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.
Pleading and Attacking Standing in Federal Court: A Practical Guide
Standing is litigated badly more often than any other threshold issue, usually because one side treats it as a checklist and the other treats it as unavoidable. This guide sets out how to do it well from both sides: pleading concrete injury with the historical analogue identified, choosing between facial and factual attacks and when each is worth making, taking the narrow discovery that resolves it, deploying standing at class certification where it does the most work, and—the decision most often skipped—determining whether winning is actually good for the client, given that dismissal is without prejudice and state courts frequently apply looser rules. It covers the plaintiff's allegations, the defendant's Rule 12(b)(1) motion, the factual attack and its discovery consequences, and standing at the class certification stage. Worked examples show how the same facts read differently at the pleading stage and at summary judgment. It also addresses mootness, ripeness, and the strategic use of standing in removal practice.
Special Education Law: IDEA, IEPs, Section 504, and Parent Rights
Roughly one in seven public school students receives special education services, and the statute that governs them is procedural to its core: parents win by using the process, not by being right about pedagogy. This article explains what a free appropriate public education requires after Endrew F. raised the standard above Rowley, how child find and evaluation obligations work and what to do when a district refuses to evaluate, what an IEP must contain and how the team operates, the difference between an IEP and a Section 504 plan, the least restrictive environment requirement, the procedural safeguards that give the statute its force including prior written notice and stay put, how disciplinary removals trigger a manifestation determination, and the dispute paths from a facilitated meeting through a due process hearing and into federal court.
Article III Standing After TransUnion: Concrete Injury, Traceability, and the End of No-Injury Claims
Standing is the first question in every federal case and the last defense many cases never survive, and the Supreme Court's decision in TransUnion changed what a statutory violation must show to get into federal court. This article explains the doctrine as it now operates: the three constitutional elements, what makes an intangible harm concrete, the historical analogue test and how courts apply it, and the requirement that every class member—not merely the named plaintiff—have standing for damages. It covers mootness and ripeness, organizational and associational standing, and the strategic consequence that most often surprises defendants, which is that winning on standing frequently sends the case to state court rather than ending it. It traces how the concreteness requirement reshaped statutory damages litigation, class certification, and removal strategy. It closes with what a standing allegation has to look like now.
Student Loan Repayment and Relief Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist runs a student loan matter from inventory to discharge. It is organized as sequences: building the loan inventory, verifying and fixing loan type, selecting a repayment plan, the annual habits that protect forgiveness, what to do when you cannot pay, escaping a default, the discharge applications worth filing, private loan defenses, servicer disputes, and scam avoidance. Deadlines and irreversible decisions are flagged. The first section is the one everything else depends on, because loan type governs every available remedy.
Pursuing or Defending a Failed Technology Project Claim: A Practical Guide
This guide takes a customer and a vendor, side by side, through a failed software implementation dispute from the first serious warning sign to settlement, arbitration award, or trial. It starts with the decisions that should come before any letter is sent: what the client actually wants (a fixed system, an orderly exit, or money), what the contract stack says, and who else is involved. Twelve numbered steps follow, covering contract triage, evidence preservation, a privileged project assessment, claim and defense mapping, notice and cure, termination and transition, the damages and cap analysis, choosing and starting the forum, pleading fraud and contract claims that survive a motion to dismiss, ESI discovery, experts and summary judgment, and settlement. Each step explains what to do, why, the governing authority, the pitfalls, the timing, and the cost, with separate notes for the customer and for the vendor. A timeline and cost table and an extended worked example involving a logistics company's failed CRM and dispatch rollout show the steps in sequence. Common mistakes, an FAQ, and takeaways close the guide.
Product Security Toolkit: SBOMs, Vulnerability Disclosure, and Recall Decisions
This toolkit collects the documents a product security function actually produces, from the disclosure policy researchers read to the recall decision memorandum that will be read most carefully if something goes wrong. It includes a triage worksheet with the product safety analysis built in, a plain-language decision aid for the reporting standard, a security advisory template written to be defensible, supplier security terms, a support period statement, an end-of-support notification sequence, a multi-jurisdiction reporting map, and a tabletop scenario. Each template is annotated with its purpose, its owner, and the failure it prevents. Each template carries drafting notes on what regulators and enterprise customers actually look for. Adapt everything to the product, the update architecture, and the markets served.
Mental Health Advocacy Toolkit: Commitment Hearings, Treatment Consent, and Guardianship Alternatives
This toolkit collects the documents that actually change outcomes in mental health matters, with commentary on what each one accomplishes and when to use it. It includes a psychiatric advance directive written the way a useful one reads, a release of information and crisis card, a collateral information letter for a family member the hospital will not talk to, a discharge plan template built to be granted, a medication objection statement, an independent evaluation request, a supported decision-making agreement as an alternative to guardianship, a complaint letter to a Protection and Advocacy agency, a jail medication notice, and an employer accommodation request. Each is written to be adapted, and each is annotated with the mistake it prevents.
Air Travel and Passenger Rights: Delays, Bumping, Baggage, and Refunds
Air travel is governed by a body of federal regulation that grants passengers a small number of genuinely enforceable rights and preempts most of the state-law claims people instinctively reach for. This article explains what those rights actually are: cash compensation for involuntary denied boarding on a formula set by regulation, a refund in cash rather than a voucher when a flight is cancelled or significantly changed, mandatory refunds of ancillary fees for services not delivered, and the tarmac delay rule requiring an opportunity to deplane. It covers the contract of carriage—the document that governs everything else and that almost nobody reads—and the baggage liability limits, which differ substantially between domestic and international travel. It closes with the disability provisions governing wheelchair assistance and mobility device damage, and the Department of Transportation complaint that is the operative enforcement mechanism.
Sweepstakes and Contest Official Rules Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist covers the drafting and launch of a promotion, item by item. It begins with the design questions that determine the compliance profile, then works the alternative method of entry requirements that keep a sweepstakes from being a lottery, every required section of the official rules, the abbreviated rules that must appear in advertising, registration and bonding thresholds and deadlines, the launch review run against final assets rather than the plan, and the administration and closeout obligations including winner verification, tax reporting, and the winners list filings that are most often forgotten.
Election Law and Voting Rights: Registration, Ballot Access, Redistricting, and Campaign Finance
Election law sits at the intersection of constitutional structure, federal statute, and fifty state administrative systems, and almost every dispute in it turns on the interaction rather than on any single rule. This article explains who runs elections and under what authority, the Voting Rights Act framework and what remains of it after the coverage formula was struck down, the one person one vote requirement and the redistricting litigation it generates, the sliding-scale balancing that governs voting restrictions, the mechanics of registration, absentee voting, provisional ballots, and recounts, ballot access requirements for candidates and parties, the campaign finance architecture built on disclosure and contribution limits, and the timing doctrine that shapes all election litigation.
Connected Device Compliance Checklist: A Practical Checklist
Connected device obligations come from five bodies of law that converge on a recognizable set of practices, and manufacturers fail on process rather than on doctrine. This checklist covers the whole program: establishing ownership with authority, publishing a disclosure policy researchers will use, running severity-based triage that includes the product safety analysis security teams reliably omit, maintaining a component inventory, committing to and disclosing a support period, and designing so remediation is possible at all. Separate sections cover supplier requirements, marketing claim review, the recall decision, multi-jurisdiction reporting, end of support, and program metrics. It covers design, supply chain, disclosure, update capability, and end-of-support commitments. Every item is written so that a "no" tells you what to do next.
Patent Prosecution Toolkit: A Roadmap and Research Guide
This toolkit is a high-level roadmap and curated library guide to U.S. patent prosecution, from capturing an invention through issuance and maintenance. It walks each stage: invention disclosure, patentability and freedom-to-operate searching, choosing between provisional and nonprovisional filings, drafting claims and specification, filing through Patent Center, examination and office-action responses, overcoming obviousness and eligibility rejections, allowance and issuance, paying maintenance fees, and honoring the duty of candor. At each stage it links to mclaw.io checklists and articles plus primary and official authorities including the MPEP, 35 U.S.C. Sections 101/102/103/112, and leading cases. This is general information, not legal advice; verify current USPTO fees and rules before filing.