作者：Andy Moseby

在每笔交易中，都存在交易双方。卖方希望让收购的价格达到最大化，而从法律的角度来看，买方当然会想要保护所购买项目的价值。

尽职调查是关键，即向买方提供所有财政信息、公司历史和商业协议的费心劳力的过程。尽职调查过程可以让你透过光鲜的外表看到所购买项目的本质。

因而，在尽职审查过程中可能触发许多案件便是可以理解的事情。当公司开始着手或者专注于产生收入而不是将金钱花在法律细节上时，这种情况就会产生。但是同样的事情不断发生，所以他们就有了将收购过程放缓的习惯，产生的额外成本或者最终导致卖方所得比预期更少的收益。

我将通过下文简要陈述5种常见的法律问题。如果有些人已经陷入这些僵局，不要担心，现在认识到并且进行纠正，总比在出售过程中才在买方的审查下做这些事情要好得多。

law issue(from blog.thansys.com)

1、税收和结构

知识产权的财政结构调整有多种不同的原因。或许是富有吸引力的行业独有减税，或者你有可能将知识产权转移到IP收入税率较低的国家，或者是某些有吸引力的R&D动机。

如果你想要使用这些战略，那么你不仅应当认证考虑这些措施的商业原因，还应当确保减税可以应用到你正在开发的项目上。

这听起来好像是常识，但是IP控制权才是关键。在IP频繁进行授权或者IP拥有者是发行商而非工作室的这个行业里，开发商需要完全理解减税条件，尤其是在许多税收激励政策刚刚出台之时（游戏邦注：因为这些政策的应用标准还未被广泛测试）。

甚至是那些已经成功在海外设立的IP也很容易会犯下错误。我们见过某些交易失败或者严重拖延的案例，仅仅是因为开发商未能将IP认证提交给收购集团供其开发。

简单地说，就是他们没有了使用自有IP的权利。

这些决定是最终项目结构的核心（游戏邦注：决定了项目对买方的吸引力），后期解决所产生的问题将变得格外棘手。

2、给予创始人或早期投资者股份

假设你成立了一家独立开发公司。几个极有天赋和创造性的人刚刚离开了大型发行公司，希望加入你的公司。你没有大量的资金，他们也没有，所以你给了他们许多股份。为进一步激励他们，你采用了保留机制，也就是如果他们离开公司之后，所持有的股份会随着时间逐渐增加，以表彰他们对公司做出的有价值的贡献。

这些做法在商业上有一定意义，但是会产生很严重的税务问题。

根据目前使用的法律，英国税务局（HMRC）会将这部分股份视为你向这些人支付的薪水。他们会根据股份分派当时的所得税税率向股票持有者征税。而当这些股份发生变动时（游戏邦注：比如每次保留机制发挥作用时），还要进一步征收个人所得税，即便股份持有人在当时并没有因持有股份而获得经济利益。

因而主管或雇员无论何时在你的公司中收到股份，他们可能就需要缴纳个人所得税款。

这种情况还可能更加糟糕。如果股份持有人出售他的股份，HMRC又要开始干涉。如果他是个高税率支付者，他可能需要以股份所得为基准支付50%的税额。

不仅如此，公司需要对PAYE（所得税预扣制计划）期间任何所得税负有主要责任，还必须缴纳国家保险捐款。

以某些顾及税收的股份选择计划（游戏邦注：比如EMI）签署股份能够有所帮助。这可以使得任何收入都以资本获得政策来监管。这应当在签署股份的14天内实施，但是如果没有实现的话，你应当同顾问谈谈。

3、确定所有权和对关键IP的使用权

买方想要知道公司是否拥有其关键资产。他们渴望看到的是，独占技术、实际技能和品牌获得完全的保护，并且能够为公司所开发。

他们还想要看到，IP属下的所有作品所有权都属于公司。同时这种情况对雇员同样适用（游戏邦注：假设他们在公司工作期间创造了某些技术或代码），还包括顾问、承包人和自由职业者等。

同样地，如果你依赖于任何第三方IP，比如游戏引擎或者中间件，如果公司终止协议，会发生怎样的情况呢？确保你的关键合同能够允许你使用相关代码，可以向任何买方展示自己有个备胎方案。

4、开源软件

即便在5年之前，如果大型公司买方遇到潜在收购项目使用大量的开源软件（游戏邦注：下文简称“OSS”），就会格外注意，购买协议中会添加整套的补偿和保证。

现在，买方采用了更务实的方法。对OSS的明智使用会得到称赞，但是理想情况下买方会希望看到经过深思熟虑的OSS管理政策。

了解正在使用何种OSS及其来源、使用的地方以及确保你的项目遵从其OSS授权条例，这可以让你在完成OSS审计的过程中防止销售被推迟（游戏邦注：或者防止买家对项目失去兴趣）。

5、正确的顾问和人脉

在项目早期便构建良好的合作关系，在合适的时机使用这些专业人士。

不要低估选择错误的顾问对交易产生的影响。这或许不一定会使此次交易失败，但是寻找那些有经验的人会让整个原本可能充满摩擦的过程变得更加简单。

结语

在成立公司的兴奋期内，许多法律事务很自然都会被忽视。暂停片刻，考虑你的公司是否会出现上述这些问题是很有必要的做法。

马上解决问题而不是等到收购谈判进行过程中才解决，这会帮助你节省成本，使得交易更流畅地进行。

游戏邦注：本文发稿于2010年10月19日，所涉时间、事件和数据均以此为准。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

5 (AVOIDABLE) LEGAL MISTAKES MADE BY GAMES COMPANIES

Andy Moseby

In every transaction, there are two sides. A seller wants to maximise the price on an acquisition. The buyer – from a legal point of view anyway – wants to protect the value of business it’s buying.

Due diligence – the laborious exercise of providing all financial information, corporate history and commercial arrangements to a buyer – is key to this. But it’s also a way in which the purchaser can chip away at the price. If skeletons lurk in the closet, you can guarantee that a thorough due diligence process will drag them out into the open, and suddenly the luxury yacht in the Caribbean has to be scaled back to a dinghy in Margate.

Many of the issues revealed during the due diligence process are understandable. They come from a time when the company was starting out or focussing on generating income rather than spending money on legal niceties. But time and again, the same things crop up, and they have a habit of slowing the acquisition process down, leading to extra costs and pulling management away from running the business, or resulting in the sellers receiving less than they anticipated.

Here is my short guide of the five most common legal pitfalls. For anyone who has already fallen into these traps: don’t worry – far better to identify and fix them now, than trying to do it in the midst of a sale under the watchful gaze of a buyer.

1. Tax and Structuring

There are many different reasons to look at clever financial structures for your intellectual property. There may be attractive industry-specific tax breaks. You may be able to off-shore your intellectual property in a country with a low tax rate on IP income or attractive R&D incentives.

If you are going to pursue this strategy, not only should you carefully assess the commercial reasons for doing so, but you should also make sure the tax breaks apply to what you’re developing.

It sounds like common sense, but control of IP can be key. In an industry where IP is frequently licensed in or owned by publishers not studios, developers need to fully understand the parameters of tax credits, especially as many tax incentive regimes have only recently been established (and their application criteria barely tested).

Even where IP portfolios have been successfully established off-shore, mistakes can easily be made. We have seen cases where deals have collapsed or been severely delayed simply because the developers have failed to put in place licences to the on-shore group businesses exploiting that IP.

To put that simply, they didn’t have the right to use their own intellectual property.

These decisions go to the heart of how your business will ultimately be structured (and how attractive it can seem to a buyer), and can be extremely difficult to unwind at a later date.

2. Giving Shares to Founders or Early Contributors

Let’s say you set up an independent developer. A couple of fabulously talented creatives have just left large publishing houses and want to join. You don’t have a huge amount of cash – and neither do they – so you issue them a bunch of shares for nothing. To incentivise them further, you put in place a vesting mechanic whereby the number of shares they retain if they leave the business increases over time to reflect their valuable contribution to the business.

This all makes commercial sense, but can lead to a significant tax headache.

Under established, but not particularly well-understood, legislation, HMRC will treat the shares as if they were paid in place of salary. They will look to tax the shareholders under the income tax regime at the time the shares are issued. When any restrictions attaching to those shares fall away (for example, each time the vesting mechanic operates) there is a further income tax charge, even though the shareholder won’t have received any financial benefit of the shares at that point.

So whenever a director or an employee receives shares in your company, they may have a hefty income tax bill to pay.

It gets worse. If a shareholder sells his shares, HMRC swoops again. If he is a higher-rate tax payer, he could be paying 50% tax on part of what he receives for his shares rather than the lower capital gains charge.

Not only that, but the company will be primarily liable for any income tax charge through PAYE and will also have to pay National Insurance contributions.

Issuing shares by way of certain tax efficient share option schemes, such as an Enterprise Management Incentive (EMI) scheme, can help, as can entering into what is known as a section 431 election. These allow any gain to be charged under the capital gain regime (provided any income tax charge on any undervalue is paid up front). This should be done within 14 days of issuing the shares, but if this hasn’t happened it is worth speaking to your advisers. Elections can sometimes be entered into later if share restrictions can be removed.

3. Establishing Ownership and Use of Key IP

A buyer wants to know that a company owns its key assets. It will be keen to see that proprietary technology, know-how and branding is adequately protected and able to be exploited by the company.

It will also want to see that all those working on your IP have effectively assigned ownership over to the company. Whilst this happens automatically for employees (provided they created the technology or code during their course of employment) it will need to be expressly provided for in any agreement entered into with consultants, contractors or freelancers.

Similarly, if you are reliant on any third party IP, such as a game engine or middleware, what happens if the company providing it goes bust or terminates the licence? Make sure your key contracts allow you access to the relevant code on insolvency, and be able show any buyer you have a back-up plan.

4. Open Source Software

Even five years ago, if a large corporate buyer came across a target business using a significant amount of open source software, alarm bells would ring, and a whole raft of indemnities and warranties would be added to the purchase agreement.

Despite the fact that key legal concepts surrounding “copyleft” and what constitutes a derivative work still haven’t been decided with any degree of certainty, these days buyers take a more pragmatic approach. Sensible use of OSS is applauded, but ideally a buyer would want to see a considered OSS governance policy.

Knowing what OSS you are using, where it comes from, where it is being used and ensuring that your business complies with its OSS licence obligations can prevent a sale being put on hold (or a buyer losing interest) whilst you are effectively forced to complete a full OSS audit.

5. Surround Yourself with the Right Network of Advisors and Contacts

Look to build good working relationships early, but recognise when it might be time to call in the specialists.

Don’t underestimate the effect appointing the wrong advisers can have on a transaction. Okay, so it won’t necessarily kill the deal, but ask anyone who has been through the process and has had to explain to advisers at every meeting how their business works, who has been unable to speak to the partner they met at the start of the deal and been passed around a series of juniors, or who has had a nasty surprise when the bill arrives: it can turn a buoyant exit into a stamina-sapping war of attrition.

Conclusion

In the excitement of setting up a business, many legal issues naturally get overlooked. It is worth stopping for a moment and considering whether any of these mistakes have been made in your business.

Fixing the issue now, rather than waiting until the middle of an acquisition discussion can save costs and help the deal run smoothly. (Source: Game Brief)