Company-sponsored parties are a fun way to build employee morale during the holiday season, but, if you're not careful, they can also result in significant liability. Potential claims include those for sexual harassment, discrimination, and overtime pay. Worse still, you may find your business is liable for an employee's behavior after the party, such as when an employee who becomes [...]
We frequently get questions from our clients about requests for payment of registration, publication or renewal fees for corporate, domain name and intellectual property filings. Requests may also be received for monitoring fees or the preparation of minutes. The scam requests typically look like invoices or letters, often containing false due dates or threats about loss of rights if you [...]
Partnerships and LLCs that are taxed as partnerships have traditionally been treated as flow-through entities and not directly subject to federal income tax, but this has changed as the result of a new federal law that took effect earlier this year. Unfortunately, the new law is highly technical and complicated. The below description of the changes to the tax laws [...]
One of the most valuable assets a business may have is its trade secrets, and most businesses have them. In order for an item to be considered a trade secret, it must be both kept confidential and provide the business with a commercial advantage. Trade secrets include, among other things, customer lists, supplier lists, secret formulas, processes and the like. [...]
Full enforcement by Oregon's Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI) of Oregon's Equal Pay Act of 2017 will begin January 1, 2019. Any Oregon employer who has not already prepared for full compliance by that date should begin planning now, given that the law applies to all employers in Oregon (except for the federal government), regardless of size. The Equal [...]
You might wonder why you should bother registering your copyrights, especially if you've heard that in the US there's no need to register your copyrights, because they're automatically protected. While this is true, this is misleading. Although your work is automatically copyrighted once it's fixed in a tangible form, you can't enforce this copyright, because you can't bring a lawsuit [...]
With so much paperwork involved in getting a new employee on board, it's easy to forget a page or two, but doing so could lead to serious legal problems for an employer. Recently there's been a dramatic spike in I-9 audits across the country. Form I-9 is used to verify the identity and employment authorization of employees in the US. [...]
When reading documents from your lawyer, you may find a number of legal terms that you do not recognize. Some of the legal terms you're most likely to encounter when involved in a legal dispute are: Mediation, Arbitration and Trial Mediation is an attempt to settle a legal dispute with the help of an impartial mediator (or referee), who tries to [...]
Trademark infringement and counterfeit products are a serious problem on the Amazon marketplace. In order to help combat these problems, Amazon updated its Amazon Brand Registry last year. This registry allows trademark owners to search for infringements on the site with text and image search and provides a streamlined method for reporting infringements. To qualify for protection on the Amazon [...]
As we've mentioned in previous alerts, even if your workplace has no union employees, it must comply with some of the rules of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Over the last several years, NLRB policies have changed quite a bit, and recently the NLRB's Office of the General Counsel issued guidelines for employee handbook policies. Section 7 of the [...]
