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Small business owners are often unaware that the employment discrimination laws apply to them. Since such business owners usually do not have the luxury of having large human resource departments or in-house counsel such businesses are often caught in the dark about their obligations under these laws. Any employer that has 15 or more employees must comply with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (“Title VII”) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”). Employers with 20 or more employees must also comply with the provisions of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (“ADEA”). What do these laws require? They require that you not discriminate against employees on the basis of the employee’s age, disability, sex, race, color, national origin or religion. In addition to these federal laws, there are also state laws that often apply to employers with very few employees. For example, in New York, the New York State Human Rights Law applies to employers with 4 or more employees and in Connecticut the state Fair Employment Practices Act applies to employers with 3 or more employees. Many times these state employment laws prohibit discrimination against people in protected classes in addition to those protected under federal law. So for instance, in New York, employers are prohibited under state law from discriminating against employees based on their race, color, creed, national origin, military status, sex, age, religion, marital status, alienage or citizenship status, sexual orientation, disability or genetic predisposition or carrier status. In Connecticut, the FEPA prohibits discrimination based upon race, color, religious creed, age, marital status, ancestry, national origin, sex, gender, sexual orientation, pregnancy, breast feeding, genetic information, present or past history of mental disability, mental retardation, learning disability or physical disability (including blindness). Moreover, both state and federal employment discrimination laws prohibit harassment as well as discrimination.

What does all this mean for you as a small or medium employer? You need to ensure that you and your managers are familiar with the employment discrimination laws. This means that all employment decisions from hiring to firing need to be made based on job-related factors having nothing to do with a person’s age, race, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, etc. It also means that your managers and employees need to be trained on the employment discrimination laws and preventing sexual and other forms of unlawful harassment. In fact, Connecticut requires employers with 50 or more employees to train all managers within six months of becoming a manager. The training must be legally compliant or it will not satisfy an employer’s obligations under the law. Small businesses should retain outside consultants to provide their Anti-Harassment Training to ensure that such training is properly taught. Our company, HR Learning Center LLC provides employment law, sexual and anit-harassment training and workplace violence prevention training to small and medium employers. Please visit our website at www.hrlearningcenter.com.

This document has been provided for informational purposes only and is not intended and should not be construed to constitute legal advice. Please consult your attorney in connection with any specific questions or issues that may impose additional obligations on you and your company under any applicable local, state or federal laws.

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If you’d like to capitalize on your business’ intellectual assets, there’s an old proverb that will fill the bill, if you’ll learn how it applies today: “Finders, keepers; Losers, weepers.” The Playground goes entrepreneurial!

Our biggest corporations have always hovered over their copyrights, their trademarks and their licensing agreements, protecting them through legal means. This can be just as profitable for companies that aren’t that big if you’ll look carefully at your processes and then learn how to promote and protect them like the big boys.

The management of intellectual assets (your companies ‘property’) isn’t only about how many new products you can bring to the market; it’s about new ideas and innovations that improve on existing goods and services. It’s all a matter of “finders, keepers,” which can be just as easy for the smallest firms to play as it is for the largest.

For all the years you’ve been in business, has there been some product or process that’s been improved on for the traditional marketing of your goods? Did your office assistant come up with a new “Eureka!” for keeping track of your client’s habits or abilities? Did you add two new steps to a production process that created more cost-efficiencies?

Look deeper. Is the way your service or product brand worth protecting? Can it become a profit generator by co-branding with another company? Inc. magazine in its May editions cited the case of Starbucks licensing its name to Jim Beam for a new liqueur, and Harley-Davidson partnering with Coca-Cola to reap millions of dollars in royalties from products incorporating both names.

Is what you know innovative (different) and would it be valuable to someone else? If your answer is yes, learn how to protect and profit from these assets or risk joining the ranks of “losers, weepers.”

Four additional tips to keep in mind:

1. Industry reports cite the growing number of Intellectual Property (IP) lawyers courting small firms instead of traditional big business clients. Go to Google.com and type in “IP lawyers” along with your state or city’s name. Some IP law firm Web sites carry free articles on IP trends.

2. Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA) are mandatory when you’re developing some new product or process and you’re seeking help from outside your company. You’ll protect your asset from the beginning. One smart article on how NDAs work is at About.com, a product of the New York Times Co., at http://management.about.com/cs/ipandpatents/a/NDA062199.htm?p=1.

3. Don’t let your assets loose, even inadvertently, through outgoing emails. Sandhills Publishing Company’s www.processing.com shares safeguards for your outgoing email procedures at www.processor.com/mirapoint-Inc.

4. Consider an outside sleuth to help you find your hidden intellectual assets. Have you ever enlisted the help of a friend to help you find a misplaced item? Invariably, you’ll hear, “Well, there it is, right in front of your nose.” Outside consultants with keen expertise and sharp insights into how to spot potential intellectual assets can prove exponentially more valuable to your bottom line than that sharp-eyed friend.