San Jose, CA Business Lawyer Blog

New entity-number format for certain California business entities

Posted on February 26, 2025 by Richard Burt

In the past, the California Secretary of State used different numbering schemes to assign entity numbers to different types of entities. Effective February 25, 2025, the California Secretary of State has changed the entity-number format that it will use to … Continue reading →

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Filing Business Entity Forms with California Secretary of State

Posted on February 13, 2025 by Richard Burt

The California Secretary of State announced that, effective Tuesday, January 21, 2025, the following registration forms will be accessible and submitted only online through BIZFILE ONLINE. The PDF versions of these forms will no longer be available on the FORMS, … Continue reading →

Is Your Out of State LLC Doing Business in California? Here’s What to Know

Posted on November 23, 2024 by Richard Burt

What if a corporation or a limited liability company (LLC) is formed in another state, like Delaware or Nevada, but does business in California? The out of state LLC doing business in California (a “foreign” business entity) must register with … Continue reading →

Posted in Commercial Law, Corporate Law, Entity Law, Foreign LLC, Qualifying to Do Business | Tagged Delaware corporation, Delaware LLC, doing business in California, foreign corporation, foreign entity, foreign llc, Nevada corporation, Nevada LLC, out-of-state, registering with California, subject to tax in California | Comments Off

Is the CA Certificate Status company a scam?

Posted on June 13, 2024 by Richard Burt

Lately, my clients have been receiving a solicitation from a company calling itself CA Certificate Status, which offers to obtain from the California Secretary of State a certificate of status for a company. The solicitation preaches the possible benefits of … Continue reading →

Posted in Corporate Law, Limited Liability Comanies (LLC's), Limited liability companies (LLC), Qualifying to Do Business | Tagged certificate of status, good standing certificate | Comments Off

Impending Changes to the required Statement of Information

Posted on April 25, 2024 by Richard Burt

Beginning Monday, April 29, 2024, the California Secretary of State will no longer accept statements of information on paper. A corporation will be permitted to file only online through the BizFile portal. There are some enhancements to the online statement … Continue reading →

Posted in Corporate Law, Directors and officers, Entity Law, Qualifying to Do Business | Tagged annual statement of information, California Secretary of State | Comments Off

I have no connection with TrademarkFormation.com

Posted on March 21, 2024 by Richard Burt

I have been receiving calls from prospective customers of TrademarkFormation.com asking if I am associated with the company since the street address shown on TrademarkFormation.com website is the same as mine: 55 S. Market Street, Suite 1500, San Jose, California. … Continue reading →

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Stock without Certificates

Posted on February 4, 2024 by Richard Burt

Now that we are moving more and more into electronic records, can we dispense with stock certificates? Yes, we can, but for most closely held corporations, it may not be worthwhile to change to certificate-less stock. The failure to issue … Continue reading →

Posted in Alter Ego Liability, Corporate Law, Entity Law, Minority Shareholders, Piercing the Corporate Veil, Professional Corporations, Purchase and Sale of a Business, S corporations | Tagged certificate-less stock, stock without certificates, uncertificated security, uncertificated stock | Comments Off

Non-Compete Clauses for Employees Become Radioactive in California

Posted on December 1, 2023 by Richard Burt

California has for over 80 years prohibited covenants not to compete (also called non-compete clauses) except in a handful of cases. The basic prohibition is in Business & Professions Code § 16600, which provides: Except as provided in this chapter, … Continue reading →

Posted in Business Disputes, Covenant not to compete | Tagged employee covenant not to compete, employee non-compete, non-compete agreement, non-compete covenant, Noncompete | Comments Off

Out-of-State LLC Owning Property in California

Posted on October 30, 2023 by Richard Burt

Experienced San Jose, CA Foreign LLC Lawyer Ready To Assist You Many California residents are members of LLCs formed under the law of other states (often referred to as “foreign LLCs”). California, being hungry for tax revenue, often tries to … Continue reading →

Posted in Entity Law, Limited liability companies (LLC) | Comments Off

I Asked ChatGPT a Legal Question–Here’s What It Said

Posted on April 12, 2023 by Richard Burt

I posed the following question to ChatGPT: What is the difference between a corporation and an LLC? Here is the response generated by ChatGPT (with my comments in red): A corporation and a limited liability company (LLC) are two different … Continue reading →

Posted in Alter Ego Liability, Attorney-Client Matters, Corporate Law, Entity Law, Limited liability companies (LLC), Piercing the Corporate Veil, S corporations | Tagged AI, Artificial Intelligence, ChatGPT | Comments Off