SLP Assignment Expectations

• Answer the assignment questions directly.
• Stay focused on the precise assignment questions. Don’t go off on tangents or devote a lot of space to summarizing general background materials.
• Make sure to use reliable and credible sources as your references. Articles published in established newspapers or business journals/magazines are preferred. If you find articles on the Internet, make sure they are from a credible source.
• Reference your sources of information with both a bibliography and in-text citations. See the Student Guide to Writing a High-Quality Academic Paper, including pages 13 and 14 on in-text citations. Another resource is the “Writing Style Guide,” which is found under “My Resources” in the TLC Portal.

CASE 3

There are no additional readings for this assignment, beyond the Pearson tutorial and the three textbook readings. However, some of the concepts in this module are tough, so make sure to read the materials carefully before starting on this assignment.

Again, we will be going through a variety of hypothetical scenarios. For each scenario, you need to explain the reasoning behind your answer and use at least one reference from the background materials to support your answer. Overall you need to have a minimum of three references from the background materials cited in your paper. In addition to three sources from the background materials, feel free to cite additional sources that are not included in the background materials. However, any citation should be from credible sources such as articles from ProQuest or textbooks from Ebrary rather than random webpages. Your paper should be 4- to 5-pages total in length:

1. Suppose you own a shipping business and have your own fleet of trucks. When you hired your truck drivers you did a thorough background check and made sure they all had clean driving records. However, recently you had more business than you could handle with your existing fleet and used an independent contractor for some of your shipping. This independent contractor ends up getting in a huge accident and destroying some of your client’s merchandise in the process. Your client finds out that this independent contractor, unlike your own employees, does not have a good driving record and has had his driving license revoked or suspended on several occasions. Are you liable for the damages your client faced?
2. Now suppose as owner of your business you have been generally satisfied with the performance of all of your employees. But one of your employees begins to slip a bit in their performance and has also gotten on your nerves a bit recently. One day when you are in a bad mood you decide to fire this employee without any kind of warning. However, a few days later you begin to worry about legal consequences even though none of your employees have contracts and your employee handbook states that anyone can be terminated at your own discretion. What kind of legal risks, if any, do you face for terminating this employee?
3. You are the owner of an Italian restaurant famous for your very tasty pesto sauce that no other restaurant in the city can beat. As a result of your tasty recipes, you are the only successful Italian restaurant in town. To protect your business from potential competitors, you make all new chefs that you hire sign a noncompetition agreement that forbids them from opening up an Italian restaurant anywhere in the U.S. for five years if they leave. Would such an agreement be likely to hold up in court if one of your chefs violates it?
4. Now suppose you are the owner of a company and have designated your personal assistant as your purchasing agent for the purchase of all office supply orders of less than $500. Your assistant makes a purchase of some discount office supplies for a total price of $450. You are unhappy with the quality of these supplies but there is a no-return policy for these supplies since there were purchased in a special clearance sale. Are you obligated to pay the $450 even though you did not specifically approve this purchase?
5. You are the owner of a retail business, and you have fallen behind for many months on your loan repayments to the bank (you owe a total of $100,000). The bank has become fed up and now wants you to hand them over all of your remaining company funds to pay back the loan. However, the holiday shopping season is coming up in a few months and this is where you typically do 60-70% of your business for the year. Without your company funds you will not be able to pay your rent and pay your staff, so you will not be able to pay back the bank until after the holiday season. If you end up needing to file for bankruptcy, what type do you think would be most appropriate for this situation – Chapter 7, Chapter 11, or Chapter 13?

Assignment Expectations

• Answer the assignment questions directly.
• Stay focused on the precise assignment questions. Don’t go off on tangents or devote a lot of space to summarizing general background materials.
• Make sure to use reliable and credible sources as your references. Articles published in established newspapers or business journals/magazines are preferred. If you find articles on the Internet, make sure they are from a credible source.
• Reference your sources of information with both a bibliography and in-text citations. See the Student Guide to Writing a High-Quality Academic Paper, including pages 13 and 14 on in-text citations. Another resource is the “Writing Style Guide,” which is found under “My Resources” in the TLC Portal.

SLP 3

After receiving excellent legal advice from you regarding contracts and legal structure, your brother’s lemonade stand business has become so successful that Peter’s lemon tree is not nearly adequate to supply all of the lemonade stands. This is good news, but also brings up a variety of legal issues now that additional labor and funds may be necessary to secure a wider supply of lemons.

While the lemonade stand business is highly successful, your brother still cannot afford an attorney. And because of the excellent legal advice you have been giving him he has come back for more advice on the legal challenges involved in securing a new supply of lemons and expanding the business.

Using references to the background materials including Kelly (2012), DuBoff (2004), and the Pearson tutorial, write a two to three page paper discussing the following legal issues involved in the efforts to increase the supply of lemons for your brother’s business. Make sure to cite at least one source from the required background materials for each of your three answers, and to use at least total references in your answer:

1. While your brother is the CEO of the company, Peter as Chief Operating Officer has been running many of the day to day operations such as supervising employees and overseeing production of lemonade. However, he has also engaging in other actions not listed in his job description such as negotiating the purchase of lemon sales from other kids in the neighborhood with lemon trees in their yards. Your brother has so far allowed Peter to engage in these actions but is becoming concerned. What kind of agency relationship does Peter currently have with your brother? What kind of agency relationship would you recommend?
2. Peter’s idea for securing more lemons is to utilize the skills of his employees, who have become quite expert in climbing trees and using ladders in order to pick the largest and freshest lemons from the top of the trees. He wishes to hire more lemon pickers and find neighbors with lemon trees who want to make some extra money in exchange for allowing their employees to pick some fresh lemons. Your brother sees some wisdom in this approach but also wants to consider purchasing lemons directly from a local farmer even these lemons will be a little more expensive and not as fresh. From an employment law perspective, which approach would be preferable?
3. Your brother wants to get a small loan to finance the purchase of a large batch of lemons and hire some new employees. He visits several banks, but the loan officers all laugh and says there is no way a bank will give a loan to an 18-year-old with a lemonade stand. Your brother presents detailed financial statements showing that his company has very good financial prospects, but still no bank will loan to him. You personally don’t want to lend him your own money because you want him to learn to survive in business on his own, so what other measures could you or your brother use to convince the bank to lend the money?

SLP Assignment Expectations

• Answer the assignment questions directly.
• Stay focused on the precise assignment questions. Don’t go off on tangents or devote a lot of space to summarizing general background materials.
• Make sure to use reliable and credible sources as your references. Articles published in established newspapers or business journals/magazines are preferred. If you find articles on the Internet, make sure they are from a credible source.
• Reference your sources of information with both a bibliography and in-text citations. See the Student Guide to Writing a High-Quality Academic Paper, including pages 13 and 14 on in-text citations. Another resource is the “Writing Style Guide,” which is found under “My Resources” in the TLC Portal.

CASE 4

To start on this assignment, first make sure that you understand the distinctions and legal issues involved in the four main types of intellectual property—patents, trade secrets, copyrights, and trademarks. Ambrozy (2012) and Bouchoux (2001) cover all four of these types of intellectual property, but if you are still unclear about any of these concepts there are several other sources in the “Optional Readings” list that will also be useful for this assignment. In addition, make sure to read DuBoff’s (2004) chapter on business insurance. You will need to cite at least one source from the background materials in each answer, and include at least three total references from the background materials in your paper.

Once you have thoroughly reviewed the readings in the background materials and are comfortable with the concepts of intellectual property, write a four to five page paper addressing the questions regarding these five scenarios:

1. Suppose you run into a friend who has a new idea for a business or product every time you see him. This time he is convinced he has invented a cutting-edge new management system called “Beverage-Based Management” whereby employees improve their performance by drinking high-caffeine energy drinks with a shot of vodka during their lunch breaks. Your friend provides a pile of research studies showing that caffeine can increase alertness and productivity while alcohol can reduce inhibitions and increase communication between employees. You are a bit skeptical of his idea but think at least some companies might buy his system (at least for comedy purposes). Your friend wants to get a patent on “Beverage-Based Management.” Would you advise that he seek a patent for this idea? If not, what other form of intellectual property protection might be a better choice for your friend?
2. Your business owns a piece of heavy machinery that is worth $200,000. However, the cost of insuring the full $200,000 value of your machinery is more than your business can currently afford. So instead you tell the insurance company that the machinery is worth $100,000 and buy a cheaper policy. Then there is a fire at your factory and the $200,000 heavy machinery is completely destroyed. However you are at least slightly relieved since you hope the insurance company will at least pay the $100,000 that you told the insurance company the machinery was worth even though this will only cover half the damage. But after reading up on business insurance in DuBoff (2004) can you really be certain the insurance company will pay up when they find out that you intentionally undervalued the machinery?
3. You find some sheet music on a webpage, and you cannot find any copyright information on the webpage at all. You do a word search on the title of the song and also check a federal registry of copyrights and cannot find this song. You and some musician friends like this song and plan to record it. Since the song was not in any federal registry and no copyright information was given on the webpage where you found the song, are you legally free to record and perform the song for money, or are their legal liabilities you still may face for using this song?
4. The An family owns a famous Vietnamese restaurant in Los Angeles called Crustacean which is famous for their garlic noodles. Unlike other dishes on the menu, the garlic noodles are cooked in a separate “Secret Kitchen” where only immediate members of the An family are allowed. Suppose one of the members of the An family goes on vacation to New York and eats at a restaurant and finds that this restaurant’s garlic noodles taste almost exactly the same as those served at Crustacean. They also recognize one of the waiters at this restaurant as one who used to work at Crustacean (but is not a member of the An family). Do trade secret laws give the An family any legal protection for their garlic noodle recipes? If so, what kind of information or evidence do you think the An family would need in order to successfully sue this New York restaurant for stealing their trade secrets?
5. Suppose you are an engineer, and one day you decide to take apart your iPhone. After playing around with the wiring and circuits, you find a way to increase the amount of time the iPhone can operate before needing to be recharged. You try the same method with other smartphones such as Samsung, but your method only works for iPhones. You successfully obtain a patent from the U.S. Patent Office for your new method for improving the function of iPhones. Will this patent allow you to manufacture your own brand of smartphones identical to the iPhone but with extended time before needing to be recharged? If not, how else might you be able to make money from your iPhone?

Assignment Expectations

• Answer the assignment questions directly.
• Stay focused on the precise assignment questions. Don’t go off on tangents or devote a lot of space to summarizing general background materials.
• Make sure to use reliable and credible sources as your references. Articles published in established newspapers or business journals/magazines are preferred. If you find articles on the Internet, make sure they are from a credible source.
• Reference your sources of information with both a bibliography and in-text citations. See the Student Guide to Writing a High-Quality Academic Paper, including pages 13 and 14 on in-text citations. Another resource is the “Writing Style Guide,” which is found under “My Resources” in the TLC Portal.

SLP 4

After facing some initial problems in obtaining a new lemon supply, your brother’s lemonade business has really taken off. Some local grocery stores now want to sell his lemonade in bottles at their stores. While you previously were under the impression that the only ingredients in his lemonade were lemon juice and sugar, you recently find out that there is actually a secret blend of spices and natural sweeteners in his lemonade that give it a unique flavor.

You are of course proud of your brother and happy you have been giving him some solid legal advice. But as you’ve problem come to realize at this point, the more a business grows the more legal challenges it may face. As protective older sibling you have become worried that others may take advantage of your brother’s success. More specifically, you want your brother to take steps to protect his valuable lemonade know-how from competitors. Furthermore, you also want your brother’s business to have some minimal level of insurance to protect against new risks that a larger size business may face.

For this assignment, review the background materials carefully and then write a two to three page paper addressing the following issues:

1. What kind of protection should your brother try to obtain for his lemonade recipe – a patent or some form of trade secret protection? How should your brother go about obtaining this protection? Refer to Ambrozy (2012) or to Chapter 10 of DuBoff (2004) in your answer.
2. Your brother’s lemonade stands only have a sign saying “Lemonade Stand”, and he wants the lemonade bottles sold in grocery stores to have a label saying “Fresh Squeezed Lemonade” on them. In your opinion, will your brother be able to get trademark protection for “Lemonade Stand” or “Fresh Squeezed Lemonade”? Why or why not? If not, give some examples of alternative trademarks that he might be able to get protection for. Refer to Ambrozy (2012), Bouchoux (2001), or Chapter 11 of DuBoff (2004) in your answer.
3. Your brother has enough income from his business to be able to afford one or two types of insurance. What kind of insurance do you think would offer him the best protection against lawsuits? Explain your reasoning, and support your answer with references to Chapter 18 of DuBoff (2004) or the article on small business insurance basics listed in the background materials.

SLP Assignment Expectations

• Answer the assignment questions directly.
• Stay focused on the precise assignment questions. Don’t go off on tangents or devote a lot of space to summarizing general background materials.
• Make sure to use reliable and credible sources as your references. Articles published in established newspapers or business journals/magazines are preferred. If you find articles on the Internet, make sure they are from a credible source.
• Reference your sources of information with both a bibliography and in-text citations. See the Student Guide to Writing a High-Quality Academic Paper, including pages 13 and 14 on in-text citations. Another resource is the “Writing Style Guide,” which is found under “My Resources” in the TLC Portal.