Thursday, March 14, 2024

First-Time Inventors Receive Boost from U.S. Patent Office

A patent portfolio can be one of the greatest assets that a company owns.

Patented technology provides value to a company that can lead to improved sales, revenue growth, and increased investment. Patents can convey great value and provide many avenues for sustaining and growing business operations. The exclusionary power of the patent right can create a foothold for innovative technology and enable a company to stake out territory that forces competitors to design around the patents, license the technology, or risk being sued for infringement. Patents also provide a basis for continued innovation and expansion through investment in R&D, covering improvements in technology, increasing the zone of exclusivity, influencing the prevailing state of the art, and tapping into new areas. And they provide added cachet in the marketplace: there is an inherent PR benefit to being able to advertise patented technology.

Monday, March 4, 2024

Corporate Transparency Act Unconstitutional?

Just last Friday, a Federal District Court in Alabama ruled that the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) is unconstitutional. For those who haven’t been following the implementation of the CTA—which you could have done right here at entreVIEW back in this August post or in this December post describing updated rules for 2024, or even this Lathrop GPM client alert from all the way back in June of last year—it is a potentially big deal to small companies.

Thursday, February 29, 2024

The Entrepreneur’s Hero Arc

Mythology, particularly of the Greek variety, has always enraptured the masses. There is something captivating about heroes and monsters, gods and ghosts, and the inevitable triumph of good over evil that creates the perfect story. The myths have an even greater impact when they center on a lone hero embarking on an epic quest (e.g. Jason and the Argonauts; The Ramayana). This plotline hits closer to home because we regularly hear about everyday people achieving amazing things with the odds stacked against them.

Thursday, February 22, 2024

Generative AI Developments

Earlier this month, Minneapolis hosted and Lathrop GPM sponsored the 2024 Midwest Legal Coneference on Data Privacy and Cybersecurity. The conference covered a wide range of topics including generative AI developments, emerging state privacy laws, and strategies to mitigate cybersecurity risks. The generative AI sessions were particularly popular and had attendees buzzing with excitement (and admittedly, some trepidation) throughout conference. Conversations about the quickly developing tool spilled out into the hallways during session breaks and continued well into the evening—lawyers are an exciting bunch, aren’t they…

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

The Economic Impact of a Perennial Winner

On Sunday, February 11th, all of Kansas City celebrated as the Kansas City Chiefs found victory in Super Bowl 58.

As a lifelong Chiefs fan, the last few years have been beyond anything I ever could have imagined. When I was growing up, the Chiefs did not compete for championships. The team had a seemingly never-ending conveyor belt of quarterbacks, none of whom could lead the Chiefs far into the playoffs.

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

Malcolm Harris, Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World (Little, Brown and Company, 2023)

Malcolm Harris lured me into this book, a history of the area now encompassing Silicon Valley, with his very first sentences: “Palo Alto is nice. The weather is temperate; the people educated, rich, healthy, innovative.” Check—this matches my initial impressions, formed when I arrived in 1979 to attend law school on the campus of the university Leland Stanford formed in 1891 in memory of his son, a victim of typhoid at the age of 15.

One detail immediately stood out for me. It was difficult for me, a middle-class son of the Midwest, to come to terms with the fact that the undergraduate parking lot was filled with cars newer and more expensive than those I encountered on a daily basis in the suburban Twin Cities neighborhood of my youth. Nonetheless, I came to see Palo Alto as a wonderful place to spend three years, even if throughout that period I had a nagging feeling that there was something not quite “real,” for lack of a better term, about the place. It turns out this is a feeling I share with Harris, who grew up there. “There were signs,” he writes, “that, if Palo Alto was normal, it was too normal, weirdly normal.” Again, right on target.

Thursday, January 18, 2024

Is Your Business Ready for 2024 and the New Data Privacy Laws?

I have the perfect tool to get you started.

Our popular 2024 Legal Guide to Privacy and Data Security is now available. This guide is a collaborative effort between Lathrop GPM and the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED). You can find a digital version here. You can also get an old school paper version by contacting me here.

The guide is written for non-lawyers and offers insight into a variety of privacy and data security related laws, the impact of such laws on businesses, and best practices to mitigate risks.