Your trusted source for Iowa business and franchise law insights.
Your trusted source for Iowa business and franchise law insights.
Prospective franchisees should read a new book from The Franchise King, Joel Libava, called Become a Franchise Owner: The Startup-Guide to Lowering Risk, Making Money, and Owning What You Do.
I don’t make that recommendation lightly. But Joel and I share a common passion. We are both passionate about making sure that franchisees…
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…
The last post touched on Franchising Your Business. To continue learning more about factors to consider in franchising your business, I highly recommend this post on the New York Franchise Law Blog called Franchising Your Business: What You Can Learn from Existing Franchisors.
One of the most important points from the post is the…
Lately we’ve heard from a number of business owners that are interested in franchising their businesses. It’s always exciting to talk with entrepreneurs who are enthusiastic about their business models. Franchising is an attractive option for many.
But there are lots of things to consider before you move down the path of franchising your business. First, you’ll…
This past week I attended the ABA Franchise Forum in Baltimore for the fifth year in a row. One of the traditions of the Forum is the annual presentation on Franchise and Distribution Law Developments. This year, Lee Plave and Stuart Hershman delivered an excellent presentation during which Iowa took center stage with the KFC decision discussed…
On December 30, 2010, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that a foreign corporation could be taxed on revenues received from the state of Iowa even though the company had no physical presence within the state of Iowa but rather received royalty revenues resulting from intangible property (i.e. the use of trademarks and licenses to franchisees) within…
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:
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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…
Steve Sink has a post on IowaBiz entitled Using an appraiser to value the business. It’s a worthwhile read.
Steve brings up a good point that many buy/sell agreements are silent on the qualifications of appraisers. He writes that the qualifications of appraisal firms should be specified based on their size, the scope of their…