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.

FinanceWorkouts

Bank Loan Workouts, Forbearance, and Receiverships

A troubled loan is a negotiation conducted in the shadow of remedies neither side wants to use, and the outcome is usually determined in the first thirty days by three things: whether the lender preserved its rights before talking, whether the borrower produced credible information, and whether the collateral position is what the loan file says it is. This article walks through the workout in sequence — recognizing default and preserving rights, the pre-negotiation agreement, diligence on collateral and guarantees, the structure of a forbearance agreement, and the restructuring alternatives. It then covers the remedies: Article 9 dispositions and their commercial reasonableness requirement, real property foreclosure and anti-deficiency limits, receiverships, assignments for the benefit of creditors, and what changes when the borrower files bankruptcy. Throughout, the emphasis is on the loan file audit that determines what the lender actually holds and on the sequence of remedies that a single misstep can forfeit.

Casey Scott McKayJuly 26, 202526 min read

Intellectual PropertyEnforcement

What Are the Consequences of Pirating Intellectual Property?

Pirating intellectual property—copying, sharing, or selling someone else's protected work without permission—can trigger civil damages that climb into the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, and in serious cases, federal criminal charges and prison. This article maps the full landscape of consequences across copyright, trademark counterfeiting, patents, and trade secrets, with the actual statutes and the real cases that put dollar figures and prison terms on the line. It explains civil statutory damages under 17 U.S.C. 504, criminal copyright infringement under 17 U.S.C. 506 and the NET Act, criminal counterfeiting under 18 U.S.C. 2320, software piracy and BSA audits, and trade-secret theft under the Economic Espionage Act and Defend Trade Secrets Act. It also covers secondary liability—how you can be on the hook for someone else's piracy under the Grokster inducement rule and the contributory and vicarious theories. Along the way it walks through worked examples, the customs and platform mechanisms that catch infringers, and the reputational and business fallout that the statutes never mention. The goal is a clear, honest map of the risk, not legal advice.

Casey Scott McKayJuly 24, 202544 min read

LitigationPersonal Injury

Personal Injury Claim Toolkit: Liability, Damages, Liens, and Settlement

This toolkit is the working file behind a personal injury claim. It runs the matter in nine stages from intake through disbursement, and supplies the operative documents at each stage: the preservation letter inventory, the representation letters, the medical chronology format, the demand package architecture, a properly constructed time-limited policy limits demand, the lien reduction letter that actually produces reductions, the settlement allocation language that survives a Medicaid or ERISA challenge, and a release review checklist. It also covers the decisions that are made once and cannot be undone: whether to file, whether to accept a limits tender, and how to structure a recovery for a minor or a benefits recipient.

Casey Scott McKayJuly 21, 202513 min read

TechnologyArtificial Intelligence

AI and Emerging Technology Legal Toolkit: A Roadmap and Resource Guide

This toolkit is a high-level roadmap for lawyers, founders, product teams, and in-house counsel who must navigate the fast-moving legal landscape of artificial intelligence and adjacent emerging technologies. It walks the field from the broad regulatory picture through the hard questions of who owns AI-generated output, whether a machine can be an inventor or author, how training-data copyright disputes are unfolding, and how biometric and privacy law constrains AI development. It then turns practical: how to contract for AI products and services and how to build an AI governance and risk-management program. Each stage links to in-depth mclaw.io articles and checklists plus the primary authorities you actually need—USPTO guidance, the Copyright Office's AI report, and the Thaler decisions. The law here is unsettled; the toolkit flags where the ground is still moving so you can advise with appropriate humility.

Casey Scott McKayJuly 18, 202515 min read

Estate PlanningElder Law

Medicaid Long-Term Care Eligibility Checklist: A Practical Checklist

A working checklist for qualifying an applicant for long-term care Medicaid and protecting them once care begins. It runs the pre-application inventory, the capacity documents, the resource and income analysis with exempt assets listed, the five-year lookback review transaction by transaction, the spousal protections and the resource assessment, the complete verification package, filing and deadline management, the fair hearing, and estate recovery. Separate sections cover the Medicare skilled nursing appeal, what to strike from an admission agreement, and the response to suspected poor care or financial exploitation.

Casey Scott McKayJuly 14, 202510 min read

CriminalDUI

DUI Defense Toolkit: Suppression Motions, Testing Challenges, and License Hearings

A working kit for defending a drunk driving case. Section A holds the letters that must go out in week one: a video preservation demand and a comprehensive discovery demand. Section B holds motion outlines for each suppression theory, from the stop through the checkpoint. Section C holds cross examination outlines for the arresting officer, the breath instrument operator, and the criminalist. Section D holds worksheets: a minute by minute timeline, a rising blood alcohol analysis, a field sobriety test administration audit, and a plea consequence calculator. Section E holds the administrative hearing outline and a hardship license request. Section F collects the primary authorities.

Casey Scott McKayJuly 14, 202515 min read

FinanceFinancial Services Regulation

Investment Management Regulatory Toolkit: Advisers, Funds, and Broker-Dealers

Two federal regimes govern people who give investment advice and people who effect securities transactions, and the line between them determines registration, standard of conduct, examination, and enforcement exposure. This toolkit runs both: the adviser definition and its exclusions, federal versus state registration and the exempt reporting categories, the fiduciary duty and the conflicts that recur, the compliance rules that generate most examination findings, private fund formation and the fee and valuation practices enforcement targets, broker-dealer registration and Regulation Best Interest, the finder problem, and the examination and enforcement process from document request through Wells notice. It closes with a build sequence for a new firm and a diagnostic for an existing one. It closes with examination readiness, where the books and records rules and the compliance program are tested against what the firm actually did.

Casey Scott McKayJuly 13, 202514 min read

CorporateBusiness Formation

Nonprofit Formation and Tax-Exempt Status Under Section 501(c)(3)

Forming a nonprofit and obtaining tax-exempt status are two separate projects, and confusing them is the most common early error. Incorporation happens at the state level and creates the entity. Exemption is a federal determination that the entity is organized and operated exclusively for enumerated purposes, and it requires specific language in the articles that a standard incorporation service will not include. This article walks the whole process. It explains the choice of entity and the governance structure directors actually owe duties under, the organizational and operational tests, and the purpose and dissolution language that must appear in the articles. It covers the Form 1023 and 1023-EZ application, what the determination letter does and when exemption is retroactive, and the public charity versus private foundation classification that determines everything about how the organization can operate and fundraise. A long section addresses the ongoing compliance obligations that trip organizations up: private inurement and excess benefit transactions, unrelated business income tax, the Form 990 series and automatic revocation, state charitable solicitation registration, lobbying limits and the 501(h) election, the absolute political campaign prohibition, and the rules governing donor substantiation. It closes with fiscal sponsorship as an alternative, a formation checklist, a worked example, an FAQ, and related reading.

Casey Scott McKayJuly 9, 202525 min read

TechnologyPrivacy

Legal Issues for Mobile Applications: Privacy

Mobile apps collect data in ways the average person never sees, and a single SDK can quietly route a user's precise location, contacts, and health interests to dozens of companies. This guide maps the entire U.S. and global legal framework that governs that collection: the FTC's Section 5 authority and its mobile-privacy enforcement playbook, COPPA's strict rules for kids' apps, California's CCPA/CPRA and the wave of copycat state statutes, the GLBA for finance apps, GDPR for any app touching Europe, and the platform rules from Apple and Google that function as private law. It explains geolocation and biometric exposure (including Illinois's BIPA), data-breach notification duties, and the new front of "dark patterns" and deceptive consent. Written for founders, in-house counsel, and curious users alike, it defines every term in plain English and grounds each rule in primary authority. By the end you will know where the legal landmines are buried in a typical app and how to defuse them before launch. Treat it as a map, not a substitute for counsel on your specific product.

Casey Scott McKayJuly 8, 202539 min read

CommercialAgriculture

Buying, Leasing, and Operating a Farm: A Practical Legal Guide

This guide covers the transactions and the annual operating cycle of a farm. It starts with buying farmland and the diligence items that are specific to agriculture: water rights and their priority, mineral severance, drainage and tile, wetland determinations, conservation compliance history, and program payment base. It then works farm lease drafting from both sides, the operating credit relationship and the liens that attach to everything, crop insurance and program elections with their deadlines, the trust preservation practices that determine whether a producer gets paid, labor and food safety compliance, and the succession plan that most farms do not have.

Casey Scott McKayJuly 6, 202529 min read

CommercialProduct Regulation

Product Safety and Recall Toolkit

Product safety is a system that either produces the records a recall requires or does not, and the difference is decided years before an event. A company that cannot identify which units are affected and where they went must recall everything, and the gap between forty thousand units and nine hundred thousand is the entire economics. This toolkit covers the whole arc: designing and certifying to the applicable standards, building the complaint intelligence that surfaces a pattern rather than resolving incidents one at a time, the traceability infrastructure that determines recall scope, recognizing a reportable condition and meeting reporting deadlines measured in hours, executing a recall including notification and logistics and effectiveness checks, the parallel product liability and criminal exposure, and the contracts and insurance that allocate the cost. It closes with a worked sequence showing how traceability narrowed one recall from 340,000 units to 62,000, and with the mock recall exercise that reveals whether the system can answer the scope question at all.

Casey Scott McKayJuly 4, 202515 min read

Intellectual PropertyTrademark Litigation

Counterfeiting, Seizure Orders, and Schedule A Litigation: Fighting Fakes in Federal Court

Counterfeiting is trademark infringement with the volume turned up, and Congress gave brand owners a set of remedies that exist nowhere else in intellectual property law: ex parte seizure of goods and records, mandatory treble damages, statutory damages of up to $2 million per mark per type of goods, and criminal penalties. This article explains what legally counts as a counterfeit, how the ex parte seizure procedure in 15 U.S.C. section 1116(d) actually works and why it is used less often than people assume, and how the modern enforcement workhorse operates: the Schedule A case, in which a brand joins dozens or hundreds of anonymous online sellers in a single complaint, obtains a sealed temporary restraining order freezing their marketplace accounts, and serves them by email. It covers the mounting judicial criticism of that practice, the joinder and personal jurisdiction defenses that are starting to work, contributory liability for marketplaces and landlords after Tiffany v. eBay and Inwood, customs recordation and border enforcement, criminal referrals, and defense strategy for sellers who are swept up. It closes with a program-building checklist, a worked example, an FAQ, and related reading.

Casey Scott McKayJuly 3, 202526 min read