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.
Drafting a Complaint That Survives a Motion to Dismiss
A complaint is a screening document. Its only job at the outset is to survive a motion to dismiss, and the plausibility standard means that the facts a plaintiff pleads matter far more than the causes of action they name. This guide covers drafting from the jurisdictional allegations forward. It explains what Rule 8 requires after Twombly and Iqbal, how courts separate conclusory assertions from well-pleaded facts, and the practical technique of pleading each element with the specific facts that support it. It then covers the heightened particularity Rule 9(b) requires for fraud and the claims courts treat as sounding in fraud, jurisdiction and standing, and the structural choices that determine whether a complaint reads as coherent or as a list. Later sections address exhibits and the documents a court may consider on a motion to dismiss, defensive pleading against affirmative defenses, alternative claims, the prayer for relief, and Rule 11.
Deposition Objections and Instructions Not to Answer: What Rule 30 Allows and What Gets Lawyers Sanctioned
This article explains the rules that govern lawyers and witnesses in a deposition, a seven-hour proceeding with no judge in the room. It reads Rule 30(c)(2) and Rule 32(d)(3) closely, explains which objections are lost if not made and what a form objection means, and sets out the only three grounds for telling a witness not to answer. It compares the competing lines of authority on whether a lawyer and witness may talk during breaks, from Hall v. Clifton Precision to In re Stratosphere and the state high courts that chose between them. It walks through the sanctions cases, including the Eighth Circuit's reversal of the training-video order in the Abbott Laboratories litigation, and shows with invented transcript excerpts what proper and improper conduct look like on the page. It also covers remote coaching, misbehaving witnesses, examining lawyers who cause the trouble, and the state and local rules that change the answer. The reader leaves knowing what is settled, what is unsettled, and where to look first in a given court.
Choice of Entity and the Tax Consequences That Follow: LLC, S Corporation, C Corporation, and Partnership
Entity choice is really two decisions that people collapse into one: what the business is under state law, and how it is taxed under federal law. Since the check-the-box regulations, those questions come apart almost completely, so an LLC may be taxed as a partnership, an S corporation, or a C corporation without changing anything about its governance. This article separates the two decisions and works through the tax consequences that actually drive the answer—self-employment tax and the reasonable compensation problem, basis and loss utilization, the qualified business income deduction, qualified small business stock, and what happens on exit, which is where most of the money is. It closes with the mechanics of getting from one regime to another when the original choice stops fitting, and with the state-level taxes that increasingly override the federal analysis.
Jury Selection and Voir Dire: A Practical Guide for Civil Trials
Jury selection is the only phase of a civil trial in which a lawyer is not trying to persuade, and the most common mistake is forgetting that. Voir dire exists to identify the people who cannot be fair to your client and to develop a record supporting their removal, and every minute spent arguing the case instead is a minute not spent finding them. This guide covers how the venire is assembled and what challenges to its composition are available, the difference between a challenge for cause and a peremptory strike and how each is used, the Batson framework as it applies in civil cases, the mechanics of the struck jury and strike-and-replace methods, and how to design questions that actually surface bias. It closes with jury questionnaires, permissible juror research, and the post-verdict issues that trace back to selection.
Responding to a DMCA Takedown with a Counter-Notice: A Practical Checklist
A DMCA counter-notice is the system's built-in safety valve: a conforming counter-notification forces removed content back online unless the copyright owner sues within the statutory window. This checklist walks a user whose content was taken down through the honest self-assessment that should precede any counter-notice, the procedural and substantive review of the underlying takedown, the five statutory elements of Section 512(g)(3) including the binding consent to federal jurisdiction, and the 10-to-14-business-day restoration clock. It flags when a counter-notice is the right move and when it is a trap, the fair-use cautions, and the Section 512(f) exposure for a knowing false counter-notice. Get advice before filing on close calls.
MDL Case Management and Bellwether Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist runs a multidistrict litigation from the JPML petition through settlement administration and remand, with separate tracks for leadership counsel, individual inventory counsel, and defense counsel. It covers the transfer stage, the case management orders that constitute the real procedural law of the proceeding, the intake vetting that determines whether an inventory survives, fact sheet and registry compliance, the general causation and bellwether stages, and the settlement participation process including the individual informed consent obligations that apply to every client. A final section covers lien resolution and the remand posture.
Responding to an EEOC Charge: A Practical Guide for Employers
A charge of discrimination is the beginning of a process that is more consequential than most employers appreciate, because the position statement written in the first month becomes the employer's story for the rest of the case. This guide covers the response from receipt through resolution. It explains the jurisdictional and timeliness questions that should be evaluated before anything is written, the immediate steps including the litigation hold and the anti-retaliation instruction that prevents the second claim, and the investigation that must precede the position statement. It then addresses the position statement itself in detail, including what to include, what to withhold, and the disclosure rules that mean the charging party will read it. Later sections cover requests for information, on-site visits and witness interviews, mediation and conciliation, the determinations the agency can issue, and what to do when the right to sue letter arrives.
Expungement and Record Relief Toolkit: Petitions, Certificates, and Collateral Consequences
A working kit for clearing a record. Section A compares the remedies side by side with what each actually accomplishes. Section B holds worksheets: a record inventory, a per case eligibility analysis, and a collateral consequences inventory that identifies which barrier is actually costing you. Section C holds filings: a motion to waive or convert court costs, an expungement petition outline, a personal statement template, and a support letter template with the specificity that persuades. Section D holds the post order letters to seven recipients. Section E holds consumer law instruments: an FCRA dispute, an adverse action response, and a mugshot removal demand. Section F holds a licensing preliminary determination request and a pardon outline. Section G collects the primary authorities.
Vulnerability Disclosure Toolkit: VDP Policies, Safe Harbor Terms, Researcher Agreements, and Response Letters
This toolkit collects the documents a company and its researchers need to run a vulnerability disclosure program and to handle the hard reports, each introduced by its purpose, its owner, and when to use it, with fill-in placeholders and drafting commentary tied to the governing authority. The templates include a public vulnerability disclosure policy, a standalone safe harbor clause, a security.txt file, a researcher reward and release agreement, a neutral acknowledgment letter, a request for more detail, a reward decision letter, a disclosure timeline and coordination agreement, an internal triage and notification memo, and a response letter for a message that reads like extortion. A running example involving a fictional logistics software company shows each document in use. The toolkit is built to be used with the program checklist and the step-by-step guide in the same set, and it flags where counsel, insurer consent, and sanctions screening are required.
Petitioning to Cancel a Trademark Registration: A Practical Checklist
A federal trademark registration is powerful but not bulletproof—it can be cancelled when it should never have issued or should no longer stand. This checklist guides a challenger and its counsel through petitioning to cancel a registration before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board: confirming the right venue, checking the registration's age and incontestability status, matching the available grounds to the timing, confirming entitlement to a statutory cause of action, pleading and filing through ESTTA, and prosecuting the proceeding. It maps the within-five-years grounds against the anytime grounds, flags the demanding post-In re Bose fraud standard, and notes the cheaper Trademark Modernization Act expungement and reexamination routes for pure nonuse. WHY notes and traps accompany each phase. Verify current TBMP guidance, 37 C.F.R. Part 2, and fees before filing.
Insurance Producer and Agency Regulation
Insurance is regulated almost entirely by the states, and the people who sell it are licensed, appointed, examined, and disciplined by fifty separate departments applying similar but not identical rules. This article covers what an insurance producer and an agency actually have to do: how resident and nonresident licensing works and where reciprocity helps, what an appointment is and why it is separate from a license, the premium trust account rules that generate the most license revocations, the compensation disclosure and anti-rebating rules, the best interest standards now governing annuity and life sales, the surplus lines framework for placing business with nonadmitted carriers, and the professional liability exposure that arises when coverage the client asked for is not there. It also covers the premium trust rules that generate more license revocations than any other category of misconduct, the compensation and anti-rebating restrictions that constrain value-added programs, and the best interest standards now governing annuity and life sales. A final section addresses agency transactions, insurtech distribution, and the multistate license and appointment tracking that becomes unmanageable without a register.
Age Discrimination Basics
This guide explains how age discrimination law works in the American workplace, centered on the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) and its companion, the Older Workers Benefit Protection Act (OWBPA). It walks through who is protected (workers 40 and older), which employers are covered (generally those with 20 or more employees), and the two main ways a claim can be proved—intentional disparate treatment and facially neutral disparate impact. It unpacks the demanding "but-for" causation standard the Supreme Court imposed in Gross v. FBL Financial, the special rules for layoffs and severance waivers, the harassment and retaliation protections that ride alongside the core ban, and the unusual ADEA collective-action mechanism borrowed from the Fair Labor Standards Act. It maps the EEOC charge process and its short deadlines, the remedies a worker can win (and the ones the ADEA pointedly withholds), and the many ways state law goes further than the federal floor. Worked examples and a plain-English FAQ make the doctrine usable for workers, managers, and counsel alike.