The pandemic has strengthened the already dynamic development of the Ukrainian IT sphere. However, “in a parallel world” we still hear news about criminal cases and searches from the largest companies.
Unfortunately, IT business starts to care about corporate security and form an organized structure only after problems are already on the doorstep. And the financial consequences and losses are inevitable. In legal matters, as in medicine, preventive measures are always more economical, and most importantly, reliable. Below, we highlight the key topics to watch out for in 2021.
Our experience with the IT business in 2020 clearly demonstrates that the problems of large and medium-sized businesses are always the same. This is a misplaced business model and rapid, chaotic growth.
How is it going today
At the start of a business, the founder works as a director, programmer, sales, PM, HR or, if required, a lawyer. By recruiting a product manager, front-end developer and other specialists to the team, legal issues are still “for later”. At best, the founder relies on fellow lawyers and “experts” from the Internet.
Further, the scenario looks like this: having accumulated a large number of orders and received an advance payment for product development, in the face of a tight deadline, the founder refuses to conclude contracts and draw up the necessary documentation for the development of software products. Because he still hopes “for later”. And then, legal mistakes become a great topic for the next fuck-up night.
Intellectual property
In the recent practice of Interlegal, there was a case of an IT company, which limited itself to using a logo, completely forgetting about the correct design of a legal entity.
The agreement was concluded at the place of residence of the CEO, and as a result, the rights to software products were registered by the customer of services as a developer and were not properly formalized. As a result, of course, the customer did not pay for the services provided.
On this, the questions of the tax police to the company have just begun. One of them was “How did you manage to receive income from business activities without legal registration?”.
The second indicative case was the non-registration of rights to developed products due to the rush to complete orders.
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Such problems are easily solved by trainings with management and employees, all kinds of “reminders” about actions in case of emergency. If a crisis situation cannot be avoided, it is important to promptly file a petition to appeal against the actions of regulatory and law enforcement agencies in court.
Thus, tax optimization, readiness for “visits” of controllers and increased attention to intellectual property, in our opinion, should become the key focus for management in 2021.