Online Business Lawyer
Speak to a lawyer with qualifications and experience across IT, business and law.
Our lawyers advise on a full range of corporate and commercial legal needs for online businesses. Whether you are offering services, software or selling goods our Online Business Lawyer is a specialist in e-commerce.
Starting an online business
Friendly, helpful and practical assistance with starting an online business.
The best time to contact us is when you start forming your business plan. We are more than happy to help you forecast the legal costs and the variety of options for setting up your new business. Furthermore, our Online Business Lawyer can assist with:
- preparing Family Trust Deeds to hold the shares in your company (and other investments);
- setting up the right company structure for your business;
- assisting you with your IP strategy, including advising on Intellectual Property Protection and drafting the necessary Intellectual Property Assignment documents to consolidate, confirm and evidence your ownership;
- drafting Website Terms of Use, Terms of Trade, a Privacy Policy and a Cookies Policy;
- preparing a Confidentiality Agreement;
- reviewing business sale agreements and conducting due diligence; and
- drafting and reviewing Software Development Agreements or other Service Agreements which you may require as you develop your website, content and branding.
If you are considering hiring a freelancer, ask our Online Business Lawyer about a Simple Service and IP Assignment Agreement. It is a simple cost-effective document which you can re-use when engaging a range of designers, developers, content writers or other freelancers which tech-entrepreneurs and founders regularly contract with when bootstrapping a Tech Startup.
Owning Copyright
It is important to realise, if you want to own the copyright in code, content or graphics, that copyright needs to be assigned in writing, signed by the owner. See section 196(3) of the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth):
An assignment of copyright (whether total or partial) does not have effect unless it is in writing signed by or on behalf of the assignor.
Information about engaging freelances
For further information about engaging freelancers see: Legal Considerations When Hiring A Freelancer.
Services our Online Business Lawyer provides to existing businesses and scale-ups
Once you have your tech venture underway, having a trusted legal advisor by your side means you are never flying solo.
For scale-ups and established businesses, our Online Business Lawyer can assist with:
- employment agreements, contractor agreements and sweat equity deals;
- company secretarial services and advice;
- technology, commercial and corporate Legal Advice;
- Privacy Law compliance and data breach advice following cyber-security events;
- Domain Name Disputes and copyright infringement demands;
- advice in relation to advertising, consumer guarantees and the Australian Consumer Law; and
- Shareholder Agreements, share sales and share issues.
In the famous words of Dave Faulkner of the Hoodoo Gurus:
Working for yourself sometimes ain't all that it's cracked up to be.
It can be as lonely at the top as at the bottom of that corporate tree.
1000 miles away may have been the anthem of the entrepreneur of the 90’s when airports were the bane of our existence, these days we spend many hours seated behind the screens rather than the plane seat in front of us. None the less the sentiment remains. That being said, when you engage with IT Lawyers Brisbane you will never be flying solo. A trusted legal advisor is only a phone call away. We are happy to work with you, just like your own in house counsel would.
Exiting your online business
What is your exit strategy?
If it comes time to sell, our Online Business Lawyer is there to help review or draft the business sale agreement and assist with an effective handover on completion.
Be sure you have a Confidentiality Agreement in place before you show what is under the hood.
Niche industry services
As an ex IT management consultant our legal practice director has worked across many industry sectors.
Our Online Business Lawyer also has expertise across a range of industries including:
Drop Shipping
Having worked with many drop shipping companies we have developed extensive knowledge of the unique Dropshipping Legal Requirements.
AgTech / AgriTech
Our principal started his career in the 90’s as a software developer at CSIRO on an AgTech project, before the phrase was even coined. See - Legal Considerations for AgTech Companies.
SaaS and mobile apps
With extensive experience in IT our Technology Lawyer can easily translate between business, tech and law, improving the quality and efficiency of the legal services we provide. With deep IT domain experience we draft a full range of SaaS and mobile app Terms of Use.
Artificial Intelligence
All too often the laws are too slow to keep up with changes to technology. Today we need to take a creative approach to Artificial Intelligence Law, at least until the legislature catch up. Being creative in this sense requires a reasonable understanding of the scope and requirements of AI, which our Technology Lawyers have. Speak to our legal practice director who even coded up his own machine learning application in Python, just to gain a better understanding.
