The Articles of Incorporation (sometimes also referred to as the Certificate of Incorporation or the Charter) are the primary rules governing the management of a corporation, and are filed with a state or other regulatory agency.
A corporation's Articles of Incorporation generally provide information such as:
The name of the person organizing the corporation (the Incorporator).
If a business, the number of shares the corporation is authorized to issue.
The names of the corporation's initial Board of Directors (though this is optional in most cases).
The location of the corporation's "registered office" - the location at which legal papers can be served to the corporation if necessary. Some states further require the designation of a Registered Agent: a person to whom such papers could be delivered.
Articles of Incorporation vary widely from corporation to corporation, and from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but generally do not go into great detail about a corporation's operations, which are spelled out in more detail in a company's By-Laws.
Examples
Articles of Incorporation - International Business Machines, Inc. (http://www.ibm.com/investor/corpgovernance/cgcoi.phtml) <-- Articles of Incorporation, IBM.
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