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.
Naturalization Application Checklist
A working checklist for a naturalization application, sequenced the way the work actually happens. It opens with the five-question screen that separates a straightforward case from one that needs counsel first, then covers the trip reconstruction, the character-issue documents that take months to obtain, and the fee and exemption decisions. It includes the interview folder contents, the questions to rehearse, and the response protocol for a request for evidence or a re-examination notice. It closes with the denial deadlines and the after-the-oath steps.
Naturalization and Citizenship: Eligibility, Good Moral Character, and the Interview
Naturalization is the only immigration process in which an applicant volunteers to be examined, and the examination reaches everything—the entire immigration history, every absence, every arrest, every tax year. This article explains the eligibility requirements from continuous residence and physical presence through the good moral character period, and why the review of that period is far broader than the statutory bars suggest. It covers the English and civics requirements and the disability exception that is available and underused, the special provisions for spouses of citizens and for military service, and the questions that make an application risky rather than routine—prior removal proceedings, certain criminal history, unfiled taxes, false claims to citizenship, and voting. It closes with the interview, the request for evidence, the administrative hearing on a denial, and the judicial review that follows.
Filing a USPTO Trademark Application Checklist: A Practical Checklist
A phase-by-phase checklist for preparing and filing a federal trademark application with the USPTO, current to the January 18, 2025 fee overhaul that retired the TEAS Plus/Standard tiers in favor of a single base application plus surcharges and moved filing into Trademark Center. It walks through clearance, register and basis selection, owner and domicile fields, goods-and-services drafting from the Trademark ID Manual to dodge surcharges, standard-character versus special-form drawings, specimens, the verified declaration, and post-filing docketing. WHY notes and trap warnings accompany each phase, with a common-mistakes list and primary authority. Educational, not legal advice; confirm current fees at USPTO.gov.
False Advertising Under the Lanham Act: Literal Falsity, Materiality, and Competitor Standing
Section 43(a)(1)(B) of the Lanham Act gives businesses a federal claim against competitors who lie in advertising, and it is one of the most useful and least understood tools in commercial litigation. This article explains the five elements of the claim, the crucial distinction between literal and implied falsity and what each requires in proof, and the doctrine of puffery that removes most sales talk from the statute's reach. It covers who may sue after the Supreme Court replaced the old standing tests with a zone-of-interests analysis, how false advertising claims interact with federal regulatory schemes, and the remedies that make these cases worth bringing. It closes with the self-regulatory and regulatory alternatives that resolve most advertising disputes without a courthouse.
Contributions to a Collective Work
A "contribution to a collective work" is an independently copyrightable piece—an article, photo, poem, cartoon, or chapter—that an author lets a publisher gather into a larger whole such as a magazine, anthology, journal, or website. Under 17 U.S.C. 201(c), the contributor keeps the copyright in their own piece, and absent a written transfer the publisher acquires only a narrow privilege to reproduce it as part of that particular collective work, a revision of it, or a later work in the same series. The Supreme Court's decision in New York Times Co. v. Tasini, 533 U.S. 483 (2001), held that loading freelance articles into searchable electronic databases that retrieve them as standalone items exceeds that privilege, while later cases such as Faulkner and the en banc Greenberg v. National Geographic held that context-preserving digital replicas of whole issues do not. This article explains the statutory definitions, the default rules that allocate rights, how Tasini and its progeny reshaped publishing, the work-made-for-hire doctrine, how to register contributions, and how termination and reversion can let authors recapture their work decades later. It is written for writers, editors, publishers, and the lawyers who advise them.
Buying a Car: Warranties, Lemon Laws, Dealer Fraud, and Financing
A car is the second largest purchase most people make and the one most likely to go wrong, because the transaction combines a complex product, a financing contract, and a sales culture built around the finance office. This article explains the warranty architecture from express and implied warranties through the Magnuson-Moss framework, what an as-is sale really means and what it cannot disclaim, how state lemon laws work and why the notice requirement matters more than the defect, revocation of acceptance as the underused alternative, the recurring dealer fraud patterns from yo-yo financing to odometer and title washing, the financing disclosures and the holder rule that lets a buyer assert claims against the lender, and how arbitration clauses reshape all of it.
Applying for Naturalization: A Practical Guide
This guide walks through a naturalization application from the screening you should do before filing to the passport you should get after the oath. It starts with the five questions that determine whether the case is straightforward or needs a lawyer, then covers the trip calculation almost everyone gets wrong, the evidence that resolves good moral character issues before they become problems, and the documentation to assemble for each category of complication. It covers fee waivers, the disability exception to English and civics, what actually happens at the interview, and how to respond to a request for evidence or a re-examination notice. It ends with denials—the administrative hearing, the deadline that governs it, and the de novo federal court review that follows—and with the steps to take in the weeks after the oath.
Payday Loans, Title Loans, and Credit Repair: Small-Dollar Credit and Its Traps
Small-dollar credit is where the arithmetic of an annual percentage rate stops being an abstraction. This article explains how payday, title, and high-cost installment loans actually work—the fee that reads as fifteen dollars and prices as four hundred percent, the rollover cycle that turns a two-week bridge into an eight-month obligation, and the security interest in a car that makes a title loan the most dangerous of the three. It covers the state rate caps, licensing regimes, and cooling-off requirements that vary enormously, and the evasion structures built to route around them. It then addresses the Military Lending Act's thirty-six percent cap and why it matters more broadly, the credit repair industry and the federal statute prohibiting advance fees for services not yet performed, and the alternatives that exist and go unused.
Domain Name Toolkit: UDRP Complaints, ACPA Pleadings, and Portfolio Management
This toolkit collects the documents a domain dispute practice actually produces, from the evidence log built in the first week through the portfolio register that prevents the next dispute. It includes a UDRP complaint skeleton organized around the three elements, an ACPA complaint outline with the nine bad faith factors mapped, a registrar abuse report for active fraud, a domain purchase agreement with the transfer mechanics that make or break a deal, and the contract clauses that stop former agencies and distributors from keeping names. Each template is annotated with its purpose, its owner, and the failure it prevents. Each template carries drafting notes on the elements a panel or a court actually decides. Adapt everything to the registrar, the registry, and the governing law.
Challenging a Government Agency Decision: A Practical Guide
This guide is the sequence for a person or business on the receiving end of a government decision they believe is wrong. It covers identifying which kind of proceeding you are in and what that determines, finding the organic statute and the agency regulations that supply most of your rights, locating the deadline before anything else, using public records requests as the substitute for discovery, building the administrative record that will be the entire case on review, preserving objections including structural constitutional ones, deciding whether to exhaust or go to court, seeking a stay, and understanding that the realistic remedy is usually a remand.
Vehicle Purchase and Lemon Law Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist covers a vehicle transaction from before the dealership through a lemon law claim or a dealer dispute. It has three parts: the ninety-minute buying protocol that prevents most problems, the service-visit discipline that builds the case if one arises, and the escalation sequence from written notice through arbitration, revocation, complaints, and small claims. Deadlines and irreversible moments are flagged, including the point at which a trade-in title should never be surrendered and the window in which finance office products can be cancelled for a refund.
Handling a Maritime Injury or Cargo Claim: A Practical Guide
This guide is the action sequence for a maritime injury, a cargo loss, or a vessel casualty. It covers what to do in the first hours aboard, why the accident report matters more than in any other injury case, how to establish seaman status with the evidence that actually decides it, how to demand maintenance and cure and what to do when it stops, how to choose a forum under the saving to suitors clause, how to respond to a shipowner's limitation action, the cargo claim sequence built around the one-year deadline and the joint survey, when to arrest a vessel, and how to handle a casualty investigation.