California Limited Liability Company – An OverviewWritten by Richard A. Chapo
Many people are surprised to learn that LLC business entity is a fairly recent phenomenon. Wyoming was first state to legislate creation of LLCs in 1977. Most states didn’t jump on LLC bandwagon until 1988 when IRS classified LLC as a pass through entity for tax purposes. This ruling turned LLCs into popular monster they are today. Now every state has legislation allowing creation of LLCs and California is no different.What Are The Advantages To Forming A LLC? The LLC business entity offers many advantages to small businesses. An LLC is going to provide a shield between your business activities and personal assets identical to a corporation. Unlike a corporation, there are far fewer corporate formalities. Instead of setting up payroll, you can take draws from entity. You are not required to maintain a balance sheet, although this is recommended. In short, LLC entity is all about flexibility. Should I Form A California LLC For My Business?
| | Domain Name TrademarksWritten by Richard A. Chapo
As your Internet business grows, value of your domain name increases. The issue of a domain name trademark should move to top of your list. You need to guard against unscrupulous competitors that may try to incorporate your domain name in their meta tags to obtain search engine rankings under your name. If you have a domain name trademark, you can go after these individuals and compel search engines to remove their listings.What Is A Trademark? A trademark is a distinctive item that is used to identify a logo, product, device, package or service. The trademark identifies item as being provided by a particular firm. To protect these items you can obtain a mark from patent and trademark office that prohibits others from trying to gain economic advantage from your mark. Domain Name The patent and trademark office views domain names in a unique way. The office views “http://www” element as a part of file transfer process, not your domain name. The “.com”, “.net”, etc., designations are considered top-level domain identifiers and are also disregarded for purpose of a domain name trademark. For example, our domain name is http://www.sandiegobusinesslawfirm.com. If we submitted domain name for registration, only “sandiegobusinesslawfirm” portion would be considered for a mark. Locators Cannot Be Registered A domain name is a locator for file pages. When you type in your domain name, a server locates and displays files. If a domain is used solely for this purpose, it will not be granted a mark. Instead, domain name must be incorporated into site. For instance, Amazon is recognized as an online bookstore and site actually has word “Amazon” on every page. Since "Amazon.com" is more than a locator, Amazon can apply for and receive a trademark. If Amazon used domain name, bookstore.com, company would be able to register “Amazon”, but not “bookstore.”
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