Last week we hosted our first legal training seminar for startups in collaboration with Field Fisher Waterhouse, and it was awesome. Lots of good advice, tips and answers to the questions of the starters by Louis-François du Castillon. This was just the first of a series of eight seminars to which you can already sign up:

Starting a cooperation

  • How to secure the beginning of a cooperation: confidentiality, exclusivity, etc.
  • From collaboration agreement to joint-venture
  • What you need to know about shareholders’ agreements: important mechanisms, keeping the control of a company, organizing the exit, etc.

Data protection boot camp

  • What personal data can I collect from my clients/prospects, and how can I use them?;
  • What are the rules around profiling and direct marketing?
  • Data protection in a mobile world: analysis of rules on location based services, social media etc.

E-commerce rules for start-ups

  • What are the legal requirements for my website?
  • Online sales and the protection of consumers: how to avoid unpleasant surprises.

Choosing and protecting the name of your new business

  • The DO’s and DON’T in brand protection (eg descriptive v. fantasy names),
  • The procedure/costs associated with trademark protection;
  • The basics of trademark litigation (incl. domain names) : what can you do if someone else is using a trademark similar to yours and what are your risks if someone has a trademark similar to your name?

Open Licenses

Since most of the start-up companies will be using or even producing open source content (software or even music, pictures and content), we propose to explore the basic principles behind open licenses. There has already been several decision by european courts in this area and we can briefly take a look at them to illustrate in a very practical way the risks associated with the use of open content when you
do not comply with the licenses.

Negotiating and Contracting

  • Precontractual liability : staying out of trouble
  • How and when am I contractually bound ?
  • Choosing the terms of the contract : what are the main issues and how to manage the associated risk (duration of the contract, prices, liability)

Contractual Litigation

  • Early termination of the contract and consequences oftermination;
  • Force majeure and hardship : may I terminate the contractor at least renegotiate the prices whereaan unforeseen event
    either renders contractual obligatons impossible, or radically
    changes the economical balance between parties.
  • Enforcement of the contract : what are the specific remediesin case of non payment of my invoices ?
  • Damages : what are the principles of the compensation fordamages under Belgian law

Please remember that they are hosted by FFW around the corner from us, at the first floor of Boulevard Louis Schmidt 29. A few of you got lost the for the first one and lost a lot of important information at the begining of the presentation.
Background information about the series of free seminars:

The Betagroup Coworking Brussels and Field Fisher Waterhouse have partnered to bring all the Betagroup community a new series of free training sessions covering practical legal issues for start-ups, with a particular emphasis on the Internet industry.

The purpose is to provide the participants with a basic  knowledge of essential legal issues in corporate, IT, IP and commercial contracts. Each session conducted in English will address a specific topic and will be presented by lawyers specialized in their field. The presentations will be to the point, non-academic and will handle the subject with pragmatic approach, based on previous experience.We will be getting free top advice from very experience lawyers.
Who is it for? Starters! If you want to start a company or have already done so, you can have a lot of your doubts disappear in this sessions.
Each presentation will last half an hour and will be followed by a Q&A and a drink where you will be able to ask your questions and share experiences with speakers and participants.

Here’s the flyer with the full list of courses:

So signup and don’t forget to share it with other entrepreneurs!