a breach. I'm not suggesting that you not get one; I'm only saying it is most likely to be observed if the signee is of extremely good moral character and/or in great fear of being sued for breach.

Re: Copyright, NDA, Business- Start up, Filing for Coroporation

(1) re website: Copyright is unlikely to give you the protection you're anticipating; (2) A non-disclosure agreement can always be challenged, but value I often see is that is a reminder and a deterrent. Again, you need to look at your goals (e.g. protecting an idea pre-patent versus trade secrets versus discouraging competition) to determine what documents would work best and how they should be implemented; (3) No, I can't give you instructions on "how to be legally protected" because that would be based on individualized recommendations after understanding more about your business plans; (4) Need a local business license and after that it depends on what you're doing; (5) If you're loading public domain information or people are posting information to your site, you don't need permissions but you may need legal disclaimers. If you're loading copyrighted information, you definitely need permission! (6) It's always advisable to have terms & conditions for your website that set forth the ground rules between you and the public. That can save a lot of headaches down the road. That's about the best I can do in answering your questions because they are so generalized. The kind of recommendations you're looking for can't be provided on this type of posting forum because good strategies come from good information. I would want to know quite a bit more about what you're planning in order to provide any real guidance. You're welcome to call and we can determine together what legal services may be of value to you.