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.
Getting Out of a Payday or Title Loan: A Practical Guide
This guide is a sequence for someone already inside a payday or title loan, starting with the step that stops the largest ongoing loss. It explains how to revoke an ACH authorization and stop the cascade of bank fees that frequently exceed the loan fees, then how to determine in two minutes whether the loan is even lawful—the license check, the rate cap, the rollover limits, and the cooling-off period that same-day repay-and-reborrow evades. It covers requesting the transaction history where the violations become visible, the extended payment plan many states require lenders to offer, and the cheaper credit that exists to refinance out. For title loans it sets out redemption rights, pre-sale notice, surplus accounting, and breach of the peace. It closes on collection threats, lawsuits, and credit repair.
Family-Based Immigration: Petitions, Priority Dates, and Adjustment of Status
Family-based immigration runs on two questions: does a qualifying relationship exist, and is a visa available. This article explains the difference between immediate relatives, who face no numerical limit, and the preference categories, where a priority date can mean a wait measured in decades. It covers how to read a visa bulletin, when adjustment of status inside the country is available and when consular processing abroad is required, and why that choice is one of the most consequential in the whole system. It works through the grounds of inadmissibility that derail otherwise strong cases, the unlawful presence bars and the waivers that address them, the affidavit of support and its enforceable obligation, conditional residence and its removal, and what actually happens at the interview.
Family Immigration Toolkit: Evidence of Relationship, Support Affidavits, and Waivers
Working templates for a family-based immigration case. It includes the priority date and category tracker, the admissibility screening worksheet that should be completed before anything is filed, an unlawful presence timeline worksheet, and the Child Status Protection Act calculator. It provides a relationship evidence index, a specific-detail affidavit format that adjudicators actually credit, the affidavit of support arithmetic worksheet and joint sponsor selection guide, a civil document tracker with a certification-of-unavailability request, and an extreme hardship brief outline for a waiver. It closes with a request-for-evidence response format, a removal-of-conditions waiver outline, and a humanitarian reinstatement request.
Family Immigration Checklist
A working checklist for a family-based immigration case from the pre-filing screen to the removal of conditions. It opens with the category determination and the admissibility screen that should happen before anything is filed, then covers the petition contents, the annual maintenance during a preference wait, and the events that convert or destroy a category. It includes the adjustment-versus-consular decision points, the National Visa Center document list, the affidavit of support arithmetic, the medical examination, and the interview folder. It closes with request-for-evidence and denial deadlines and the ninety-day conditional residence window.
Border Enforcement Toolkit: Recordations, Seizure Responses, and Gray Market Programs
This toolkit collects the working documents of a border enforcement and anti-diversion program, from the material differences matrix that makes every other tool possible through the metrics dashboard that shows whether the program is working. It includes the Lever-rule petition structure, a product identification guide outline written for customs officers rather than lawyers, test purchase and forensic protocols, a code tracing log, channel audit and termination materials, marketplace complaint language, and the distribution agreement clauses that give diversion consequences. Each template is annotated with its purpose, its owner, and the failure it prevents. Each template carries drafting notes on what CBP is looking for and what it ignores. Adapt everything to the mark, the product, and the import channel.
Registering a Copyright in Software: A Practical Checklist
Software is protected by copyright the instant it is written, but registration is the gateway to federal court, statutory damages, and attorney's fees. This checklist walks a developer, founder, or counsel through registering a computer program: confirming ownership and clearing contractor and open-source issues, choosing the application, completing the limitation-of-claim field, and preparing a source-code deposit using the first-25-and-last-25 rule and the special trade-secret redaction options that let you register without surrendering your crown jewels. It covers derivative versions, screen displays, the Rule of Doubt for object code, and special relief when the source is gone. It cites the deposit mechanics in the Compendium and the timing rules of Section 412. Verify current fees and deposit options at copyright.gov before filing.
Patent Cases to Watch in the Second Half of 2024: Implications for IP Strategy
This long-form analysis surveys the patent decisions and pending issues that reshaped patent law around 2024 and into 2025, and explains what each means for portfolio owners. It covers the Federal Circuit's en banc LKQ v. GM decision overhauling design-patent obviousness, the design-patent damages framework that makes those patents so valuable, the enablement fallout from Amgen v. Sanofi, the persistent uncertainty of Section 101 eligibility after Alice and Mayo, the Supreme Court's history-and-tradition turn in Vidal v. Elster, the USPTO's evolving examination guidance, developments at the PTAB including the long-running Fintiv discretionary-denial saga, and trends in patent damages and apportionment. For each area the article states the issue, its status and known aftermath, and the concrete IP-strategy implication for prosecution, portfolio management, and litigation. It is written as durable strategic guidance, candidly flagging where outcomes have continued to evolve since 2024. The goal is to help inventors, in-house counsel, and litigators position their portfolios against a moving body of law.
Military Legal Issues: The UCMJ, Servicemember Protections, and Employment Rights
Servicemembers live under two legal systems at once, and the interaction produces problems no civilian encounters. This article explains the Uniform Code of Military Justice from nonjudicial punishment through the three levels of court-martial and appellate review, the constitutional cases defining military jurisdiction and the limits on servicemember speech, the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act protections against default judgments, high interest rates, evictions, and lease obligations, the USERRA reemployment and antidiscrimination framework including the escalator principle and the imputed-bias theory, and the administrative routes to a discharge upgrade or a correction of military records.
Customs IP Enforcement Checklist: A Practical Checklist
Border enforcement of intellectual property rights runs on documents the rights holder supplies, and programs fail for administrative reasons rather than legal ones. This checklist covers the whole sequence: recording marks and copyrights, documenting material differences and filing a Lever-rule petition, building identification materials officers can actually use, serializing so goods can be traced, running test purchases and forensic examination, auditing the channel, and responding when Customs detains a shipment. It closes with the metrics that show whether the program is working and the errors that cause it to consume budget without reducing volume. It sequences recordation, enforcement requests, and the response to a seizure notice. Every item is written so that a "no" tells you what to do next.
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.
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.
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.