
5 Legal Tips To Save Startups Money & Headaches - terpua
http://gigaom.com/2008/10/05/5-legal-tips-to-save-startups-money-headache/
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tptacek
This really reads more like 5 legal tips to get you into a lawyer's office
before there's any real need.

(1) The open source business models in this article weren't locked down until
years after the products were successful. SourceFire and Tenable, in my
industry, are both examples of extremely successful companies that simply
shipped straight GPL until they were ready to start making money (on Snort and
Nessus, respectively).

(2) There's little you can reasonably do in a 3-month old company to
bulletproof yourself from a bad-faith partner who is going to make claims on
your IP; also, you have bigger problems; also, if it looks like you're going
to make money, VC probably doesn't care. I've been through VC due diligence a
bunch of times, and I never saw them take out the fine-toothed comb.

(3) It seems equally likely to me that by posting a FAQ and "policing" your
content, you set up the expectation with content providers and with the courts
that you're _obligated_ to do that.

(4) Ok. Don't sign ROFR's. Gotcha. Why didn't he just offer the real advice,
which is, "don't sign any contract complicated enough to have a ROFR clause,
or anything else you could call a 'clause', without a lawyer"?

(5) Have any of you bothered to register trademarks?

