The world at large is increasingly tech driven, which means that there are an ever-increasing number of tech companies, many of which are in that exciting, but precarious, start up stage.
With an increase in the use of tech for, well, everything, the complexities of the laws surrounding the tech industry are increasing as well, and just one legal misstep can derail a promising tech startup. Working with an experienced tech lawyer, like those on the Pearl Lemon Legal team, can, and will prevent such devastating scenarios, while also helping your tech company grow in the best way possible.
What is a Tech Lawyer?
A lawyer who focuses on technology law – a tech lawyer – has a thorough awareness of the digital world, including both its advantages and disadvantages. Transactional and advising work in the field of technology law typically serves tech corporations or businesses interested in digital solutions.
A tech lawyer should also be someone that any growing tech startup consults with early in their growth, as the legal pitfalls such companies can encounter, and fall foul of, can derail a promising new company before it has ever really had a chance to get started.
When working with an experienced tech lawyer, like those on the Pearl Lemon legal team, the work can be extensive and diverse. Our remit as tech lawyers can range from data protection and intellectual property rights to telecom contracts, hosting agreements, software license agreements, and compliance.
Being a successful tech lawyer entails staying current with new technology and, more significantly, the dangers connected to the application of new technological solutions. It involves making sure that solutions adhere to legal and regulatory requirements, while also being aware that the law lags behind technological advancements.
As a result of this lag, governments and regulators frequently introduce new laws that only control how new technologies are used, rather than the technology itself. This method frequently leaves gaps in the legal and regulatory environment, which can, of course, put a clients’ businesses in jeopardy.
As a result, tech lawyers need to be conversant with cutting-edge subjects like automation, blockchain, and machine intelligence in addition to having a strong technical background.
Are All Lawyers Tech Lawyers?
How lots of lawyers operate hasn’t really altered; they still have to be present at the office every day, draft contracts, dictate into dictaphones with secretaries, have the transcriptions proofread, meet with clients in person, and manually check contracts.
One of the oldest professions in the world frequently appears to be falling behind when it comes to technology and innovation. Lawyers in law firms still frequently rely on in-office support workers, outmoded techniques, and paper-based procedures.
Some of this is unavoidable, even for tech lawyers like those on the Pearl Lemon Legal team, as many court procedures and processes are still pretty antiquated themselves. However, some is a resistance to change and simply a lack of knowledge about technology in general.
The rest of the world, meanwhile, appears to be becoming more and more dependent on technology. Digital technologies have completely changed markets and business structures in a variety of industries, including communications, manufacturing, banking, and retail. As a new wave of cutting-edge technologies, including artificial intelligence, blockchain, 5G, and others, approaches our doorstep, we are far from at the end of the road.
A great tech lawyer should practice what they preach (or operate within the realm of their legal speciality at least.) We at Pearl Lemon Legal endeavour to grow our firm in a unique way. We wanted to utilize technology in our daily work after spending years working for tech firms and major corporations.
For everything from communication to customer onboarding to billing and signatures, digital solutions have to be used. Our founding goal was to “live and breathe tech,” and we currently do just that.
When you choose us for your tech lawyers, you’ll quickly realise that not only do we ensure that our legal knowledge and skills in the tech arena are up-to-date and extensive, but our understanding of tech in general is too, which, our clients tell us, makes a big positive difference.
How a Tech Lawyer Can Help You
The speed and pressure for technology organizations of all kinds can be unrelenting: develop, create, revise, compete, survive, expand, prosper, repeat. Pearl Lemon Legal, as a pre-eminent technology law practice, shares your passion for entrepreneurship and our tech lawyers can prove invaluable in many ways on a day-to-day basis.
With a combination of legal expertise and commercial insight that can scale with management teams from the initial stages of development through becoming a mature public company, we partner with you to expand your business and achieve your potential more effectively.
Here are, however, just some of the ways our tech lawyer team commonly helps its clients, and can help you too:
Business Structuring
When launching a new tech business, the type of business organization is crucial since it will have significant legal ramifications, including how the business is taxed, how it can obtain funding, and the personal liability of the people in charge of the business. Corporations, partnerships, and sole proprietorships are the three types of businesses that are most prevalent.
Sole proprietorships are unincorporated businesses with a single owner who is liable for all debts incurred by the company and who keeps all profits generated by the operation.
Partnerships are relationships between two or more people, businesses, or other entities that operate a business jointly in an effort to make a profit. Without a formal partnership agreement, the relationship is governed by presumption norms outlined in general law.
However, the rights and obligations of partners as among themselves are typically set out in a formal partnership agreement, and such an agreement is best drawn up by a tech lawyer, to ensure that all parties are equally protected should things go sour!
The most typical type of business organization for a technology startup is a corporation. Corporations have all the rights, powers, and advantages of a natural person, as well as a separate and distinct legal identity from their shareholders and management. Additionally, corporations have the legal authority to own property, conduct business, and form agreements.
Choosing, and properly setting up, these business structures can be tricky. A tech lawyer from Pearl Lemon Legal will help you make the right decision for your unique business, and then work with you to ensure that all the legal ‘paperwork’ is properly executed so that you can get on with doing what you do best to grow your new business.
Intellectual Property Protection
Intellectual property protection is of huge importance to the growth and success of any tech company, but it is also a complex, and ever-changing, area of the law that can quickly get very confusing. It’s one of our biggest missions as a tech lawyer team to ensure that our clients have this process demystified for them and that anything, and everything, they create and own is properly legally protected at all times.
How complex are intellectual property issues? According to the law, intellectual property includes all ‘works of the mind’ that are ’employed in trade’, including inventions, literary and creative works, symbols and icons, names, and images.
Patents, trademarks, copyrights, and industrial designs are the types of intellectual property that IT and tech firms should be most concerned about. A time-limited, legally protected, and exclusive right to create, use, and sell an invention is provided by a patent. Trademarks are any combination of letters, sounds, or symbols that are used to set one company’s products or services apart from those of competitors.
In addition to software programs and code, performer performances, sound recordings, and communication signals, copyrights also cover literary, artistic, dramatic, and musical works.
Industrial designs are distinguishing characteristics of a product that are evaluated only by the eye and may combine qualities of shape, configuration, pattern, or ornament.
Technology startups must understand the value of intellectual property, protect customer information, transfer ownership of intellectual property to the company, and protect their ownership of work produced by employees, contractors, and third parties. When developing an intellectual property strategy, it’s also important to take geographic variations in policy into account. As you can see, it’s all very complex.
Working with Pearl Lemon Legal as your tech lawyer, we will not only ensure that you retain all the proper rights to your intellectual property, but also help to ensure that others do not infringe upon it – and face the consequences if they do.
Regulatory Compliance for Tech Companies
There are a LOT of compliance and regulatory issues that tech companies must understand, and the simple fact is that these are constantly changing. From the way you gather email addresses from prospects, to the things you say on your website, to how you sell your products and services to just what you can sell may all be regulated, and limited, under various aspects of the law. Keeping up with it all is a full time job (as tech lawyers, we are the best people to vouch for that!)
Falling foul of these regulations can have very serious consequences, and while many of the ‘rules’ are obscure and hard to define – the law does not always keep up with tech very well – an ignorance of them is no defence. Having Pearl Lemon Legal on your side will help ensure that you and your business stays on the right side of these ever-changing rules and regulations.
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