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TKA Law Firm

We put Wall Street knowledge to work for you.® Fractional general counsel for companies scaling toward investment, partnership, and exit. Attorney advertising.

Business transactions and IP. TKA Law Firm is a business transactions and intellectual property practice serving companies as they scale toward investment, partnership, and exit. The firm operates as fractional general counsel, sized to the company, handling the contracts, intellectual property, and day-to-day legal questions that keep a business moving. The work is preventive and transactional: structuring deals, negotiating commercial agreements, and protecting brands upstream of the problem. Core areas include mergers and acquisitions, venture capital financing, commercial contracts, entity structuring and governance, and trademark and brand protection. Founder Shakera Thompson brings Big Law experience trained on Wall Street transactions to companies that want that caliber of judgment without a full-time legal department. This page is for general information and does not constitute legal advice or create an attorney-client relationship. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes.

10/20/2026

Existing investors often offer to fund a year-end bridge round. When their partners also serve on the board, how the round is offered can matter as much as its price.

Pattern A: The bridge is open only to the investors whose directors approve it. It can close quickly, but the approving directors are effectively deciding on their own investment, and a fair price may not resolve that conflict.

Pattern B: The same terms are offered to every stockholder on a pro rata basis. It can take longer, but every holder has the same opportunity to invest. It still does not fix terms that may favor the insiders.

When time permits, Pattern B may be the stronger option. For either structure, the company should give attention to the approval path before the term sheet is signed.

General information only, not legal advice.

10/13/2026

An updated name or logo cannot automatically count the years the earlier version was used.

A modest redesign can leave a trademark essentially the same in the eyes of customers. A more significant change can create a different trademark, even if the company considers it part of the same brand.

That difference can determine whether the updated version may rely on those earlier years or needs protection as a new trademark.

The decision matters when the updated brand becomes part of a licensing deal, partnership, or potential sale of the company.

TKA Law Firm provides fractional general counsel for companies evaluating how name and logo changes affect existing trademark rights.

General information only, not legal advice.

10/06/2026

A known problem before signing can reduce a business’s value without ending the deal.

If the buyer still wants to close, an indemnity is not automatically a substitute for changing the purchase price. The agreement may cover certain losses while still excluding recovery for the drop in business value.

That means the buyer could keep the original price and later find that the indemnity cannot make up the value it knowingly left in the deal.

Before signing, the buyer needs to decide whether the remedy can actually carry that economic loss. If it cannot, the purchase price may need to change.

TKA Law Firm provides fractional general counsel for companies evaluating acquisition price, indemnity, and damages terms before signing.

General information only, not legal advice.

09/29/2026

A trademark consent can help with registration, but the company may have to accept limits on how it uses the name.

That can be a good trade if the limits are narrow and unlikely to matter. It can be a bad trade if the company is giving up products, markets, or brand extensions it may realistically want later.

In that case, changing the trademark now may preserve more options than keeping a restricted trademark and building more value into it.

TKA Law Firm provides fractional general counsel for companies weighing whether to accept those limits or change the trademark before signing a consent or coexistence agreement.

General information only, not legal advice.

09/22/2026

Two companies can both help create IP without every resulting asset needing a 50/50 ownership split.

Pattern A: The collaboration agreement treats all jointly developed IP as jointly owned. That is simple and even-handed on paper, but it can force the same ownership structure onto assets with different legal needs.

Pattern B: The parties decide which rights truly need shared ownership and which should remain consolidated, while still giving both sides meaningful rights that reflect what each contributed.

The difference becomes important when the same 50/50 ownership structure that looks fair across the collaboration makes a particular asset harder to use or protect. Shared brands and proprietary know-how are two places where that issue can matter.

TKA Law Firm provides fractional general counsel on collaboration, licensing, trademark, and trade-secret matters where IP ownership is part of the underlying business deal.

General information only, not legal advice.

09/15/2026

Collecting public information and creating nonpublic output from it are not necessarily treated the same for trade-secret protection.

A product might organize public information so the information is easier to find. Or it might apply a nonpublic method, combination, or analysis that produces relationships, forecasts, market signals, exposure calculations, or other output not contained in the public information.

The collection effort or a “proprietary” label does not by itself turn public facts into a trade secret. A commercially valuable nonpublic method, combination, or analysis that is sufficiently distinct from the public information used to create it may support trade-secret protection.

For companies licensing data products or valuing those products in a transaction, that distinction can affect what the company is actually commercializing and what rights the deal should address.

TKA Law Firm provides fractional general counsel on data-product, IP, licensing, and strategic commercial matters where the commercial value may be in a nonpublic analytical layer built on public inputs.

General information only, not legal advice.

09/14/2026

Founder and Principal Attorney Shakera Thompson will teach a CLE titled “Mergers and Acquisitions: Anatomy of a Deal from LOI to Closing” on September 18.

The course covers the private-company M&A process from the letter of intent through due diligence, the purchase agreement, disclosure schedules, and closing, with a focus on how each stage fits into the larger transaction.

09/08/2026

A customer agreement can warn that AI-generated responses may be inaccurate or unreliable. That addresses one kind of problem: the software gives “bad” output.

A different problem exists when the product itself takes the next step. It sends a message, changes a setting, or triggers a workflow, and the action is wrong.

Last week, the question was who the agreement could fairly treat as choosing the action. Once the software itself performs it, the next question is what kind of contractual failure occurred.

If the problem is bad output, the disclaimer may apply. If the service itself performed incorrectly, a performance obligation or warranty may apply instead. If the software performed what the customer directed or expressly approved, or the customer used the product outside the agreed scope, the agreement may instead place responsibility on the customer.

That distinction can affect which protection or remedy is available under the agreement.

TKA Law Firm provides fractional general counsel to companies assessing AI-enabled customer agreements as products move from generating responses to performing actions.

General information only, not legal advice.

09/01/2026

A customer can ask an AI system to achieve an outcome without choosing every act the system takes to get there.

That distinction can matter when a customer agreement makes the customer responsible for its “instructions.” If the product chooses intermediate steps and then takes an external action without the customer choosing each intermediate step, the fact that the customer started the task may not answer who selected the conduct that matters.

The legal judgment is who the agreement can fairly treat as choosing that act, based on what the customer directed, what the product decided, and what conduct came from provider performance.

TKA Law Firm provides fractional general counsel to companies negotiating AI-enabled commercial agreements where automated discretion is part of product performance.

General information only, not legal advice.

08/28/2026

Best Lawyers recognitions are based on peer review, which gives this announcement particular meaning for TKA Law Firm.

Founder and Principal Attorney Shakera Thompson has been recognized in the 2027 edition of Best Lawyers: Ones to Watch® in America for Intellectual Property Law. We are pleased to see her work recognized again by fellow members of the profession.

Congratulations to Shakera and the other attorneys recognized this year.

Address

244 Fifth Avenue, Suite E128 (by Appointment Only)
New York, NY
10001

Opening Hours

Monday	9am - 6pm
Tuesday	9am - 6pm
Wednesday	9am - 6pm
Thursday	9am - 6pm
Friday	9am - 6pm

Website

http://www.tkalawfirm.com/

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Send a message to TKA Law Firm:

The Law Offices of Richard M. Kenny
363 7th Avenue 16th Floor

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