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.
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.
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.
Bringing or Opposing a Motion to Compel Discovery: A Practical Guide
This guide takes a federal litigator step by step through bringing a motion to compel discovery and, separately, through opposing one. It begins with the decisions to make before writing anything: whether the dispute is worth a motion, who the target is, whether a prior order exists, what the local rules and the judge's individual practices require, and how the discovery schedule constrains timing. The requesting party's steps cover diagnosing each deficiency, writing the deficiency letter, running and recording the conference, choosing between a joint letter and a formal motion, drafting the papers and supporting declarations, asking for expenses under Rule 37(a)(5), and enforcing the resulting order. The responding party's steps cover triage, curing what can be cured before filing, building burden and proportionality evidence, cross-moving for a protective order, limiting fee exposure, and objecting to a magistrate judge's order under Rule 72(a). A section on nonparty motions under Rule 45, a timeline and effort table, an extended worked example, common mistakes, an FAQ, and practical takeaways complete the guide.
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.
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.
Post-Trial Motion Checklist: A Practical Checklist
Post-trial motions are won or lost on preservation and deadlines, and this checklist turns both into concrete actions. It runs in the order the work happens: preserving issues before the case goes to the jury, verdict day, entry of judgment and the calendar, choosing the motions, drafting the renewed JMOL and the new trial and remittitur motion, and using Rules 59(e), 52(b), and 60. Separate parts cover opposing the motions, the hearing and remittitur election, stays and bonds, costs, fees, and interest, and the notice of appeal. A part on intellectual property verdicts covers injunctions, enhancement, ongoing royalties, profits, and statutory damages. Each item carries a short note and the controlling rule or case, and the checklist closes with common mistakes, a table of key authorities, and a short FAQ.
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.
Building a Cybersecurity Compliance Program That Satisfies Regulators: A Practical Guide
Regulators no longer ask whether a company has security; they ask to see the documents that prove a program exists, works, and is overseen. This guide walks through building that program in ten chronological steps: scoping the regimes that apply, appointing accountable people, conducting the written risk assessment, writing the policies, implementing the controls examiners check first, managing vendors, training and testing, building an incident response plan mapped to every reporting clock, reporting to the board and certifying, and preparing for examinations and investigations. Each step identifies the governing requirements under the FTC Act and Safeguards Rule, NYDFS Part 500, the SEC's disclosure rules, HIPAA, CMMC, and state law, together with the evidence a regulator will request and the decisions the company must make. It closes with a realistic twelve-month timeline and cost ranges, common mistakes, a worked example of a New York-licensed online lender building its program from a standing start, an FAQ, and practical takeaways for compliance teams, boards, and the lawyers who advise or examine them.
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.
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.
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.
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.