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.
Domain Name Dispute Checklist: A Practical Checklist
Domain disputes are won on preparation done before anything is filed and lost on a step skipped in the first week. This checklist runs the sequence: diagnosing which of five situations you actually face, establishing the two dates that decide most cases, building the evidentiary record before contact tips the registrant, choosing among the UDRP, the URS, federal litigation, and purchase, and prosecuting the chosen route. It includes a respondent-side section for registrants receiving a complaint, and a prevention section covering the portfolio hygiene that stops the next occurrence. It sequences the choice between a UDRP proceeding and an ACPA action before either is filed. Every item is written so that a "no" tells you what to do next.
Domain Acquisition Toolkit: Outreach Scripts, Purchase Agreements, and Post-Closing Records
This toolkit collects the working papers for buying a domain name from its current holder, each introduced by purpose, owner, and timing and followed by drafting notes tied to authority. It includes a decision record and intent memo, outreach scripts and answers to the awkward questions, a broker engagement letter, and a seller provenance questionnaire. It also includes a domain purchase agreement with title, no-lien, and no-dispute representations, escrow instructions, and a transfer closing run sheet that accounts for ICANN's current 60-day lock and its adopted reforms. Post-closing papers cover the security record, an internal license from a holding entity, and a closing file index. Every template uses bracketed placeholders and can be adapted to a small purchase or a large one.
Complying with Pay Transparency and Pay Equity Laws
Two related bodies of law now govern compensation. Pay equity statutes prohibit paying employees differently for comparable work absent a legitimate justification, and most state versions have broadened the comparison standard well beyond the federal equal-work test while narrowing the available defenses. Pay transparency statutes require employers to disclose pay ranges in job postings, to employees on request, and in some jurisdictions to report aggregate pay data to the state. This guide explains both, identifies where the state requirements differ in ways that matter operationally, walks through how to conduct a privileged pay audit and what to do with the results, and sets out the compensation infrastructure—job architecture, pay bands, documented criteria, and approval discipline—that makes compliance sustainable rather than a recurring emergency.
Water Rights: Prior Appropriation, Riparian Doctrine, Groundwater, and Federal Reserved Rights
Water law is two systems, a set of federal overlays, and a growing crisis, and which system applies depends on which side of roughly the hundredth meridian you are standing on. This article explains riparian rights and the reasonable use standard in the East, prior appropriation and the priority system in the West, how a right is created, maintained, lost, and transferred under each, the separate and often incoherent treatment of groundwater, federal reserved rights under the Winters doctrine and the Indian water rights settlements that implement them, interstate allocation by compact and equitable apportionment, general stream adjudications, and where Clean Water Act permitting intersects with all of it.
Recovering a Domain Name: A Practical Guide
Recovering a domain name is a decision tree, not a single procedure, and the first branch is why the name is gone. This guide separates the five common situations—a squatter, a legitimate prior holder, a lapsed registration, a hijacked account, and a former partner or employee—because each has a different remedy and treating them alike produces expensive failures. It walks through the investigation that must precede any filing, the choice between the UDRP and federal litigation, the mechanics of drafting and prosecuting each, the negotiated purchase as an alternative, and the portfolio hygiene that prevents the next occurrence. It includes evidence checklists, a timeline, and the errors that most often defeat an otherwise strong claim.
Domain Name Disputes: Cybersquatting, the ACPA, and the UDRP
A domain name is a contract with a registrar that happens to function like a brand, and that mismatch produces a distinctive body of law. This article explains the two systems that resolve domain disputes—the federal Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act and the contractual Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy—and why they exist side by side rather than one replacing the other. It covers the elements of each, the in rem procedure that lets a trademark owner sue a domain name itself, the bad faith factors that decide ACPA cases, and the recurring situations that are not cybersquatting at all. It closes with practical portfolio management and the trap of reverse domain name hijacking.
Cross-Examination Preparation Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist sets out, phase by phase, the tasks a litigator should complete before cross-examining an adverse witness, at deposition or at trial, in federal civil litigation. It covers defining goals from the elements, gathering intelligence on the witness, assembling impeachment material, controlling exhibits, confirming the governing evidence and procedure rules, and building a chapter outline. Separate phases address deposition-specific and trial-specific steps, expert witnesses, preparing your own witnesses against Reptile and Reid-style questioning, and an ethics check before the examination. Each item links the governing rule or case and adds a short practical note. Red-flag boxes, a deadlines table, a short worked example, and a list of common failure points close the checklist.
Right of Publicity Toolkit: Releases, NIL Agreements, and Takedown Demands
This toolkit collects the documents that publicity work actually produces: releases in the variants an organization needs, an endorsement agreement outline with the clauses that decide disputes, a standalone digital replica consent that should never be folded into a media grant, a rights inventory schema, and the demand and takedown materials used when a use turns out to be unauthorized. Each template is annotated with its purpose, its owner, and the failure it prevents. Because the underlying right is state law and varies substantially, the templates flag the points where jurisdiction-specific review is required rather than pretending to a uniform national standard. Each template carries drafting notes on scope, term, territory, and the digital replica provisions now appearing in state statutes. Adapt everything to the governing state law, which varies more here than in most areas.
Right of Publicity Clearance Checklist: A Practical Checklist
Publicity claims against ordinary businesses almost always trace to one of three failures: no release, an expired release, or a release whose scope did not cover the use. This checklist is built to catch all three before a campaign ships. It runs the clearance sequence from classifying the use through verifying releases, checking stock license restrictions, handling deceased individuals, addressing digital replicas as a separate consent, and applying escalation rules. Separate sections cover the individual's side of a licensing negotiation and the enforcement evaluation when an unauthorized use is discovered.
Indian Country Jurisdiction and ICWA Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist runs a matter with a tribal dimension from the first jurisdictional question through ICWA compliance and judgment enforcement. It is organized as sequences: the three threshold facts, the Public Law 280 and tribe-specific statute check, tribal code research and court admission, the exhaustion decision, sovereign immunity and contracting, criminal jurisdiction analysis, the full ICWA compliance sequence with its deadlines and standards, judgment recognition, and consultation. The items that most often destroy an otherwise sound position are flagged.
Licensing and Protecting Name, Image, and Likeness: A Practical Guide
Name, image, and likeness work divides into two jobs that look similar and require different skills: licensing an identity so it produces revenue without giving away more than intended, and clearing third-party identities so a campaign does not generate claims. This guide covers both. It walks through the individual's side—entity structure, category definition, approval mechanics, digital replica consent, morals clauses, and the compliance overlay in college athletics—and the user's side, including release drafting, stock imagery restrictions, deceased individuals, and the escalation rules that keep advertising out of trouble. It closes with enforcement: how to evaluate an unauthorized use, what a demand letter should say, and when the claim is worth pursuing.
Firearms Law Toolkit: Licensing, Transfers, Restoration, and Compliance
This toolkit assembles the working documents of firearms compliance: an eligibility worksheet and certified disposition request, a background check denial challenge and record correction request, a private transfer bill of sale, a registered item application tracker and trust responsible-persons list, reciprocity and travel worksheets, an inventory template and theft report checklist, surrender compliance and order termination letters, a restoration petition outline, a plea colloquy advisory for criminal practitioners, a dealer compliance audit and straw purchase refusal memorandum, and an estate firearms memorandum.