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.
Policy-Limits Demand Toolkit: Demand Letters, Insurer Responses, and Excess Exposure Letters
This toolkit supplies the working papers of a time-limited policy-limits demand, each introduced by its purpose, its owner, and when to use it, and each followed by drafting commentary tied to the governing authority. The claimant's templates are a demand decision worksheet, a limits disclosure request, a time-limited demand letter with California, Georgia, and Florida riders, and a release outline. The insurer's templates are an intake log and acknowledgment, an excess exposure letter to the insured, a request for clarification or extension, an acceptance or limits tender letter, and a written explanation of non-acceptance. Defense counsel and the insured get a report-and-advisory letter and a letter demanding that the insurer settle within limits. Further templates cover a multiple-claimant global settlement invitation with an interpleader decision memo and an outline of an assignment, covenant not to execute, and Coblentz-type agreement. A deadline tracker, an FAQ, and takeaways close the toolkit.
Design Patent Toolkit: A Roadmap for Protecting How a Product Looks
This toolkit is a high-level roadmap and curated research guide for protecting the ornamental appearance of a product through U.S. design patents. It walks the full life cycle—from deciding what a design patent can and cannot protect, through drawings and prosecution, to functionality and obviousness after the Federal Circuit's en banc LKQ decision, the ordinary-observer infringement test of Egyptian Goddess, and the total-profits remedy of 35 U.S.C. § 289 as construed in Samsung v. Apple. At each stage it links the firm's articles and checklists alongside primary statutes, USPTO resources, and controlling cases. It is written for product companies, in-house counsel, founders, and litigators who need to navigate the field, not for a single discrete task. Use it to orient yourself, then drill into the linked deep-dive documents. Verify all fees and deadlines at the official USPTO site before relying on them.
The Federal Estate and Gift Tax: Exemptions, Portability, and Lifetime Transfer Planning
The federal transfer tax system taxes gratuitous transfers of wealth through three related taxes—gift, estate, and generation-skipping transfer—that share a single lifetime exemption and a common rate. Because the exemption is historically large, the system now reaches very few estates directly, which has shifted planning away from tax avoidance toward basis maximization for most families and toward aggressive lifetime transfers for the few still exposed. The mechanics that matter are the unified credit and its scheduled reduction, portability of a deceased spouse's unused exclusion, the marital and charitable deductions, and the generation-skipping tax that operates as a separate and unforgiving overlay. This article covers how the taxes fit together, the deductions and elections that shape most plans, the principal lifetime techniques and their risks, and the compliance obligations that follow a death.
Mastering Document Discovery: A Comprehensive Guide to Objecting and Responding to Requests for Production
Requests for production under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 34 are the workhorse of modern civil discovery, and the quality of a party's objections and responses often determines whether a case is won, settled, or sanctioned. This guide explains the scope of discovery under Rule 26(b)(1) and the transformative 2015 proportionality amendments, the strict response requirements of Rule 34(b)(2) including the duty to state whether documents are being withheld, and the courts' growing hostility to boilerplate objections. It covers electronically stored information in depth—form of production, native versus TIFF, metadata, collaboration tools, ephemeral messaging, and technology-assisted review—as well as privilege logs, waiver and protection under Federal Rule of Evidence 502, and clawback orders. The article also addresses the litigation hold, the meet-and-confer duty, Rule 37 sanctions, spoliation under Rule 37(e), and third-party subpoenas under Rule 45, with worked examples and model objection-and-response language. It is written so that judges, practitioners, and non-lawyers alike can follow the mechanics and the strategy of document discovery.
Trademark Fair Use: Descriptive Use, Nominative Use, and Expressive Works After Jack Daniel's
A trademark gives its owner control over a signal of source, not ownership of words, images, or the right to talk about the brand. This article explains the three doctrines that mark that boundary: classic descriptive fair use under 15 U.S.C. § 1115(b)(4), nominative fair use for truthful references to a mark owner and its products, and the special treatment of expressive works and parody under Rogers v. Grimaldi and the dilution exclusions in § 1125(c)(3). It walks through the leading cases from KP Permanent Make-Up and New Kids on the Block to the Supreme Court's 2023 decision in Jack Daniel's Properties v. VIP Products, which held that Rogers does not apply when the accused use functions as a source identifier for the user's own goods. It then shows how courts have applied that rule in Vans v. MSCHF, Punchbowl v. AJ Press, Hermès v. Rothschild, and the Bad Spaniels remand, and how the circuits still divide on burdens and tests for nominative use. Practical sections cover procedure, evidence, strategy for brand owners and accused users, costs, common mistakes, and worked examples involving a repair shop, a craft brewery parody, and a SaaS comparison chart, followed by an FAQ and takeaways.
Real Estate Development Toolkit
Development is a sequence of options in which the developer buys time to answer questions before committing capital, and the failures are almost always a question answered too late. Title exceptions discovered after closing, an environmental condition found after the innocent landowner defense was lost, an entitlement the site could not obtain, a construction loan that funded before the equity was documented. This toolkit follows a project from site identification through disposition: structuring the acquisition with the diligence period and the deposit at risk, running title and survey and environmental review, obtaining entitlements, assembling the capital stack and the joint venture, financing and building, achieving stabilization, and exiting. Each stage identifies the decision that must be made before the next one begins.
Advertising FAQs: A Guide for Small Business
This is a plain-English, deeply practical FAQ on U.S. advertising law for small businesses, founders, and the lawyers who advise them. It explains the bedrock rule that ads must be truthful, substantiated, and not unfair under Section 5 of the FTC Act, then walks through the doctrines that trip up real companies: the substantiation requirement, express versus implied and monadic versus comparative claims, the FTC's reasonable-consumer and "net impression" tests, the 2023 endorsement and influencer disclosure rules, native advertising, "Made in USA" claims, the Green Guides, deceptive pricing and "free" offers, bait-and-switch, and comparative advertising. It covers the laws that govern how you reach customers, including CAN-SPAM for email, the TCPA for texts and robocalls, the Telemarketing Sales Rule, COPPA for marketing to kids, and the negative-option and "dark patterns" rules for subscriptions. It addresses competitor disputes under Lanham Act Section 43(a) and the role of self-regulation through the National Advertising Division and its Fast-Track SWIFT process. Throughout, it flags where federal law ends and the fifty-state patchwork of consumer-protection statutes begins, and it gives concrete, worked examples a non-lawyer can follow.
Workers Compensation: The Grand Bargain, the Claim, and the Exceptions
Workers compensation is the oldest and largest no-fault system in American law, and almost nobody outside it understands the trade it makes. An injured worker gives up the right to sue the employer and to recover for pain and suffering; in exchange, benefits are paid without proving fault and without the delay of litigation. This article explains the bargain and everything that follows from it: what injuries are covered and the phrases that decide coverage, the benefit categories and how each is calculated, the medical control fights that dominate modern practice, the exceptions that let a worker sue anyway, the third-party claim that is often worth more than the compensation case, and the settlement mechanics. It is written for injured workers, employers, and the lawyers on both sides.
Top-Level Domain Names: An Overview
This article explains what top-level domain names (TLDs) are and where they sit in the Domain Name System hierarchy, then maps the full landscape of generic, country-code, sponsored, and new gTLDs. It describes ICANN's governance role and the new gTLD expansion program, the registry-registrar-registrant chain, and how WHOIS data and the EU's GDPR shape investigations. The article details the trademark rights-protection mechanisms built into the gTLD system—the Trademark Clearinghouse, Sunrise and Claims services, the Uniform Rapid Suspension System, and post-delegation procedures—and compares the two principal anti-cybersquatting remedies, the UDRP and the federal ACPA, 15 U.S.C. 1125(d). It examines the unsettled question of whether a domain is property, analyzes how the USPTO treats TLDs in trademark applications including the Supreme Court's decision in Booking.com, and closes with practical guidance, worked hypotheticals, and an FAQ. It is written for judges, practitioners, and laypeople alike.
Regulation of Cryptocurrency Around the World
Cryptocurrency sits at the crossroads of money, securities, commodities, property, and software law, and the rules differ sharply depending on which token you hold and which border you stand behind. This article explains in plain language what crypto and blockchain are, then maps the fractured U.S. framework: the SEC and the Howey securities test (including the 2023 Ripple ruling and the conflicting Coinbase and Kraken decisions), the CFTC's commodity jurisdiction, FinCEN's anti-money-laundering regime under the Bank Secrecy Act, the patchwork of state money-transmitter laws and the New York BitLicense, and the IRS's treatment of crypto as property. It then surveys the rest of the world, from the EU's comprehensive MiCA regulation to the very different approaches of the UK, Switzerland, Singapore, and Japan, to outright bans in China and elsewhere, plus the rise of stablecoins (and the 2025 federal GENIUS Act) and central bank digital currencies. Because the 2024-2026 U.S. legislative landscape is moving quickly, the article flags what is settled, what is contested, and what is genuinely in flux. Worked hypotheticals translate abstract doctrine into concrete decisions a founder, investor, or compliance officer actually faces. Read it as a map, not as legal advice for any specific transaction.
Corporate Formalities and Veil Protection Checklist: A Practical Checklist
The corporate veil is not created by filing articles of organization; it is maintained by behaving as though the entity is real. This checklist covers what that means in practice, organized around the factors courts actually weigh when deciding whether to hold an owner personally liable. It starts with formation and capitalization, then covers the separateness practices that matter most in litigation: separate bank accounts, documented related-party transactions, signature blocks that disclose the entity, and contracts and leases in the entity's name. Later phases address governance records, state compliance and foreign qualification, the special problems of the single-member LLC, and the obligations that survive dissolution. A final phase covers what to do when a plaintiff has already pleaded alter ego.
Buy-Sell Agreement Drafting Checklist: A Practical Checklist
A buy-sell agreement fails in a small number of predictable ways: a stale price, an appraisal procedure that can deadlock, a chain of options with no mandatory purchaser, and insurance nobody maintained. This checklist is organized to catch each of them at drafting, and to establish the maintenance discipline that keeps the agreement usable years later when it is finally needed. It covers structure, the full range of triggering events, the valuation mechanism and the discount question that generates most of the litigation, funding through insurance and installment notes, the surrounding governance terms, and the entity-specific provisions that differ between corporations, LLCs, and professional practices. It closes with the estate tax and funding questions that determine whether the agreement's price will be respected and whether the money to pay it will actually be there.