Comment by isostatic
7 years ago
So form a company Profit from blatant copyright infringement When the court case eventually comes, wind up the company, move the assets to another company, and you’re quids in
7 years ago
So form a company Profit from blatant copyright infringement When the court case eventually comes, wind up the company, move the assets to another company, and you’re quids in
The law does not work like technology and code. A judge would see through that in a heartbeat and go “You thought that would work? You’re kidding, right?”.
Tell that to the construction industry. This is incredibly common behavior for industries and housing construction - its what gets you out of superfund sites and repairing the subpar housing you threw up in 2010.
I woud assume that to be a case of:
1. Big Company gets what it wants because Big. Everybody pretends it’s a loophole, in order to get out of having to get in trouble with Big Company.
2. Smaller later companies uses same “loophole” and nobody can say anything, because that would be tantamount to accusing Big Company of misdeeds, and get into trouble.
I suspect these kind of situations are unstable, since as time goes by, the “loophole” will be abused more and more, and eventually it becomes untenable, and a judge will rule the “loophole” moot, (especially if the statue of limitations has conveniently expired for the crimes of Big Company). This process might be slowed in slower industries like construction and pollution, but I would imagine it to be inevitable.
My point is, since this probably only works because Big Company, it only works in similar situations where point 2 applies. It does not validate the general theory of why such things would be judged to be legal in other situations in other industries.
Exactly how @teddyh wrote. Make sure you don't tell anyone, don't write it on emails, don't even sleeptalk about this. A judge will get to decide if you were geniunly unknowngly broke some rules, or you are messing with him/her. I will assume that judges don't appreciate being messed around with :)
Not exactly. If you close a company with the intention to avoid legal consequences of your actions only to then spin up another company, there's often some kind of law in place to prevent you from benefiting.
In the UK, these are generally called "phoenix companies" and courts can step in to stop the abuse of limited liability and can apply civil penalties and criminal sanctions to company directors.