Corporate Practice

Furman Gregory Deptula’s integrated corporate practice gives our clients access to specialists in entity formation, intellectual property, corporate management, commercial transactions, business tax, private financings and private investment funds, alternative investment representation, merger & acquisitions and other liquid events and dispute resolution. We help start-up business owners set up a corporation or entity, manage the initial actions and ongoing maintenance of the entity, set funding goals, and seek funding. We can also advise and represent our clients in relation to negotiating commercial leases and real estate acquisitions or sales, purchase of another small business, sale of a business, and advise on complex tax issues that arise as part of the related transactions. In this manner, we are happy to either help a business from incubation through formation and growth to success, or otherwise jump in to assist an existing successful business looking to use efficient and knowledgeable legal counsel for day to day commercial transaction negotiations and management.

Although we are not limited to industries or clients served, we do have practitioners that focus in Bioscience and Creative Economy clientele, and are willing to research and really understand your industry and standard practices to provide relevant and cutting edge advice.

ENTITY FORMATION

For a new business, an initial step in working with legal counsel is to determine whether the business will be run by an individual owner, or will be converted into an entity structure. Our practitioners can help you consider the pros and cons of running a business as a sole proprietorship, partnership, limited liability, or corporation, and choose the appropriate jurisdiction. We can also advise as to strategies for bringing on investors, and future funding and growth goals. For those non-profits, we advise and assist you in seeking an IRC 501(c) 3 determination letter.

Attorneys: Karin Gregory / Don Furman / Susan Antonio / William Fabbri

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

Furman Gregory Deptula’s intellectual property practice is aimed at helping clients protect and leverage their intangible assets in commerce. We work to educate clients on the protection options they may be able to pursue to protect their business name, artistic works, software code, designs, business methods, client lists, and more. We can offer advice on how to create additional revenue streams for your business by strategically licensing intellectual property and managing your portfolios both domestically and abroad. In an initial consultation, we can help you consider what types of intellectual property your business creates, owns, and utilizes, and what protection strategies are most efficient and meaningful in your industry.

Trademark Protection: When starting a new business, it is important to do proper due diligence to not only determine that the name you want to do business under is available within your jurisdiction and field, but also on a federal level. We want to assist you in considering branding strategies from the beginning to not only minimize the likelihood that your marks infringe on others, but also that your mark is strong and capable of federal protection if that is your goal. We work with clients on flat-fee bases to get through the required stages of preparing and prosecuting a trademark application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, and also to defend and protect your mark should others infringe upon your common law or federal rights.

Copyright Protection: It is important not only for creators and authors to understand how copyright law affects their ownership and rights in their works, but also for business owners that may hire independent contractors to design or contribute works (such as logos, software code, etc.). Understanding the rights granted to the author of a copyrighted work, the benefits of registration, and how doctrines like “fair use” and “work for hire” impact your ability and intentions to use or leverage a work in commerce is pivotal. We can help counsel both creators, licensors, licensees, and those wishing to acquire ownership rights in works they have “commissioned.”

Trade Secret Protection: For information or practices that may be unique to your business but not otherwise (affordably) protectable, we can help you consider appropriate practices for trade secret protection. The important thing about trade secrets is that the information that is being protected as a trade secret is only protectable as long as it remains a secret. By virtue of the definition, the information has to have value based on the secrecy of the information, and be subject to reasonable efforts to maintain secrecy. Sensible precautions should be taken to protect any information that you regard as a trade secret. After considering your protection options, we can advise on best practices for protecting your company assets and know-how.

Contract Strategies: As ideas and some other intangible assets are not generally protected under state and federal laws, we can discuss utilizing contracts such as Assignment of Invention, Non-Disclosure Agreements and Confidentiality Agreements to protect ideas and assets that you may share with third parties in pitches, employment relationships, or transactions.

Patents: The Patent Act provides for a process to apply for and receive a federal statutory grant of exclusive rights to an inventor in relation to a useful, novel, non-obvious and fully disclosed machine, process, or composition of matter. Should we decide that patent protection is an opportunity worth pursuing, we will source other local trusted patent attorneys in the area that can assist with the patent prosecution process.

Attorneys: Wayne Keown / Karin Gregory / William Fabbri / Emily Danchuk

CORPORATE MANAGEMENT

As a new business owner, or a business owner with new complex structures to work with, we will not leave you on your own to figure it all out. We are happy to work as outside in-house counsel, to help management and owners truly integrate the practices we put in place for legal compliance. We may be called on to advise on employment issues, board of director obligations, shareholder voting rights, taxation of income, or other day-to-day operations that will arise as a business grows.

Attorneys: Karin Gregory / Don Furman / George Deptula / Susan Antonio / Emily Danchuk

COMMERCIAL TRANSACTIONS

Our team will support your various contract activities such as licensing, manufacturing, distribution, sales agreements, other vendor relationships, leasing or real estate transactions. Our attorneys understand the importance of these relationships to the future growth of your business.

Attorneys: Karin Gregory / Don Furman / Susan Antonio / William Fabbri / Emily Danchuk

BUSINESS TAX

Our attorneys are able to help you issue spot and weigh options for transaction structures to consider tax consequences. As your business grows, we can prepare and understand complex tax returns, manage audits, and represent you in federal or state administrative hearings and court proceedings.

Attorneys: Don Furman / Susan Antonio