Steve regularly helps companies form, organize the relationship amongst the founders, obtain registrations for company branding, and take on early-stage financing. Among his notable representations are:

Mergers and Acquisitions

• jQuery Foundation, Inc. – Steve represented the jQuery Foundation, a not-for-profit open source software foundation and home to the jQuery Project, in its merger with the Dojo Foundation. The combined organization is the preeminent open source software foundation supporting the JavaScript community. Steve additionally advised the Foundation through the process of a corporate re-branding and re-structuring, re-launching in October of 2016 as the JS Foundation with corporate partners IBM, Samsung, and other prominent members of the JavaScript ecosystem.
• Boston Restaurant Group – Steve represented the minority owners of a local Boston restaurant group in their buy-out of the majority owners. This transaction allowed the minority owners to streamline restaurant operations and provided a launch pad and template for future acquisitions.

Financing

• Apparel Brand – A local founder established several apparel brands with different partners, different ownership interests, and different levels of success. Steve worked with the Founder to negotiate intellectual property ownership with all parties, consolidate the separate businesses into a single entity, and structure that new entity to take on future financing. When it came time, Steve negotiated and closed the company’s half-million dollar Series Seed Preferred Stock financing. Steve continues to act as outside general counsel and intellectual property counsel, representing the company with regard to day-to-day legal and strategic concerns, and expanding and protecting their IP portfolio.
• Manufactured Goods Brand – Steve represented a brand new IoT product company in initial formation, an early $100,000 common stock angel financing, and in a hybrid common stock/convertible debt financing as part of the company’s entry into a focused hardware accelerator program.
• Mobile App Company – Steve represented a Boston-based mobile app company as it transitioned from a limited liability company to a corporation, brought on co-founders and employees, and in the negotiation and closing of nearly one million dollars in angel round convertible debt financing.
• Mobile App and Marketplace Company – Steve represented a metro-Boston software company providing a mobile application and contractor marketplace B2B solution in a $2.5M Preferred Stock financing, including a significant liquidity event for the founders.

Intellectual Property

• JS Foundation – As outside general counsel to the re-launched JS Foundation, Steve counsels the Foundation’s Board and Executive Director on all aspects of open source software licensing, branding, and trademark registration and enforcement. In this role, Steve manages the Foundation’s ever-growing trademark portfolio, a value-add that the Foundation is able to pass along to the open source projects they support.
• Fitness Brand – Steve manages the trademark portfolio for a Boston-based and ever-expanding fitness brand. On a day-to-day basis Steve provides counsel on IP strategy, registers marks, undertakes trademark enforcement actions, and handles trademark prosecution and cancellation issues in front of the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board.