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.
Contract Interpretation and Ambiguity Review Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist works in two directions. For a drafter it runs the consistency and ambiguity review that catches the defects introduced in the last negotiation rounds, clause by clause, with the specific formulations that cause trouble flagged. For a litigator it runs the interpretation analysis in the order that decides cases: the forum's threshold rule on extrinsic evidence, the strongest textual argument, the course of performance record that is admissible everywhere, the parol evidence analysis, and only then the canons. A final section covers whether interpretation is the right frame at all.
Open Source Software: Licenses, Compliance, and Risk
Open source software now sits inside almost every codebase on earth, which means almost every company is a party to dozens of license contracts it has never read. This guide explains what "open source" actually means under the Open Source Initiative's ten-point definition, walks the license taxonomy from permissive MIT/BSD/Apache through weak-copyleft and the famously "viral" GPL family, and unpacks the hardest questions in the field: what counts as a "derivative work" that triggers copyleft, and when two licenses can lawfully be combined. It covers the landmark enforceability ruling in Jacobsen v. Katzer, the contract-theory turn in SFC v. Vizio, the Neo4j fight over adding restrictions to an open license, the SCO-Linux saga, and the modern compliance toolkit built around software bills of materials (SBOMs). It then maps the live controversies reshaping the field in 2026: the relicensing wave (MongoDB's SSPL, HashiCorp's BUSL, Redis, Elastic), the "open core" business model, and the collision of open source with generative AI trained on public code. The aim is a single, readable reference a general counsel, a developer, and a curious layperson can all follow.
Finding, Qualifying, and Using Prior Art: A Practical Guide
Finding prior art is only the first third of the job; the reference must also qualify under 35 U.S.C. § 102 and be proved with admissible, corroborated evidence before it can invalidate anything. This guide walks the process step by step: fixing the claims and their effective filing dates, planning and running searches across patent databases, non-patent literature, archived web pages, and products, and investigating the patent owner's own sales and demonstrations. It then explains how to qualify each candidate by category, date, public accessibility, content, and the § 102(b) exceptions, how to authenticate and corroborate it, and how to chart it for anticipation or obviousness. The final steps cover deploying the art in prosecution (IDS practice, Rule 130 declarations, third-party submissions, reexamination) and in litigation and PTAB proceedings, with timelines, costs, and the patent owner's counterattacks. A worked example follows a defendant who finds an old competitor's product manual on archive.org and turns it into an invalidity case.
Utility Service: Shutoffs, Billing Disputes, and Assistance Programs
Utility service is a regulated monopoly relationship, which means the customer has rights that do not exist in ordinary commerce—including, in most states, a right to notice before disconnection, a right to dispute a bill and keep the service on while the dispute is pending, and a right to a payment arrangement rather than a shutoff. This article explains the disconnection process and the protections that interrupt it: weather moratoria, medical certificates, protections for households with infants or elderly members, and the deferred payment agreements a utility generally must offer. It covers billing disputes, meter tests, estimated readings, and back billing, and the assistance programs that go substantially unclaimed—energy assistance, weatherization, arrearage forgiveness, and telephone and broadband subsidies. It closes with the public utility commission complaint process, which is free, effective, and almost unknown.
Right of Publicity Basics
The right of publicity is the legal right to control the commercial use of your name, image, likeness, voice, and other recognizable parts of your identity. It is almost entirely a creature of state law, so it varies dramatically from one state to the next, and it grew out of privacy law before courts recognized it as a property right in its own right. This article traces the doctrine from Haelan Laboratories and the Supreme Court's only right-of-publicity decision, Zacchini, through the voice and persona cases (Midler v. Ford, Waits v. Frito-Lay, and White v. Samsung), and explains the First Amendment, transformative-use, and copyright-preemption defenses that frequently defeat these claims. It covers who is protected, the registration and "continuing use" hoops some postmortem statutes impose, how the right differs from defamation, false light, trademark, and copyright, the remedies available, and the new wave of AI, voice-cloning, and deepfake legislation, including Tennessee's ELVIS Act and the proposed federal NO FAKES Act. Worked examples and a FAQ make the concepts concrete for celebrities, businesses, and ordinary people alike. The piece is educational and is not a substitute for advice from qualified counsel.
Drafting and Maintaining a Privacy Policy: A Practical Guide
This guide walks a company, its lawyers, and anyone reading a privacy policy against it through the life of the document in the order the work actually happens: scoping the project, deciding which laws apply, building the fact base from a data map, vendor list, network capture, and retention schedule, and making the business decisions the policy will describe. It then covers drafting the full policy, the notices at collection, and the just-in-time notices; designing consent flows, opt-out links, and Global Privacy Control handling that survive the dark-pattern rules; and verifying every sentence against a named source of truth before launch. It explains how to publish, archive, and give notice of changes, when a change requires affirmative express consent under the FTC's Gateway Learning rule, what the formation cases from Douglas and Stover to Schnabel require of a change notice, and how to run the twelve-month update cycle and the annual accuracy audit. It covers what to do when a demand letter, a regulator's investigative demand, or an acquirer's diligence request tests the policy, with strategy for each side. A worked example follows an online retailer through a ten-week rebuild of its policy for a loyalty launch, and the guide closes with special situations, timelines and costs, common mistakes, an FAQ, and practical takeaways.
Oil, Gas, and Mineral Rights Toolkit: Title, Leasing, Royalties, and Disputes
This toolkit supplies the working documents of mineral ownership. It contains an ownership worksheet computing net mineral acres and identifying which of the five mineral sticks are held, a runsheet format, a lease addendum with the clauses worth the most money, a surface use agreement outline, a division order verification worksheet with the decimal calculation, a royalty audit demand, lease termination and release demands, curative documents including affidavits of heirship and ratifications, a forced pooling election analysis, a mineral deed review checklist for offers to purchase, and a family mineral entity structure for holding interests across generations.
School Discipline Response Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist runs a school discipline matter from the phone call to the appeal. It opens with the five things to establish before walking into the meeting, including whether law enforcement has been involved, and the four documents to obtain first. It sets out the removal-day count that changes more outcomes than any other question, the manifestation determination and stay-put protections, and the written evaluation request that can bring an unidentified student within them. It covers the meeting itself with the questions to ask and the documents never to sign, the alternatives to request by name, and the appeal with the grounds that actually win. It closes with expungement, the situations that have their own rules, and the free help available in every state.
Navigating the Paper Trail: A Comprehensive Guide to Federal Civil Litigation Filings
This guide walks through every major filing in a federal civil case in chronological order, from the pre-filing investigation and the complaint through the notice of appeal, using a single running hypothetical so the reader can watch one document lead to the next. It explains the legal standard behind each filing in plain language for laypeople while staying precise enough for judges and practitioners. The article covers pre-suit cease-and-desist and demand letters and the litigation-hold duty, Rule 8 notice pleading and the Twombly/Iqbal plausibility standard, the Rule 10 caption and the Rule 7 line between pleadings and motions, Rule 11's signature-as-certification and its safe-harbor sanctions machinery, Rule 4 service, Rule 12 motions including Rule 12(c) judgment on the pleadings, answers and counterclaims, Rule 65 TROs and preliminary injunctions, the Rule 26(f) conference and Rule 16 scheduling order, ADR and settlement filings, discovery, Rule 56 summary judgment, Daubert and pretrial filings, trial and post-trial motions under Rules 50 and 59, costs, fees and interest, and the mechanics of CM/ECF e-filing, PACER, local rules, deadline computation under Rule 6, and certificates of service. Each section identifies the controlling rule and the strategic purpose the document serves. The article is designed as both a roadmap for first-time litigants and a refresher for experienced counsel, and it closes with an FAQ and links to related firm resources on discovery, depositions, and case evaluation.
Manufactured Home Purchase and Park Tenancy Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist runs a manufactured home from the sales center through the lot lease, the annual routine, and the two events that decide most outcomes—a defect found in the first year and a park closure notice with a purchase window measured in weeks. It covers the itemized price to demand before signing, the data plate to photograph, the loan to shop away from the dealer, and the lot rent history that tells you what you are really buying. It sets out how to read a lot lease against a state park act, the four written questions that expose improper utility charges, the documentation that protects a sale in place, and the eviction responses that keep a homeowner from losing a house over a month's rent.
Clawback Toolkit: 502(d) Orders, Clawback Notices, and Privilege Review Protocols
This toolkit gives litigators working papers they can copy into a real case. It includes a Rule 502(d) order with clause options, a motion for entry over objection, a clawback notice, a sequestration response, and a quarantine stipulation. It also includes a reviewer protocol, a privilege QC worksheet, a generative AI addendum, deposition scripts, a Rule 502(b) declaration outline, and an opposition outline. Each paper states its purpose, owner, and timing, and each is followed by drafting notes tied to reported authority. All bracketed text must be conformed to your case and court.
Genericness, Genericide, and Acquired Distinctiveness: Where Trademark Protection Begins and Ends
Trademark protection has two borders, and most expensive brand disputes are fought on one of them. At the bottom border sits genericness: a term that names the product itself (aspirin, escalator, thermos) belongs to everyone, whether it was born generic or died into genericness through the owner's own neglect, and no registration, however old, can save it. At the upper border sits acquired distinctiveness, the showing under Section 2(f) of the Lanham Act that lets a merely descriptive term, a product shape, a color, or a sound cross into protection because the public has learned to read it as a brand. This article explains the primary significance test, the difference between genericness ab initio and genericide, the Supreme Court's rejection of a per se rule in USPTO v. Booking.com, the Federal Circuit's line from Marvin Ginn through Princeton Vanguard, Cordua, and Royal Crown, and the Teflon and Thermos survey formats and their critiques. It then walks through the Converse factors, the five-year presumption, why sales figures alone rarely prove secondary meaning, the special rules for product configuration and color, and the brand usage disciplines that keep a successful name from becoming a noun. Two worked examples (a software product whose name is becoming a verb, and a furniture maker seeking 2(f) protection for a chair design) show how the doctrine plays out in practice.