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.
Software Interoperability and Reverse Engineering Clearance Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist walks counsel and engineering leads through clearing a software interoperability or reverse-engineering project before work begins and keeping it cleared while it runs. It is organized in phases: scoping the compatibility objective, copyright, contract and terms of service, DMCA anti-circumvention, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and state computer crime laws, trade secrets, patents, trademarks and marketing, and execution controls and records. Each item is specific and tied to the governing statute, rule, or leading case, with practical notes on what to look for. Red-flag boxes mark the facts that should stop a project until counsel resolves them. A deadlines and timing table, a short worked example involving a health-technology company building a connector to a hospital records system, and a list of common failure points close the checklist.
Protective Orders, Confidentiality Designations, and Sealing: Secrecy and Its Limits in Federal Court
Litigation forces parties to disclose material they would never share voluntarily, and the machinery that makes this tolerable is the protective order—which is also, increasingly, the machinery that courts scrutinize when the public asks what a case was about. This article separates the two questions that practitioners routinely conflate: what discovery material may be kept private between the parties, which is governed by a permissive good-cause standard, and what may be kept out of the public record once filed, which is governed by a much more demanding right of access. It covers designation practice and its abuses, tiered access including attorneys-eyes-only, clawback protection, and how sealing motions actually succeed. It explains why the standard for keeping discovery material confidential differs sharply from the standard for sealing a court filing. It closes with the drafting and practice consequences for both producing and receiving parties.
Trademark Maintenance and Renewal Checklist: A Practical Checklist
A checklist for keeping a federal trademark registration alive and strong, organized around the Lanham Act maintenance calendar: the Section 8 declaration of continued use between the fifth and sixth years and at each renewal, the combined Section 8 plus Section 9 renewal every ten years, the Section 71 path for Madrid registrations, and the optional Section 15 declaration of incontestability. It covers specimens, grace periods, the USPTO proof-of-use audit program, and the substantive threats no calendar can stop: abandonment through nonuse, genericide, and naked licensing. WHY notes, trap warnings, a common-mistakes list, and primary authority are included. Educational, not legal advice; confirm current fees and deadlines at USPTO.gov.
Removal Defense Toolkit: Bond, Relief Applications, Appeals, and Judicial Review
This toolkit supplies the working documents of removal defense. It contains a relief screening matrix covering every form of relief with its elements and bars, a criminal analysis worksheet applying the categorical approach, a notice to appear review sheet, a bond package index and argument outline, a declaration template with the questions that must be answered, a corroboration and country conditions index, expert declaration request letters, a credibility reconciliation table for prior statements, a pre hearing brief framework, and the appeal and petition for review outlines with the jurisdictional framing that determines reviewability. It closes with a family contingency planning worksheet.
Handling a Flight Disruption and Filing a Claim: A Practical Guide
This guide covers a flight disruption from the moment it happens through the claim that follows, in the order the work has to be done. It opens with the first thirty minutes at the airport, where most of the value is captured—screenshotting the stated cause, standing in two lines at once, asking for specific things by name, and refusing a voucher before asking about the cash alternative. It explains what involuntary denied boarding actually pays and why volunteering forfeits it, how to demand a refund rather than a travel credit, and how to claim the ancillary fees airlines never volunteer. It covers baggage reporting deadlines, mobility device damage and the Complaints Resolution Official, and closes with the four claim routes: the airline, the Department of Transportation, a credit card chargeback, and small claims on the contract of carriage.
Forum Strategy Toolkit: Clauses, Transfer Motions, and First-Filed Briefing
This toolkit collects the documents that decide forum disputes: a clause that does what the drafter intended, a comparison worksheet that converts instinct into a client-facing analysis, the witness declaration that determines whether a transfer motion succeeds, a forum non conveniens conditions stipulation, first-filed briefing for both sides, and the standstill agreement that prevents the declaratory-action race entirely. Each template is annotated with its purpose, its owner, and the failure it prevents, and the drafting notes explain which single word in each provision does the work. Each template carries drafting notes on what the court is actually weighing and what evidence supports it. Adapt everything to the district, the parties, and the claims. The declaration templates in particular are where transfer motions are won.
Venue and Transfer Checklist: A Practical Checklist
Forum decisions are made once and lived with for years, and the motions that follow are won on the specificity of the record. This checklist runs the whole sequence: comparing candidate districts on the factors that actually differ, confirming venue including the special statutes that displace the general rule, avoiding the demand letter that invites a declaratory action, building a transfer motion around named witnesses beyond the subpoena power, enforcing or resisting a forum selection clause after Atlantic Marine, briefing first-filed priority, and sequencing motions so nothing is waived. It covers venue propriety, the section 1404 convenience factors, forum selection clause enforcement, first-filed disputes, and the record each requires. Separate sections address the movant and the party resisting transfer. Every item is written so that a "no" tells you what to do next.
Voting and Running for Office: A Practical Guide
This guide is the operating manual for two roles: the voter who wants their ballot to count and the citizen who decides to run for something. For voters it covers the annual registration check, absentee mechanics and the cure process that saves rejected ballots, what to do when told you are not on the list, and the assistance rights that exist. For candidates it covers the county handbook that answers most questions, the signature gathering that defeats more campaigns than opponents do, committee registration and reporting, the coordination firewall, and what happens in a recount or a contest.
The TCPA and Text Message Marketing: Consent, Revocation, and Class Action Exposure
The Telephone Consumer Protection Act is thirty-five years old, was written about fax machines and robocalls, and is now the most expensive statute in American marketing because it pays five hundred dollars per message with no cap. A company that sends a single unwanted campaign to fifty thousand numbers has created twenty-five million dollars of nominal exposure before anyone asks whether the messages were annoying. This article explains what the statute actually prohibits after the Supreme Court narrowed the definition of an autodialer in Facebook v. Duguid, why prerecorded voice calls and the do-not-call rules remain the live exposure, what consent must look like and how it must be documented, how revocation works after the FCC's recent rulemaking, and where the state statutes go further than federal law. It closes with a compliance program that actually prevents claims.
Moving or Keeping a Case in Your Chosen Forum: A Practical Guide
Forum fights are won on preparation done before filing and on the specificity of the record supporting a motion. This guide covers both sides: choosing a defensible forum and documenting why, avoiding the demand letter that hands the other side a declaratory action, drafting a transfer motion around named witnesses rather than general inconvenience, enforcing or resisting a forum selection clause after Atlantic Marine, briefing first-filed priority and its exceptions, and handling removal and multidistrict tag-alongs. It includes a forum comparison worksheet, a motion outline, the declarations that decide these motions, and the errors that recur. A worked transfer fight shows how the convenience factors are actually built from declarations. It also covers first-filed disputes, forum selection clause enforcement, and parallel state proceedings.
Evaluating the Timeliness of a Copyright Claim: A Practical Guide
This guide takes a plaintiff or a defendant through a copyright timeliness question from the first phone call to the verdict form. It explains how to identify the forum's accrual rule, sort the claims by type, build a dated chronology from documents and system records, and calculate the window correctly. It covers the evidence that wins or loses constructive discovery and repudiation disputes, what to preserve, when a tolling agreement is worth signing, and how to plead without hurting yourself. Each litigation stage gets its own decisions on motions, discovery, jury questions, and preserving the injury rule for appeal. Two worked hypotheticals, sample language, trade-offs, and a list of common mistakes make it usable on a live matter.
Forum Selection, Transfer, and Parallel Proceedings: Choosing and Keeping the Court You Want
Where a case is heard shapes its outcome more than most substantive rulings, and the doctrines controlling that question are scattered across venue statutes, transfer provisions, contract enforcement, and abstention. This article assembles them. It covers venue and the transfer statutes, the transformed analysis that applies when a valid forum selection clause exists after Atlantic Marine, forum non conveniens for foreign alternatives, the first-filed rule and its exceptions, abstention where parallel state proceedings exist, anti-suit injunctions against foreign litigation, and consolidation through multidistrict litigation. It closes with the practical question of what actually happens to choice of law when a case moves.