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.
Apex Deposition Toolkit: Protective Order Motions, Executive Declarations, and Alternative Discovery Proposals
This toolkit collects the working papers for an apex deposition dispute, each introduced by its purpose, its owner, and when to use it, and each followed by drafting commentary tied to the governing authority. For the party seeking the deposition, it supplies an involvement map, interrogatories directed to the executive's role, a meet-and-confer proposal letter, an opposition built around a unique-knowledge evidence chart, and a time-limited examination outline. For the party resisting, it supplies a notice triage memo, an executive interview outline, an executive declaration, a motion for protective order, and an executive preparation module. Shared templates include an alternative discovery and sequencing stipulation, a deposition limitations order, and a Rule 72(a) objection outline, and a separate template addresses motions and mandamus petitions for high-ranking government officials. All templates use bracketed placeholders and follow one running example, a product liability case in which the plaintiff seeks to depose an appliance maker's chief executive.
Subsidized Housing Application and Hearing Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist runs subsidized housing from the waiting list application through the hearing that saves a tenancy. It covers applying to every list including the shorter project-based ones, claiming preferences with documentation, and requesting the informal review that reverses discretionary denials. It walks the voucher search with the arithmetic to check before signing, then the annual routine of recertification and the reporting obligations that produce most terminations. It closes with the hearing sequence—requesting it within the deadline, demanding documents, auditing the rent calculation line by line, and arriving with a specific proposal—plus the reasonable accommodation requests that change outcomes at every stage.
Pregnancy Discrimination in the Workplace
Pregnancy discrimination law changed more between 2023 and 2025 than in the four decades before it, and this guide brings the whole picture current. It explains the Pregnancy Discrimination Act and its "treat-her-like-everyone-else" command, the Supreme Court's accommodation framework from Young v. UPS, and the landmark Pregnant Workers Fairness Act of 2023 with the EEOC's 2024 final rule that finally created an affirmative duty to accommodate pregnancy, childbirth, and related conditions. It covers the PUMP Act's lactation protections, how the FMLA and ADA fit alongside these statutes, and the patchwork of stronger state laws. Worked hypotheticals show how the doctrines play out for real employers and employees, and a practical walk-through covers the EEOC charge process, remedies, damages caps, and prevention. Written so a judge, an HR director, and a worried expectant employee can all follow it, the guide is current to 2026 and flags where the law is still moving.
Trade Dress Protection Toolkit: From Product Design and Packaging to Registration, Functionality, and Enforcement
This toolkit is a roadmap to protecting the look and feel of a product or its packaging as trade dress. It explains what trade dress is, the crucial distinction between product packaging (which can be inherently distinctive) and product design or configuration (which always requires secondary meaning after Wal-Mart v. Samara), the functionality bar that defeats protection, how to register trade dress at the USPTO, how trade dress compares to and complements design patents, and how to enforce it. At each stage it links mclaw.io articles and checklists alongside the governing Lanham Act provisions and the Supreme Court's foundational trade dress cases. It is written for product companies, brand counsel, and litigators. Verify current USPTO requirements and fees before filing.
Final Arrangements Toolkit: Disposition Directives, Price Comparisons, and Benefit Claims
This toolkit provides the documents that make final arrangements manageable, ordered from the preparation that prevents problems to the responses that fix them. It opens with a disposition directive, a funeral wishes letter, and the one-page kitchen drawer sheet that families actually find in the first hour. It includes a telephone price worksheet built around the two questions that expose a fivefold price spread, a general price list comparison, a script for the arrangement conference with the exact phrases that assert each right, an itemized statement review, and a Funeral Rule complaint letter. It then covers the cemetery fee inquiry, preneed contract questions, veterans benefits claims and a DD-214 request, a death certificate order worksheet, a notification tracker, a credit bureau deceased notice, and an outline for a disposition dispute petition.
Farm and Ranch Legal Toolkit: Leases, Liens, Insurance, and Succession
This toolkit supplies the working documents of a farm operation. It contains cash rent and crop share lease templates with the clauses that decide disputes, a termination notice letter, a farmland purchase diligence worksheet, a water right verification form, the PACA invoice language and the packers and stockyards preservation notice, a lien search protocol, a crop insurance and program deadline calendar, a program eligibility worksheet, a two entity structure model, a pesticide drift incident protocol, agritourism signage requirements, a grain contract review sheet, and a succession family agreement outline.
Lookalike Domain Toolkit: Abuse Reports, Registrar Demands, and UDRP and URS Outlines
This toolkit gives working papers for responding to a lookalike domain, ready to copy and fill in. It includes triage and evidence worksheets, a bank call script, a wire recall letter, and a notice to the beneficiary bank, plus a law enforcement referral outline. It offers abuse reports for registrars, hosts, mail providers, and CDNs, a registrar demand letter, and an ICANN compliance complaint outline. It also has URS and UDRP outlines, a TRO package outline with proposed order language, an in rem outline, and a Doe subpoena rider. Customer, staff, counterparty, and insurer communications follow, along with a loss-allocation worksheet, a defensive registration matrix, contract clauses, and a response for a registrant wrongly reported. Each template states its purpose, owner, and timing, and its drafting notes tie the language to the authority behind it.
Artificial Intelligence and Inventorship: Global Perspectives on Machine Contributions to Innovation
Patent systems around the world now agree that an inventor must be a human being, yet they disagree—sharply, and in ways that change real filings—about how much a person must contribute when an AI system does much of the creative work. This article explains the global state of play in plain language, anchored by the DABUS litigation that forced the question and a realistic mid-spectrum example of a scientist inventing with AI assistance. It covers the United States (including the USPTO's November 2025 rescission of its 2024 guidance and its return to the traditional conception test), the European Patent Office, the United Kingdom, and the major Asian patent offices. It also tackles the twin problem of disclosure—written description and enablement for "black box" inventions—and distinguishes the settled formal rule from the unsettled practical question. Throughout, it maps the spectrum of human involvement and offers concrete documentation, drafting, and cross-border strategies, with worked hypotheticals a judge, a patent lawyer, and a curious founder can all follow.
Trademark Injunction Toolkit: Evidence Declarations, Proposed Orders, and Delay Chronologies
This toolkit collects nineteen working papers for a trademark preliminary injunction fight, ready to copy and adapt. Movants get a clock memo and chronology, brand and harm declarations, test purchase and web capture declarations, and an attorney certificate for a TRO without notice. Opponents get a rebuttal matrix, buying-process and cost declarations, an opposition outline, and an alternative narrow order. Both sides can use the survey decision memo, bond calculator, proposed order, schedule of identifiers, findings skeleton, standstill letter, delay cross outline, and compliance report. Each paper states its purpose, owner, and timing, and ends with drafting notes tied to authority.
Software Transactions: An Overview
Software is bought, sold, rented, built, embedded, and resold in a dizzying variety of deals, and the legal rules that govern them are surprisingly unsettled. This guide maps the whole landscape of software transactions—on-premises licenses, SaaS and cloud subscriptions, custom development agreements, and reseller, VAR, and OEM channel deals—and explains how each is structured and why the differences matter. It tackles the foundational puzzle of which law applies (the UCC Article 2 versus common-law debate and the cautionary tale of UCITA), how clickwrap contracts are formed and enforced, who owns the intellectual property when code is written to order, and how data, privacy, and open-source obligations flow through a deal. Worked hypotheticals walk through the negotiation of indemnities, warranties, liability caps, service levels, and source-code escrow, including the modern cloud-escrow analog. It closes with the merger, acquisition, and asset-transfer problems that catch dealmakers off guard, a section on the disputes that actually arise, an FAQ, and cross-links to deeper companion articles.
Keeping a CDL and Handling a Motor Carrier Violation: A Practical Guide
This guide is built around the decisions that decide whether a commercial driver keeps working. It opens with the citation, because the plea that any other driver would take is prohibited for a CDL holder and taking it anyway is how careers end. It covers the medical certificate whose lapse downgrades a license by operation of law, the annual records review that catches errors while they are fixable, and the driver qualification file the carrier keeps about you. It walks the drug and alcohol testing regime including the clearinghouse and the return-to-duty sequence that must be done in order, then the roadside inspection, the out-of-service order, and the DataQs challenge that removes bad data for free. It closes with the whistleblower and coercion complaints, their short deadlines, and what to examine before signing a lease-purchase.
Deposition Use Toolkit: Designation Charts, Objection Logs, and Impeachment Scripts
This toolkit collects the working documents a trial team needs to turn deposition transcripts into evidence: fourteen annotated templates, each introduced by its purpose, owner, and timing and followed by drafting notes tied to the governing rules and cases. The errata templates cover a worksheet and statement of changes under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 30(e) and a response letter and motion outline for challenging an opponent's errata. The designation templates cover a Rule 32 route chart, a package of declarations proving unavailability, a joint designation chart, an objection log that tracks waiver under Rule 32(d) and Rule 26(a)(3), a completeness statement for counter-designations, and a clip specification and quality-control log for video. The trial templates are scripts for impeachment with a prior inconsistent deposition answer under amended Federal Rule of Evidence 613(b), impeachment of a Rule 30(b)(6) designee who changed an answer by errata, rehabilitation and completion, proposed jury instructions, and record-making at trial. A final template builds a summary judgment citation table and a response to a sham affidavit, and the toolkit closes with an FAQ and practical takeaways.