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.
Building and Managing a Global Patent Portfolio: A Practical Guide
This guide walks through building and running a patent portfolio that spans several countries, from inventory to pruning, in the order the work actually happens. It starts with the asset register almost nobody has, moves to the jurisdiction strategy that should govern every later decision, and then covers invention capture, filing policy and decision gates, the priority year, the PCT phase, and national phase entry. Later steps address managing foreign associates, budgeting annuities that arrive years after anyone remembers approving them, running an annual portfolio review with real pruning authority, and using the portfolio for licensing, diligence, and enforcement. A final step covers integrating an acquired portfolio and surviving a firm transition, which is where most established portfolios lose cases. Each step names who does the work, what it costs, and the specific failure it prevents.
Building a Sustainability Disclosure Program: A Practical Guide
This guide builds a sustainability disclosure program from nothing, in the order the work has to happen. It starts with the obligation map—which regimes actually apply, and what each one demands—then constructs the greenhouse gas inventory that every other deliverable derives from, including the boundary and methodology decisions that are hard to change later. It covers the materiality assessment, the physical and transition risk work, target setting that will survive scrutiny, and the data controls and assurance readiness that turn a spreadsheet into a reportable figure. The last sections cover review, publication, and the annual cycle, including the website sweep and contractual deliverable calendar that most programs omit.
Bringing or Defending a Treaty Claim: A Practical Guide
An investor-state arbitration runs four to six years and costs several million dollars, and the decisions that determine its outcome are made in the first six months. This guide runs the process from both sides. For the claimant it covers the pre-filing assessment, the notice of dispute and the cooling-off period where a meaningful share of cases settle, the treaty analysis, arbitrator selection, and the evidentiary case that must be built from documents the state controls. For the respondent state it covers the jurisdictional objections and bifurcation strategy that end most successful defences, the regulatory framing of the challenged measure, and the quantum attack where the money actually is. It closes with annulment, enforcement, and the funding and insurance options that change the economics.
Bringing or Defending a Qui Tam Case: A Practical Guide
This guide runs a False Claims Act matter from both sides, in the order events actually occur—which for a defendant means beginning before it knows a case exists. It covers recognizing the signals of a sealed qui tam, responding to a civil investigative demand, issuing a hold that reaches the systems where the evidence lives, and running an internal investigation that finds the company's own facts before the government asks about them. It then addresses the two records that decide most cases: the contemporaneous interpretation file that answers scienter after Schutte, and the agency payment history that answers materiality after Escobar. Later steps cover the presentation to the government during the seal, the motion to dismiss, discovery, settlement and its collateral terms, and parallel criminal exposure. Separate steps set out the relator's path and the compliance work that should precede all of it.
Brand Licensing Toolkit: License Terms, Quality Programs, and Audit Rights
This toolkit supplies the working documents of a brand licensing program, from the term sheet to the termination notice. It includes an annotated term sheet, model quality control and approval clauses with the drafting reasoning behind each, a product specification schedule outline, a submission and approval form, and a royalty report template designed so the numbers can actually be checked. It also provides an audit demand letter, a licensee scorecard, a franchise law screening memo, a notice of non-conformity and a termination and sell-off notice, a control file index, and a rider for international licenses. Each item is annotated with the failure it prevents, because most licensing failures are operational rather than legal. Adapt the language; keep the architecture.
BPCIA Patent Exchange Checklist: A Practical Checklist
A working checklist for the BPCIA information exchange and the litigation that follows, organized by the statutory day counts. It covers the applicant's pre-filing estate mapping, process design-around, and exclusivity computation, then the dance decision and each step of the exchange with its deadline and its consequence. Later sections address the immediate action, the 180-day notice, the preliminary injunction that replaces the automatic stay, the confidentiality regime and its gaps, the interchangeability decision, at-risk launch analysis, and settlement structuring. A closing section covers the parallel regulatory, PTAB, manufacturing, and commercial tracks. Every item is written so that a "no" tells you what to do next.
Books-and-Records Toolkit: Demand Letters, Production Protocols, and Confidentiality Orders
This toolkit supplies the operative documents of a books-and-records matter in drafting-ready form, annotated with the failure each provision prevents. For the stockholder it provides a full demand letter with a purpose statement and bounded categories, a stockholder list demand, and a second-request letter seeking electronic communications. For the company it provides a preservation hold notice, a response letter that negotiates rather than refuses, and a completeness statement. A confidentiality and use agreement with an incorporation-by-reference clause, a production protocol, and a privilege log format complete the set. The annotations focus on the handful of terms that determine whether a production is usable and whether a later complaint survives.
Books-and-Records Demands: Section 220, Proper Purpose, and the Documents You Actually Get
A books-and-records demand is the cheapest and most consequential tool a stockholder has, and Delaware has spent two decades calibrating how much it should yield. This article explains what a stockholder must show to obtain inspection, how the "credible basis" standard actually operates, and why the scope fight now matters more than the entitlement fight. It works through the categories of documents courts order produced, the increasingly contested question of when emails and text messages are available, the confidentiality restrictions that accompany production, and the incorporation-by-reference consequence that makes produced documents part of a later complaint. It then covers the defense side, where the strategic question is rarely whether to produce but how much, how fast, and on what terms. Worked examples follow a demand from letter through production and into the derivative complaint it enables.
Books-and-Records Demand Checklist
A books-and-records demand succeeds or fails on details that are easy to get right and easy to overlook. This checklist covers the stockholder's side from standing evidence through category drafting and service, then the company's side from the day-one preservation hold through the honest assessment, the board briefing, and the scope negotiation. Separate sections cover the production itself, including privilege handling and the completeness statement, and the post-production steps for each side. It also covers stockholder list demands and director inspection demands, which run on different rules. A red-flag section identifies the defects that cost weeks.
Board Sale Process Checklist: A Practical Checklist
A working checklist for a board selling the company, sequenced the way a reviewing court will read the record. It begins with the standard of review determination and the conflicts mapping that must happen in week one, then covers committee formation and empowerment, advisor selection and conflicts disclosure, the market check, projections discipline, negotiation, deal protections, and the proxy. A separate section walks the MFW sequence for controller transactions, where an ordering error forfeits the protection entirely. Closing sections address private company adaptations, the documentation file, and a pre-signing sign-off. Every item is written so that a "no" tells you what to do next.
Biosimilar Litigation Toolkit: Disclosure Lists and Preliminary Injunction Briefing
Working templates for BPCIA practice on both sides. It includes a patent estate mapping worksheet, a process design-around record, a dance decision memorandum, a manufacturing process disclosure scope guide, a supplemental confidentiality agreement, a sponsor patent list format, detailed statement outlines for both sides, a list exchange worksheet, a 180-day notice, preliminary injunction and opposition outlines with an irreparable harm evidence plan, an at-risk launch memorandum, a settlement term sheet, and a day-count calendar. Each carries drafting notes on what the document does, what the other side will do with it, and where each side most often fails. A closing day-count calendar ties the statutory deadlines to the parallel regulatory, PTAB, and commercial tracks. Adapt every template to the product, the patent estate, and the regulatory posture.
Biologics and the BPCIA: The Patent Dance, Biosimilar Approval, and Exclusivity
Congress gave biologics their own version of Hatch-Waxman and made almost every part of it different. This article explains the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act: the abbreviated 351(k) pathway, the twelve-year reference product exclusivity, the interchangeability designation, and the elaborate private information exchange known as the patent dance. It covers what the Supreme Court held in Sandoz v. Amgen about whether the dance is enforceable and when the 180-day notice of commercial marketing may be given, why biosimilar makers face patent thickets rather than a short Orange Book list, and how preliminary injunction practice replaced the automatic stay. It closes with the strategic decisions each side makes and why so few of these cases reach judgment.