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Legal services for Startups

A startup represents a modern form of business that enjoys great popularity nowadays. However, founding a company and starting a business is a process that is demanding and requires complex knowledge, among other things, in the field of law. In the case of startup projects, we provide a complete legal service, from the founding of the company and throughout its entire existence. Our law office cooperates with a number of companies operating in various areas of the market, which can provide you with potential business partners or the entry of investors into your project. If you decide to use our services, we will provide you with:

CORPORATE SETUP

A stable house cannot be built on bad foundations, which is also true when starting a company. The suitability of a company's corporate setup can generally be assessed from two perspectives: "fraud proof" setting of competences of partners and statutory representatives and a clear organization of relations, thinking about possible future entry of the investor. The basic documents regulating the company's internal relations are the social contract, or the company's charter and articles of association, the quality of which is a matter of course for the sake of a clear definition of mutual rights and obligations. Provision § 66c of Act no. 513/2011 Coll. However, the Commercial Code also enshrines the possibility for partners of commercial companies to define mutual rights and obligations arising from their participation in the company in separate written agreements, which are the so-called partners' agreements, or shareholder agreements. Written agreements of partners, or shareholder agreements can regulate any rights and obligations of partners, provided that they do not conflict with the legal order or good morals, while in the sense of the Commercial Code, these are mainly:

1. method and conditions for exercising rights associated with participation in the company,
2. the method of exercising rights related to the administration and management of the company,
3. conditions and scope of participation in share capital changes, and
4. ancillary arrangements related to the transfer of participation in the company.

Our services:

• legal advice in the field of company law,
• establishment of any form of business company,
• drafting or commenting on partners' agreements / shareholders' agreements.

PROTECTION OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

The biggest asset of a large part of young companies is their intellectual property, or the intellectual property of their partners, the threat of which can thus represent an existential risk for these companies. The subject of intellectual property is intangible property, which is the product of the mental activity of its author. Rights to intellectual property objects arise either automatically, i.e. by "creating" itself, as in the case of copyright, or by registering them, where we speak of industrial property. Trademarks, utility models and patents are primarily registered.

Copyright regulates the author's legal relationship to the work, while a work is considered any work from the field of literature, art or science, which is a unique result of the creative mental activity of the author perceptible by the senses, regardless of its form, content, quality, purpose, form of its expression or the extent of its processing. It is valid that copyrights are acquired at the moment of creation of the work, e.g. "it is enough" to write a song or paint a picture and its author has the rights resulting from his authorship.

Unlike copyright, industrial property rights are acquired by registering them in the relevant register maintained by the Industrial Property Office of the Slovak Republic. Trademarks represent the right to and protection for the verbal, graphic or combined representation of the sign, which has the so-called distinctiveness. A patent application is a patent, which is a protective document granted for an invention and which entitles the owner to use the invention for a certain period of time. In addition to the patent, a utility model can also be registered as a tool for legal protection of new industrially usable technical solutions that are the result of inventive activity from any field of technology.

Our services:

• legal advice in the field of intellectual property law,
• representation in legal disputes for the protection of intellectual property rights,
• representation in any proceedings before the Slovak Industrial Property Office,
• preparation and submission of patent applications, utility model applications, and trademark applications and related documentation.

FINANCING

It is often not possible to finance the ideas of new or growing companies only from internal sources. In practice, the most widespread source of external financing for companies is a bank loan, but nowadays several forms of alternative financing are well known, the terms of which are often more acceptable for such companies compared to bank financing. Financing from external sources of the company can generally be divided into financing from public sources and commercial financing. Financing from public sources is mainly various grants, subsidies and other contributions, while the financing entity mainly pursues the public interest in its activities.

In commercial financing, the financing entity pursues its interests, most often in the form of the evaluation of its investment. Among the wide range of forms of commercial non-bank financing, the most widespread in practice is the so-called crowd funding, the so-called crowdfunding, which can be based on donations, subscriptions, loans, or equity participation. Crowdfunding based on a donation or subscription is not regulated by any special legislation and therefore its implementation is the easiest among all forms of alternative financing, but it assumes a lower potential yield due to the lack of financial motivation of investors who contribute for reasons other than profit. The implementation of crowdfunding based on the provision of credit or equity participation in the company is regulated by Regulation (EU) 2020/1503 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 7 October 2020 on European providers of crowdfunding services for businesses and amending Regulation (EU) 2017/1129 and Directive ( EU) 2019/1937, according to which such services can be provided exclusively by licensed crowdfunding service providers.

Our services:

• in cooperation with our partners, we provide comprehensive consulting services in the field of drawdown of European funds and subsidies
• preparation of complete documentation for the implementation of crowdfunding based on donations or subscriptions,
• legal advice for any type of crowdfunding,
• legal advice when issuing any type of financial instrument,
• legal advice in issues of cryptoassets and realization of inominate forms of alternative financing.

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