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.
Medical Bill Dispute and Debt Response Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist runs a medical bill from the envelope through collections, judgment, and discharge. It covers the four documents to collect and the specific errors to look for in each, the four reductions available and the order they must be done in, the surprise billing analysis and complaint route, the thirty-day validation window and the partial-payment trap that revives dead debt, the affirmative defenses waived if not raised in an answer, and the exemption claims that protect wages and benefits after a judgment. Deadlines that forfeit rights are flagged throughout.
Recovering From a Missed Federal Court Deadline: A Practical Guide
This guide walks through the hours and days after you discover a federal deadline has passed. It starts with confirming the date, sorting the deadline into the right category, and preserving the evidence you will need. It then gives the route for each common miss, including late oppositions, unanswered complaints, scheduling order dates, late service, deemed admissions, post-judgment motions, notices of appeal, removal, and limitations periods, with sample language. Separate sections cover what to say to the client and the malpractice carrier, how to oppose a late filing if you are on the other side, and how a person without a lawyer should proceed. It closes with costs and trade-offs and the mistakes that most often turn a recoverable lapse into a final loss.
Post-Trial Motions in Federal Court: Judgment as a Matter of Law, New Trial, Remittitur, and Relief From Judgment
The 28 days after a federal jury verdict decide whether the verdict survives and what the appeal will look like. This article explains the four post-trial motions that do that work: judgment as a matter of law under Rule 50, a new trial under Rule 59(a), a motion to alter or amend under Rule 59(e), and relief from judgment under Rule 60(b). It walks through the Supreme Court cases that define each one (Reeves, Unitherm, Ortiz, Weisgram, Gasperini, Hetzel, Dimick, Banister, Kemp, Pioneer, Espinosa, Liljeberg, Gonzalez, and Buck), the remittitur and additur rules that the Seventh Amendment imposes, and the separate constitutional review of punitive damages under Gore, State Farm, and Exxon. It then covers the deadlines that cannot be extended, the way each motion starts or fails to start the appeal clock under Appellate Rule 4(a)(4), stays and bonds under Rule 62, interest, costs, fees, and the equitable relief that follows an intellectual property verdict. Two worked examples, a $4.2 million trademark verdict the defendant wants reduced and a plaintiff who lost on a bad instruction, show how the motions fit together, and the strategy sections address both the party attacking the verdict and the party defending it.
Overcoming Obviousness Rejections: A Comprehensive Guide to Section 103 Analysis
Obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 is the single most common and most consequential ground on which patent claims are rejected and invalidated. This guide explains the governing framework from Graham v. John Deere through KSR v. Teleflex, the death of the rigid teaching-suggestion-motivation test, and exactly what an examiner or challenger must show to make out a prima facie case. It then walks through the substantive rebuttals available to a patent owner—attacking the motivation to combine and the reasonable expectation of success, teaching away, non-analogous art, change in principle of operation, and the full set of objective indicia of nonobviousness together with the all-important nexus requirement. The article translates each doctrine into concrete prosecution and litigation strategy, including claim amendments, declarations under 37 C.F.R. 1.132, examiner interviews, the duty of candor, and the distinct burdens that govern obviousness disputes before the examiner, at the PTAB, and in district court. Worked hypotheticals illustrate how the pieces fit together so that lawyers, judges, and inventors alike can follow the analysis.
Litigating Substantial Similarity in a Copyright Case: A Practical Guide
This guide walks plaintiffs and defendants through a copyright case in which the decisive question is whether two works are substantially similar in protectable expression, in the order the case actually unfolds. It begins with pre-suit assessment, registration and deposit-copy checks, and the similarity chart and filtration analysis that every later stage relies on. It then explains how to plead similarity and attack it on a motion to dismiss, how to use the scheduling conference to shape discovery, how to take the access and creation discovery that proves or disproves copying, and how to retain, disclose, and defend experts under Rule 702. Later steps cover summary judgment in the major circuits, jury instructions and verdict forms, presenting the works at trial, preserving Rule 50 and Rule 51 objections, appeals, and the fee and cost rules that drive settlement. A worked example follows a small game studio's clone case from discovery of the copying through mediation, and the guide closes with common mistakes, an FAQ, and practical takeaways.
Post-Conviction Toolkit: Sentencing Memoranda, Appeals, and Habeas Petitions
This toolkit assembles the working documents of sentencing and post-conviction practice: a presentence report objection letter, a sentencing memorandum skeleton, a character letter request and allocution outline, notice of appeal and transcript order language, an issue screening worksheet and appellate brief outline, a trial file demand and police file records request with a preservation demand, a witness affidavit template, structures for ineffective assistance and Brady claims, a state post-conviction petition outline with an evidentiary hearing request, a habeas deadline worksheet and exhaustion chart, a compassionate release motion outline, and a counsel request letter.
Adoption Law: Agency, Private, Stepparent, and Interstate Placements Under the ICPC
Adoption permanently severs one legal parent-child relationship and creates another, which is why the procedures are formal, the consents are hedged with revocation periods, and courts scrutinize the paperwork closely. The structure differs sharply by route—an agency placement, a private placement arranged between the parties, a stepparent adoption, or a foster care adoption each carries distinct consent, home study, and termination requirements. Two federal overlays reach nearly every case: the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children, which must be satisfied before a child crosses a state line, and the Indian Child Welfare Act, which imposes heightened standards and placement preferences whenever a child may be a member of a tribe. This article covers the routes, consent and termination, the interstate and tribal frameworks, intercountry adoption, and the effects that follow finalization.
Trademark Ownership Audit Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist audits whether a business actually owns the trademarks it thinks it owns, and whether its paperwork would survive a challenge from a departing founder, a former distributor, a licensee, or an acquirer's diligence team. It is organized in ten phases: inventorying marks and digital assets, establishing who first used and now controls each mark, testing whether each applicant was the owner on its filing date, tracing the chain of title through assignments and corporate changes, and reviewing founder, employee, and contractor documents. Later phases cover licenses, franchises, intercompany arrangements, and distributor agreements; bands, performers, and personal-name brands; domains, handles, and marketplace accounts; maintenance and loss-of-rights risks; and remediation. Each item cites the governing authority and adds a practical note. Red-flag boxes, a deadlines table, common failure points, and a short worked example involving an acquisition of a skincare company complete the checklist.
Air Travel Claim Toolkit: Refund Demands, Baggage Claims, and DOT Complaints
This toolkit provides the scripts, letters, and worksheets that turn a flight disruption into a paid claim, ordered from the gate outward. It opens with gate scripts and a disruption log to capture the facts while they exist, then a refund demand that uses the exact language needed to decline a voucher, an ancillary fee demand itemizing the charges airlines never volunteer, and a denied boarding compensation demand that specifies cash. It includes baggage damage and delay claims keyed to the short contractual deadlines, a mobility device damage claim invoking the assistive device exception, a contract of carriage citation worksheet, an airline complaint letter, a DOT complaint narrative, a credit card chargeback letter, a trip delay benefit claim, a small claims outline framed as contract, and a one-page claim summary.
Cybersecurity Incident Response and IP Protection: Preventing Trade Secret Loss During Data Breaches
When a breach hits, the incident-response machine almost always points itself at one target—personal data and the notification clock—while the theft of trade secrets, often far more financially devastating, goes unrecognized until the window for protective action has closed. This article explains how to fold intellectual property protection into incident response, following a fictional manufacturer whose breach exposes both customer data and a proprietary process. It covers why post-breach conduct can preserve or forfeit trade secret status under the Defend Trade Secrets Act's "reasonable measures" standard, how to spot trade-secret-targeted intrusions, the legal steps and remedies available under the DTSA and Economic Espionage Act, forensic documentation built to litigation rather than regulatory standards, the privilege traps that snared Capital One, the fragmented cyber-insurance landscape, and how to write IP into an incident-response plan. The throughline: trade secret protection cannot be an afterthought addressed only after the privacy boxes are checked.
Identity Theft and Credit Reporting: FCRA Rights, Disputes, and Remedies
A credit report is a dossier assembled about you by companies you never hired, sold to companies you never met, and used to decide whether you get a house, a car, a job, or an insurance policy. This article explains what the Fair Credit Reporting Act actually requires: the accuracy duty on reporting agencies, the reinvestigation obligation triggered by a dispute, the frequently misunderstood rule that disputes to furnishers must run through the bureaus to be actionable, the identity theft tools including the free security freeze and the block of fraudulent information, permissible purpose limits, adverse action notices, and the willful and negligent liability provisions with the standing constraints the Supreme Court has imposed.
Identifying Goods and Services and Trademark Classification: A Practical Checklist
A trademark is protected only for the goods and services you actually claim, and the USPTO sorts all of commerce into the 45 standardized classes of the Nice Classification. This checklist guides a filer through inventorying every offering, finding the correct class and pre-approved wording in the USPTO ID Manual, drafting accurate and properly scoped identifications, deciding the class count, and budgeting the 2025 per-class fees and surcharges. It flags the ministerial nature of classification, the one-way door that lets you narrow but never broaden an identification, the Class 9 versus Class 42 software trap, and the need to clear coordinated and related classes. WHY notes and traps accompany each phase. Confirm current fees and the live ID Manual before filing.