Intellectual Property Insights
Analysis and practical guides on intellectual property.
446 articles, checklists, and guides on intellectual property law, written by the attorneys at MC Law. Every piece is general information, not legal advice—for a specific matter, contact the firm.
Copyright Timeliness Toolkit: Accrual Chronologies, Tolling Agreements, and Limitations Motions
This toolkit collects the working papers for a copyright timeliness dispute, ready to copy and adapt. It includes an accrual chronology, an act-by-act window worksheet, evidence logs for diligence and repudiation, and a preservation rider for server and monitoring data. It provides a full standstill and tolling agreement with clause options, a repudiation letter, and a first response to an old-use demand. Clause banks cover complaint and answer language, including injury rule preservation. Outlines for Rule 12 and Rule 56 briefing on both sides, discovery requests, jury instructions, a special verdict form, and a damages window schedule complete the set, each with drafting notes tied to authority.
Patent Venue Toolkit: Venue Discovery, Rule 12(b)(3) Motions, and Section 1404 Transfer Papers
This toolkit collects working papers for a patent venue dispute, each with its purpose, owner, timing, and drafting notes tied to authority. It includes a forum decision matrix, a defendant's footprint worksheet, a sample venue allegation bank, venue interrogatories, document requests, requests for admission, and Rule 30(b)(6) topics. It also provides a discovery stipulation, a Rule 12(b)(3) motion outline, an opposition outline, section 1404(a) evidence charts, declaration templates for facilities, personnel, and transfer, a proposed order, and a mandamus petition outline. A short note for human resources and facilities teams addresses how location decisions create venue facts. Bracketed placeholders must be replaced and every factual statement confirmed before filing.
How to Conduct a Comprehensive Trademark Clearance Search
A comprehensive, practitioner-grade guide to trademark clearance—the discipline of confirming a proposed mark is available for use and registration before a brand is built on it. The article moves from the quick knockout search through the full search of state registrations, common-law uses, domains, and social handles, then through likelihood-of-confusion analysis under the DuPont, Sleekcraft, and Polaroid factors, clearing across the 45 international classes, risk categorization, and the proceed/modify/abandon decision. It explains how a documented clearance opinion from counsel functions as a shield against willful-infringement findings, how to address conflicts through consent and coexistence agreements, and how foreign clearance and the Madrid Protocol fit into an expansion strategy. It reflects the USPTO's retirement of TESS in favor of the cloud-based Trademark Search tool and is written for founders, in-house counsel, and trademark practitioners.
Enablement, Written Description, and Indefiniteness After Amgen v. Sanofi: What Section 112 Demands
This article explains what Section 112 of the Patent Act demands of a patent and how the courts have enforced it since the Supreme Court decided Amgen v. Sanofi in 2023. It traces enablement from the telegraph and the light bulb through the Wands factors and Amgen, then reads the Federal Circuit's later decisions, including Baxalta, Seagen, Brita, Wyeth, Satius, and the contested method-of-use ruling in Teva v. Lilly. It covers written description and possession under Ariad and Juno, the reasonable certainty test for indefiniteness under Nautilus, and means-plus-function claiming under Williamson. A former software engineer's explanation shows what actually happens when a software claim recites a result without an algorithm, and how the same logic reaches trained machine learning models. Readers also get the burdens, standards of review, USPTO guidance, and a candid list of what remains unsettled as of November 2026.
Registering a Copyright in a Website: A Practical Checklist
A website is not a single copyrightable thing but a bundle of separate works, text, images, video, sound, and code, each with its own author, owner, and registration path. This checklist explains how to register the right components the right way: auditing ownership, classifying content as published or unpublished, registering crown-jewel content individually, batching the rest through the group options (GRTX, GRUW, group photographs), registering the software separately, and capturing the site arrangement as a compilation or collective work where you fully own everything. It covers the constant-updating problem and the derivative-version rule, deposit format, and the timing that drives statutory damages. Verify current group caps and fees at copyright.gov before filing.
Daubert Challenges to Consumer Survey Experts in Trademark Litigation: A Practical Guide
Consumer surveys are among the most powerful—and most attacked—forms of evidence in trademark litigation, and the motion that decides their fate is the Daubert challenge. This guide explains, in plain language for both lawyers and business owners, how the gatekeeping framework of Daubert, Joiner, Kumho Tire, and Federal Rule of Evidence 702 (as amended in 2023) governs the admissibility of survey, damages, and technical experts. It covers what a valid trademark survey requires, the recurring battle over whether methodological flaws go to weight or admissibility, the most common grounds for excluding or discounting survey testimony, the difference between the Eveready and Squirt survey formats, how courts in the Second Circuit and the Eastern District of New York actually treat these challenges, whether a damages expert can be excluded for failing to apportion, and how Kumho extends the analysis to non-scientific experts. It closes with two worked hypotheticals, a litigation checklist, and an FAQ for both the challenger and the proponent.
General Information Concerning Patents
This is the broad, plain-English overview of the U.S. patent system—what a patent is, the constitutional bargain behind it, and how it differs from copyrights and trademarks. It walks through the three kinds of patents (utility, design, and plant), the four statutory gates every invention must pass (eligibility and usefulness under 35 U.S.C. 101, novelty under 102, non-obviousness under 103, and adequate disclosure under 112), and what can and cannot be patented after Alice and Mayo. It maps the journey of an application from invention disclosure through provisional and nonprovisional filing, examination, allowance, issuance, maintenance fees, and international protection via the Patent Cooperation Treaty. It explains the AIA's first-inventor-to-file rule, patent term and term adjustment, and the post-grant procedures (inter partes and post-grant review) that let the public challenge issued patents. Finally, it explains the rights a patent actually grants, how marking and "patent pending" work, and the basics of enforcement. Think of it as the trailhead: a single map of the whole territory, with links to deeper guides on each leg of the trip.
People-Search Toolkit: Opt-Out Letters, Claim Evaluation Worksheets, and Defense Frameworks
This toolkit gathers working papers for everyone involved in a people-search listing. Individuals get a routing matrix, an evidence capture sheet, opt-out and deletion letters, a safety-based removal request, a Daniel's Law notice, a re-check log, and an FCRA dispute letter. Counsel gets a state-by-state claim evaluation worksheet, a viewership and standing worksheet, and a demand letter skeleton. Operators and sales-intelligence vendors get a funnel audit, a defense framework tied to authority, a terms-of-service clause bank, a notice intake procedure, and a risk control register. Each paper states its purpose, owner, and timing, with drafting notes tied to authority as of 31 October 2026. Bracketed placeholders mark what to fill in.
Copyright Registration of Games
Games occupy one of the strangest crossroads in intellectual property law: the single most valuable thing about a game—its rules, its mechanics, the clever way it makes players think—is the one thing copyright flatly refuses to protect. This guide explains the classic and unyielding rule that game ideas, systems, and methods of play are not copyrightable, traces it from Baker v. Selden through Section 102(b), and walks through what copyright actually does protect: the artwork, the text, the audiovisual displays, the code, and the particular expression an author pours into a game. It covers how to register the many separate components of a board game or video game with the U.S. Copyright Office, including the deposit and identifying-material rules that trip up tabletop publishers, the choice among application types, and the litigation tools—substantial similarity, the abstraction-filtration-comparison test, scènes à faire—that decide cloning disputes. Anchored by the leading "look and feel" decisions in Tetris Holding, LLC v. Xio Interactive, Inc. and Atari v. North American Philips, the guide uses vivid examples from Pac-Man to Tetris to Monopoly to make a notoriously slippery area of law concrete. It explains why developers must reach for trademark, patent, and trade dress to fill the gaps copyright leaves wide open. It is written for game designers, developers, founders, and the lawyers who advise them.
Privacy Policy Drafting and Review Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist turns the law of privacy disclosures into concrete tasks for anyone who drafts, approves, audits, or challenges a privacy policy. It starts with scope and fact-gathering, because a policy can only be checked against the data map, the vendor contracts, a network capture, the retention schedule, and every other public statement the company has made about data. It then works through architecture and placement, collection, use, disclosure and sale, cookies and opt-out signals, consent flows and dark patterns, sensitive and children's data, retention and security, and consumer rights, followed by the California, multistate, and GDPR sections and the sector notices and statutory consents that must live in their own instruments. Later parts cover a line-by-line review of the words that create liability, the policy as a contract, change management and the retroactive-change rule, version control and evidence, and the annual accuracy audit. A reverse-use part shows how plaintiffs, regulators, and acquirers run the same checks, and the checklist closes with common mistakes, an FAQ, and practical takeaways. Each item carries a short note and the governing authority so a reviewer can trace it to its source.
Rebrand Legal Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist turns the legal work of a rebrand into check-off tasks grouped in eleven phases, from scoping the project and inventorying the old brand estate to monitoring the new mark after launch. Each item names the governing statute, rule, or case where one applies and adds a short practical note. The phases cover naming criteria and clearance, conflict resolution, intent-to-use and foreign filings, domains and handles, corporate name changes and counterparty notices, the transition plan and marketing claims review, launch and registration, the legacy mark decision and maintenance filings, and the terms of a settlement-driven rebrand for both the rebranding company and the senior user. Red-flag boxes mark the points where rebrands most often fail. A deadlines table, a short worked example, and a list of common failure points close the checklist.
Federal Trademark Application Checklists: From Preparation to Registration
A definitive, authority-rich checklist collection covering every phase of federal trademark registration—pre-filing clearance and distinctiveness assessment, filing-basis selection (Sections 1(a), 1(b), 44, and 66), goods-and-services identification and Nice classification, specimen preparation, application filing through the USPTO Trademark Center, office-action response, publication and opposition, intent-to-use prosecution, and post-registration maintenance under Sections 8, 9, and 15. It reflects the USPTO's January 18, 2025 fee overhaul (one base application plus surcharges, filed through Trademark Center; cloud-based Trademark Search replacing TESS) and the Trademark Modernization Act of 2020 (expungement and reexamination, flexible three-month response periods). Each checklist is paired with the legal reasoning and primary authority behind it, with worked examples that follow a hypothetical brand from idea to incontestability. Fees change—verify current amounts at USPTO.gov before filing.