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.
Expert Deposition Preparation Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist turns expert deposition practice into concrete tasks for both sides of the table, organized in the order the work happens. It begins with the steps both sides should take before reports are exchanged, including an expert stipulation, protective order provisions for expert access, and the separation of consulting and testifying roles. The taking-side phases cover auditing the report against Rule 26(a)(2)(B), collecting the expert's file by request and subpoena, settling the Rule 26(b)(4)(E) fee, researching the expert, building an outline organized by Rule 702 element, conducting the examination, and turning the transcript into motions. The defending-side phases cover preserving the file, responding to the notice and subpoena, preparation sessions built around the three Rule 26(b)(4)(C) exceptions, objections and instructions, errata, supplementation, and the Daubert hearing. Short sub-checklists address treating and hybrid witnesses, remote and foreign depositions, dual-hat experts, patent damages experts, and software experts, followed by red flags, an FAQ, and practical takeaways.
Requesting Disability Accommodations and Enforcing Access Rights: A Practical Guide
This guide is about the practical craft of asking—how to make a disability accommodation request that gets granted, and what to do when it is not. It explains why the specific sentence you use matters more than the statute you cite, how much medical documentation is actually required and what a provider letter should and should not say, and how to run the interactive process without giving away information you do not have to disclose. It covers the different rules for stores, governments, landlords, airlines, and websites, including the exact two questions a business may ask about a service animal and the broader housing rule for assistance animals. It then walks the escalation path: the written follow-up, the person whose job this is, the agency complaint and its deadlines, and the choice between federal and state routes, where state law is frequently the better one.
Multistate Employment Compliance Toolkit
A toolkit for building a multistate employment compliance program. One employee working in a new state makes a company a multistate employer subject to that state's entire employment regime, its payroll tax registrations, and usually its corporate income and sales tax nexus, from the first day of work. Most companies discover this one state at a time, through a notice. This toolkit builds the program that prevents it: establishing where employees actually work and controlling where they may work, running the registration sequence before the first paycheck, layering the wage and hour and leave differences that catch employers paying only weekly overtime, handling pay transparency and restrictive covenant limits that reach remote postings and relocations, building a handbook architecture with state addenda that stays current, and choosing whether to build the compliance function or buy it. It closes with the relocation checklist and the legislative tracking cadence that keep the program current once the initial cleanup is done.
Timeshare Purchase and Exit Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist runs a timeshare matter from the moment of signing through exit, default, and inheritance. It leads with rescission because that right expires in days and is the only clean exit, setting out how to find the deadline, how to send the letter correctly, and what to check if the deadline appears to have passed. It then walks the exit hierarchy in order of what actually works, beginning with the deed-back program most resorts operate and most owners never ask about. It flags the single reliable indicator of exit-company fraud, sets out what actually happens on default for each type of interest, and covers what executors and heirs must do—including the disclaimer requirements that a single booked stay can forfeit.
Post-Mortem Publicity Rights Clearance Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist helps filmmakers, publishers, advertisers, merchandisers, game studios, and AI developers decide whether they can use a deceased person's name, image, voice, or likeness, and what they must do first. It is organized in phases: classify the use, identify the person and the domicile at death, map every state whose law may apply, find the right owner through state registries and trademark records, test the use against statutory exemptions and the First Amendment, and apply the newer digital replica rules for AI voices and synthetic performances. Later phases cover the federal overlay of false endorsement, trademark, and copyright, then licensing, documentation, and release. Red-flag boxes, a table of terms and registration rules, a short worked example, and a list of common failure points make it usable on a live project.
Employment Discrimination: Protected Classes, Proof Frameworks, and the Charge Process
Employment discrimination law is a system of deadlines and proof frameworks that decides most cases long before anyone reaches the merits. This article explains who is covered and by which statute, the protected characteristics under federal law and the substantially broader lists many states add, and the difference between disparate treatment and disparate impact. It works through the burden-shifting framework that structures most cases, what a comparator is and why it does more work than any other category of evidence, and the hostile work environment standard with the employer defenses attached to it. It covers reasonable accommodation for disability and religion and the interactive process that decides those claims, retaliation—which is the most commonly filed and frequently the strongest claim—and the charge-filing deadlines that are short, jurisdictional in effect, and the single largest cause of otherwise meritorious claims being lost.
Copyright Preemption Under Section 301: When Federal Law Wipes Out Your State Law Claim
This article explains how 17 U.S.C. § 301 wipes out state law claims that overlap with copyright, and why it reaches ideas and facts that copyright itself refuses to protect. It walks through the two-part test, the extra element inquiry, and the claim-by-claim results for contract, idea submission, hot news, unjust enrichment, conversion, trade secrets, and the right of publicity. It reads the leading opinions closely and marks where the circuits disagree, including the unresolved contract split the Supreme Court declined to take up in ML Genius. It explains how scraping disputes have split district judges in the Northern District of California on terms of service claims. It also covers complete preemption, removal, remand, what Royal Canin does to post-removal amendments, and the limitations and fee consequences that follow when a state claim is recast as a federal one. Readers get worked hypotheticals and practical steps for plaintiffs, defendants, and contract drafters.
Conducting a Reduction in Force: WARN, Selection Criteria, and Releases
A reduction in force is a project with a legal structure, and the sequence matters as much as the substance. This guide walks it from the business decision through the last separation. It covers the WARN Act and its state analogues, including the aggregation rules that turn a series of small layoffs into a mass layoff, the notice content requirements, and the exceptions that rarely apply. It then covers the selection process, which is where discrimination exposure is created or avoided, including how to define the decisional unit, apply objective criteria, and conduct an adverse impact analysis under privilege before the decisions are final. Later sections address severance design and the OWBPA requirements that make an age release valid, the group disclosure that surprises employers, notification logistics, and the post-separation obligations that continue long after the announcement.
Section 1983 Complaint and Qualified Immunity Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist runs a Section 1983 case from intake through the fee petition. It front-loads the two deadlines that destroy cases before anyone reaches the merits, the state notice of claim period and the body camera retention schedule, then works defendant selection, the pleading standards that a qualified immunity motion will test, the clearly established precedent search that should happen before filing, the Monell discovery plan that determines value, and the damages and fee proof that determines what the case is actually worth. Separate sections cover the defense sequence and the Heck bar analysis.
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.
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.
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.