Over the past four years, since the enactment of the JOBS Act in April 2012, entrepreneurs and investors, particularly in the startup community, have been abuzz about crowdfunding, the process by which a company raises a large amount of money by selling securities in small amounts to a large number of investors. After the runaway success
While the “Leave” result of the June 23 referendum will not have an immediate impact on intellectual property, the eventual British exit (“Brexit”) from the European Union could have long-term implications for IP protection and filing decisions in Europe. On June 23, the United Kingdom voted in favor of leaving the European Union, raising questions
There has been a resurgence of concern about the misuse of financial measures and key performance indicators not based on generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). Late last year, the Chair of the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), Mary Jo White, addressed the 2015 National Conference of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). She noted
At the February meeting of the American Bar Association’s House of Delegates in San Diego, which I attended, the delegates adopted a resolution giving states a regulatory framework for allowing non-lawyers to provide certain legal services. Resolution 105, sponsored by the ABA’s Commission on the Future of the Legal Profession, was purportedly aimed at addressing
We committed so much time and effort in law school learning to research, analyze, and advocate. We made course outlines, studied the Blue Book citation formats, searched the library for the Shepard’s pocket parts to make sure we cited cases that were not overruled, and lugged the heavy case reporters and digests from shelves to
Adhering to corporate formalities is often cited as a disadvantage of organizing a business using the corporate form, but those formalities play a crucial role in protecting the corporation’s shareholders. This fact was made clear in the Delaware Court of Chancery’s October ruling in the case of Zuckerberg v. Espinoza, 124 A.3d 47 (Del. Ch. 2015). The case, which
Insurers have a number of tools at their disposal to change the behavior of their policyholders. This should be relatively unsurprising. Once an insurer indemnifies a policyholder from loss, it is the insurer’s money at risk, not the policyholder’s—if the policyholder suffers a loss, the insurer must pay the cost of the loss. And insurers hate to lose money just like you and me. It is therefore in the insurer’s interest to either demand or encourage policyholders to take more precaution.
Among the many important decisions a company facing a SEC investigation must make is the decision whether to publicly disclose the existence of the investigation. The decision may depend on the stage of the investigation, what is being investigated, and what is the likelihood of a bad outcome. While the weight of authority suggests that
In the era of Tiger Woods’s racial self-identification as “Cablinasian” and Caitlyn Jenner’s transition from Olympian to transgender advocate, it may seem obvious that a growing number of Americans openly embrace fluid social identities, being multiracial, post-racial, transgender, or gender nonconforming, among others. Efforts to use new words and conceptions of race and sex appear
Over the past few decades, the federal government has increased its focus on investigating and prosecuting fraud and corruption in a variety of industries. Businesses are required to develop comprehensive compliance programs to comply with a variety of federal, state, and, in some cases, foreign laws and regulations to minimize risk and avoid legal repercussions.