Topic map / The company and its duties
9 questions
WIPO’s Enterprising Ideas (2021) introduces startups to intellectual property and to the risk of ignoring ownership. A buyer’s diligence question is often simpler than a filing strategy: can you show the chain of title from every person who made the work?
1.Who created the core work, and under which contract?
2.Do the contractor agreements assign rights, or only grant a licence?
3.Is there a written chain of title for every contributor, including founders?
4.What did you disclose in public before any filing or trade-secret habit existed?
5.Which names and marks are you using that you have not searched?
6.What open-source obligations ship inside the product?
7.Who controls the domains, the stores, and the original design files?
Pass 2 · strengthened
A clause that gives you the work is not the same as holding the domain, the repository, or the account that can publish.
8.What would a buyer find missing if they asked for diligence tomorrow?
9.What should you share at each diligence stage, and which customer or third-party restrictions govern that access?
Pass 2 · new
Relationship-building is not the same as handing over customer data or a repository.
Enterprising Ideas: A Guide to Intellectual Property for Startups · World Intellectual Property Organization
WIPO publication no. 961. An introduction to how startups can use intellectual property and where risk shows up if ownership is ignored. Local registrars and your lawyer still decide what you can file or own.
Aaron Harris on fundraising and meeting with investors · Y Combinator
Harris writes that most founders do not get to choose whose money they take. He discusses AngelList syndicates and special purpose vehicles that raise from outside limited partners, and says those forms are not bad in themselves. Concealment of who someone is, and of whose money is being invested, is a reason to be suspicious. He does not publish a four-way taxonomy of capital sources.
Regulatory alert: awareness regarding impersonation of authorised persons · ADGM Financial Services Regulatory Authority
The FSRA warned that fraudsters misuse names and logos of FSRA-licensed firms. Only firms authorised by the FSRA may undertake regulated activities in ADGM. Check the ADGM Registration Authority public register for incorporation, and the FSRA public register for a Financial Services Permission. One register does not answer the other.