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.
Launching a Game: A Practical Legal Guide for Studios and Publishers
Shipping a game means closing dozens of legal questions on a schedule set by a launch date, and the ones that hurt are the license scope issues nobody catalogued. This guide runs the work in the order it has to happen: building the rights register, closing the gaps it reveals, drafting terms for the product actually shipping, reviewing the monetization flow the way a regulator would, standing up the content infrastructure a game hosting player creations needs, and preparing for the first ninety days after launch. It includes a twelve-week countdown, budget guidance, the failures that recur across studios, and what changes for a live-service title. A worked launch sequence shows what has to be finished twelve, six, and two months out. It also covers the post-launch obligations that begin the day the game ships.
Hiring a Contractor and Handling a Construction Dispute: A Practical Guide
This guide covers a home improvement project from the first estimate through the final payment and, when necessary, the dispute that follows. It sets out the two hours of screening that prevent most construction disasters—verifying the license, calling the insurer directly, getting three bids on one written scope, and calling a reference from a project two years old. It explains the contract terms that decide how a project goes, why the payment schedule and retainage are the homeowner's only real leverage, and how change orders should work. It then covers what to do during construction, including the preliminary notices that look like junk mail and are the complete list of who can lien your house. It closes with the dispute sequence: the defect notice statute to check first, the licensing board and bond claim that are free, and the consumer protection statute that shifts fees.
Video Game Law: Intellectual Property, Virtual Goods, User Content, and Player Protection
A video game is several legal objects at once: a copyrighted audiovisual work, a piece of licensed software, a service delivering purchasable items, a platform hosting user content, and increasingly a marketplace. This article separates those layers and explains what governs each. It covers what copyright protects in a game and what it does not, the licensing chain from engine to platform to player, the legal character of virtual goods and the consumer protection scrutiny of how they are sold, the user content and modding questions studios handle badly, the anti-cheat and account termination issues that generate the most player litigation, and the publicity and personality rights that attach to depicting real people. It explains why the legal questions in games are unusually layered, with copyright, trademark, contract, consumer protection, and gambling regulation all bearing on the same feature. It closes with the drafting and design decisions that determine exposure.
Pretrial Release Toolkit: Bail Motions, Conditions, and Detention Hearings
This toolkit collects the working documents of a pretrial release matter: a release package cover sheet and the verification letters that support it, a third-party custodian affidavit, a treatment acceptance request, a criminal history correction sheet and risk assessment challenge, motions for release on conditions and for bail reduction with a financial affidavit, a menu of condition packages matched to specific government concerns, a detention hearing outline, a prompt probable cause demand, a bond form comparison and bail bond contract review sheet, condition modification and fee waiver requests, a motion to quash a warrant after a missed date, and motions to reopen and to review a detention order.
Small-Dollar Credit Toolkit: Revocation Letters, License Checks, and Regulator Complaints
This toolkit contains the letters, worksheets, and scripts that get a borrower out of a payday or title loan, ordered by urgency. It opens with the ACH revocation letters to the lender and the bank and a request to reverse the NSF fees that frequently exceed the loan fees. It provides a lawfulness worksheet covering the license check, the rate cap, and the rollover rules, a transaction history request, and a rollover audit that makes the violations visible. It includes an extended payment plan demand, a credit union call script, a title loan redemption and notice demand, a repossession documentation worksheet, a Military Lending Act letter, a regulator complaint, a collection violation log, a skeleton answer to a collection suit, a credit report audit worksheet, a credit repair refund demand, and an APR calculator.
Patent License Term Sheet: A Practical Checklist
This checklist walks a patent owner and counsel through building a license term sheet—from the threshold question of whether to license at all, through valuation and the structure of the grant, to the royalty architecture and protective machinery, to the doctrinal landmines every licensor must avoid. It covers exclusive versus non-exclusive grants and the field-of-use and territorial hybrids in between; upfronts, running royalties, minimums, and milestones; audit rights, representations, warranties, and indemnity; and the Supreme Court rules that silently make royalty streams uncollectible—the Brulotte/Kimble bar on post-expiration royalties, the Lear right of a licensee to challenge validity, patent exhaustion, and patent misuse. It flags university licensing under Bayh-Dole and standard-essential patents under FRAND. Use it to turn the right to exclude into a revenue stream without giving away the crown jewels. Educational, not legal advice.
Employee Handbook Drafting Checklist: A Practical Checklist
An employee handbook is the most-read legal document most workers ever encounter, and a careless one quietly surrenders the at-will defense, violates federal labor law, or becomes Exhibit A in a discrimination suit. This checklist walks a drafter through the whole job in order: scoping and architecture, the at-will disclaimer and the implied-contract traps from Toussaint and Woolley, the load-bearing policies (EEO and anti-harassment built for the Faragher/Ellerth defense, ADA accommodation, FMLA and the wider leave landscape, wage-hour with an FLSA safe harbor, PTO, code of conduct, confidentiality), drafting work rules narrowly enough to survive the NLRB's Stericycle standard, the acknowledgment form, arbitration placement, the multistate maze, and a review cadence. Each phase pairs checkboxes with the WHY and the traps, plus common mistakes and primary authority. It closes with related mclaw.io resources.
Civil Commitment and Mental Health Rights Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist runs a mental health crisis from before it happens through the months after discharge. It covers the advance paperwork that changes every later conversation, who to call and what to say when a crisis arrives, the first hours of an emergency hold for both the patient and the family, the two or three days available to prepare for a commitment hearing, the separate process governing medication over objection, the elements a discharge plan must contain to be granted, and the post-discharge work of insurance appeals, employment protections, firearm rights, and record sealing. Items that create rights or forfeit them are flagged.
Adtech Privacy Toolkit: Tag Inventories, Consent Records, and Litigation Defense
This toolkit collects the working documents of an adtech privacy practice: the capture protocol that produces a real inventory rather than a list, the per-tag record whose fields determine every legal analysis, a consent verification procedure that can be handed to an engineer, the vendor contract clauses that decide the party-exception argument, privacy policy language that describes actual practice, a residual risk memorandum with an acceptance line, and the preservation, discovery, and defense materials used when a demand letter arrives. Each template is annotated with its purpose, its owner, and the failure it prevents. Each template carries drafting notes on what the document proves and who will read it. Adapt everything to the site, the vendors, and the jurisdictions where users are located. The tag inventory in particular should be maintained continuously rather than reconstructed after a demand letter.
Website Tracking Compliance Checklist: A Practical Checklist
Website tracking exposure is technical, and this checklist is built to be run by a lawyer and an engineer together. It covers capturing what the site actually transmits rather than accepting a list, reconciling against the tag manager, mapping transmitted fields, identifying sensitive-page leakage, verifying that consent gating works, reviewing vendor contracts for the permitted-use term that decides the party-exception analysis, and remediating in priority order. Separate sections cover mobile applications, design changes that prevent leakage, governance, and what to do when a demand letter arrives. It covers the inventory, the consent mechanics, the vendor terms, and the litigation-readiness record. Every item is written so that a "no" tells you what to do next.
Copyright Enforcement and DMCA Toolkit: A Roadmap and Research Guide
This toolkit is a high-level roadmap and curated library guide for enforcing copyrights and operating within the DMCA's notice-and-takedown system. It walks the process from detecting infringement, through filing and responding to DMCA takedown notices and counter-notices, qualifying for and maintaining Section 512 safe harbor as an online service provider, satisfying the registration prerequisite to suit, litigating infringement, evaluating fair use, and navigating the fast-moving generative-AI copyright disputes. At each stage it links to mclaw.io checklists and articles plus primary and official authorities including 17 U.S.C. Section 512, copyright.gov, and leading cases. This is general information, not legal advice; verify current procedures and law before acting.
SNAP, TANF, and Public Assistance: Eligibility, Fair Hearings, and Overpayments
Public benefits programs are administered by overwhelmed agencies applying complicated rules, which means errors are common and the appeal system exists because of it. This article explains who qualifies for food and cash assistance, how households are counted and income calculated, and the deductions applicants routinely fail to claim. It covers expedited service for households with almost nothing, work requirements and the good cause exceptions that go unraised, and what an agency must do before it reduces or ends benefits. It then turns to the fair hearing—the deadline that preserves benefits while the appeal is pending, what to bring, and how these cases are actually won—and to overpayment claims, including the difference between agency error and an intentional program violation and why that difference determines everything.