General business news

Or does your business have one? What about your own personal computer? Are you sure that you have not violated the law? If you have any doubts, take a look at Rise of the armchair thieves - web - Technology - theage.com.au:

"Hew Griffiths, a 44-year-old NSW man is serving a 15-month sentence in a US jail for software piracy. Griffiths had never set foot in the US before he was indicted there. Indeed he had never owned a passport. Yet he was convicted under US law for copyright breaches he committed while in Australia. And the Australian Government agreed to extradite Griffiths to the US to be sentenced and jailed there. Surely Griffiths must have been some sort of software piracy godfather to warrant an international extradition and High Court challenge? Here's a sobering thought: rather than making any money out of his piracy activities, Griffiths cracked security codes on proprietary software and made that software available free on the internet. He wasn't raking in bundles of cash for his activities but he allowed thousands of people to get free software that otherwise would have been protected."

What to do when you are an at-will employee and the business just closes its doors? First, I suggest making speeches about suing the company is not a good idea. Second, get yourself to the Workforce Development office for signing up to get unemployment benefits.

The Richmond Garfield's restaurant closed their doors this week. The employees had no notice of the restaurant's impending demise and so were certainly shocked to find themselves unemployed. So reports the Richmond Palladium-Item.

As some of the comments make clear, Indiana is an at-will employment state. That severely limits any wrongful discharge kind of suit.

On the other hand, that the employer blithely ignored any harm done to its emp0loyees seems pretty clear cut. Not that that lack of concern rises to grounds for a lawsuit. It does seem highly unlikely that Garfield's will want to re-enter the Richmond market, or that many from the Richmond market will frequent Garfield's restaurant's outside of Richmond, or that those reading the Palladium-Item articles outside of the Richmond area will be impressed with the Garfield's franchise system.

The latest Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge newsletter shows a new article entitled Five Steps to Better Family Negotiations. Worth reading by anyone with a family-run business or representing one. The steps are:

1. Analyze the negotiation space
2. Don't try to beat the other side
3. Understand the other party's interests, constraints, and perspective
4. Avoid single-issue negotiations: identify and negotiate multiple issues simultaneously
5. Negotiate over interests, not positions

Frankly, these steps ought to have a place in most negotiations.

How can the Internet help your business? Information exists freely online that once was too expensive in time or money or both for practical use. This information may provide the competitive edge for your business or the means of avoiding dangerous costs - if you know about the information. The problem is now fighting information overload.

You can now find here links to those business resources I find useful. These post wills now be an ongoing weekly feature for this blog, so check back often or subscribe to the RSS feed or to the e-mail updates. I suggest that you help by using the Comment function at the bottom of the posts to let me know if you find this information useful or not, and also for any recommendations or requests about business resources.

So why am I passing along this information for free? Am I being a spendthrift with my knowledge? Is the information really worth something?

I freely admit my self-interest here. First, giving you this information educates you on the subject and about my knowledge of the information. Second, you knowing what you need to do does mean you know how to do this for your specific business needs. Putting those together will hopefully illuminate for you why you need to hire me as your lawyer and as your lawyer I will not need to waste your time educating you about whatever needs to be done. Lastly, some resources may lead you to a profitable market area. Even if you do not hire me as your lawyer, I have improved the economy around me and that will benefit all of us eventually.

Dumb Little Man blog from Inter Alia. Dumb Little Man is about productivity tips, saving money, and maybe just keeping its readers sane. I like the style, not sure a lot of it I can use, but what I can use is great. I subscribed to the RSS feed.

At Dumb Little Man, I found this post, 13 Government Resources for Small Businesses. These are federal publications and only a fraction of what is out there.

For businesses writing probably does not seem as important as doing whatever it is that the business does, but how much of what a business does involve some sort of written communication? I thought about this when I ran across the Business Writing blog. Bookmark it or subscribe to the RSS feed for future reference.

I got notice about this report and read the summary. I certainly did not have time to read the full report. Here is the point of the summary:

I discovered the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse this past Saturday. I get asked some simple questions about the Internet (such as will someone get in trouble for posting something stupid to a web page.), but I think this site has the credentials to be a starting point for researching Internet issues. The site describes its credentials and its purpose in the first two paragraphs on the site:

I am preparing for a jury trial and have not had much time for posting. I am barely keeping up with what is going on in the outer world. Baseball has started, right? I did notice that the New York Times has now started a section for small business. The headlines pose the possibility of useful information. Without any more preliminaries here is the New York Times' Small Business section.

I admit this post is mostly an attempt to catch up with the news. Some interesting tidbits that I do not think need a full post - especially after a rather long day.

Looks like some lenders are stepping up to the plate and dealing with the subprime mortgage mess.

Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored company that is the second-largest buyer and guarantor of home loans in the country, announced Wednesday that it will buy as much as $20 billion in fixed-rate and adjustable-rate mortgages to help borrowers with high-priced loans keep their homes. The new mortgages, expected to be available by midsummer, will include loans with longer fixed-rate terms.

Fannie Mae, the No. 1 mortgage financer, also is offering new options so that lenders can help subprime borrowers refinance out of high-interest adjustable-rate mortgages or other difficult loans.

And Washington Mutual Inc., one of the country's largest financial institutions, said it will refinance up to $2 billion in subprime mortgages to help borrowers avoid default and foreclosure, allowing them to apply for discounted fixed-rate home loans or other refinancing alternatives. Subprime loans comprise only about 6 percent of Seattle-based Washington Mutual's mortgage holdings, but they dealt a heavy blow to its first-quarter earnings, which slid 20 percent.

If you or someone you know has one of these subprime mortgages, I strongly suggest checking out these offers. The AP article obtusely headlined Lending giant moves indicate cooperation,can be found at this link.

This article, Technology Quiz: How Does E-Mail Disappear?, covers a lot of the territory I wrote about in Electronic discovery - E-mails, Enron, and Karl Rove. The article's style differs a good deal from the article I wrote about and that might make for a more interesting read, but I suggest reading this article only supplements my earlier post and not vice versa.

I get this e-mail newsletter from Lumen Legal. Sometimes they have good articles and sometimes the articles are just okay. Ignorance about e-Discovery No Longer an Excuse falls under the latter category. Nothing in the article explains its conclusion: "[f]ailing to show litigators and regulators how you have tried to preserve data can be as dangerous as not knowing where it is at all...."

I am still pondering why I want to find a Federal Employer Identification Number, but this very short article, Find a Federal Employer Identification Number informs me that there are services out there for finding this information. The article also has three screenshots.

Well, that is all for today.

What if an employee alters a contract but no one catches the changes before the employer signs? From Workplace Management:

Laura R. Kreisler pleaded guilty last year to stealing more than $857,000 from Creative Consumer Concepts Inc., or C3, as it’s known in its hometown of Overland Park, Kansas. She was sentenced to seven years in prison.

Case closed? Not really. The embezzlement came to light about a month after she was fired in November 2004 for insubordination. When C3 fired her, the company offered to continue paying her salary for six months. She took the severance contract home and scanned it into her computer and added a provision that would allow her to keep the extra pay even if the firm sued her. Unaware that the contract had been altered, C3’s human resources manager signed it.

Employer got lucky in this case because the wrong person signed for the employer. Be careful what you sign is an old proverb made even more important with today's technology. While I am not so sure that employee would win every time, what business can afford the time and expense of a law suit? Always read before signing.

From PC Magazine comes House Bill Would Create Govt. Copyright Czar:

Those are the highlights. The article contains pro and con positions on the proposed law. I think protecting my client's trademarks important but I see the results of the RIAA litigation and think trademarks are about to go down the same route.

The Washington Post has economist Dean Baker writing an op-ed piece on the subprime meltdown. More of a policy article than probably fits comfortably here, I still suggest reading this. I am only excerpting two of the more interesting points:

The full effects of the collapse of the subprime market remain to be seen, but it is not too early to talk about the policies that got us here. In particular, the government policy of promoting homeownership should be examined.

***

If, say, those fees came to 10 percent on a $200,000 house, or $20,000, then the transaction costs would have added $5,000 per year to the housing cost for a typical moderate-income home buyer. Since the median annual rent in Washington is only around $9,000, the transaction costs associated with buying and selling a home are significant. A family that lived in a home for only four years almost certainly would have been better off renting.

I added the italics. A bit to think about, especially if you are thinking of buying a home right now. My earlier post on the subject is here.

Read Robert J. Samuelson's article in the Washington Post for background on this subprime mortgage mess and what it could possibly mean to consumers and businesses.

Off to court, have a good day.

Lots of news lately on sub-prime mortgages and the end of the real estate boom but I have not had time to post anything. That is just as well as I think I encountered a very good post on the subject at The Bankruptcy Litigation Blog: The Subprime Squeeze Is Looking More Like a Hangman's Noose. The title itself pretty much captures my feelings on the subject. Indiana lead the nation in foreclosures not so long ago and it may still do so, but we can certainly expect to maintain a high level in the near future.

With the new bankruptcy laws imposing problems for debtors, the creditors will have more foreclosures, and the creditors really do not want to be holding real estate when they could be holding paper that will make them money. I know of no easy solution. I can suggest that debtors and creditors work together to solve any potential defaults. That solution might work if the debtors were certain who held their mortgages. For debtors solving their financial problems means getting proactive rather reactive in shoring up their finances and cutting their expenses.

Be aware of what you are buying. From Imperative Information comes a post on a case from Texas where a background check failed to disclose that the person was on the sex offender registry.

Complex business case go to a business curt in Miami, Orlando, and Tampa, according to a Miami Herald article. An interesting concept but one that goes back centuries. The cause stems from the complex cases being filed in state court rather than federal court.

Disputes for business court can range from breach of contract to unfair or deceptive trade practices -- about 20 different matters in all. Some types of disputes require claims of at least $75,000 to qualify for business court, but other disputes, such as controversies over trade secrets, can be litigated regardless of the amount of money involved.

For all small businesses, a new publication from the federal Department of Labor needs checked out:

A bit of fun that is business related. The Business of Management Blog thinks the answer is No. See the post here: http://www.workforce.com/section/01/feature/24/74/90/index.html#cooliris

The Federal Trade Commission gave notice today that it is extending time for comments to its Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising. The notice is here.

Frankly, this site annoys me. The site has two stories and provides sample interviews from the print edition. That the site has no RSS feed, and what news site does not have a RSS feed? Not one of any consequence, is my answer. I would say that its reason for existence is to sell the print newsletter ($795.00 per year to for-profit corporations). So I apologize in advance, it may be of some use or interest to someone but not to me. I think that one could get more news in a more timely manner for free by setting up a search under Google or Yahoo News.