Legal insights
Analysis from the front lines of IP & technology law.
Our attorneys write about the developments shaping intellectual property—from the PTAB and the Federal Circuit to the practical realities of protecting fast-moving technology.
Preparing and Filing a Provisional Patent Application: A Practical Guide
This guide walks an inventor, a startup, or the lawyer advising them through a provisional patent application from the first conversation to the conversion deadline twelve months later. It begins with the decisions to make before drafting: whether to patent at all, whether a provisional is the right vehicle, and what event sets the real deadline. The numbered steps cover controlling disclosures, securing ownership and identifying inventors, running an invention capture session, drafting a specification and figures that will support later claims, optional claims, entity status and fees, the cover sheet, filing through Patent Center, the foreign filing license, and the year of follow-up work that ends in a nonprovisional, PCT, or deliberate lapse. A separate step shows a challenger how to audit a provisional priority claim. A timeline and cost table, an extended worked example involving a marine robotics startup, common mistakes, an FAQ, and takeaways close the guide.
Trademark Registration Guide
This is the practical, step-by-step playbook for filing a federal trademark application at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. It walks you through pre-filing clearance, the spectrum of distinctiveness, choosing your goods and services using the USPTO ID Manual and the international Nice classification, the difference between TEAS Plus and TEAS Standard, the 2025 fee restructure, and the drawing and specimen rules that trip up more applicants than anything else. It explains how to pick a filing basis, what happens inside the examination pipeline, how to answer an examining attorney's Office Action under the post-2022 three-month deadline regime, how publication and opposition work, and how to keep a registration alive for the rest of its life through Sections 8, 15, and 9. Worked examples, primary citations, and plain-English definitions appear throughout so a first-time founder, a seasoned paralegal, and a judge can all follow along. Read it as the how-to companion to our broader lifecycle and basics articles.
Chapter 7 Liquidation and Creditors' Rights: Claims, Exemptions, and the Discharge
Chapter 7 is a liquidation, and understanding it means keeping two very different proceedings straight: an individual case, which is mostly about the discharge, and a business case, where there is no discharge and the entire exercise is about collecting and distributing assets. This article covers both from the perspectives that matter—the debtor deciding whether to file, and the creditor deciding what to do about a filing that just landed. It works through the estate and the automatic stay, what the trustee actually does, how claims are filed and paid in priority order, the exemption system and its state-by-state variation, and the categories of debt that survive a discharge along with the deadlines for challenging them. It closes with the alternatives to filing at all, which are frequently better for a small business than a bankruptcy case nobody will fund.
Hearsay and Business Records at Trial: Rule 803(6), Self-Authentication, and Getting Documents Into Evidence
This article explains why a genuine invoice, ledger, email, or system log can still be excluded at trial, and how each one gets in. It covers what hearsay is and is not, opposing party statements, the five elements of Rule 803(6), records prepared for litigation under Palmer v. Hoffman, and third-party data adopted into a company's files. It then turns to self-authentication under Rule 902(11), (13), and (14), the line between computer-stored and machine-generated records, and the unsettled treatment of AI output. Readers also get the 2024 changes to Rule 1006 and new Rule 107, the proposed changes to Rule 104, the summary judgment standard in Rule 56(c)(2), and the Confrontation Clause limits in criminal cases. Worked hypotheticals show how the analysis runs on real-looking exhibits.
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.
HIPAA Security Rule Risk Analysis Checklist: A Practical Checklist
The risk analysis is the foundational requirement of the HIPAA Security Rule and the single most frequently cited failure in Office for Civil Rights enforcement, and the reason is almost always scope rather than effort. Organizations analyze the electronic health record and omit the imaging system, the research database, the billing vendor, the shared drives, and the laptops. This checklist runs an enterprise-wide analysis in the sequence the regulation contemplates: build a complete inventory of every system and location where electronic protected health information lives, identify the threats and vulnerabilities to each, assess the safeguards actually in place, determine likelihood and impact, and document the result. Later phases cover risk management, the addressable specifications that must be either implemented or justified in writing, and the review cycle that keeps the analysis current.
Types of Lawyers: A Field Guide to Legal Specialties (and How to Hire the Right One)
The American legal profession is enormous and deeply specialized, and the lawyer who is perfect for one problem may be the wrong choice for another. This guide is a friendly, plain-English tour of the major practice areas—personal injury, criminal defense, family law, estate planning and probate, business and corporate, intellectual property, employment, immigration, real estate, bankruptcy, tax, civil litigation, and more—explaining what each kind of lawyer actually does, the kinds of problems that send people to their door, the law that runs underneath the work, and a relatable example for each. It then turns practical: how to choose and vet a lawyer, how the major fee structures (hourly, contingency, flat fee, retainer, and the growing family of hybrids and alternative fee arrangements) really work and what they cost, and how to read an engagement letter before you sign. Throughout, it links to deeper mclaw.io resources on specific topics so you can keep reading where your problem lives. The aim is to leave you confident about what kind of help you need and how to find the right person to provide it.
Product Liability for Manufacturers, Distributors, and Sellers
Any business that makes, imports, distributes, or sells a physical product can be sued when that product hurts someone, and the claim usually does not require proof that anyone was careless. This article explains the three theories that carry product cases and the three defect categories courts recognize. It covers strict liability's origins in Greenman and section 402A, the manufacturing defect claim that is essentially self-proving, the design defect claim and the divide between the consumer expectations and risk-utility tests, and the failure-to-warn claim that generates most modern litigation. It then works through the parallel negligence and warranty theories, why the warranty claim survives when the tort claim is barred, and the disclaimers and limitations that do and do not work under the Uniform Commercial Code and the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. A long section covers the defenses that actually decide cases: federal preemption after Riegel and Wyeth, the state of the art and compliance defenses, misuse and alteration, comparative fault, the learned intermediary and sophisticated user doctrines, statutes of repose, and the sealed container statutes that protect innocent retailers. It closes with compliance and recall obligations, insurance, contractual risk allocation up and down the supply chain, a worked example, checklists, an FAQ, and related reading.
Alcohol Beverage Law: The Three-Tier System, Licensing, and Direct-to-Consumer Shipping
Alcohol is the only consumer product whose regulation is written into the Constitution, and the Twenty-first Amendment's grant of authority to the states produced a body of law unlike any other. A producer answers to a federal agency for permits, labels, formulas, and excise tax, and to fifty state regulators for licensing, distribution, pricing, promotion, and shipping. This article explains the three-tier system and the tied-house rules that enforce it, what the TTB actually requires before a product can be sold, how state franchise statutes make terminating a distributor far harder than the contract suggests, where direct-to-consumer shipping is permitted after Granholm and Tennessee Wine, and how the contract production and private label arrangements common in craft beverage actually need to be structured. It also addresses the transactional side, where licenses generally cannot be transferred as assets and distributor rights survive a change of ownership.
The Copyright Claims Board: Small Claims Copyright Litigation Under the CASE Act
The Copyright Claims Board is a three-officer tribunal inside the U.S. Copyright Office that decides copyright disputes worth up to $30,000 without the cost of federal court, but only if the respondent does not opt out within 60 days of service. This article explains the CASE Act framework in 17 U.S.C. sections 1501 to 1511 and the Board's regulations: the claims the Board can hear, the damages caps, the registration rule, the opt-out, the smaller claims track, discovery and evidence, defaults, bad-faith penalties, and the narrow review available in district court. It analyzes the constitutional logic of a consent-based tribunal, the leading cases that shape Board practice, how the Board handles conflicting circuit law, and what a determination is worth once issued. It reviews what the Board's own statistics show about its first years, including how many claims fail compliance review, how many respondents opt out, and how few proceedings reach a contested determination. It closes with strategy for claimants and respondents, common mistakes, a worked example of a photographer's claim from filing through determination, an FAQ, and practical takeaways.
Arbitration Evidence Toolkit: Redfern Schedules, Witness Statement Templates, and Expert Protocols
This toolkit collects the working papers for evidence in an international arbitration, each introduced by its purpose, its owner, and when to use it, and each followed by drafting commentary tied to the IBA Rules on the Taking of Evidence (2020), the institutional rules, and U.S. law where a U.S. seat makes it relevant. It begins with model evidence provisions for Procedural Order No. 1, including a most-favored-nation privilege clause and data protection and cybersecurity terms. Document production templates include a Redfern schedule with model entries, a bank of request language, a bank of objection language, and an arbitral privilege log. Witness and expert templates include a witness statement, an expert instruction letter, an expert joint meeting and joint statement protocol, a witness conferencing protocol, and a remote testimony protocol. An adverse inference application outline and a request for an arbitral summons under Section 7 of the Federal Arbitration Act complete the set, followed by a running example, takeaways, and related documents.
Proving or Defending Against Trade Secret Damages: A Practical Guide
This guide walks both sides of a trade secret case through the damages and remedies fight in the order it actually happens, from the first week after a departure or a demand letter through judgment, appeal, and collection. It explains, step by step, how to triage the remedy theory, preserve the financial and development evidence, seek or resist emergency relief and set the bond, plead and disclose damages so the theory survives Rule 37, take damages discovery, retain experts and build a head start and damages model, test the opinions through depositions, Daubert motions, and summary judgment, value the case for settlement, try the numbers with a verdict form that prevents double counting, and win or limit the equitable phase, exemplary damages, and fees. Each step identifies the decision points, the filings, the deadlines under the Federal Rules, and the moves available to the trade secret owner and to the accused employee or competitor. It draws on the Defend Trade Secrets Act, the Uniform Trade Secrets Act and key state variations, and decisions including Syntel v. TriZetto, Epic v. Tata, Motorola v. Hytera, CardiAQ v. Neovasc, Mallet v. Lacayo, and O2 Micro v. Monolithic Power. It closes with cost and fee realities, common mistakes, an extended worked example with real numbers, an FAQ, and practical takeaways.