Strictly Business
A legal blog on private funds, startups, and venture capital.
Strictly Business
A legal blog on private funds, startups, and venture capital.
When is stock not stock? When it’s issued by the Green Bay Packers.
Given their recent success this season, the timing of the Green Bay Packers’ decision to engage in another capital raise couldn’t be better. The Offering Document for their newest stock offering contains quite a peculiar sentence: “COMMON STOCK DOES NOT…
Patentable Subject Matter Under 35 U.S.C. § 101: Part 2 – Application in the Software and Life Science Fields
This post is the fourth in a series written by Nashville attorney Shane Cortesi on patent protection. As I mentioned in my previous post on patentable subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101, the law in this area has been…
Implications of the Pending Startup Crowdfunding Bill
The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed the Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act (H.R. 2930), which creates an exemption from the registration requirements of the Securities Act of 1933, allowing startups to engage in crowdfunding (i.e. raising capital from a…
Patentable Subject Matter Under 35 U.S.C. § 101: Part 1 – An Historical Perspective
This post is the third in a series written by Nashville attorney Shane Cortesi on patent protection. As I mentioned in my earlier article concerning the requirements for obtaining a utility patent in the U.S., in addition to being useful,…
Requirements for Obtaining a Utility Patent in the U.S.
This post is the second in a series written by Nashville attorney Shane Cortesi on patent protection. As I mentioned in my previous article where I provided an introduction to patent protection in the U.S., there are 3 types of…
What does the future hold for crowdfunding legislation?
Previous, I summarized the Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act (H.R. 2930), a bill which provides for a crowdfunding exemption to the registration requirements of federal and state securities laws. The bill was recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives,…
What are the different basic categories of patents?
This post is the first in a series written by Nashville attorney Shane Cortesi on patent protection. Patents are important to companies for at least two reasons. First, patents held by the company can serve as barriers of entry in…
Bill Creating Crowdfunding Exemption from Securities Registration Passes U.S. House of Representatives
On November 3, 2011, the U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to pass the Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act (H.R. 2930). The bill creates an exemption from the registration requirements of the Securities Act of 1933, adding a new Section…
South Dakota Updates Its Policy on Investment Adviser Registration for Private Fund Managers
Recently, I posted a summary of the status of state investment advisor registration requirements for private fund managers in the Northwest including the state of South Dakota. On October 24, 2011, the South Dakota Division of Securities issued a revision…