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.
Background Check and Adverse Action Checklist: A Practical Checklist
Background check compliance fails on formatting and sequencing rather than on judgment, which is why the violations are uniform and the cases are classes. The disclosure must sit alone on its own page; the report and the current summary of rights must be delivered before any decision is communicated; a real waiting period must elapse; and the adverse action notice must contain four specific elements. This checklist covers each in the order the process runs, adds the individualized assessment that federal guidance and a growing number of state and local fair chance laws require, and includes the governance items—a written targeted screen, vendor audit rights, and coverage confirmation—that convert an isolated failure into a defensible program. It also maps the state and municipal fair chance rules that layer additional timing, individualized assessment, and notice requirements on top of the federal sequence.
Unemployment Insurance: Eligibility, Disqualification, Benefits, and Appeals
Unemployment insurance is a federal-state hybrid in which Congress sets conditions on state programs and the states write the substantive rules, which is why the answer to almost every question begins with the name of a state. This article explains the two-part eligibility test of monetary qualification and non-disqualifying separation, what misconduct really means and why the employer bears the burden, when quitting still qualifies, the continuing requirements of ability, availability, and work search, how benefits are computed, the constitutional limits the Supreme Court has imposed on religious and pregnancy-related disqualifications, the appeal structure, and the overpayment and fraud penalties that turn a benefit into a debt.
ERISA Fiduciary Duties for Plan Sponsors and Committees
Almost every company that offers a retirement plan has fiduciaries who do not know they are fiduciaries, exercising discretion they do not know is discretionary, without the documented process that is their only real defense. This article explains what ERISA actually requires. It separates settlor functions from fiduciary functions, identifies who becomes a fiduciary by title and by conduct, and works through the four core duties of loyalty, prudence, plan-document compliance, and diversification. It then covers the prohibited transaction rules and the exemptions that make ordinary plan administration lawful, the fee disclosure regime, and the monitoring obligation that the Supreme Court has addressed in Tibble and Hughes. Sections on excessive fee litigation and the pleading standard, delegation to 3(21) and 3(38) advisers, co-fiduciary and successor liability, correction programs, bonding and insurance, and health plan fiduciary issues follow, with a worked committee calendar, an FAQ, and related reading.
Disability Access and Accommodation Request Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist covers a disability accommodation request from the sentence you say at the counter through the agency complaint. It sets out how to phrase the request, exactly how much documentation you owe and what a provider letter should not contain, and the different rules that apply in businesses, government offices, housing, air travel, transit, and online. It gives the two questions a business may ask about a service animal and the broader housing rule, separates reasonable accommodations from reasonable modifications and identifies who pays for each, and lays out the escalation ladder with the filing deadlines that forfeit rights—including the one-year housing administrative window.
Copyright vs. Trademark vs. Patent: Understanding the Three Pillars of IP
Copyright, trademark, and patent are not interchangeable labels for the same thing; they are three different legal systems that protect three different kinds of value, and trade secret quietly stands as a fourth. This article explains in plain language what each one protects, where its law comes from, how the right arises, how long it lasts, who registers it, what symbol marks it, and how an infringement case is actually proved. The centerpiece is a single worked example—an ordinary athletic sneaker—that turns out to be wrapped in all four kinds of protection at once. You will leave able to look at any product, song, app, gadget, or brand and name which kind of IP is doing the work, and which kind you should be reaching for. A decision guide and FAQ tie the pieces together.
Timeshare Toolkit: Rescission Letters, Deed-Back Requests, and Complaint Filings
This toolkit contains the letters and worksheets that resolve timeshare matters, ordered by urgency. It opens with the rescission letter and the two notices that must accompany it, because that right expires in days. It then provides a deed-back request written to produce the requirements in writing, a payment plan proposal for owners in arrears, and a pre-default letter that gets a surrender accepted more often than owners expect. It includes a transfer verification checklist that prevents the recorded-transfer failures several scams depend on, a demand letter for owners with a real claim, complaint templates for the state timeshare regulator and attorneys general, a fraud report for exit-company victims, a sales presentation timeline and document inventory for building a claim, and the executor and heir notices that preserve a disclaimer.
The Evolution of Trade Dress Protection for Product Design and Configuration: A Comprehensive Case Law Analysis
This article is the deep case-law spine of mclaw.io's trade dress coverage. It traces the doctrine for product design and configuration through the four foundational Supreme Court decisions decided between 1992 and 2001—Two Pesos v. Taco Cabana, Qualitex v. Jacobson, Wal-Mart v. Samara, and TrafFix v. Marketing Displays—and the circuit law that has applied them. Written for judges, practitioners, and business readers alike, it explains the outcome-determining line between product packaging (which can be inherently distinctive) and product design (which can never be, and always demands secondary meaning), along with the elusive "tertium quid" middle category. It works through utilitarian functionality under Inwood, the Morton-Norwich evidentiary factors, aesthetic functionality under Qualitex, and the way TrafFix demoted alternative-design evidence and elevated expired utility patents. It surveys how the circuits have handled footwear, multi-tools, snack food, restaurant decor, beverage bottles, and smartphones, pays close attention to who bears the burden of proving (non)functionality and to the expert and survey evidence that decides close cases, and closes with worked hypotheticals, industry-by-industry guidance, a comparative look at trade dress abroad and at emerging pressures from AR, 3D printing, and AI, and a practical FAQ. The throughline is the law's enduring effort to balance brand identity against the public's right to copy unpatented, functional features.
Promotions and Prize Marketing Toolkit: Rules, Registration, and Platform Compliance
This toolkit assembles the documents a promotions program runs on. It contains a design brief for the marketing team, a mechanic decision matrix mapping each promotion type to its legal profile, a modular official rules template with the alternative method of entry and error provisions that matter most, an abbreviated rules block for advertising assets, a registration threshold worksheet, influencer agreement and entrant disclosure language, the winner documents including the affidavit and releases, notification and disqualification letters, a launch review form, and a records retention schedule.
Powers of Attorney and Advance Directives: A Practical Guide
A power of attorney and a health care directive are the documents most likely to be needed and least likely to exist, and the ones whose failure produces a guardianship proceeding that costs more than the entire estate plan. This guide covers both. It explains what a durable power of attorney does, why springing powers create the problem they were meant to solve, and the specific authorities that must be granted expressly because the statutory form withholds them by default. It covers the third-party acceptance problem, which is the most common practical failure, and the agent's fiduciary duties and recordkeeping obligations. The second half addresses health care documents: the proxy, the living will, the HIPAA authorization that is separate and necessary, and the POLST that operates differently from all of them, along with guardianship as the alternative when the documents do not exist.
Managing Willfulness Risk After a Patent Notice Letter: A Practical Guide
This guide takes a company from the day a patent notice letter arrives to the point where it has a defensible record on willfulness, whether the matter ends in silence, a license, a redesign, an inter partes review, or a lawsuit. It opens with the decisions to make before acting, then sets out twelve steps: triage, routing to counsel and controlling internal communications, a litigation hold, assessing declaratory judgment risk, a privileged preliminary analysis, choosing between a formal opinion and informal advice, documenting a design-around, deciding on a Patent Office challenge, writing the response letter, managing customers and suppliers, tendering to insurers, and monitoring. Each step explains what to do, why, the governing authority, common pitfalls, timing, and typical cost ranges. A separate part covers the patent owner who is drafting the letter. A timeline and cost table, an extended worked example involving a lighting manufacturer and a patent assertion entity, common mistakes, an FAQ, and practical takeaways close the guide.
Filing an Employment Discrimination Charge: A Practical Guide
This guide walks through filing a discrimination charge in the order the work has to be done, starting with the deadline that ends more claims than any argument. It explains how to calculate the window, why each discrete act starts its own clock and hostile environment does not, and how to preserve the deadline while you are still deciding. It covers what to write down before memory fades, how to identify comparators while you still have access, and why the internal written complaint is the single most important procedural step an employee can take. It then walks the charge itself—what the intake questionnaire does, how to draft the charge so it does not limit your later claims, and what happens through the position statement, mediation, investigation, and right-to-sue letter—and closes on severance releases and the second deadline nobody expects.
Filing and Appealing a VA Disability Claim: A Practical Guide
This guide runs a VA disability claim from the first decision to file through an appeal to the Board. It covers the intent to file that preserves back pay for the cost of a form, obtaining the service records and the claims file, identifying every condition to claim including the secondary conditions almost nobody claims, obtaining a nexus opinion in the words the standard requires, writing lay statements that carry weight, preparing for the compensation and pension examination and what to say in it, reading a decision letter to identify which element failed, choosing among the three review lanes, and pursuing TDIU, dependency benefits, and the state benefits the VA does not administer.