contracts-and-business-law

# Contracts and Business Law Commercial law is the infrastructure that makes exchange between strangers possible. Contracts, property rights, consumer-protection rules, and the four intellectual-property regimes together form the legal layer on which businesses operate. This skill is not legal advice — it is a literacy map for non-lawyers, so they can ask their lawyers the right questions and recognize the situations where they need to. **Agent affinity:** mintzberg (institutional context for legal practice), drucker (business and society) **Concept IDs:** bus-contract-formation, bus-property-rights, bus-consumer-protection, bus-intellectual-property ## The Business-Law Toolbox at a Glance | # | Technique | Best for | Key signal | |---|---|---|---| | 1 | Elements of contract formation | Checking whether an agreement is enforceable | A deal is being made without paper | | 2 | Common contract types | Picking the right template | Many similar deals, no consistency | | 3 | Terms to watch | Reviewing a draft | Someone else's lawyer drafted it | | 4 | Property rights | Understanding what can be owned and transferred | Disputed control over an asset | | 5 | Consumer protection | Selling to end customers | Marketing and sales practices carry legal risk | | 6 | Employment basics | Hiring, firing, and compensating | Growing past a handful of employees | | 7 | Patents | Protecting a novel invention | A technical advantage is the core asset | | 8 | Copyrights | Protecting expression...