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.
Board Meeting and Minutes Checklist: A Practical Checklist
Minutes are the corporation's only durable record of what the board decided and why, and they are read years later by auditors, lenders, acquirers, regulators, and plaintiffs' counsel. Minutes that recite only motions and outcomes are worthless as evidence of a deliberative process, and minutes that transcribe the discussion create admissions. The useful version sits between those, and producing it consistently is a discipline rather than a talent. This checklist covers the meeting cycle: notice and quorum, the agenda and the advance materials that make the duty of care satisfiable, conflicts and recusal, the conduct of the meeting including executive session, what belongs in the minutes and what does not, the resolutions and consents that formalize decisions, and the retention and access practices that keep the record usable.
Finding Evidence of Inequitable Conduct in Patent Prosecution: A Comprehensive Guide for Attorneys and Inventors
This litigator's companion guide explains how to find, plead, and prove (or defend against) inequitable conduct in patent prosecution. It walks through the heightened pleading requirements of Exergen Corp. v. Wal-Mart Stores under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 9(b), the demanding Therasense standard of but-for materiality and specific intent to deceive, and the duty of candor codified at 37 C.F.R. Section 1.56. It maps the practical sources of evidence a litigator mines—file histories, Information Disclosure Statements, foreign counterparts, inventor declarations, and assignment records—and lays out discovery strategy, crime-fraud and prosecution-bar issues, the use of technical and patent-practice experts, and the clear-and-convincing burden at trial. Worked hypotheticals illustrate how the pieces fit together, and a closing FAQ answers the questions clients ask most. The article is written so a judge, a practicing lawyer, and an inventor can all follow it.
VA Disability Claim and Appeal Checklist: A Practical Checklist
A step ordered checklist for a VA disability claim. It opens with the intent to file that preserves back pay for the cost of a form, then the records to request including the claims file that adjudicators actually read, the condition inventory including the secondary and presumptive claims that are most often missed, the nexus opinion requirements in the exact words the standard demands, lay statement contents, compensation and pension examination preparation and the adequacy review afterward, how to read a decision letter to identify which element failed, lane selection with the one year deadline, TDIU evidence, and the benefits that must be separately claimed including dependents at thirty percent and survivor compensation.
Disability Rights Toolkit: Accommodation Requests, Access Complaints, and Housing Modifications
This toolkit supplies the letters, scripts, and worksheets used to request disability accommodations and to enforce access rights when a request is refused. It includes a general accommodation request, a provider verification letter written to disclose the minimum required, separate housing accommodation and modification requests that make the payment allocation explicit, a barrier removal letter that asks for alternative methods in the same breath, an effective communication request, a verbatim script for the two questions about a service animal, a follow-up letter for a denial that reframes the "we treat everyone the same" response, complaint narratives for DOJ and HUD, a retaliation letter, and an access log and measurement worksheet for building the record.
Buy-Sell Agreements and Business Valuation: Triggers, Formulas, and Funding
A buy-sell agreement decides what happens to an ownership interest when an owner dies, quits, divorces, becomes disabled, or simply wants out, and it is the single most consequential document most closely held businesses will ever sign. The two questions it must answer are what triggers a purchase and at what price, and the most common failure is an agreement that answers the first carefully and the second with a formula nobody has revisited in a decade. This article covers the structural choice among cross-purchase, redemption, and hybrid designs, the full range of triggering events and which ones should be mandatory rather than optional, the valuation mechanisms and the discount fights they generate, and the funding problem that makes an otherwise perfect agreement unenforceable in practice. It also addresses the tax rules that reshape these deals, including the estate-tax consequences the Supreme Court clarified in Connelly.
Funeral, Burial, and Death Care Law: The Funeral Rule, Remains, and Final Arrangements
Death care is a consumer transaction conducted by people who are grieving, on a short timeline, with a seller whose product is impossible to compare. This article explains the Federal Trade Commission's Funeral Rule—the general price list, the itemized statement, the right to buy only what you want, and the prohibition on requiring embalming or refusing an outside casket—and then the state law that determines who actually has the legal right to decide what happens to a body. It covers preneed contracts and the trust and insurance arrangements behind them, cemetery contracts and their perpetual care obligations, veterans burial benefits including national cemetery eligibility and the burial allowance, and the anatomical gift framework. It closes on death certificates, home funerals and green burial, disputes among family members, and what happens when nobody claims a body.
Copyright FAQs: Answers to Common Copyright Questions
This hub FAQ answers the questions people most often ask about U.S. copyright law, in plain language for creators, businesses, lawyers, and the merely curious. It explains what copyright is and where it comes from, what it does and does not protect, the exclusive rights bundle, how protection arises automatically on fixation, and how long it lasts under the layered rules for old and new works. It walks through registration and why timing is everything, fair use after Google v. Oracle and Warhol v. Goldsmith, the DMCA takedown system, how infringement is actually proved through access and substantial similarity, the full range of remedies including the small-claims Copyright Claims Board, work made for hire, transfers, and the powerful and deadline-driven right to terminate them. Worked examples and clearly labeled hypotheticals keep the answers concrete. Throughout, the article links to deeper mclaw.io guides on each topic.
Foreclosure Defense and Loan Workout Toolkit
This toolkit assembles the working documents of a residential mortgage default, on both sides of the file. It contains the RESPA request for information and notice of error templates that produce the loan file, an arrears and fee audit worksheet, the complete loss mitigation application package and the dual tracking assertion that stops a sale, model answer and affirmative defenses for judicial states, a foreclosure discovery request set, the temporary restraining order framework for nonjudicial states, and the exit documents—short sale approval terms, deed in lieu conditions, and the surplus funds claim. It also supplies the servicer-side compliance review that prevents most of the errors it identifies.
Employment Discrimination Charge Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist runs a discrimination matter from the deadline through the charge and the ninety days that follow. It leads with finding the filing deadline this week, because that step ends more claims than any legal argument. It sets out the documentation to gather while memory and access still exist, the comparator questions to answer now, and the written internal complaint that removes an employer defense and creates a retaliation claim. It covers drafting the charge so it does not limit later litigation, confirming dual filing, requesting the position statement, and the second deadline after the right-to-sue letter. It closes with severance releases, the ADEA revocation rules, and what to do while a charge is pending.
Trademark Overview: Obtaining Protection and Licensing
A trademark is only as valuable as the rights you can actually acquire, keep, and exploit. This Part 3 of our four-part trademark overview series explains how rights arise (use versus federal registration), walks step-by-step through the USPTO application and examination process, and untangles the difference between the Principal and Supplemental Registers. It then turns to the business side of brands: licensing a mark without committing the cardinal sin of "naked licensing," selling a mark together with its goodwill to avoid an "assignment in gross," and pledging a trademark as loan collateral. Along the way it explains the quality-control rule of Dawn Donut, Barcamerica, and Eva's Bridal, the anti-assignment-in-gross doctrine, the hidden trap of the "accidental franchise," and the Madrid Protocol route to international protection. The article is written so a judge, a transactional lawyer, and a first-time founder can all follow it.
Fintech and Payments Regulatory Toolkit
A payments, deposit, or credit product is regulated financial services from the first transaction, and the obligations attach whether or not anyone has read them. The framework is fragmented across federal prudential regulators, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, FinCEN, OFAC, and fifty state banking departments, and the same product can be lawful in one structure and unlicensed money transmission in another. This toolkit runs the sequence a company actually needs: mapping the flow of funds and identifying the licensing question, choosing among direct licensing, a bank partnership, and a restructured model, building the anti-money-laundering and sanctions programs that apply regardless, meeting the consumer protection obligations that attach to accounts and credit, satisfying the sponsor bank's third-party risk expectations, and running the compliance function that keeps all of it working. It closes with the compliance management system a sponsor bank's examiner expects and the ongoing reconciliation, complaint handling, and change control that keep the program working.
Managing and Escaping Student Loan Debt: A Practical Guide
This guide is the operating manual for a student loan borrower, from building an accurate inventory of what is owed to escaping a default or applying for a discharge. It covers verifying loan type before anything else, choosing between repayment plans with the arithmetic that matters, the annual recertification and employment certification habits that protect forgiveness, why forbearance is almost always the wrong answer, the two exits from default and how to choose, the discharge applications that are badly under-used, how to fight a servicer error, and how to recognize the debt-relief industry that preys on this exact confusion.