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0 pointsClumsyPilot3y ago0 comments

> But maybe a better moral would be that shell corporations (& lawyers playing shell games with them) should be outlawed.

Shell companies have done more damage to the world than most tyrants ever could - enabling tax evasion, escaping responsibility for substandard construction (you close the company after completing contruction of a house) or for decommissioning toxic assets like exhausted mines or oil rigs. They are uaed to obscure land ownership.

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kasey_junk3y ago

Most of those aren’t shell companies by the common definition of a shell company.

Usually people talking about shell companies are referring to companies with no business interests at all or if they are bring expansive only contracts/ip agreements. A construction company is doing actual business. Land owned in a corporation has an actual asset etc.

Most startups start as shell companies, you sort of can’t create a corporation without being one for some amount of time.

So I’m ok with the idea of corporate ownership reform but I think you’d need to get more specific than “shell companies == bad”

bell-cot3y ago

IANAL, and was not proposing specific legislation. I used "shell company" in colloquial sense - a token / minimal / empty legal organization, used by lawyers & their ilk for what most honest & reasonable non-lawyers would see as duplicitous or malicious purposes.

kasey_junk3y ago

The corporations in this case a) hold assets and b) provide liability limits. That is the basis of all corporations.

So we’d need to get specific about which practice is duplicitous. Is it the treatment of IP as an asset? The transferability of patents ? Limited liability of patent defense?

I am no expert in any of those things but I bet there is value in each and bad unintended consequences of each.

If I described to a lay person that there was a hacker website frequented by lots and lots of people with an active forum community, you’d likely get at least some of them to suggest banning it…

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newaccount743y ago

Anonymous companies are bad.

I think you could fix a lot of the issues by requiring that all companies must be recorded in a public registry that includes contact information, owner and executive names, as well as a list of actual physical locations where the company operates (if any -- online businesses don't need to have a physical location).

kasey_junk3y ago

You’d need a federal level legislation to achieve that (and perhaps a constitutional amendment).

The states decide the information requirements in their jurisdictions and many have vested interests in not changing them (particularly Delaware where this case is).

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kasey_junk3y ago

Most of those aren’t shell companies by the common definition of a shell company.

Most startups start as shell companies, you sort of can’t create a corporation without being one for some amount of time.

So I’m ok with the idea of corporate ownership reform but I think you’d need to get more specific than “shell companies == bad”

bell-cot3y ago

kasey_junk3y ago

The corporations in this case a) hold assets and b) provide liability limits. That is the basis of all corporations.

So we’d need to get specific about which practice is duplicitous. Is it the treatment of IP as an asset? The transferability of patents ? Limited liability of patent defense?

I am no expert in any of those things but I bet there is value in each and bad unintended consequences of each.

If I described to a lay person that there was a hacker website frequented by lots and lots of people with an active forum community, you’d likely get at least some of them to suggest banning it…

2 more replies

newaccount743y ago

Anonymous companies are bad.

kasey_junk3y ago

You’d need a federal level legislation to achieve that (and perhaps a constitutional amendment).

The states decide the information requirements in their jurisdictions and many have vested interests in not changing them (particularly Delaware where this case is).

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse