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.

ConsumerTimeshares

Getting Out of a Timeshare: A Practical Guide

This guide answers the question people actually ask about timeshares, which is how to get out, and it answers it in order of what works. It starts with rescission — the non-waivable right that expires in days and is the only clean exit — including how to send it correctly and what to do if the deadline appears to have passed. It then walks the exit hierarchy honestly: the deed-back and surrender programs that most resorts operate and most owners never ask about, giving the interest away, the resale market where interests trade for a dollar, and negotiated release where there is a real claim. It devotes a full section to the exit-company fraud industry and the single reliable red flag. It closes with default, foreclosure, credit consequences, and what executors and heirs should do.

Casey Scott McKayMay 6, 202627 min read

Civil RightsDisability Rights

Disability Rights in Everyday Life: The ADA, Service Animals, and Accessible Housing

Disability rights law is the rare body of federal law an ordinary person invokes by talking to a store manager. This article explains what the Americans with Disabilities Act actually requires of governments and businesses, and — just as importantly — what it does not. It distinguishes Title II from Title III, explains reasonable modification, readily achievable barrier removal, and effective communication, and works through the two questions a business may lawfully ask about a service animal. It then turns to housing, where the Fair Housing Act operates on a different logic: reasonable accommodations that a landlord pays for, reasonable modifications that the tenant pays for, and design requirements for covered multifamily buildings. It covers air travel under its own separate statute, the growing law of website accessibility, and the remedies that are and are not available — including why most ADA plaintiffs cannot recover damages.

Casey Scott McKayMay 6, 202630 min read

Intellectual PropertyCopyright

Copyright Registration of Computer Programs

Software is protected by copyright the instant it is written, but registering that copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office is what turns a quiet legal right into an enforceable one—and it is the gateway to federal court, statutory damages, and attorney's fees. This guide explains what copyright in code actually covers (and the large swath of functional material it does not), drawing on Google v. Oracle, the abstraction-filtration-comparison test, and the reverse-engineering line of cases. It walks step by step through the eCO application, the source-code deposit rules, and the special trade-secret redaction options that let developers register without surrendering their crown jewels. It covers ownership and work made for hire, derivative versions, screen displays and graphical user interfaces, user manuals, video games, HTML, object code and the Rule of Doubt, special relief when the code is gone, and how a registration is actually used to prove infringement. The article is written for developers, founders, in-house counsel, judges, and curious laypeople alike, with worked examples throughout.

Casey Scott McKayMay 6, 202649 min read

Government BenefitsVeterans

Veterans Benefits: Service Connection, Ratings, and the Appeals Process

The VA disability system pays compensation for conditions incurred in or aggravated by military service, and it is unusual among adjudicative systems in being explicitly non adversarial, with a statutory duty to assist claimants and a benefit of the doubt rule that resolves evidentiary ties in the veteran's favor. This article explains the three elements of service connection and the several routes to establishing them, how presumptive and secondary service connection work, how the rating schedule and the combined ratings table produce a percentage that is rarely what people expect, what total disability based on individual unemployability provides, how effective dates and intent to file filings determine how much back pay a claim generates, and the three decision review lanes created by the Appeals Modernization Act and how to choose among them.

Casey Scott McKayMay 4, 202628 min read

CommercialProduct Regulation

Food and Beverage Compliance Toolkit

Food and beverage businesses answer to more agencies than almost any other consumer industry, and the boundaries between them are historical rather than logical. The failures are predictable and cheap to prevent: an ingredient whose regulatory status nobody confirmed, a claim that converts a food into an unapproved drug, a label defect discovered after a print run, and a recall the company cannot scope because the lot code is on a carton the consumer threw away. This toolkit runs the arc from product concept through a recall: determining which agency labels the product, confirming every ingredient's status, building the food safety plan the Food Safety Modernization Act requires, constructing the label panel by panel, substantiating claims before they are made, managing co-packers and importers, and preparing for the two exposures that end companies rather than merely costing money. It closes with a worked sequence from a home kitchen to national distribution, and with the compliance calendar that turns all of it into a routine rather than a project.

Casey Scott McKayMay 4, 202614 min read

EmploymentWage and Hour

Wage Claim Toolkit: Hour Reconstruction, Demand Letters, and Agency Filings

This toolkit contains the worksheets and letters that build a wage claim, ordered from the habit that costs ten seconds a day to the agency filing. It includes a daily hours log, a pay stub audit worksheet, and a regular rate recalculation worksheet that exposes the violation appearing on no pay stub. It provides an exemption duties worksheet and a classification worksheet keyed to the tests that actually decide those questions, an hour reconstruction table with an evidence inventory, and a damages calculation including liquidated damages and state penalties. It then supplies a preservation letter, a written internal complaint, a classification inquiry, a demand letter, state and federal agency filings, a retaliation log, a final paycheck demand, a personnel records request, and an attorney consultation preparation sheet.

Casey Scott McKayMay 3, 202619 min read

TaxState and Local Tax

State and Local Tax for Multistate Businesses: Nexus, Apportionment, and Combined Reporting

Multistate tax exposure accumulates invisibly. A company hires a remote employee, stores inventory in a fulfillment warehouse, or crosses a sales threshold in a state it has never visited, and acquires filing obligations nobody noticed until an audit or a diligence request surfaces them. The framework has three moving parts: nexus, which decides whether a state may tax at all; apportionment, which decides how much of the company's income that state may reach; and the reporting method, which decides whose income is counted. Each has shifted substantially in the last decade — economic nexus for sales tax after Wayfair, a narrowing interpretation of the federal protection for solicitation-only activity, and a broad move toward single sales factor apportionment with market-based sourcing. This article explains each part and the practical work of finding and fixing exposure.

Casey Scott McKayMay 3, 202625 min read

CriminalVictims' Rights

Crime Victim Toolkit: Notice Requests, Impact Statements, Restitution, and Claims

This toolkit supplies the letters, worksheets, and templates a crime victim actually needs, with commentary on when each is used and what it accomplishes. It includes a notification registration letter, a conferral and plea-consultation request, a restitution loss worksheet with the categories courts recognize, a victim impact statement scaffold and a worked example, a compensation application cover letter and an appeal letter for a denial, a preservation letter to a third party whose surveillance footage matters to a civil claim, an employer notice letter, and a parole input letter. Each template is written to be adapted rather than copied blindly.

Casey Scott McKayMay 3, 202616 min read

Intellectual PropertyTrademark Enforcement

Trademark Cease-and-Desist Letters: Sending and Responding: A Practical Guide

A cease-and-desist letter is usually the opening move in a trademark dispute, and how it is written—or answered—can shape everything that follows. This guide explains both sides of the exchange in plain language for lawyers and business owners alike: how a trademark owner should investigate, calibrate, and draft a letter that advances its position without creating new risk, and how a recipient should evaluate and respond to a letter objecting to its use of a mark. It walks through what a cease-and-desist letter does, the pre-suit investigation that should precede one, the claims and remedies that give a letter its bite (including Romag Fasteners and Octane Fitness), and the strategic traps of overreach—declaratory-judgment exposure under MedImmune and reputational blowback from trademark bullying. On the response side, it covers the holding letter, the information request, the sober merits-and-defenses assessment, the full menu of options, and how to draft a substantive reply that persuades rather than provokes. It folds in the Trademark Modernization Act's restored presumption of irreparable harm and closes with a worked example, a common-mistakes survey, and an FAQ.

Casey Scott McKayMay 2, 202644 min read

Intellectual PropertyTrademark

The Geographic Scope of Common-Law Trademark Rights: A Practical Guide

Common-law trademark rights are local, not national. They reach only as far as a business has actually sold, advertised, built a reputation, or can realistically expect to expand—and that simple fact drives a surprising amount of real-world strategy. This practical guide focuses on what to do with the geographic-scope doctrine rather than where it came from. It maps the three zones of protection, shows how to prove territory with sales and advertising evidence, explains how federal registration and constructive use under 15 U.S.C. § 1057(c) convert local rights into national ones, and works through the Dawn Donut rule and its erosion in the internet age. It covers concurrent-use proceedings under Section 2(d), coexistence agreements, expansion and franchising playbooks, cease-and-desist strategy, and a litigation checklist, and it closes with a worked hypothetical and an FAQ. For the case-history deep dive behind the doctrine, it cross-links to a companion article.

Casey Scott McKayMay 2, 202637 min read

Government BenefitsSocial Security

Social Security Claiming Decision Checklist: A Practical Checklist

This checklist covers the Social Security retirement decision in six sequences: verifying the earnings record while corrections are still possible, reading the benefit estimate honestly, making the claiming decision, running the married-couple and divorced or widowed analyses, applying correctly, and responding to overpayments and denials. Every item is a concrete action rather than a concept. It is built for someone sitting down with the earnings statement and a calendar. Deadlines are noted where they are unforgiving, because most of them are. Use it with the accompanying article and guide.

Casey Scott McKayMay 2, 20267 min read

FinanceLending

Commercial Loan Closing Checklist: A Practical Checklist

A loan closing is a documentary exercise in which the lender's collateral position is created and the borrower's obligations are fixed, and nearly everything that goes wrong later traces to a step that was skipped or deferred here. A financing statement filed against a slightly wrong debtor name is an unperfected lien. A control agreement the depository bank never signed is no control at all. A landlord waiver deferred to post-closing is a waiver that never arrives. This checklist runs the closing in sequence: the organizational and authority documents, the credit and security documents, the perfection steps for each collateral type, the third-party deliverables that take the longest and are started last, the insurance and opinion requirements, the funds flow, and the post-closing items that must actually be tracked to completion.

Casey Scott McKayMay 2, 202610 min read