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.
Serving a Foreign Defendant Under the Hague Convention: A Practical Checklist
Serving a foreign-based defendant is one of the first and hardest problems in cross-border litigation, and getting it wrong can cost personal jurisdiction or leave the plaintiff holding a judgment no foreign court will enforce. This checklist walks through the threshold Schlunk question of whether the Hague Service Convention even applies, the standard Central Authority route with its translation and timing demands, why the familiar shortcuts (mail, consular service, local agents) are foreclosed where a state has objected to Article 10, the live frontier of court-ordered email service under FRCP 4(f)(3) and the Schedule A cases, and the planning moves—the Rule 4(d) waiver, the SinoType contractual workaround, and a U.S. agent for service—that can avoid the treaty entirely. China is used as the leading restrictive example. It is general information, not legal advice; treaty membership, designated authorities, fees, and processing times change.
Section 337 Investigations at the ITC: Exclusion Orders, Domestic Industry, and Speed
The International Trade Commission is the fastest and in some ways the most powerful patent forum in the United States, and it is available only to those who can prove a domestic industry. This article explains what a Section 337 investigation is, how it differs from district court litigation in remedy, pace, and procedure, and why the domestic industry requirement is the gate that decides who may use it. It covers the phases of an investigation from complaint through Commission determination and presidential review, the difference between limited and general exclusion orders, and how Customs actually enforces them at the border. It also addresses the strategic reality that most Section 337 complainants also sue in district court, and how the two proceedings interact.
Nonprofit Annual Compliance Checklist: A Practical Checklist
Exempt status is not a category an organization occupies; it is a set of recurring obligations, and most of the ones that cause real damage are administrative. Three consecutive missed information returns revoke exemption automatically. An unregistered solicitation in a state where donors live draws an attorney general notice. An executive compensation decision made without comparability data and contemporaneous documentation loses a protection that costs almost nothing to obtain. This checklist organizes the year: the filings and their deadlines, the governance actions that must occur annually, the compensation and conflicts procedures that make transactions defensible, the unrelated business income and lobbying tracking, restricted fund compliance, and the periodic reviews that keep the documents aligned with what the organization actually does.
Patent Damages Toolkit: Royalty Models, Expert Reports, and Daubert Motions
This toolkit collects the working documents that a damages case actually runs on, from the pre-filing marking audit through the post-trial ongoing royalty briefing. Each template is annotated with its purpose, its owner, and the specific failure it prevents. The materials cover both sides—a marking audit worksheet serves the patentee proving compliance and the defendant attacking it, and the expert report outline doubles as a review protocol for the opposing report. They are structures rather than forms, intended to impose the discipline that keeps damages opinions admissible and damages verdicts affirmable.
Identity Theft and Credit Report Toolkit: Freezes, Disputes, Blocks, and Litigation
This toolkit assembles the letters and worksheets of a credit reporting matter: the block request that most consumers never send, a six-part dispute letter template, demands for transaction records and adverse action notices, requests for the reinvestigation procedure and the reinsertion certification, mixed file separation language, notices to furnishers and debt collectors, the dissemination list request that establishes concrete harm, dispute and call logs, a harm documentation worksheet, goodwill and pay-for-delete letters, and a pre-litigation demand. Each is annotated with the provision it invokes.
Art Transaction and Provenance Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist runs an art matter from diligence through claim. It covers the provenance research sequence and the gaps that require resolution rather than explanation, the warranties a bill of sale must contain, what to read in auction conditions of sale before bidding, the consignment terms that determine whether an artist recovers work from a failed gallery, the moral rights sequence a building owner must follow before renovation, insurance and shipping practices, loan agreement terms, and the response sequences for a stolen art claim, a forgery, and an estate.
Restrictive Covenants in Business Sales, Franchises, and Partnerships
Restrictive covenants outside the employment relationship are governed by different rules, judged by a more forgiving standard, and drafted for entirely different purposes than the employee non-compete that dominates the commentary. A covenant given by a seller of a business protects the goodwill the buyer paid for and is enforced in nearly every state, including states that prohibit employee non-competes outright. A covenant in a franchise agreement protects a system and a territory. A covenant among partners or members protects a firm that each of them owns. This article explains how the sale-of-business, franchise, and equity-holder contexts differ from employment, how antitrust law constrains them, why choice of law is the most consequential drafting decision, and what forfeiture provisions can accomplish where injunctions cannot.
Patent Damages Checklist: A Practical Checklist
Patent damages fails in predictable places, and nearly all of them are avoidable with a checklist run at the right time. This one is organized by phase: the pre-filing audit that fixes the damages period and tests marking compliance, the discovery that must be requested in the right format, the apportionment analysis that will be tested under Rule 702, the expert report review protocol, and the post-trial motions that determine enhancement, fees, interest, and ongoing royalties. Items are written so either side can use them, with notes where the patentee's and the accused infringer's tasks diverge. Each section closes with the failure it exists to prevent.
Juvenile Court and Delinquency Response Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist runs a juvenile delinquency matter from the moment of police contact through sealing the record. It covers the invocation script and what never to consent to, the counsel decision that must not be waived, intake and diversion review, the detention release plan built from logistics, the predisposition preparation that determines the outcome, transfer hearing requirements, probation conditions and violation response, fees and ability-to-pay inquiries, placement and release planning, collateral consequences in school, housing, immigration, and licensing, and the sealing conversation that belongs at disposition.
Expungement, Reexamination, and Letters of Protest: The Trademark Modernization Act in Practice
The Trademark Modernization Act of 2020 gave businesses blocked by phantom registrations cheaper tools than a full cancellation case, and gave registrants new ways to lose registrations they never earned. This article explains how ex parte expungement (marks never used) and ex parte reexamination (marks not in use on the date use was claimed) work under 15 U.S.C. §§ 1066a and 1066b and 37 C.F.R. §§ 2.91 to 2.94, including the reasonable-investigation requirement, the filing windows, the Director's non-reviewable institution decision, the registrant's response options, estoppel, and appeals to the TTAB and the Federal Circuit. It walks through the TTAB's leading decisions under the new procedures, the new Section 14(6) nonuse cancellation ground, and how each tool compares with abandonment and fraud claims after In re Bose. It also covers letters of protest, shortened office-action response periods, the post-registration audit program, and the restored presumption of irreparable harm in 15 U.S.C. § 1116(a). A worked example follows a startup whose application is blocked by a 2016 registration supported by a doctored specimen, and the article closes with strategy for both sides, common mistakes, an FAQ, and practical takeaways.
Proving and Attacking Patent Damages: A Practical Guide
Patent damages is built, not argued: the number a jury returns depends on data collected months earlier and on methodological choices that cannot be revisited after reports are served. This guide walks through the work in sequence for both sides—the pre-filing valuation, the discovery that must be requested and produced, the selection and management of a damages expert, the apportionment analysis that will be tested under Rule 702, and the deposition and motion practice that decides whether an opinion reaches the jury. It includes a working calendar, a division of labor, a list of the errors that most often produce exclusion, and a framework for valuing the case at each stage so settlement decisions rest on something better than instinct. Worked examples show how a royalty base is narrowed and how an expert survives or fails a Daubert challenge. Written for counsel on either side of the damages case and for in-house lawyers pricing the exposure.
Tribal Law and Indian Country Jurisdiction: Sovereignty, Criminal Authority, and ICWA
Indian country jurisdiction is the most intricate allocation of authority in American law, and the answer to almost any question in it requires knowing three facts before anything else: where the conduct occurred, who the parties are, and what kind of case it is. This article explains the statutory definition of Indian country, the criminal jurisdiction grid created by the General Crimes Act, the Major Crimes Act, and Public Law 280, the civil jurisdiction framework built on the Montana test, tribal sovereign immunity and the Indian Civil Rights Act, the structure and recognition of tribal courts, the Indian Child Welfare Act with its notice, active efforts, and placement requirements, and the recent decisions that have reshaped the field.