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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.
Neighbor Dispute Toolkit: Demand Letters, Surveys, Nuisance Logs, and Boundary Agreements
This toolkit contains the documents that resolve neighbor disputes, ordered by when you will need them and annotated with the outcome each one produces. It opens with the friendly confirming email that turns a conversation into a record, then the first written notice and the escalation letter that follows it. It includes the written revocable license—one paragraph that defeats adverse possession and prescriptive easement—a nuisance and noise log built to satisfy ordinance elements, a survey scope request that specifies what to order and what to refuse, an arborist engagement letter, a tree damage demand citing timber trespass multipliers, a hazardous tree notice, a drainage demand built around an engineer's report, a code enforcement complaint, and the three recorded agreements that end disputes permanently.
Medical Malpractice Case Evaluation Checklist: A Practical Checklist
A screening and workup checklist for a potential medical malpractice claim. It opens with the intake questions that sort most calls in ten minutes and the three dates that must be calendared on day one including the statute of repose that can bar a claim before it is discovered. It then runs the two minute check for a federally deemed clinic that changes the court and the deadline entirely, the itemized complete records request including the electronic audit trail that is never produced unless named, the chronology built from objective sources, the merit review that answers breach and causation separately, the economic analysis against the state damages cap, the pre suit requirements that run inside the limitations period, discovery priorities, damages proof, and lien resolution before any settlement is recommended.
Higher Education Toolkit: Records Requests, Hearing Preparation, and Appeals
This toolkit supplies the letters and worksheets a student needs in a college conduct or Title IX proceeding, ordered by when the decisions arise. It opens with the criminal exposure inquiry that must precede any substantive response and an opening request that obtains the eleven pieces of information the institution has and the student does not. It provides a procedure mapping worksheet that builds the strongest available theory at any institution, an education records request, challenges to interim measures and requests for supportive measures, and a contemporaneous procedural objection that preserves appeal grounds. It includes an investigation submission, an element-by-element analysis, a hearing statement, a sanction impact worksheet covering transcript notations and financial aid and immigration consequences, an appeal letter built around enumerated grounds, and complaints to the Office for Civil Rights and the accreditor.
Ransomware Response Toolkit: Decision Memos, Sanctions Screening Records, and Notification Templates
This toolkit collects the working papers a company and its counsel need after a ransomware attack, each introduced by its purpose, owner, and timing and followed by drafting commentary tied to the governing authority. It begins with a deadline map and a negotiator instruction letter, then provides a payment decision memo, a sanctions screening record designed around OFAC's strict liability rule and its 2021 ransomware advisory, and a law enforcement contact log. Insurance and investigation templates include an insurer notice and consent request and a counsel-directed forensic engagement letter structured to protect the report. Regulator templates cover CIRCIA incident and payment reports, NYDFS 72-hour, 24-hour, and 30-day submissions, a HIPAA individual notice and HHS summary, and a state attorney general cover letter. The toolkit closes with a customer notice, an employee communications script, and a board briefing outline, all illustrated by a running example involving a public logistics company.
Default Judgment Toolkit: Entry Requests, Damages Declarations, and Motions to Vacate
This toolkit collects fourteen working templates for federal default practice, for plaintiffs seeking a default judgment and defendants trying to undo one. Plaintiff templates cover a pre-default notice letter, the request for entry of default and its declaration, the non-military status declaration, the clerk's-judgment affidavit of sum certain, a Rule 55(b)(2) motion outline, a business-witness damages declaration, a fee and cost declaration, and a proposed judgment. Defendant templates cover motions to set aside an entry of default under Rule 55(c) and to vacate a default judgment under Rule 60(b)(1), (4), and (6), with circumstances and meritorious-defense declarations. Shared templates include a stipulation to set aside the default with a proposed order, an opposition outline, and a deadline tracker. Each template states its purpose, owner, and timing, uses bracketed placeholders, and closes with drafting commentary tied to the governing rules and cases, all illustrated by one running fictional case.
College Conduct and Title IX Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist runs a college conduct or Title IX matter from the notice through the appeal, in the order the decisions must be made. It leads with the criminal exposure question that must be answered before anything is written, and the advisor of choice provision that both parties routinely fail to use. It sets out the documents to obtain, including the handbook version in effect on the date of the alleged conduct, and the procedure mapping that supports the strongest available theory at any institution. It covers interim and supportive measures, the investigation, element-by-element hearing preparation, and the four strategies that should not be combined. It closes with sanction negotiation and the collateral consequences that outlast it—transcript notations, financial aid, immigration status, and licensure disclosure.
Bringing a Medical Malpractice Case: A Practical Guide
This guide runs a potential malpractice claim from the first phone call through resolution. It covers the intake questions that identify a case in ten minutes, the complete records request including the electronic audit trail that almost nobody asks for, building the minute by minute chronology from objective sources, obtaining a merit review that separates breach from causation, the state specific pre suit requirements that take months and cannot be compressed, the economic analysis that determines whether a case can be brought at all under damages caps, the deemed federal clinic check that changes the court and the deadline entirely, discovery and expert work, and resolution including lien resolution and structured settlements.
Prior Art Under the America Invents Act: Section 102, the On-Sale Bar, Public Use, and the One-Year Grace Period
Prior art is everything the world already knew before you filed, and under the America Invents Act it is defined by 35 U.S.C. § 102 as patents, printed publications, public uses, sales, and anything else available to the public anywhere before the effective filing date, plus earlier-filed U.S. applications by other inventors. This article explains each category with the cases that give it content, including the public accessibility test for printed publications, the Pfaff two-part test and the Helsinn rule that secret sales still count, the experimental use negation, and the narrow one-year grace period that protects an inventor's own disclosures but not much else. It covers the pre-AIA regime that still governs older patents, the earlier-filed application rules under section 102(d), how a reference must enable and inherently or expressly disclose every claim element to anticipate, and how the clear-and-convincing burden and the forum (district court, IPR, or PGR) change what art can be used. It then gives strategy for inventors who want to avoid creating their own prior art and for challengers who want to find and prove it, with a worked example of a hardware startup that demonstrated its product at a trade show fourteen months before filing.
Neighbor Dispute and Boundary Problem Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist runs a neighbor dispute from the first conversation to the recorded agreement that ends it. It sets out the three questions to answer before acting, how to document a recurring problem so enforcement agencies will act on it, and what a boundary survey must include to be useful. It covers the tree rules that people most often get expensively wrong, the fence and drainage obligations that vary by state, and the free enforcement machinery that resolves most disputes without a lawyer. It ends with the documents that end things permanently—the written license that defeats adverse possession, the recorded boundary line agreement, and the maintenance agreement that most easements omit.
Utility Dispute Toolkit: Medical Certificates, Payment Agreements, and Commission Complaints
This toolkit contains the letters and worksheets that keep utility service on and correct bills that are wrong, ordered by urgency. It opens with a disconnection notice audit worksheet that identifies the procedural failures behind most improper shutoffs, then a medical certificate request and a provider letter template that a doctor's office can complete in an afternoon. It provides a payment agreement proposal, a notice that an assistance application is pending, and a letter requesting the three programs utilities almost never volunteer. It includes a written bill dispute drafted to activate the protection against disconnection, an account history and meter test request, a back billing challenge, a leak adjustment request, a deposit refund demand, an informal commission complaint, a municipal utility appeal, a landlord shutoff letter, and a submetering calculation request.
Trademark Fair Use Toolkit: Nominative Use Guidelines, Comparative Advertising Clearance, and Defense Briefing
This toolkit collects the working documents of a trademark fair use practice, each introduced by its purpose, owner, and timing and followed by drafting commentary tied to the controlling cases. For marketing and legal teams it supplies nominative use guidelines with an approved-phrasing chart, a reference-use review form, a descriptive copy worksheet, a comparative advertising clearance memo, a model comparison chart, and model disclaimers. For disputes it provides a parody and expressive-use risk memo built around Jack Daniel's Properties v. VIP Products, a response to a cease-and-desist letter, answer language for the fair use defenses, dispositive motion outlines for both sides, an evidence matrix, targeted discovery requests, and a survey and expert planning brief. The commentary reflects the Ninth Circuit's August 2026 decision vacating the Bad Spaniels tarnishment injunction and the post-2023 cases on use as a mark, including Vans v. MSCHF and Punchbowl v. AJ Press. Every template is meant to be adapted to the controlling circuit and the facts, and the toolkit points to the companion article, guide, and checklist for the doctrine.
Resolving a Dispute with Your Neighbor: A Practical Guide
This guide is about the sequence—what to do first, second, and third when something a neighbor is doing has become a problem, and why skipping steps costs money and goodwill. It covers the conversation that resolves most disputes and how to have it, the written notice that resolves many of the rest and what it must contain, and the documentation that makes everything afterward possible: dated photographs, a log with times and durations, a survey, an arborist's report. It then walks the free enforcement machinery most people never use—code enforcement, animal control, noise enforcement, zoning, and the HOA—followed by community mediation, and finally the choice between small claims for money and superior court for an order. It closes with the agreements that end disputes permanently: the written license, the boundary line agreement, and the recorded maintenance agreement.