This article is part of a series of book excerpts from The Entrepreneur’s Intellectual Property & Business Handbook, which provides the business, strategy, and legal reference guide for start-ups and small businesses.

 

In the United States there has been the development of a relatively new category of for-profit enterprise that focuses on a public good that occurs directly as a consequence of the company’s operation. Unlike a tax exempt, nonprofit charity which can have no shareholders, the public benefit corporation allows for shareholders and profits, but it also allows management great flexibility in transferring the profits of the enterprise to the charitable purpose identified in the organizational documents of the company.