On Wednesday (28 October 2015) Rossa McMahon gave a guest seminar to postgraduates at UCC’s IT Law Clinic running a legal guidance service for Irish information technology startups.
UCC is a member of iLinc, a European network of information and communications technology law incubators who provide free legal support to startups while giving postgraduate law students an opportunity to engage in real legal issues. The main areas of law covered are intellectual property, data protection and ecommerce.
In particular, Rossa outlined key questions and issues which arise in his experience advising startups and small businesses in the area of intellectual property and data protection, contractual arrangements and consumer law.
Startups cannot afford the full range of legal advice and guidance that the need to grow their business and manage it properly. However, such advice is often crucial for any new business so that costly disputes can be avoided and so that investors or purchasers can be attracted.
The IT Law Clinic fills a very obvious gap in supports available to such businesses by providing a free and useful service to which queries can be submitted.
The clinic is based in UCC but queries can be submitted by IT startups around Ireland that meet certain criteria. For more information, visit the IT Law Clinic website.
PG McMahon Solicitors advise small and medium businesses, including startups, on the range of legal issues affecting them, including:
- website and business terms and conditions;
- consumer law obligations;
- intellectual property protection and domain name disputes;
- data protection issues and privacy statements;
- employment law;
- landlord and tenant law.