A Legal Blog and Resource Center
Stock options, such as the Incentive Stock Option (ISO) and the Non-Qualified Stock Option (NSO), are an important tool to incentivize employees, contractors, and consultants hired by a startup to work at their top capacity. These stock options provide workers with the right and opportunity to purchase shares in the future at the (theoretically) lower price that is set at the moment the stock is granted. Of course, the assumption here is that the company’s…
The Basics When an individual is granted stock as compensation from his/her employer, the taxes may either be received fully at the time of grant or may be received incrementally along a vesting schedule. Naturally, the IRS considers this stock to be a form of financial gain that is subject to taxation. Under this default assumption, an individual pays taxes based on the value of stock at the time of vesting. However, under the…
17 U.S.C. 1201, the “anti-circumvention” provision of the Copyright Act, makes it illegal for a user of a “digital good” to access certain copyrighted information, like a computer program’s code, if the code is so written to disallow access to it. For example, if a user purchases a new smartphone that implements a measure to block access to its operating system’s code, and the user “circumvents” that measure to see the code, that user has…
Yaina Williams had an idea for a reality TV show, called “Married At 1st Sight,” where 3 different, random couples go on a 12-hour blind date, after which the TV audience selects a winning couple who then marry one another. The goal is for the couple to remain together for at least 6 months in order to win prizes at the end of it all. Williams uploaded her “Treatment” to TV Writer’s Vault, a website…
Google, the often-verbed champion of the search engine, faced a lawsuit from the Author’s Guild in 2013 over Google Books’s “Library Project.” Since 2004, Google has worked with several libraries to create something of an online card catalog that, as Google proclaims, aims to make finding relevant books easier for those looking for them – “specifically, books they wouldn’t find any other way such as those that are out of print.” Naturally, this ain’t grandma’s…
