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The sad reality is that if you make something of value, there are rotten people who will come and try to steal from you. The author thinks he's discovered somet
by noonespecial 15y ago
The sad reality is that if you make something of value, there are rotten people who will come and try to steal from you. The author thinks he's discovered something new. I don't think he has. "Patent trolling" might be a bit of a new angle but business has always been risky.
In some parts of the world, if you farm a little too much, gangs come by in rusty toyotas with AK47's and help themselves (and might kidnap your children for good measure). In our society, we've allowed these men to wear suits and pretend they are contributing members and in exchange, they no longer use guns. This seems like a valid compromise until we as a society outgrow this sort of behavior. (Here's hoping)
There are tools for managing risk. Create an LLC and have professional liability insurance. Sure bad stuff can happen. I had an over-zealous zoning official try to revoke the business license for my house because I was "manufacturing" software (and manufacturing is zoned industrial, donchaknow).
I wish there weren't patent trolls, but at some point you have to admit that you can't spend your life worrying about all of the bad stuff that could happen. Take a few reasonable precautions and then do your thing.
- rbarooah 15y agoNeither an LLC nor liability insurance will stop your business being destroyed and years of your life being wasted if a troll decides to target you. Would you suggest an LLC for each product so that they can only be attacked individually?
- noonespecial 15y agoActually, if they are suitably different, yes. It has the added benefit of making it easy to sell the product/business down the road or convert to a different kind of Corp to get investors. If a product is good enough to make money on it's own, it's good enough for its own LLC.
- ww520 15y agoOT: Is LLC better than C-Corp or S-Corp in CA? Isn't LLC mostly for real estate holding? What I have been doing is having a parent C-Corp and using DBA for individual product/company under it. I wonder whether I should switch to LLC.
- noonespecial 15y agoLLC's are usually the cheapest and easiest to set up especially for an individual. The LLC does exactly that. Limits the liability to the corporate entity. I don't think a dba does this. If any of your products incurs liability, the assets from the entire parent are on the line automatically. Lawyers always try to get through the corporate barrier and get at your personal assets, or connect your companies to get at them all at once. (This even happened in the tiny trademark case I was involved in) Having this done, and done right, its a big impediment to that happening. Don't mix your accounts, pay yourself a salary from each company and keep your papers in order.