High Tech

The energy of innovation is turning Michigan’s economy. New companies are being formed, often spun out of the state’s many research institutions, and established high-tech companies are moving in to access the state’s talent and resources. Many of these innovators are forming ventures with enterprises around the world.

Bodman’s High Tech attorneys are in the middle of it all. Every day, we help companies optimize their business and tax structure, secure financing, commercialize technology, and develop strategic relationships. Whether it’s software, aerospace, biotech, media, or another emerging enterprise, we connect our clients to the business support they need to develop and grow.

Our Services:

Our high-tech clients range from the multibillion-dollar, global enterprise to the graduate student setting up an information architecture consulting company.  Attorneys from multiple areas of practice support high-tech clients in the following areas:

• Corporate Structure:  Whether setting up the original business entity or restructuring an existing one, we assist clients in choosing a corporate structure consistent with tax goals, funding strategies, relationships among company founders, intellectual property realization, and plans for corporate growth.
• Financial Matters – Investment, Securities, and Lending:  We advise clients regarding initial capitalization, angel investments, venture capital, private placement offerings, initial public offerings, convertible debt, options and warrants, and bank loans and other lending issues.  Additionally, we assist clients with setting up tax qualified incentive stock option plans, nonstatutory options plans, bonus structures and other employee retention programs.
• Intellectual Property:  The heart of most technology companies is their intellectual property portfolio. Our Intellectual Property team works closely with clients to identify, protect, register, commercialize, capitalize and license these assets.  This ranges from selecting and protecting the company name, to negotiating complex licensing transactions.  We also specialize in assisting clients with the unique tax issues involved with the creation, ownership, license and sale of intellectual property.
• Workplace Issues:  The foundation of intellectual property-based assets is the people who conceive and develop the inventions and workproduct of the company.  We support the human resources function of a company from the preliminary phase of drafting and posting job descriptions, through the development of employment applications, testing procedures, entry and exit interviews, and executive compensation packages.  We also help clients protect their intellectual property assets through employment policies and manuals, and employment agreements addressing ownership and nondisclosure of intellectual property, as well as the specialized areas of post-employment restrictions, such as customer nonsolicitation, employee non-raiding, and noncompetition.
• Real Estate Leasing, Construction, and Acquisition; Environmental:  Location of corporate headquarters, manufacturing plants, and laboratories raise issues relating to land use and facilities acquisition, construction, leasing, zoning, and environmental compliance.  Our Real Estate, Construction Law, Municipal and Zoning, and Environmental specialists guide clients through the decision-making process and assist them in implementing their facilities plan.
• Dispute Resolution:  Occasionally problems arise.  We are skilled in all forms of dispute resolution for technology-based businesses, including facilitation, mediation, arbitration, emergency litigation (restraining orders and injunctions), and trial and appellate litigation.

Representative Matters:

We have completed several funding rounds for the newest, most innovative flow cytometry company in the U.S.  Bodman negotiated technology deals with the University of Michigan, secured intellectual property protection and structured commercial relationships.

Bodman negotiated a $6.8 million, 10-year state tax credit for a generic drug maker. Combined with local tax abatements worth up to $5.7 million, the deal resulted in a huge manufacturing facility expansion that will create 600 new jobs in an economically blighted urban area.

We advised the author of a groundbreaking book on Jackie Ormes, the first African-American woman cartoonist. The American Library Association named the publication one of the top ten biographies of 2008. Bodman facilitated publication of the book, which contains cartoons and comic strips not seen in 50 years.

We successfully represented a national telecommunications company in numerous class-action lawsuits alleging damages from service outages and from the gathering of personally identifiable information.

We structured relationships between private-public entities that developed systems that enable mid-flight refueling of stealth aircraft.

We have represented more than a third of the start-up companies that license technology from the University of Michigan, the largest public research university in the United States.

Bodman structured a business relationship between a client and an inventor-engineer whose designs for wheels and tires were used in space exploration, first on the Moon and then, in an adaptation by NASA, on Mars.

When a Bodman client discovered that several Fortune 500 companies were using unlicensed copies of its software – which models machines and enables faster time-to-market for new products – we approached the companies and quickly recovered significant licensing fees. 

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