Technology Insights
Analysis and practical guides on technology.
150 articles, checklists, and guides on technology law, written by the attorneys at MC Law. Every piece is general information, not legal advice—for a specific matter, contact the firm.
Mobile App Launch Legal Checklist: A Practical Checklist
You finished building the app—now the legal work begins, and most of it should happen before the launch party. This checklist walks the founder, in-house lawyer, and curious layperson through everything between "feature complete" and "live in the store," roughly in the order the risks bite: a liability-shield entity, signed IP assignments from every contractor, surviving Apple's and Google's developer agreements in a post-Epic v. Apple world, enforceable EULA/terms via conspicuous clickwrap, a privacy policy that matches the store labels, the auto-renewal/ROSCA subscription minefield, ADA/WCAG accessibility, COPPA for kids' data, advertising truthfulness, open-source license compliance, and export/encryption rules. Each phase pairs checkboxes with the WHY and the traps, plus common mistakes, primary authority, and related mclaw.io resources. The law here is fast-moving in 2026; treat this as a sophisticated map, not a substitute for counsel.
Consumer Health Data Outside HIPAA: My Health My Data, the FTC, and the Apps That Know Too Much
Most people assume HIPAA protects their period tracker, glucose app, and online pharmacy intake form, and most of the time it does not. This article explains where HIPAA actually stops and what takes over: section 5 of the FTC Act, the FTC's amended Health Breach Notification Rule, Washington's My Health My Data Act and its private right of action, Nevada and Connecticut's parallel laws, California's Confidentiality of Medical Information Act, and Illinois's genetic privacy statute. It walks through what physically happens when an app's software development kit or a website's pixel sends an event to an ad platform, because the technology decides most of the legal questions. It reads the leading cases closely, including the 2026 appellate decisions in Rand v. Eyemart Express, Santoro v. Tower Health, and J.M. v. Illuminate Education, and the Flo Health litigation that ended in a jury verdict against Meta. It covers reproductive health and location data after the vacatur of the HIPAA reproductive rule, and it states plainly what remains unsettled as of November 2026.
Technology Project Dispute Toolkit: Notice of Breach Letters, Cure Plans, and Project Record Protocols
This toolkit provides ten working templates for customers and vendors in a troubled or failed software implementation, from the go-live reservation of rights through the final settlement and transition agreement. Each template states its purpose, owner, and timing, uses bracketed placeholders, and is followed by drafting commentary tied to the governing authority, including material breach and cure doctrine, UCC acceptance and adequate assurance, Rule 37(e) preservation duties, copyright assignment requirements, Rule 408, and the case law on limitation-of-liability carve-outs. The templates include a change order log, a notice of material breach and demand for cure, a vendor response, a cure plan, a project record protocol and litigation hold notice, a termination notice with transition demand, a tolling and standstill agreement, a damages model outline, and a settlement and transition agreement. A running example involving an outdoor retailer and its order management integrator shows how the documents fit together. An index table at the top lets the reader go directly to the template needed.
Unmasking Anonymous Online Speakers: John Doe Subpoenas, the Dendrite and Cahill Tests, and the First Amendment
When a defamatory review, a leaked document, or an infringing upload comes from an anonymous account, the route to the person behind it runs through a subpoena to a platform or internet provider, and courts will not enforce that subpoena until the plaintiff clears a First Amendment threshold. This article explains where the right to speak anonymously comes from, from Talley and McIntyre to Reno v. ACLU, and how courts turned it into the tests that govern unmasking: Seescandy, Dendrite, Cahill, Highfields, the Sony Music factors adopted in Arista Records, and the Ninth Circuit's instruction in In re Anonymous Online Speakers that the nature of the speech should drive the standard. It surveys how state appellate courts and federal circuits have chosen among those tests, what the mass BitTorrent cases did to early discovery, joinder, and personal jurisdiction, and how the Stored Communications Act, the Cable Act, Section 230, and the DMCA subpoena provision limit what a platform can hand over. It then covers procedure and timing, the statute of limitations and relation back problem, the evidence a prima facie showing requires, the anti-SLAPP overlay, and strategy for the plaintiff, the anonymous speaker, and the platform. A worked example follows a restaurant targeted by a fake review campaign from complaint to identification, and the article closes with common mistakes, an FAQ, and practical takeaways.
Social Media Account Toolkit: Ownership Policies, Platform Complaints, and Demand Letters
This toolkit collects the documents a business, its counsel, and the people on the other side need for social media account ownership, impersonation, and handle disputes. Each template states its purpose, its owner, and when to use it, followed by the template with bracketed placeholders and drafting commentary tied to the governing authority. The prevention templates are an account inventory and ownership register, a social media account ownership policy, account clauses for employment, agency, and influencer agreements, and a credential handover protocol with a departure certification. The response templates are an ownership evidence memo, demand letters to a former employee and to an agency, platform impersonation and trademark complaints, a customer scam warning, and a narrow proposed order for credential return. For the other side, there is a response letter for an employee or creator who receives a demand. A running example involving a brewery, its former social media manager, its old agency, and an impersonating account ties the templates together.
Recovering or Defending a Social Media Account or Handle: A Practical Guide
This guide walks a business, a creator, or their lawyer through recovering a social media account or handle in the four situations that cause most disputes (a hacked account, an account held by a former employee or agency, an impersonating account, and a squatted handle), plus a suspension by the platform itself. It begins with the decision points that set the strategy: what kind of problem it is, who can prove ownership, what the client actually needs, and which channel will move fastest. Ten numbered steps then cover evidence capture, securing the accounts that remain, platform recovery and law enforcement for hacks, demand letters and injunctions against insiders, agency disputes, impersonation reports and lawsuits, squatted handles, and suspension appeals. A separate step addresses the other side: the employee, creator, agency, or parody account accused of holding or misusing an account. A timeline and cost table, a worked example running through each step, common mistakes, an FAQ, and practical takeaways close the guide.
Ransomware Readiness and Response Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist turns ransomware readiness and response into specific, assignable tasks, each tied to the governing authority. The readiness phases cover governance and the incident response plan, technical resilience and backups, insurance terms that decide whether a ransom and its related costs are covered, pre-arranged counsel and vendor relationships, and a regulatory map built before it is needed. The response phases cover the first twenty-four hours, investigation and law enforcement contact, the short-clock regulatory reports, negotiation and sanctions screening, the payment decision, execution of a decision to pay or not to pay, breach notification, and litigation and post-incident work. Red-flag boxes mark the points where responses most often fail, and a deadlines table collects the clocks in one place. A short worked example involving a North Carolina county and a list of common failure points close the checklist.
Reducing Video Privacy Protection Act Risk on a Website or App: A Practical Guide
This guide walks a publisher, retailer, fitness company, e-learning business, or nonprofit through reducing exposure under the Video Privacy Protection Act, in the order the work should actually happen. It covers a two-hour triage, a video inventory, a network-level pixel audit run by counsel and an engineer, audience and forum mapping, and the choice among removing tags, stripping data, gathering consent, or accepting risk. It gives sample consent language tied to the statute, vendor terms, retention rules, and arbitration trade-offs. It explains what to do on the day a demand letter arrives, including why deleting a pixel without preserving evidence is a mistake. A separate section gives the plaintiff's view: how a claim is evaluated, documented, and pleaded. Worked examples, a timeline, and a list of common mistakes make it usable on Monday morning.
Website Accessibility Remediation Checklist: A Practical Checklist
Website accessibility litigation is high-volume, low-value, and highly repeatable, which means the cheapest defense is a documented remediation program rather than a settlement. This checklist works through legal exposure first, because the answer differs by circuit and by whether the business has a physical location, then moves to the technical work: an audit combining automated scanning with manual keyboard and screen reader testing, prioritized remediation of the defects that actually block users, and the governance that keeps a remediated site from regressing. Separate phases address mobile apps, PDFs and third-party content, overlay widgets and why they are not a defense, procurement language for new vendors, and what to do in the first week after a demand letter arrives. The through-line is documentation: an audit, a prioritized plan, and dated records are worth more in defending a claim than any single technical fix.
Website and Mobile App Accessibility Under the ADA: WCAG, Litigation Risk, and Remediation
Thousands of federal lawsuits are filed every year alleging that a website or mobile app is inaccessible to people with disabilities, and the vast majority settle quickly because the legal question is unsettled while the technical question usually is not. This article explains the state of the law and, more usefully, what to actually do about it. It covers whether and when a website is covered by Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the circuit split over whether a physical place of public accommodation is required and the nexus test that governs in the Ninth Circuit after Robles v. Dominos Pizza, the Department of Justice's 2024 rule adopting a technical standard for state and local government websites and what it signals for private entities, and the state law overlay that supplies statutory damages where the federal statute does not. It then turns to engineering: what the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines actually require, the small number of defects that generate most complaints, why automated scanners catch only a fraction of them, and why accessibility overlay widgets have become a liability rather than a solution. It closes with a remediation program, a demand-letter response playbook, a worked example, an FAQ, and related reading.
Data Breach and Incident Response Toolkit: From Detection to Notification
An incident response plan is tested exactly once, under conditions where nobody has time to read it. This toolkit is built for that moment and for the preparation that makes it survivable. It starts with what must exist before an incident, because the decisions that determine cost are made in advance: the plan, the retainers, the insurance, and the logging that makes an investigation possible. It then works through the first hours, containment and evidence preservation, the privileged forensic investigation and the case law that governs whether the report stays privileged, the legal analysis that determines whether notification is required in each jurisdiction, and the notification mechanics themselves. Later stages cover ransomware and its sanctions problem, business email compromise, vendor breaches where the data is yours and the incident is not, regulatory response, litigation that follows, and the post-incident work that reduces the next one.
Minors Online Compliance Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist turns the law on minors online into tasks a product, security, and legal team can assign and date. It moves through feature inventory, coverage tests, injunction status, the redesign, exclude, block, or verify decision, method selection, data handling, parental consent, minors' feature defaults, COPPA, app store signals, public statements, and enforcement readiness. Each task names its authority, with notes on where courts have split or a provision is enjoined. Red flags mark the facts most likely to produce an enforcement action or a lawsuit. It is meant to be printed, marked up, and kept with the applicability memo.