Business Law 415 - Bug Inc

BUG, Inc.

A paper submitted in the course of

Business Law BUS/415

University of Phoenix

March 1, 2008

BUG, Incorporated is a company that designs, manufactures, and sells electronic recording devices. The majority of their clientele are businesses that are in law enforcement. The type of equipment they sell enables the ability to listen secretly to other conversations via cell phone transmissions, telephone wire tapping and remote microphones. As in any business BUG should make sure they have different types of legal protection to ensure their employees, vendors and the company is protected.

BUG must consider protections for its intellectual property, such as patents, copyrights, trademarks, and contractual. A patent is a grant of property rights, approved by the Patent and Trademark Office. Patents are beneficial for BUG because part of BUG equipment is driven by software designed by employees of the company. A trademark is a distinctive way in which businesses goods and services are represented. Trademarks come in the form of a logo, symbol, words, or brand names for packaging purposes and provide security for BUG’s company logo when expanding internationally. A copyright affords protection of original literary, artistic works, and sound recording. BUG inventions are protected from reproduction by other businesses with a copyright.

WIRETAP, Inc. is a competitor of BUG. Steve, one of WIRETAP’s current employees, obtained a job at BUG in the research and development department. While working at BUG, Steve forwarded e-mail pertaining to client relations, both domestic and international, and information about the BUG product lines to WIRETAP. Many crimes are committed against business property often engaging in stealing or theft and the misappropriation of funds. Steve engaged in taking another business’s property, namely tangible property, trade secrets, computer programs and other business property. Steve faces civil liabilities of larceny and, more appropriately, theft. Additionally, Steve faces specific crimes committed by business people only, referred to as white-collar crimes, involving being cunning and decei tful. Embezzlement also applies to the situation because property is being stolen by someone BUG has entrusted in being a key element in a civil case.

WIRETAP is liable for engaging in receiving stolen property or intentionally depriving the rightful owner of property. WIRETAP is also liable for obtaining property through dishonesty and trickery amounting to a crime of false pretenses, also known as criminal fraud and deceit. Depending on how the company intends to use the stolen information, intentional misrepresentation, falsely representing the material fact, applies. Furthermore, WIRETAP is participating in a very common law tort of palming off, an old form of unfair competition often occurring when one company tries to palm off its own product on the competition. Additionally, WIRETAP has engaged in criminal conspiracy and is liable for overt act.

Walter is a security guard for BUG, who he found out that Steve does work for the competitor, WIRETAP and decided to find out exactly what he was doing at BUG and what information he gave to WIRETAP. Unfortunately, in doing so Walter threatened bodily harm to Steve if he did not give up the information he was demanding. Walter committed the tort known as assault, which is an attempt to inflict physical harm. BUG will be liable for damages if Steve were to sue the company for Walter’s actions.

If BUG Incorporated is interested in selling their products via the internet, they need to take into consideration the e-commerce legal issues that could affect the company. Some of the issues that are relevant when starting an e-commerce business are having a Ttrademark, Ccopyright privileges, complying with the import and customs regulations and have site ownership and contracts with different ISP’s. A Ttrademark represents to the consumer the source of the goods or service. The Ttrademark should not replicate another company’s trademark in any way. Copyright privileges should also be considered, this protects the content located on the site. The import and custom regulations have to be followed in order to sell products overseas. When it comes to naming the domain, BUG must check with the US Patent and Trademark database to verify if the name they pick available. The domain name should not be too long, should be easy to remember, and descriptive to the business. BUG needs to ensure they own the sites look and feel, including specific text, graphics or videos. Contracts with ISP’s should spell out the sites availabilities and number of users it can accommodate at a time as well as any penalties if the goals are not reached. (E-commerce Legal issues)

Duty of care is the obligation we all owe each other not to cause any unreasonable harm or risk of harm. The courts decide if a duty of care is owed in specific cases by applying a reasonable person standard (Cheeseman, 2004). The employees who were robbed at night walking to their cars could have potentially been put at risk because of the number of lights being burnt out. With the recent crime wave, BUG, Inc. should have increased security to eliminate any unnecessary crime of the premises. Without increasing security BUG, Inc. is not taking action to protect the employees.

The vendor who was attacked while waiting for the dock manager to return from lunch was not put in any harm and BUG, Inc. would not be responsible for replacing