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10-12-2015 3-48-06 PMWhether you have 10 or 10,000 employees, running a business can be a challenge. Making decisions based on strategic reasoning is critical to the success and longevity of any company. How can members of the c-suite, as well as the small business owner, gain helpful insight into the boardroom and, at the same time, try and avoid the courtroom?

We cordially invite you and your top-level managers to join members of Henderson Franklin’s legal team on Tuesday, November 17, 2015 as they present the Southwest Florida C-Suite Summit at Sanibel Harbour Marriott Resort & Spa. Topics and speakers include:

The Recipe for Business Longevity presented by Attorneys Guy Whitesman (Chair, Business and Tax Department), Eric Gurgold (Chair, Estate Planning and Administration Department) and Mark Nieds (Intellectual Property Group). They will outline proven techniques and best practices to preserve, protect, and perpetuate your business. One size does not fit all. The panel will explore avenues to successful business perpetuation, liquidity events and the preservation of wealth.

The Comeback Kid: Southwest Florida’s Ongoing Economic Recovery. Attorneys Denis Noah (Chairman of the Horizon Council) and Russell Schropp (Horizon Council Task Force Chair) will provide a look at the state of Southwest Florida’s economic recovery – from a lawyer’s perspective!
Continue Reading Registration is Open — Southwest Florida C-Suite Summit

hashtag flickr maria elenaHashtags — words or short phrases preceded by the # symbol — are seemingly everywhere now. The hashtag was initially adopted in the Twittersphere as a means of indexing and linking content to searchable and thus cross-linkable subject matter designations. A designation like #XYZ could be used by people on social media to denote messages about XYZ. The #XZY tag would then cross-link to all messages containing that hashtag and display those messages to anyone who used or searched for the #XYZ hashtag. This would allow a single social media user to gain exposure to potentially thousands of other users around the world who were interested in that hashtag. Hashtags are now used for innumerable subjects and purposes, from politics (#Hillary2016) to social issues (#Ferguson) to the inane (#lolcats). Because use of hashtags in social media can result in the exponential spread of a post across the Internet, much like the Faberge “and they told two friends…” commercial, it was only a matter of time before marketers began to harness the viral potential of # to build brand awareness and entice customers.
Continue Reading #Trademark Rights in the #Hashtag

Social Media via gavinjllewellyn on flickr creative commonsSocial media provides business the opportunity to stay in contact with customers, reach out to prospects, spread news, and keep tabs on competitors. Indeed, chances are many of you reading this post were alerted to it as a Henderson Franklin Twitter follower, Facebook friend or LinkedIn connection. The heart and soul of social media accounts (SMA) are their contacts. The more contacts a user has, the wider it can spread information. In any social media platform, a user’s profile page generally displays all of its friends, followers and connections. Building those contacts takes time and effort and represents valuable assets to the SMA owner. Many businesses have policies in place addressing SMA use by employees. But, when there are no policies in place, some interesting questions arise, namely: Who owns those contact lists and can a business claim proprietary trade secret rights in same? Only a few courts have looked at these questions and while the law is not settled, the decisions shed light on how these assets can be protected.

Trade Secret BaselineContinue Reading Secret Friends – Protection of Social Media Account Information