Lawyers are not immediately recognized as the most creative souls on the planet but some of the best lawyers I know definitely have the the creative spark. I have seen many who were classic doodlers, photographers and painters. Some of them were also the most creative in the courtroom and ultimately very successful in winning cases. That’s why I am

Jason Shinn of the Michigan Employment Law Advisor had a great post entitled "Is your company making this mistake when it comes to employees and intellectual property?" The post centers on a lawsuit filed by an employee of Marvel Entertainment who claimed he created the Ghost Rider character back in the 1970s. With the recent success

A false advertising lawsuit has been filed against Brett Bros. Sports International, Inc. by an Iowa man. The President of the company is none other than Hall of Famer and legendary baseball player, George Brett. The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Iowa seeks class action status and more than

I am pleased to announce that I now have a Rush on Business You Tube Channel where I’ll post short videos on various aspects of business and franchise law. I have a few videos posted so far and I’ll add content weekly.

New videos include:

Should You Include Your Spouse When Forming a Small Business LLC?

Jon Hyman wrote on his Ohio Employer’s Law Blog that the NLRB has issued a 2nd report on social media as protected concerted activity.  If you are an employer considering discipline or termination of an employee resulting from social media activity you need to be very careful. Jon points out:

This report underscores that employees’ use of social

Over the last 5 years that I have been writing this blog, there haven’t been many Iowa business lawyers who write a blog on a regular basis. But when I was looking at Mike Colwell’s Startup Models site, I noticed a new blog from business lawyer Chris Sackett of Brown Winick called BizB4Law.

Chris wrote

I had the opportunity to attend the Forum on Franchising in Baltimore this past month. The Forum Chair, Joseph Fittante, was recently interviewed by BlueMauMau on the state of franchise law which I thought was important to share.

Fittante commented that he is seeing more high stakes litigation. In his experience the number of litigation cases are decreasing but

One of the things I love the most is providing proactive educational workshops to companies and other organizations.  Due to the ever-growing interest in the topic, I am pleased to announce that I am now offering a new legal training workshop for businesses, large and small, regarding social media. A custom workshop will be designed for your business to cover the following topics:

  • Overview of Social Media,

Franchisees generally want an exclusive territory that is protected from encroachment by other franchisees or the franchisor’s company owned stores. Unfortunately franchisees are often under the mistaken belief they have an "exclusive territory" when they really don’t.

You must consider whether the franchisor has reserved rights that could cause encroachment or competition from the franchisor, other