Jesse Berg

Managing Partner (Los Angeles Office)
1.626.795.0500
tmiller@vestedlaw.com

Jesse Berg is a corporate/securities and commercial attorney with over 20 years of broad based legal experience. His clients benefit from his varied legal experience as an attorney at both large and small law firms, as general counsel of a publicly traded software company and as the co-founder of a number of different companies. He began his career as an associate at Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro (now Pillsbury Winthrop), a large international law firm based in San Francisco where he represented financial institutions, telecommunications companies, energy and technology companies.

He practiced at MBV Law representing start-up companies in the technology and media space. He served as General Counsel to OpenTV Corp, a publicly traded interactive television software company, where he managed a ten person worldwide legal department and was responsible for licensing and services agreements, investment and joint venture agreements, intellectual property, labor and corporate governance. Prior to the formation of his own firm in 2008, he was a founder of a boutique equity advisory company providing outsourced strategic and business development advice to small technology companies as well as a founder of a business brokerage firm.

Jesse represents entrepreneurs and privately held companies in all stages of development. His corporate expertise includes entity formation for start-ups, equity compensation, debt and equity financing, mergers and acquisitions and shareholder matters. He often acts as outside general counsel for private companies, advising them on corporate compliance, board and management issues, investor relations and strategic business matters. In this capacity, he will frequently handle all commercial transactions for these companies, including software license agreements, consulting agreements, software-as-service agreements, purchase and sale agreements and website terms of use.

Read some of Jesse’s Insights Here.

To succeed, a business must have a well understood, overall strategy as well as strategies for particular aspects of the business. Examples of such strategies include intellectual property strategy, product development strategy, and market strategy.

In the context of intellectual property strategy, businesses far too often invest time and money in a hodge-podge fashion. As a result, the return on their investment can be less than optimal. A proper intellectual property strategy maximizes the potential return.

A first stage in devising a proper intellectual property strategy includes a comprehensive audit of the business’ existing intellectual property. A second stage includes understanding the competition and their intellectual property. Once this information has been gathered, risks and opportunities can be analyzed and a proper strategy can be decided upon. This strategy should include implementation of a long-term mechanism for capturing and protecting intellectual property going forward.

The intellectual property audit and understanding of competitor’s intellectual property also informs the product development strategy. This information is essential to help ensure that any new product is protected and also that the new product does not infringe on someone else’s intellectual property.

Finally, a market strategy will be driven at least in part by the product development strategy. In addition, intellectual property in the form of trademarks and goodwill should be part of the market strategy.

Vested is well positioned to help you with these essential aspects of your overall business strategy.

Admitted

Admitted to practice in California

Education

Jesse holds a B.A. magna cum laude from the University of California at Berkeley where he was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. He obtained his J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley (Boalt Hall) where he was a member of the California Law Review.

Industries

Jesse has experience in following industries:

  • New media

  • Emerging Technology and software

  • Digital publishing

  • Private equity and venture capital

  • Education Technology

  • E-commerce

  • Online gaming

Representative Transactions

   Private Offerings

  • Represented a leading digital publishing software provider in the raising of over $5 million of convertible notes and preferred equity.

  • Represented an online catalog aggregator in raising over $5 million in multiple rounds of preferred equity offerings.

  • Represented a brewery in the Sierra foothills in the raising of equity capital.

  • Represented a cold pressed juice company with the sale of convertible notes and then preferred equity.

  • Represented an electric truck company in the sale of convertible notes and preferred equity.

  • Represented a data storage company in the offering of over $5 million in convertible notes.

  • Represented various private equity groups and angel investors with investments in technology companies.

    Mergers and Acquisitions

  • Represented an online video subscription service for crafters in the sale of its assets to Demand Media.

  • Represented a casual gaming company in its sale to News Corp.

  • Represented a virtual currency company in its sale to Live Gamer.

  • Represented an online catalog aggregator in its sale to Coupons.com.

  • Represented an organic fruit company in its sale to Albert’s Organics.

  • Represented an online ticketing company in numerous acquisitions.

  • Represented a provider of online local deals to EYC, Ltd.

  • Represented a public relations firm in its sale to Daniel J. Edelman, Inc.

    Technology

  • Represented an online ticketing company in all of its commercial transactions with customers and venues.

  • Represented a publicly traded hard drive manufacturer in the development of its template agreements.

  • Represented a genetics counseling service in its clinical development agreements.

  • Represented a software company in the construction industry with all of their online agreements.

  • Represented an education technology company in its software-as-service agreements.

  • Represented a digital publishing company in all of its agreements with authors and print publishers.

  • Represented an online advertising agency in its agreements with customers.

  • Represented an online clothing company with its supplier and distributions agreements.