Interpreting Written Contracts In Kansas
Even here in the great state of Kansas, handshake deals and gentlemen’s agreements aren’t too common anymore. Small businesses and individuals write and sign a lot of contracts. This is a normal part of doing business or just living life. Down the road, unfortunately, problems between the parties to a contract can surface; and each […]
Are There Laws or Regulations Pertaining to Who Can Provide Trademark Law Advice?
As a lawyer who often practices before the USPTO, I have been asked the question on occasion as to what qualifications a United States resident must possess to act as a trademark representative before said agency. The answer, in brief, is that a trademark representative must be a licensed attorney or a person pleading or […]
Description Meta Tags, Trademarks, and Fair Use
The Digital Revolution has made the presence of a website a sine qua non for a company’s relevancy and success. Website owners and webmasters working in competitive industries find themselves jockeying for position with respect to their websites’ rankings within search engine results pages. One technique they may use to achieve higher rankings concerns the […]
Be Careful When Selecting Domain Names
When a new company is being formed, founders should pay careful attention to Internet domain names. An Internet domain name is a unique address by which an Internet resource can be identified and found by a Web browser accessing the Internet. Well-known examples are “Amazon.com” and “Priceline.com”. Entrepreneurs must take into consideration the availability of […]
Trade Name Infringement
Blue Ribbon Feed Co., Inc. v. Farmers Union Cent. Exchange, Inc., 731 F.2d 415 (Cir. 1984) is a case in which a company vindicated its rights in its trade name and demonstrated that, under certain conditions, the user of a trade name is entitled to protection against infringement of that trade name in the same […]
Employment Law – Discrimination Charges By The Numbers
According to statistics compiled by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, there were 707 charges filed with the EEOC, within the state of Kansas, in the year 2015. Within the state of Missouri (in the same year) 1,868 charges were filed. Why were these numbers so different? As of 2015, the population of the entire state […]
Employment Law — Overtime
The Fair Labor Standards Act requires that employers pay their employees time and one-half their regular rate of pay for all hours worked in excess of 40 in a workweek. In other words, employees are generally entitled to at least 50 percent greater pay for all hours worked per week after 40. There are a number […]
Employment Law – Workplace Discrimination
On Tuesday, April 19, 2016, I gave a one-hour presentation to Professor Tammy Broaddus’ Introduction to Entrepreneurship class at UMKC’s Bloch School of Management. A surprising number of questions from the audience centered around employment law. For that reason, I’m dedicating my firm’s first blog post to that topic. Employers cannot discriminate against a person on the basis […]