Intellectual Property

I own two companies. The one company owns all the intellectual property in a whole lot of training books and material that I’ve developed over the years. Through my other company, I sold some software licenses to a guy who’s a motivational speaker. He wanted to make extra money on the side by selling some of my books at his speaking events, so I added the books onto his order. He paid me for the software but not the books, and now refuses to answer my calls. I want to send him a letter of demand. Which company’s letterhead should I use?  

If the books were sold through your software license company, backed up by the order process and invoicing, then the sale transaction is between your software company and the customer. That is the company that is owed the money and is entitled to institute a legal action against the customer for payment, and therefore the software company should be used to issue the letter of demand.

Technically speaking, your software company would have sourced the books through your other company: this relationship and process don’t concern your customer. If you try to claim the money using your training company your customer could reject the claim on the basis that your training company has no legal standing to do so.