Most business owners treat the independent contractor agreement as the thing that decides whether a worker is a contractor. It is not. In Minnesota, classification is decided by how the relationship …
READ MORE →When a former employee, a competitor, or an anonymous reviewer publishes a false statement that costs your company customers, Minnesota law gives you a way to respond. A business can sue for …
READ MORE →Being sued is unsettling, and the part that catches most business owners off guard is discovery: the formal exchange of evidence that runs for months before any trial. Minnesota does not let the other …
READ MORE →One of the first questions in any business sale is a structural one: is the buyer purchasing the company itself, or just its assets? The answer drives the tax bill, the liability exposure, and the …
READ MORE →Letting another company use your brand name can be one of the most profitable things you do with it, or it can quietly cost you the mark entirely. A trademark license lets a licensee use your name, …
READ MORE →Most Minnesota business owners assume that if they pay someone to build software, design a logo, or write marketing copy, the result belongs to the company. For an employee’s work, that …
READ MORE →Choosing a business or product name feels like a branding decision, and it is, but it is also a legal decision you make once and largely cannot undo. A mark’s inherent distinctiveness is largely …
READ MORE →When you sell your Minnesota business with an earnout, you agree to take part of the price later, contingent on the business hitting performance targets after you no longer run it. That structure can …
READ MORE →When a commercial real estate deal in Minnesota falls apart, the fight often turns on a contingency: a condition the parties wrote into the purchase agreement that one side now reads differently. …
READ MORE →Minnesota now has a comprehensive consumer privacy law, and as of 2026 it is being actively enforced. The Minnesota Consumer Data Privacy Act, codified at Minn. Stat. § 325M.10 through § 325M.21, took …
READ MORE →Raising capital for your business almost always means selling a security, and federal law treats every security offering as something that must be registered with the Securities and Exchange …
READ MORE →When a departing employee walks out with your customer database or a vendor starts selling a process you spent years refining, the practical question is not whether the law disapproves. It is how fast …
READ MORE →When a customer will not pay an invoice, a partner walks off with company property, or a vendor breaches a contract, the first real decision is not whether you have a claim. It is whether to spend …
READ MORE →When a competitor ends up with your pricing model, your customer database, or your manufacturing process, the first question a Minnesota court asks is not whether the information was stolen. It is …
READ MORE →When you buy or sell a Minnesota business through an asset purchase agreement, the representations and warranties section is where the real risk allocation happens. Representations and warranties are …
READ MORE →When a Minnesota business owner asks whether a revocable living trust is worth setting up, the honest answer is: it depends on what you want it to do. A revocable trust will not save you tax and will …
READ MORE →When a competitor lures your customer out of a signed contract, or recruits a key employee in breach of an agreement, your first instinct is to sue the person who broke the deal. Minnesota law gives …
READ MORE →Every growing company runs on vendors: the software platform that holds your customer data, the supplier that ships the parts you assemble, the logistics firm that moves your product. When one of …
READ MORE →A commercial lease is one of the largest fixed obligations most business owners ever sign, and Minnesota law treats it very differently from a residential rental. A commercial lease is a contract, and …
READ MORE →Most Minnesota business owners assume the federal estate tax is the thing to worry about, and for the federal tax they are usually right: the federal exclusion is now $15,000,000 per person, so the …
READ MORE →When a security incident exposes your customers’ personal information, Minnesota law tells you who you have to notify, when, and how. Minnesota codifies this directly: the private-sector rule is …
READ MORE →When another company starts using a name, logo, or slogan close to yours, the first question is usually direct: can I make them stop, and can I collect anything for the damage already done. Trademark …
READ MORE →When a departing salesperson walks out with your pricing model, or a vendor uses a process you shared in confidence, the first question is not how to sue. It is whether the information legally counts …
READ MORE →When a Minnesota business owner asks whether their brand is “protected,” the honest answer is that several distinct protections exist with sharply different reach. Common-law rights vest …
READ MORE →When Minnesota lawmakers passed the Paid Family and Medical Leave Act in 2023, they created the country’s thirteenth state-administered paid-leave program. The substantive duties hit Minnesota …
READ MORE →When Minnesota’s pay-transparency rule took effect on January 1, 2025, most employers I work with treated it as a small administrative tweak. It is more than that. Minn. Stat. § 181.173 reaches …
READ MORE →Minnesota legalized adult-use cannabis in August 2023, and Chapter 342 changed almost every employer-policy assumption written before that date. The change was not just a relabeling of a controlled …
READ MORE →When a vendor sells its business to a competitor, can your contract go with it? When a customer assigns its receivable to a factor, can you ignore the new payee? When a software company is acquired, …
READ MORE →Two business partners shake hands when the company is small. Five years later one of them dies, gets divorced, or wants out, and the surviving partner discovers there is no agreed price, no agreed …
READ MORE →A choice-of-law clause is one of the cheapest paragraphs in your contract and one of the most consequential. The clause decides which state’s substantive law a court will apply to interpret your …
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