IP ownership gets complicated thanks to the natural fluidity of startups as business enterprises: A developer may start out with a side project, bring some of that knowledge to bear on a consulting engagement, and ultimately found or join a related startup.
Second in importance only to talented people, IP in all its forms is the key asset comprising most of the value of any tech startup. Nevertheless, even industry veterans are often fuzzy on the definitions and boundaries between different types of IP and the ways they can be protected and exploited. Hence this “Cliff’s Notes” refresher, to be followed by a discussion of why it matters.
Facebook is forthcoming about the challenges of mobile: No revenue currently generated from mobile advertising; unclear how much mobile use could be monetized; failure to solve this puzzle combined with a dramatic shift toward mobile usage could be a serious problem; and they don’t control the iOS and Android platforms. Frankly, if there were one thing that persuaded me not to invest in FB at current valuations, this would be it.
Guide to laying the legal foundations of a successful startup company by startup lawyer Antone Johnson, Founding Principal of Bottom Line Law Group
This week, industry leaders, pundits, journalists and assorted hangers-on are gathering in San Francisco for the annual Web 2.0 Summit, one of the online industry’s most influential events. John Battelle and Tim O’Reilly moderate conversations with a long list of Web luminaries, including Eric Schmidt, Carol Bartz, Marc Benioff, Reed Hastings, Peter Chernin, Tony Hsieh, Evan Williams, Mark Zuckerberg, Mark Pincus, Ron Conway, John Doerr, and Fred Wilson.
As a completely made-up statistic, assume that 0.01% of users are sociopaths or predators who cause serious damage to the community and its other members. With 10,000 users, that’s one guy. With a million, it’s a hundred people. With 100 million registered users — the scale at MySpace when I left — it’s ten thousand. That kind of math illustrates why every major consumer Internet company has an abuse team that serves as the first line of defense against all kinds of ugliness.
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