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.

Intellectual PropertyTrade and Customs

Stopping Gray Market and Counterfeit Imports: A Practical Guide

Stopping unauthorized imports is an operational program with a legal layer, not a litigation strategy. This guide walks through building the program in the order that makes each step work: recording marks with Customs, documenting material differences, preparing the identification materials officers actually use, serializing so goods can be traced, and rewriting distribution agreements so diversion has consequences. It then covers the investigation — test purchases, forensic examination, and code tracing — and the enforcement channels available, from border detention through marketplace complaints to litigation. It includes a first-ninety-days plan, a budget, and the errors that cause programs to consume resources without reducing volume.

Casey Scott McKayFebruary 10, 202627 min read

LitigationMaritime Law

Maritime Claim and Vessel Compliance Checklist: A Practical Checklist

This checklist runs maritime matters from the moment of an incident through arrest, limitation, and trial preparation. It covers the first hours after an injury aboard, the evidence that establishes seaman or longshore status, the maintenance and cure demand and what to do when payments stop, forum selection under the saving to suitors clause, responding to a limitation action, the preservation letter that must go out within days, the cargo sequence built around the delivery inspection and the one-year deadline, vessel purchase lien diligence, arrest procedure, and the operator's casualty response.

Casey Scott McKayFebruary 10, 20268 min read

PropertyWater Law

Securing and Defending a Water Right: A Practical Guide

This guide is the operating sequence for anyone who owns, is buying, or wants to create a water right. It covers the due diligence that prevents the most common and most expensive mistake in rural real estate, how to apply for and perfect a new appropriation, the annual documentation habit that defeats forfeiture, how to run a change or transfer application including the historical consumptive use analysis that decides it, what to do when a curtailment order arrives, how to file a statement of claim in a general adjudication, and how to handle a district or ditch company relationship that may matter more than the underlying right.

Casey Scott McKayFebruary 9, 202628 min read

Wills and EstatesProbate

Probate and Estate Administration Checklist: A Practical Checklist

A deadline ordered checklist for administering an estate. It opens with the first week, including the insurance call about vacancy that families miss and that causes the worst outcomes in this field. It then runs the titling review that determines whether probate is required at all, the simplified procedures worth asking about before filing anything, the petition and appointment, the estate account and ledger that protect the representative personally, the creditor notice that must include direct written notice to known creditors, the claim period and statutory payment priority, the inventory and appraisals that fix the basis step up, the four tax filings and the portability and disclaimer deadlines, and closing with releases and a discharge order.

Casey Scott McKayFebruary 9, 20268 min read

Intellectual PropertyTrade and Customs

Gray Market Goods and the First Sale Doctrine: Parallel Imports, Exhaustion, and Border Enforcement

Gray market goods are genuine products sold outside the channel their maker intended, and whether that is lawful depends on which intellectual property right you invoke and where the goods were first sold. This article explains the exhaustion rules for copyright, patent, and trademark separately, because they differ in ways that decide cases. It covers the Supreme Court decisions that established international exhaustion for copyright and patent, the material differences doctrine that keeps trademark law available against parallel imports, and the customs framework that determines what actually gets stopped at the border. It closes with the contractual and commercial tools that work where intellectual property law does not.

Casey Scott McKayFebruary 9, 202628 min read

Intellectual PropertyPatent

Freedom to Operate and IP Clearance Toolkit: Clearing the Path Before You Launch

This toolkit is a high-level roadmap and curated library guide for clearing intellectual property risk before launching a product, brand, or codebase. It walks the full clearance process: why to clear before launch, conducting a patent freedom-to-operate search, trademark clearance, copyright and open-source clearance, the role of opinions of counsel in defusing willful-infringement exposure after Halo v. Pulse, designing around blocking rights, and ongoing risk management. At each stage it links the firm's articles and checklists alongside the search tools and primary authorities a practitioner needs—USPTO Patent Public Search, Espacenet, Google Patents, USPTO trademark search, and the willfulness/enhanced-damages framework of 35 U.S.C. § 284. It is written for product and brand teams, founders, in-house counsel, and outside clearance counsel. Read the roadmap, then drill into the linked search checklists. FTO is a risk-management exercise, not a guarantee—calibrate depth to the stakes.

Casey Scott McKayFebruary 9, 202614 min read

FinanceBankruptcy

Filing a Chapter 13 Plan: A Practical Guide

A Chapter 13 plan is a payment proposal that becomes a binding court order, and drafting one badly produces a case that fails eighteen months later with nothing accomplished. The plan must be filed with or shortly after the petition, payments must begin within thirty days whether or not the plan is confirmed, and the numbers must satisfy three separate tests — disposable income, best interests, and feasibility — that constrain each other. Most of the real work happens before filing: gathering the income history that fixes the commitment period, valuing the collateral that determines what secured creditors receive, and testing whether the household can actually sustain the payment for the full term. This guide walks the preparation, the plan's provisions section by section, the confirmation process and the objections to expect, and the post-confirmation management that keeps a case alive.

Casey Scott McKayFebruary 9, 202626 min read

CommercialProduct Regulation

FDA Food Labeling Review Checklist: A Practical Checklist

Food labels are among the most prescriptive documents in commercial regulation, and nearly every requirement is a formatting rule with a numerical answer rather than a judgment call. That makes label defects unusually easy to prevent and unusually expensive to discover after a print run. This checklist walks the label panel by panel: the statement of identity and net quantity on the principal display panel, the ingredient statement and allergen declaration and manufacturer identification on the information panel, the Nutrition Facts panel and the serving size that must derive from the reference amount customarily consumed rather than from marketing preference, and then the claims — nutrient content, health, structure function, natural, organic, and bioengineered disclosure — each of which carries its own definition and its own substantiation requirement. It closes with the state overlays, the review process, and the version control that makes it possible to prove what a label said on any given date.

Casey Scott McKayFebruary 8, 202610 min read

Intellectual PropertyAdvertising

False Advertising Toolkit: Substantiation Files, Surveys, and Injunction Briefing

This toolkit collects the working documents of an advertising dispute practice, on both the compliance side and the litigation side. It includes the claim intake form and substantiation file structure that prevent claims from becoming cases, the evidence log and characterization worksheet that open a challenge, a demand letter and a self-regulatory challenge outline, a preliminary injunction brief skeleton, survey specifications for building and attacking, targeted discovery requests, and settlement terms that actually prevent recurrence. Each template is annotated with its purpose, its owner, and the failure it prevents. Each template carries drafting notes on what the document is proving and to whom. Adapt everything to the claim, the medium, and the governing law.

Casey Scott McKayFebruary 8, 202611 min read

CriminalPretrial Release

Bail and Pretrial Release: Detention, Conditions, and the Money Bail Debate

Whether a person is released before trial changes almost everything about the case, and the decision is usually made in a hearing lasting minutes, on incomplete information, within days of arrest. This article explains the constitutional framework from the Excessive Bail Clause through Stack v. Boyle and United States v. Salerno, the federal Bail Reform Act's structure of a presumption of release and a graduated set of conditions, how detention hearings actually work and what the rebuttable presumptions do, the probable cause timing rules, the mechanics of cash bail, commercial sureties, and unsecured bonds, the pretrial services and risk assessment apparatus, the reform movement and the evidence behind it, and how release is revoked.

Casey Scott McKayFebruary 8, 202628 min read

Intellectual PropertyAdvertising

False Advertising Claim Checklist: A Practical Checklist

False advertising disputes are decided in the first ninety days, and the checklist below is organized to fit that reality. It runs the sequence from capturing an advertisement before it changes, through characterizing the claim as literally or impliedly false, choosing among the demand letter, the self-regulatory forum, and litigation, moving for preliminary relief, and running the substantiation and survey discovery that decide the merits. Separate sections cover the defendant's response, the advertising review program that prevents claims, and the settlement terms worth negotiating. It covers the plaintiff's proof, the defendant's substantiation file, and the survey decision. Every item is written so that a "no" tells you what to do next.

Casey Scott McKayFebruary 7, 20267 min read

GovernmentTribal Law

Tribal Law Toolkit: Jurisdiction Analysis, Tribal Court Practice, and ICWA Compliance

This toolkit collects the working documents of a matter with a tribal dimension: a jurisdiction analysis worksheet, an Indian country determination request, a tribal code research log, a tribal court admission letter, an exhaustion motion outline, a sovereign immunity waiver clause with a council resolution request, the ICWA inquiry script and notice letter with a genealogy intake form, an active efforts log, a qualified expert engagement letter, placement preference and transfer tools, a protection order enforcement packet, a comity petition outline, and consultation and cultural resources letters.

Casey Scott McKayFebruary 6, 202614 min read