Dropservicing business in the US - is this legal for industries like law, accounting/bookkeeping and other regulated industries? I am looking to get into the business of dropservicing - finding a white label provider of certain services and then re-selling those services to retail customers. For myself, I'm sticking to traditional IT services and digital marketing. However, I was talking to a friend and he's not at all into technology (that's why I'm asking this question for him here, aside from my own curiosity). After I told him what I was doing, he was thinking of doing a similar business with bookkeeping and general legal services. We found some white label providers of these services (US-based), but he was concerned about legal issues since those are regulated industries. My question is: is this sort of arbitrage legal for those kinds of industries? Thank you.
Both law and accounting are subject to state regulation, so, at a minimum, work done remotely by non-licensed persons must be reviewed substantively and blessed by a local admitted professional before being shared with a client, and there are limits on what contacts with the client the back office can have. In a legal context, the back office is limited to what a paralegal can do, and that varies considerably from one U.S. state to another, especially with respect to real property matters. Mere &quot;book keeping&quot; as opposed to accounting is rarely a regulated profession under state law, but as in the case of legal services, the distinction between accounting that requires a license and activities that do not require a license varies from state to state (although less dramatically). The notion of selling &quot;forms&quot; is well recognized, but what crosses over the line from selling a &quot;form&quot; to selling legal or accounting advice varies and can be treacherous. I don't know off hand if this is true for accountants in most states, but in most U.S. states non-lawyers are prohibited from having an equity or profits based interest in a law firm, and referral fee compensation is also subject to significant professional ethics regulation. Non-competition clauses involving lawyers are also subject to heavy professional ethics regulations not common to non-legal professional activities. Without a more concrete example of what the dropservicing business model would entail, it is impossible to do a very definitive analysis. Your model seems to be based upon obtaining services from a third-party and re-selling those services. For the most part, that isn't a workable business model from a regulatory perspective in the U.S. Instead, you need licensed &quot;white label&quot; providers as the face of the business and you may potentially provide services behind them in the back office. There are some services along this line currently in existence with varied business models involving somewhat similar concepts: Legal forms companies like the recently succeeded Bradford Publishing. Hyatt Legal Services Plans Private legal services insurance such as Legal Shield. H&amp;R Block and also tax services. The legal services provided by the JAG Corps to military service members. Nolo.com Union sponsored legal services plans such as Union Plus. Title insurance companies such as First American Title and related transaction execution companies. The legal defense provided incident to a liability insurance policy by companies such as Allstate. Governmental shared risk pools such as CIRSA. Donation driven non-profits such as the ACLU. The Ann Arbor Tenants Union. Temp agencies providing paralegals to companies such as this one. A few also make contract attorneys' available for a firm's one time big project. Tax software companies like TurboTax (a division of Inuit). Westlaw LexisNexis Wolters Kluwer (f.k.a. CCH).
Financial institutions in the US are subject to regulations that restrict what sorts of things non-licensed employees can talk about with clients and advice they can give about structuring accounts and payments in ways that might avoid triggering money laundering alarms. I think this employee was being cautious about getting into a gray area and phrased the reason they couldn't talk about it poorly. The reason they were restricted from giving you an answer could be a legality, but not necessarily because they are giving you legal advice.
I've been wondering if it is possible to hire / create a company with someone who would open a restaurant in my place and manage it according to my guidelines. Yes, of course. You can do it just like you described: Create a company, hire employees, (let them) open the restaurant. You, as the owner of the company, could set up whatever guidelines you have in mind, and your employees would be bound by them (limited only by general laws, such as on health and safety). Some caveats, however: You will need money to set this up - for buying / renting space for the restaurant, for paying your employees, obtaining supplies, initial marketing etc. It may take a while until the restaurant earns money (if ever), and you'll need money in the mean time. Someone will need to manage, that is make decisions. You can do that yourself, but then you will work for the restaurant (which you write you do not want to do). Or you can hire someone to do it for you, but that will cost more (in salary), plus you will have to find someone you can trust. That's a tradeoff for you to make. I guess it'd be like an intellectual property. That depends, but usually there will be little in terms of intellectual property. If you have a unique idea for the restaurant, you could patent it, but there are many restrictions on what you can protect, and ways around it, plus this also costs money (a lot if you need a lawyer's advice). Apart from that, you can register a trademark for the restaurant, but that only protects the name / logo, not any ideas. Finally, some of your ideas might be considered trade secrets, but again the protection is limited. In general, there is no blanket "idea protection". If you have a good idea for a restaurant, in most cases other restaurants will be able to copy them, possibly with slight changes - take that into account.
The customer list is indeed a trade secret if the shop kept its customer list secret and has an advantage from having that customer list, while others don’t have it. And I would think that is the case, because a competitor laying their hands on the list could for example send special offers to the customers in the list. The question is whether your two hairdressers took that customer list and whether the store has reasonable evidence that they did. If customers find out where their favourite hairdresser moved to that’s no legal problem. Can’t understand why no attorney wants to take the case. To the attorney it doesn’t make a difference whether they took the list or not. If they took the list then his or her job is to end the case with the smallest possible amount of damages being paid. PS. Just read in the comments that there is an accusation of "intentional interference with economic relationship". I would want a lawyer who knows the difference between perfectly legal competition which includes trying to get customers to move their business, and "intentional interference with economic relationship". PS. Really make sure that these guys appear in court. With a lawyer. Not appearing means that if the plaintiff says "Judge, these guys did X, punish them!" and they are not there to say "We absolutely didn't do X, prove it if you can", the judge will assume that they did X.
Is it legal? Yes. You can make just about any payment arrangements you like. You wouldn't be able to verify compliance, though, without some connection to the student's employer. The IRS won't tell you how much money a third party earned, or how much tax they paid, in a given year. Pretty sure they can't provide that info, which is why companies wanting to verify your income ask for copies of your tax returns rather than permission to get those returns.
Yes Businesses (and consumers) can choose who to do business with and what information they ask for and disclose and when they do that. If you’re uncomfortable with how they do business, don’t deal with them. If they don’t like how you do business, they are free not to deal with you. This is called discrimination. However, it is not unlawful because only discrimination against a person due to membership of a protected classes is unlawful. This person “won’t answer my questions” is not discrimination based on a protected class (unless they are a monk who has taken a vow of silence).
Licencing agreements The company producing these has successfully negotiated a licencing agreement with the IP holder to use the IP. These are extremely common. Subcontracting They have actually been commissioned by the IP holder to make these things for the IP holder e.g. for the IP holder to sell in their own outlets. As part of that agreement, they are also allowed to sell on their own behalf. Piracy They are breaking the law and hope they will be undetected, not worth prosecuting or operate out of pirate jurisdictions which will not enforce foreign judgements.
The store is, as far as i can see, not using the trademarked image to sell their cake. Your family does not intend to sell anything at all. This photo, from the description, could not reasonably be confused with an official image from the trademark holder. (all of this is based on your description, of course). Therefore, the trademark holder probably won't sue for trademark infringement, even if they somehow heard of this event, and if they did sue, they would quite likely lose. You would be making a copy of a presumably copyrighted image. You might have an active defense, but that is very hard to be sure of in advance. (Note that "fair use" is a very specifically US legal concept, and would not apply in the UK. The roughly comparable concept is "fair dealing" but that is more restrictive, and follows somewhat different rules.) In any case, it is possible that the rights holder would sue, and if the situation were a bit different (the was only one person pictured, making the shirt with the protected image very prominent, for example) there might be a larger chance of such a suit being successful. No business is going to want a bakery department manager deciding whether a particular use of a particular image does or does not infringe IP rights, and whether it does or does not expose the business to significant risk. Just to get an opinion from their lawyer on whether this image infringes would probably cost them several times the price of the cake with image printing. The store has no doubt written its guidelines to err well on the side of caution, because one suit, even if they won, would cost far more than the profits of many cakes, and if they lost, could have a very negative effect on their bottom line indeed. The store is entitled to restrict what business it does to keep itself safe from lawsuits. It is going to keep well on the cautious side, in all likelihood, and so it should. I fear you will have to find a store with a different policy, or use a different picture.