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.
Claim Construction and Markman Hearings: How Courts Decide What a Patent Actually Covers
Most patent cases are not won at trial. They are won at claim construction, when a judge decides what the words of the patent mean and, in doing so, usually decides whether the accused product infringes and whether the patent survives. This article explains what patent claims are, why judges rather than juries construe them, and how the Supreme Court's decisions in Markman, Teva, and Nautilus set the framework courts still use. It walks through the hierarchy of evidence courts consult, the handful of interpretive moves that decide the overwhelming majority of disputes, and the procedural machinery of a modern Markman proceeding from term exchange through the hearing. It closes with the strategic questions that matter most: which terms to fight over, when a construction is worth an appeal, and what happens to a case after the order issues.
Buying, Selling, and Protecting Art: A Practical Guide
This guide is the working sequence for anyone buying, selling, commissioning, lending, or inheriting art. It covers the diligence a buyer must actually do and document, how to read auction terms of sale and what the limited authenticity warranty really provides, the consignment agreement that determines whether an artist recovers work from a failed gallery, the moral rights questions a building owner and a commissioning client must address before installation rather than after, insurance and shipping practices that prevent most real-world losses, what to do when a work turns out to be stolen or fake, and how to plan a collection into an estate.
Representing a Child in Juvenile Court: A Practical Guide for Families
This guide is the sequence for a family whose child has been taken into custody or referred to juvenile court. It covers what to say and not say at the moment of police contact, why counsel must never be waived and how appointed counsel actually works, how the intake decision is made and how to influence it, what a diversion contract should and should not contain, how to win a detention hearing with logistics rather than argument, how the predisposition report drives everything and how to shape it, what a transfer hearing requires, how to handle probation conditions and violations, and how to get the record sealed.
Cybersecurity Regulatory Compliance Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist turns the overlapping cybersecurity rules that apply to American businesses into concrete, checkable tasks. It starts with applicability and scope, then works through governance, the written risk assessment, the written program and policies, core technical controls, vendor oversight, training and testing, and incident response with every regulatory reporting clock. A regime-by-regime section covers the FTC Safeguards Rule, NYDFS Part 500, the SEC's disclosure rules and Regulation S-P, HIPAA and the Health Breach Notification Rule, defense contractor requirements, state laws, insurance, telecommunications, and critical infrastructure. It closes with board reporting and certifications, examination readiness, an annual compliance calendar, common mistakes, an FAQ, and practical takeaways. Each item cites the governing rule so that compliance teams, counsel, auditors, and examiners can trace it to its source.
Bringing or Defending a Claim Before the Copyright Claims Board: A Practical Guide
This guide walks claimants and respondents through a Copyright Claims Board proceeding step by step, from deciding whether the Board fits the dispute through filing, compliance review, service, the 60-day opt-out window, the active phase, and the final determination. It explains what to file at each stage, the deadlines set by 17 U.S.C. section 1506 and 37 C.F.R. Parts 220 to 234, the fees, and the decision points where claims are won, lost, or dismissed on technicalities. Separate parts cover the claimant's preparation and service, the respondent's investigation and opt-out decision, the response and counterclaims, standard discovery, written testimony and hearings, the smaller claims track, settlement through the Board, and defaults and failures to prosecute. It then covers reconsideration, the Register's review, challenges in district court, and confirming and collecting an award. A worked example follows a small online retailer from service through settlement, and the guide closes with common mistakes, an FAQ, and practical takeaways.
Administrative Law: Rulemaking, Adjudication, and Judicial Review
Administrative law is the operating system of the modern state, and most people encounter it without knowing its name, in a benefits denial, a licensing decision, a permit, or an enforcement action. This article explains the Administrative Procedure Act framework from the inside out: how notice and comment rulemaking works and what makes a rule vulnerable, how formal adjudication differs from the informal decisions most agencies actually make, the scope of judicial review and what arbitrary and capricious review really demands, the collapse of Chevron deference and what replaced it, the surviving but narrowed deference to an agency reading its own regulation, the major questions doctrine, the threshold barriers of standing, finality, ripeness, and exhaustion, and the constitutional pressures now reshaping agency adjudication.
Prior Art Qualification Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist turns the question "is this reference prior art?" into a sequence of concrete tests that a challenger, a patent owner, a prosecutor, or an inventor can run on any patent, publication, web page, product, use, or sale. It starts by fixing each claim's effective filing date and the governing version of 35 U.S.C. § 102, then classifies the reference and works through the category-specific requirements: public accessibility for printed publications and archived web pages, non-confidential use and readiness for patenting for public uses, and the Pfaff commercial-offer test (secret sales included, after Helsinn) for the on-sale bar. It then covers the experimental use negation, the § 102(b) exceptions and Rule 130 declarations, the pre-AIA rules that still govern older patents, and the content requirements of anticipation, including inherency and enablement. The final phases address proof (authentication, hearsay for dates, corroboration of testimony, and product provenance), forum limits such as the patents-and-printed-publications rule for inter partes review, and the same questions run in reverse by patent owners and as a self-audit by inventors before filing. A one-page qualification record, an FAQ, and practical takeaways close the document.
Policy-Limits Demands and Insurer Bad Faith: How Time-Limited Demands Set Up Excess Verdicts
This article explains how a liability insurer that turns down a reasonable settlement offer within its policy limits can end up paying a verdict many times those limits, and why the time-limited demand has become the main tool for creating that exposure. It traces the duty to settle from the Texas Stowers decision of 1929 through California's Comunale and Crisci cases, then compares the standards courts now apply, from Texas negligence to New York's gross-disregard rule. It explains what makes a demand legally effective, the case law on short deadlines, impossible conditions, liens, and multiple claimants, and the growing body of statutes in California, Georgia, Florida, and Missouri that regulate demands. It then covers what happens after a demand lapses: excess verdicts, assignments, consent judgments, and the limits courts have placed on them. Separate sections address federal court practice and the ethical duties of plaintiff's counsel, defense counsel, and the insurer. An extended worked example, common mistakes, an FAQ, and takeaways close the article.
Firearms Law: Federal Regulation, State Permitting, and the Second Amendment
Firearms law is three regimes stacked on each other: a federal licensing and transfer system, a separate federal registration and taxation scheme for particular categories of weapons, and fifty state systems that vary from nearly unregulated to among the most restrictive in the country. This article explains who is prohibited from possessing firearms and why that list is longer than most people know, how transfers actually work and what a straw purchase is, the registration and transfer requirements for the narrow class of regulated items, the constitutional framework from Heller through Bruen and Rahimi, state permitting and carry, extreme risk protection orders, and the routes to restoration of rights.
Auto Purchase and Warranty Toolkit: Inspection, Demands, Revocation, and Claims
This toolkit collects the working documents of a vehicle dispute: the pre-purchase inspection request, repair order correction language, a defect log, the manufacturer lemon law notice with its repair attempt table, a revocation of acceptance letter, the holder rule notice to the lender, cancellation demands for service contracts and gap insurance, the yo-yo financing and trade-in restoration demand, an odometer fraud demand, dealer board and regulator complaint outlines, a settlement demand letter, an arbitration submission package, a small claims exhibit list, and a deficiency defense outline.
Forming and Qualifying a Nonprofit Corporation: A Practical Guide
Forming a nonprofit is a sequence of decisions in which the early ones constrain everything that follows, and most of them are made by people filling in a form without knowing what the form is deciding. This guide walks through the sequence in order: whether to form at all or use a fiscal sponsor, which entity form and which state, what the articles of incorporation must say for the IRS to grant exemption, how to write bylaws that will govern rather than sit in a drawer, how to build the initial board, and how to complete the exemption application without triggering the questions that stall it. It then covers what happens after the determination letter—state charitable registration, state tax exemptions, employment setup, insurance, and the annual calendar that keeps the exemption alive. Throughout, the emphasis is on the decisions that are cheap at formation and expensive to fix afterward—the purpose and dissolution language in the articles, the composition of the first board, and the choice between the full exemption application and the streamlined one.
Administrative Practice Toolkit: Comments, Hearings, Records, and Appeals
This toolkit collects the working documents of administrative practice: a rulemaking comment template built to survive review, public records request and appeal letters, hearing request and prehearing statement forms, subpoena and exhibit tools, proposed findings of fact, objection and offer-of-proof language, a reconsideration request, a stay request to the agency, a petition for review outline, record designation and completion language, standard-of-review argument blocks, structural constitutional preservation language, and a fee application outline. Each is annotated with the provision it invokes and the failure it prevents.