Business Law

Partnerships, Joint Ventures, Strategic Alliances & Licensing

Our clients are often presented with opportunities to form strategic alliances with other enterprises, allowing them to streamline their current business activities or broaden the scope of their operations to previously untapped market opportunities.

Every partnership, joint venture or strategic alliance requires careful attention to the complex legal issues that arise, such as questions of structure, management, and control and ownership of assets, including intellectual property. Each alliance also involves navigation of tax, securities, and accounting concerns. Our business attorneys' broad, cross-industry experience makes them ideally situated to successfully negotiate and advise our clients on these complex issues.

Our Business Law Group's integrated approach ensures that business owners have access to subject matter experts in all phases of these partnership transactions, including:

• Governance
• Legal structure
• Financing
• Regulatory compliance
• Tax planning and structuring

Representative Experience

• A wind energy developer needed help building strategic partnerships while paying particular attention to complex regulatory and financing issues. Hemenway & Barnes successfully negotiated and structured partnership agreements for this client with landholders, including tribal nations, turbine manufacturers and other stakeholders in the wind energy industry.
• A manufacturer of food service equipment needed assistance with international distribution and partnership agreements. The company hired our firm to structure the relationships and negotiate and draft the documents.
• An information service provider hired Hemenway & Barnes to create an alliance with business process solution providers for a joint solution for healthcare data analysis, management and processing.

Licensing and Transactions

Whether you are a developer looking to distribute your software or a business purchasing a new enterprise system, Hemenway & Barnes can help you review and negotiate complex licensing transactions. We have a broad range of experience, including with technology transfer, marketing and distribution, manufacturing and supply, and research and development agreements.

Representative Experience

• A start-up technology company with an application to help match landlords and retail tenants as well as manage complex rent arrangements engaged Hemenway & Barnes to develop service agreements and negotiate relationships with strategic partners.
• A major developer needed help licensing its products (interactive television games and interfaces for the cable television industry). Hemenway & Barnes took on the task, negotiating and drafting licensing, maintenance and support, and other agreements with the developer's customers.
• A publicly held software systems company needed our assistance to license and implement business process outsourcing solutions that included software, customization and implementation.
• A company hired Hemenway & Barnes to negotiate a licensing agreement and address privacy and technology protection concerns with a SaaS vendor for a global data center.
• We serve as general counsel for a major health maintenance organization in Massachusetts, handling matters that include negotiations of technology and clinical information systems agreements.