Legal knowledge: this is what businesses both small and medium sized should master in order to scale locally, let alone internationally. However, in order to do that, the processes related to laws should be ones that they take into account on a daily basis, rather than just a set of rules imposed by the legal system that they need to study a few times to get out of their mind the very process they have to follow in case they face any litigation. This is because they need to both lower failure risk and prepare for scaling by knowing which laws are applicable in the markets they target, and learn why and how said laws operate.

Now, if we take the theme of this article into account, we can think about stalking laws – in particular we are going to focus on how Colorado’s stalking laws work. In this sense, once you click on the sentence “Stalking Laws in Colorado”, you will be able to navigate the transcription of the post which will help you grasp a basic understanding of how this type of laws operate in Colorado.

So let’s start by providing you with a glimpse of what stalking means, as for Colorado’s stalking laws. This provides us with an insight of what problems SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) could face if they lacked basic legal knowledge: they could take advantage of their inability to interpret the legal system and provide protection to those who they harass; they could falsely accuse those who they don’t like of harassment; and maybe even worse, they could misuse the opportunity given by the legal system to violate human beings’ basic rights.

So let’s explain how Colorado’s stalking laws work, as from the post written by Lawyerdeliver: “Under Colorado law, law enforcement authorities can prosecute a person for stalking if the person, knowingly: Following or spying on another person; Keeping surveillance upon another person; Entering onto or remaining on property occupied by another person; Contacting another person by any form of communication, or visiting the “dwelling” or workplace of another person, including by e-mail and other electronic messages; A single course of conduct consisting of more than one incident evidencing either of the above; That under circumstances one would believe would cause a reasonable person seriously to alarm, annoy, etc., another person; With the intent to stalk another person, or cause another person to suffer serious emotional distress; And where there is no legitimate purpose for such behavior.”

Therefore, it is very clear that SMEs need to master legal knowledge to be able to avoid the unpleasant consequences of stalking and all other crimes described in the post. However, the majority of SMEs find almost impossible to spend time and energy dealing with those issues in practice. Then, the question is: what can they do in order to avoid going through said situations?

Well, as you might be well aware by this stage, knowledge is the key for SMEs to be able to master their processes and improve them together with their legal systems. Therefore, they should understand that they need to grasp at least the following: there are different laws applicable in the US, and while the federal ones might apply to the internationalization steps they are thinking of taking, they should also take into consideration the state laws applicable in an individual US state.

Another issue that SMEs could ponder on is how laws interact with company values. For example, the reason that comprehensive stalking laws in Colorado exist is because a group of people – or individuals – in Colorado thought that other people should not feel threatened by others who have the intent to harm them. Therefore, the US is founded on the basis of values that protect its citizens from any sort of psychological or physical harm, and these values are what have built up to make the human rights system progress in all dimensions.

Indeed, this is a main driving force behind the system and it’s what allows the US to impact other countries around the globe from a regulatory perspective. As a consequence, Regulation is indeed one of the best tools that different types of legislation should utilize in order to make the world a better place.

If you need help to understand what laws are applicable in the US, please visit the Up4Scale platform.