Publication date: 21.06.2025
My name is Dmytro Dubograyev, I am the head and managing partner of a law firm
Introduction: Dmitry Dubograev and his law firm provide legal support for technology projects with the aim of both legal entry into the American market and opening branches, production and sales points in selected locations, including his colleagues protecting the intellectual property of US startups and other protection of startups' rights in America. Often, it is necessary not only to represent the interests of startups in the US in court, but to a greater extent and most often, all parties are interested in pre-trial dispute resolution, which saves a lot of effort, money and energy. In the end, the task is to bring the startup and American legislation together.
Task:
The client had a dispute with representatives of a technology company over an expired license and rushed to leave negative reviews about the product on review sites, which damaged the reputation of the IT startup and could have a negative impact on product sales. The dispute was soon settled and the client renewed the license, but refused to remove the reviews. Review sites leave the resolution of such conflicts to the side of the applicants and do not contribute to the resolution in any way according to their Privacy policy. The task was to remove negative reviews about the company.
Solution:
According to clients, "The solution came from the legal side.
When preparing a license agreement, little attention is paid to some points. And in vain, because you never know how this seemingly “passable” point can play out.
It contained a clause on the protection of business reputation, which directly prohibited the parties from distributing knowingly false information about each other. For violating this clause, we could, with full justification, terminate the agreement and revoke the license."
Result:
“It was precisely this point that Dmitri I. Dubograev politely pointed out to the client. The arguments proved convincing, and within a week the reviews were removed, and we saved our nerves and time on dealing with review sites. Happy end.
In conclusion, I would like to draw attention to the risks associated with sites like capterra, sourceforge, and other smaller ones. The privacy policy of these sites directly shifts the responsibility for dealing with such reviews to the companies whose products are posted on this service.
The situation is aggravated by the fact that products are often added to the site automatically, and you may not even know that something unflattering is being written about you. And once you find out, there's little you can do about it, except for extra effort and resources to offset one bad review with a dozen positive ones.
Review sites are becoming increasingly important when choosing which software to buy. So I recommend paying close attention to such risks and developing an approach to working with such sites. For example, we are currently developing a strategy for getting positive reviews so that single bad reviews don't greatly affect the company's digital footprint.”
Reputation risks are some of the most dangerous legal risks for US startups, which must be foreseen and prevented in the legal field. For this, legal support for startups in the USA is simply irreplaceable and, moreover, mandatory. After all, the founders of companies, as well as their projects, often come from completely different countries and are not strong in local legislation. Therefore, the first thing you should do is contact Dmitry and his company, where qualified support for IT startups in the USA will be provided.
