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.
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explains how to register the right components the right way: auditing ownership, classifying content as published or unpublished, registering crown-jewel content individually, batching the rest through the group options (GRTX, GRUW, group photographs), registering the software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.
Litigation Sanctions and Professional Responsibility Toolkit
Sanctions in civil litigation come from four distinct sources that reach different conduct, carry different standards, and are lost in different ways—and conflating them is why most sanctions motions fail before anyone reaches the merits. This toolkit separates them, sets out the procedure each requires, and then addresses the professional responsibility obligations that operate alongside and independently: candor to the tribunal, the duty to disclose adverse controlling authority, conflicts, confidentiality, and supervision. It closes with the practices that prevent exposure entirely, including the citation verification discipline that recent enforcement has made unavoidable, and the steps to take when a motion arrives. It closes with citation verification and the generative AI problem, now the fastest-growing category of sanctions in federal court.
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.
Responsive Pleading Toolkit: Answer Templates, Affirmative Defense Libraries, and Counterclaim Outlines
This toolkit collects annotated templates for the defendant's first pleading in federal court and for the plaintiff's response to it. It begins with an intake and deadline worksheet, an allegation-by-allegation response chart, a model federal answer, and a bank of response language for admissions, partial denials, lack-of-knowledge statements, documents, legal conclusions, capacity, and conditions precedent. Two affirmative defense libraries follow, one for general and commercial cases and one for patent, copyright, and trademark cases, each pairing model language with notes on when the defense is proper and what facts it needs. Counterclaim tools cover the compulsory counterclaim screen, declaratory judgment, trademark cancellation, contract and setoff claims, crossclaims, third-party complaints, the Rule 7.1 disclosure statement, and the jury demand. The toolkit closes with plaintiff-side tools (an admissions inventory, a deficient-answer letter, and a motion to strike outline), a motion for leave to amend, a Rule 12(c) motion outline, an FAQ, and practical takeaways.
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.
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.
Wills, Trusts, and Estate Planning Basics
Estate planning is not about death taxes, which affect a very small number of families, and it is not only for the wealthy. It is about who decides for you when you cannot, who receives what you own, how much of it is consumed by process, and whether the people you leave behind spend a year in court. This article explains the core documents and what each one actually does. It covers intestacy and why the state's default plan rarely matches anyone's intent, wills and their formalities, probate and what it costs, and the revocable living trust including the funding step that people skip and that makes the trust useless when they do. It explains the incapacity documents that matter more often than the death documents, the beneficiary designations and titling that override the will entirely, and guardianship nominations for minor children. A second half addresses the federal estate and gift tax framework, the step-up in basis, portability, lifetime gifting, irrevocable trusts and when they make sense, retirement account rules after the SECURE Act, digital assets, and business succession. It closes with a document checklist, a worked example, an FAQ, and related reading.
Summary Judgment Motion Checklist: A Practical Checklist
Summary judgment is decided on a record and on compliance with a local rule, and most motions are lost on the second of those. This checklist covers the whole sequence: deciding whether to move at all, building the record during discovery, drafting the statement of undisputed facts that carries the motion, handling evidence and objections under the post-2010 framework, and preserving the ruling for appeal. It gives separate phases to the moving and opposing sides, because the failure modes differ, and it flags the two Supreme Court decisions that determine what survives a denial. Used during discovery rather than after it, the checklist doubles as a plan for the evidence the motion will need.
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.
Expert Witnesses After the 2023 Amendment to Rule 702: Daubert, Disclosure, and Cross-Examination
On December 1, 2023, Federal Rule of Evidence 702 was amended to correct what the Advisory Committee described as widespread misapplication by courts. Many decisions had held that questions about an expert's application of a methodology go to weight rather than admissibility, effectively surrendering the gatekeeping role the Supreme Court assigned in Daubert. The amended rule makes two things explicit: the proponent must demonstrate by a preponderance of the evidence that each admissibility requirement is met, and the expert's opinion must reflect a reliable application of the methodology to the facts of the case. This article explains what changed and what did not, works through the Daubert trilogy and the reliability factors courts actually use, and covers the disclosure machinery of Rule 26(a)(2) including the difference between retained and non-retained experts and the work product protections added in 2010. It addresses the practicalities that decide expert fights: report drafting, deposition strategy, motions to exclude and their timing relative to summary judgment, the special problems of damages experts and apportionment, and cross-examination technique. It closes with checklists, a worked example, an FAQ, and related reading.
Understanding Equitable Defenses—A Comprehensive Guide to Laches, Acquiescence, Waiver, and Equitable Estoppel
Equitable defenses can defeat or limit an otherwise valid legal claim not by disputing the merits but by pointing to the claimant's own delay, conduct, or representations. This article defines and distinguishes the four core equitable defenses—laches (unreasonable delay plus prejudice), acquiescence (active conduct signaling a claim will not be pursued), waiver (intentional relinquishment of a known right), and equitable estoppel (misleading conduct plus detrimental reliance)—and explains how each differs from a statute of limitations. It gives particular attention to the sharp curtailment of laches as a damages bar after Petrella v. MGM (2014) and SCA Hygiene v. First Quality (2017), and to where laches still does real work—above all in trademark, where the Lanham Act has no limitations period and doctrines like progressive encroachment and inevitable confusion shape the outcome. The article also treats the related unclean-hands and assignor-estoppel doctrines and the practical mechanics of pleading equitable defenses under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(c). Worked hypotheticals spanning patent, trademark, copyright, contract, insurance, corporate, and real-property practice illustrate each doctrine for judges, practitioners, and non-lawyers alike.