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.
Design Patents v. Utility Patents: Key Differences
Design patents and utility patents are two entirely different legal instruments that happen to share the word "patent." A utility patent protects how an invention works under 35 U.S.C. 101; a design patent protects how an article of manufacture looks under 35 U.S.C. 171. They differ in term, claim structure, examination, cost, the test for infringement, and—dramatically—the damages a winner can recover. This guide walks a judge, a lawyer, and a curious inventor through every key difference, with worked examples, current authority including Egyptian Goddess, Samsung v. Apple, and the 2024 en banc LKQ decision, and practical guidance on when to file one, the other, or both.
Estate Planning for Business Owners: A Practical Guide
A business owner's estate plan has to solve three problems at once, and solving one badly can defeat the others. Control must pass to someone who can run the business. The estate must have liquidity to pay taxes and to equalize among heirs, without selling the business to raise it. And the transfer should be structured to minimize transfer tax while preserving the income tax basis step-up where that matters more. This guide works through each: getting a defensible valuation, structuring and funding a buy-sell agreement including what the Supreme Court's decision in Connelly changed about redemption arrangements, the estate tax framework and the deferral provisions available to closely held businesses, the lifetime transfer techniques that actually move value, how to treat children who work in the business and children who do not, and how to align the entity documents with the estate plan so they do not contradict each other.
Personal Jurisdiction Over Online and Foreign Defendants: From Zippo to Ford Motor
A company in Shenzhen sells 40 units into Illinois through a marketplace. A blogger in Ireland writes something defamatory about a California executive. A German manufacturer sells components to an American assembler who ships finished products everywhere. In each case the threshold question is the same and is genuinely hard: may a United States court exercise power over this defendant. This article explains the modern doctrine of personal jurisdiction as it applies to online and foreign defendants, beginning with the constitutional framework of International Shoe and the sharp separation of general and specific jurisdiction that the Supreme Court has enforced since Goodyear and Daimler. It covers the effects test of Calder as narrowed by Walden, the Zippo sliding scale for websites and why most circuits have moved past it, the express aiming and something more standards that replaced it, the meaning of Ford Motor's holding that a claim may arise out of or relate to forum contacts without strict causation, and Mallory's revival of consent by corporate registration. It then addresses the machinery: state long-arm statutes, the federal long-arm of Rule 4(k)(2), jurisdictional discovery, waiver under Rule 12, and the practicalities of suing defendants abroad. It closes with strategy for plaintiffs and defendants, a worked example, an FAQ, and related reading.
AI-Generated Inventions: Who Owns What the Machine Creates?
Every major patent system to consider the question has now answered the narrow one—an AI system cannot be named as an inventor—but the commercially decisive question of how much human contribution an AI-assisted invention requires is still in motion. This article traces the DABUS litigation across the United States, United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, and beyond; explains the conception and joint-inventorship doctrines that actually decide these cases; and follows the USPTO's sharp pivot from its February 2024 Pannu-factor framework to the November 2025 Revised Inventorship Guidance that recasts AI as an ordinary tool. It then works through the practical machinery—documentation, invention disclosure, workflow design, correction of inventorship, the duty of candor, ownership and assignment, Section 112 disclosure problems, trade-secret alternatives, and foreign-filing audits—and closes with the policy debate and an extended FAQ. Written for R&D-driven businesses, in-house counsel, and patent practitioners. It is general information, not legal advice.
Professional Malpractice: Standards of Care, Expert Proof, and Defenses
Every professional malpractice case has the same four elements and a fifth practical requirement that decides most of them: expert testimony establishing what a reasonably careful practitioner would have done. This article covers the elements as they actually operate across professions, the procedural gatekeeping devices that dispose of claims before discovery, and the defenses that succeed. It works through legal malpractice and its distinctive case-within-a-case causation requirement, medical malpractice with its certificate of merit statutes and damages caps, accounting malpractice and the privity limits on third-party claims, and design professional liability with its economic loss rule problem. It closes with the limitations rules that are more complicated in this area than in any other tort, and with what a professional firm should do the day a mistake is discovered.
Copyright Registration Checklist: A Practical Checklist
Copyright protection attaches automatically the moment an original work is fixed, but registration is what makes the right enforceable: it is the ticket into federal court for U.S. works and the gateway to statutory damages and attorney's fees. This checklist walks a creator or adviser through the entire registration process step by step, from confirming ownership and choosing the right application type to preparing a compliant deposit, completing the electronic application accurately, and timing the filing to preserve maximum remedies. It anchors each step in primary authority, flags the most common errors that draw correspondence or refusals, and explains why accuracy matters after Unicolors v. H&M. Verify current fees and deadlines at copyright.gov before filing.
Trademark Challenges in the Metaverse and Virtual Goods
Virtual worlds, NFTs, and digital fashion have pushed trademark law into territory its nineteenth-century architects never imagined, and the Hermès v. Rothschild "MetaBirkins" litigation has become the defining case study for how the doctrine translates to digital-first commerce. This article maps that doctrinal landscape: what "use in commerce" means when goods exist only as code, how the Supreme Court's Jack Daniel's decision narrowed the Rogers v. Grimaldi expressive-works defense, how likelihood-of-confusion and dilution analysis adapt to avatars and virtual storefronts, and how the Nice Classification and competing trademark offices treat virtual goods and the physical-virtual relatedness question. It is written for brand owners, digital creators, and trademark practitioners who need the governing principles before they reach for tactics. A companion article covers the operational brand-protection playbook. This is not legal advice.
Trademark Dilution Under the TDRA: Blurring, Tarnishment, and What It Means to Be Famous
Dilution is the trademark claim that does not require confusion. It protects a small class of genuinely famous marks against uses that whittle away their distinctiveness or drag their reputation through the mud, even when no consumer is deceived about anything. This article explains the Trademark Dilution Revision Act of 2006, why Congress passed it to overrule the Supreme Court's actual-dilution requirement in Moseley v. V Secret Catalogue, and what a plaintiff must now prove: fame among the general consuming public of the United States, distinctiveness, use in commerce beginning after the mark became famous, and a likelihood of blurring or tarnishment. It works through the six statutory blurring factors with case illustrations, explains the three statutory exclusions and how the Supreme Court narrowed the parody safe harbor in Jack Daniel's v. VIP Products, and covers state antidilution statutes, TTAB dilution claims, remedies, and evidence. It closes with brand-owner and defense strategy, a worked example, an FAQ, and related reading.
Patent Basics and General Information Concerning Patents: A Practical Guide
A patent is a federal grant giving an inventor the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, offering to sell, or importing a claimed invention for a limited time, in exchange for a full public disclosure of how the invention works. This guide is a comprehensive, cited reference on U.S. patent law for inventors, lawyers, founders, and anyone trying to understand how patents actually work. It walks through the constitutional and statutory framework; the three types of patents and their terms; the requirements for patentability (eligible subject matter and utility under Section 101, novelty under Section 102, nonobviousness under Section 103, and the disclosure rules of Section 112); ownership and inventorship; the application and prosecution process before the USPTO through Patent Center; publication, allowance, issuance, and maintenance; correction and post-grant proceedings before the PTAB; and the law of enforcement, defenses, and remedies. It incorporates the America Invents Act's first-inventor-to-file system and current practice, illustrates the doctrine with worked hypotheticals, and closes with topic-organized tables of leading cases and practical takeaways.
Corporate Practice of Medicine and Healthcare Transactions: MSOs, Private Equity, and Fee-Splitting
Most states prohibit a corporation from employing physicians or otherwise controlling the practice of medicine, which means a non-physician investor cannot simply buy a medical practice. The workaround the industry settled on is a two-entity structure: a physician-owned professional corporation that holds the clinical business and the licenses, and a management services organization that provides everything else under a long-term contract paying a management fee. Whether that structure is respected depends on how the documents allocate control and how the fee is calculated, and both are constrained by fee-splitting rules, the federal fraud and abuse statutes, and an increasingly active set of state transaction review laws. This article explains the doctrine, the structure and its pressure points, the regulatory overlay, and the diligence and closing mechanics that healthcare deals require.
Removal Proceedings and Humanitarian Relief: Asylum, Withholding, Cancellation, and CAT
Immigration court is an administrative system inside the Department of Justice where the stakes approach those of a criminal case and the procedural protections do not. This article maps removal proceedings from the notice to appear through federal appellate review, explaining what the government must prove, how detention and bond actually work, and the forms of relief that exist and what each requires. It covers asylum and its deadlines and bars, withholding of removal and protection under the Convention Against Torture, cancellation of removal for permanent residents and non-permanent residents, adjustment of status and waivers, and voluntary departure. It closes with the criminal grounds that determine most outcomes and the review that follows an order.
Insurance Coverage Toolkit: Placing, Tendering, and Litigating Claims
Insurance is the risk-transfer mechanism every business relies on and almost no business reads until it needs to. This toolkit covers the whole arc, because the outcome of a claim is usually determined at placement rather than at tender. It starts with reading a policy in the order that matters and understanding the difference between occurrence and claims-made coverage, then works through the placement decisions that determine what will be covered, the additional insured and indemnity architecture that decides whose policy responds in a construction or vendor relationship, and the notice mechanics that forfeit coverage more often than any exclusion. Later stages cover the tender letter, the duty to defend and the reservation of rights, independent counsel, settlement and consent, allocation among policies and periods, first-party claims and proof of loss, bad faith, and coverage litigation.