PRESS RELEASE

October 29, 2007

New Book and Online Column Explains Essentials of Business Success for Startups

Announcing: Own It — The Law and Business Guide to Launching a New Business through Innovation, Exclusivity and Relevance

CONCORD, NH — Jon M. Garon, an attorney with law firm Gallagher, Callahan & Gartrell, has just published a new book, Own It: The Law and Business Guide(tm) to Launching a New Business Through Innovation, Exclusivity and Relevance. The book is a step-by-step manual for new businesses and provides clear and lively explanations and real-life examples of the nexus between intellectual property and innovation.

Coinciding with the release of this book, Gallagher, Callahan & Gartrell is launching a new monthly column on gcglaw.com titled: Startups 101 — The New Essentials of Business Success, offering key excerpts from the book. Persons interested in receiving the column via e-mail can sign up for the firm's e-newsletter.

About the Book

Own It doesn't offer entreprenuers the secret to getting rich quick, but rather gives them what they need to know to make their businesses stable and long lasting. Garon's book focuses on exclusivity and relevance as the keys to a start-up business finding its place in the market and succeeding, Garon writes: "exclusivity is creating a distinctive product," and relevance is "making sure that it's a product that customers really want." Without these two key elements, the most innovative-appearing product in the world isn't going to succeed.

Most start-ups, Garon explains, don't succeed. And there are as many reasons why as there are business failures. Many new businesses or new products fail simply because their owners or promoters didn't do their homework. Misjudging customers' needs is a common pratfall, Garon points to the failure of New Coke as a prime example. Instead of the advice to "practice, practice, practice" to get to Carnegie Hall, business start-ups are advised to "watch the fundamentals" and constantly revisit customer needs, prices, finances and what the competition is up to.

Like his earlier book, The Independent Filmmaker's Law & Business Guide, Garon's new volume is readable, practical and comprehensive, covering branding, trademarks, patents and copyrights, trade secrets, financing and business structuring, business plans, LLCs, e-commerce, publicity rights, and privacy law. The book is peppered with capsule case studies, which are as entertaining as they are instructive, from Thomas Edison, Disney and mouse traps, to Newman's Own, Star Wars and iPods.

Own It is published by Carolina Academic Press, and is available through amazon.com and other booksellers.

Gallagher, Callahan & Gartrell is a multidisciplinary law firm with offices in Augusta, Maine; Boston, Massachusetts; and Concord, New Hampshire.

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