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.

TechnologyPrivacy

Smile: Cell Phone Camera Privacy and the Law

Nearly everyone now carries a high-resolution camera and microphone everywhere they go, and the law has scrambled to keep pace. This article maps the legal landscape of photographing and recording people--starting with the public-versus-private divide and the "reasonable expectation of privacy," then untangling the patchwork of one-party and all-party wiretap-consent statutes that govern audio under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and its state analogs. It explains the federal video voyeurism crime at 18 U.S.C. 1801, state "upskirting" and revenge-porn laws, the First Amendment right to record police, and the special rules for landlords, employers, biometrics, and drones. It also addresses how lawfully captured footage becomes admissible evidence. Throughout, it offers concrete do's and don'ts for both the person holding the phone and the person on the other side of the lens. Because recording-consent rules vary dramatically from state to state, the article repeatedly flags where you must check local law before you hit record.

Casey Scott McKayFebruary 17, 202548 min read

Intellectual Property and TechnologyPrivacy and Data Security

International Data Transfers After Schrems II: Standard Contractual Clauses and Transfer Impact Assessments

The digital economy runs on cross-border data flows, but for any organization touched by European data protection law those flows carry real legal and financial risk after Schrems II. This article maps the post-Schrems II architecture for moving personal data out of the EEA: the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework and the Latombe litigation now testing it on appeal; the 2021 modular Standard Contractual Clauses and the Transfer Impact Assessment that Schrems II made mandatory; technical, organizational, and contractual supplementary measures and their limits; Binding Corporate Rules; and the narrow Article 49 derogations. It covers the parallel UK regime, including the December 2025 adequacy renewal through 2031, reviews the enforcement record that gives these rules teeth, and lays out a phased compliance program with a maturity model. The throughline: this framework demands genuine legal analysis rather than contractual box-ticking, and some transfers will not survive that analysis.

Casey Scott McKayFebruary 16, 202547 min read

CorporateLLC

Drafting an LLC Operating Agreement: A Practical Guide

The operating agreement is the constitution of a limited liability company, and the default statutory rules that apply in its absence rarely match what the members actually intended. This guide works through the document section by section, explaining what each provision does, where the drafting choices lie, and what happens if the section is omitted. It covers formation and capital structure including the difference between capital and profits interests, allocation and distribution provisions and the tax rules that constrain them, management structure and the major decisions list that determines who really controls the company, and the transfer restrictions and buy-sell mechanics that decide what happens when a member dies, divorces, defaults, or simply wants out. Later sections address fiduciary duties and their modification under the Delaware and uniform acts, deadlock resolution, dissolution and winding up, tax provisions including the partnership representative, and the drafting errors that recur most often.

Casey Scott McKayFebruary 14, 202525 min read

LitigationCivil Procedure

Statute of Limitations Diary Checklist: A Practical Checklist

More claims die on the calendar than on the merits, and the failure is almost never a forgotten date. It is an accrual assumption nobody tested, a repose period nobody looked for, or a notice-of-claim deadline that ran months before the limitations period anyone was tracking. This checklist builds the discipline that prevents each: an intake analysis that lists every claim with its own period and accrual rule, a calculation from the earliest defensible accrual date rather than the latest, three calendared warnings, and a closing memorandum that preserves the analysis for the related matter that surfaces years later. It also covers the defense side, where limitations is an affirmative defense that is waived if not pleaded.

Casey Scott McKayFebruary 12, 20258 min read

CommercialAntitrust

Antitrust Compliance for Distribution and Pricing: Resale Price Maintenance, Colgate, and Territory Restrictions

Antitrust exposure in distribution is created by ordinary commercial conversations, and the difference between a lawful policy and a felony can be a single sentence in an email. This article explains where the lines are. It starts with the structural divide between horizontal conduct, which includes the per se offenses that carry criminal penalties, and vertical restraints, which are almost all judged under the rule of reason after Leegin. It then covers resale price maintenance and the minimum advertised price policies that companies use instead, the Colgate doctrine and the narrow protection a genuinely unilateral policy provides, and territorial and customer restrictions. Later sections address exclusive dealing, tying, most favored nation clauses, the Robinson-Patman Act and its recent revival, information exchange and trade association risk, no-poach and wage-fixing enforcement, and what a working compliance program contains, with a worked example, an email discipline guide, and an FAQ.

Casey Scott McKayFebruary 12, 202526 min read

Family LawDivorce

Divorce and Dissolution: Grounds, Property Division, Support, and Custody

Divorce is where family law, property law, tax law, and federal benefits law all meet, usually in front of a judge with a crowded docket and two people who cannot agree. This article explains how no-fault grounds and residency requirements work, the difference between equitable distribution and community property and why it matters less than people think, how marital and separate property are identified and how separate property gets converted through commingling, how retirement accounts and pensions are actually divided and why a QDRO is a separate document, how spousal support and child support are calculated and modified, how custody is decided under the best interests standard, and how the interstate statutes keep one court in charge.

Casey Scott McKayFebruary 10, 202527 min read

LitigationJudgment

Judgment Enforcement and Collections Toolkit

Winning a judgment and collecting one are different projects with different skills, and most judgments are never collected because nobody starts the second project. This toolkit covers it from the day judgment is entered. It begins with the steps that must happen immediately, including perfecting a lien before other creditors do, then covers finding assets through postjudgment discovery and public records, the enforcement mechanisms available against each asset type, and the exemptions that will defeat some of them. Later stages address judgment debtors who have moved assets, which raises fraudulent transfer law, debtors who have moved states, which requires domestication, entities whose owners may be personally reachable, and the bankruptcy filing that stops everything and raises the separate question of whether the debt is dischargeable.

Casey Scott McKayFebruary 9, 202515 min read

Intellectual PropertyCopyright

The DMCA Anti-Circumvention Provisions: Section 1201, Digital Locks, and the Triennial Exemptions

Section 1201 of the Copyright Act makes it unlawful to break a digital lock on a copyrighted work, and unlawful to sell tools that do the breaking, even when the underlying use would be perfectly lawful. That decoupling of circumvention from infringement is what makes section 1201 both powerful and controversial, and it catches security researchers, repair shops, tinkerers, and competitors far more often than it catches pirates. This article explains the structure of the statute, the difference between access controls and copy controls and why it matters, the two trafficking bans, the seven permanent exemptions, and the triennial rulemaking through which the Librarian of Congress grants temporary exemptions for uses like jailbreaking phones, repairing tractors, and preserving video games. It works through the leading appellate decisions, including Corley, Chamberlain, Lexmark, and MDY v. Blizzard, and explains the circuit split over whether a section 1201 claim requires a nexus to infringement. It closes with compliance guidance for device makers, software vendors, researchers, and repair businesses, plus a worked example, an FAQ, and related reading.

Casey Scott McKayFebruary 7, 202528 min read

Family LawDomestic Violence

Obtaining and Enforcing a Protective Order

A protective order is available quickly, on limited evidence, and it can order a person out of their home, away from their children, and out of possession of their firearms within a day of the petition being filed. That combination of speed and consequence means the procedure is structured in two stages: an ex parte temporary order issued on the petitioner's affidavit alone, followed within days or weeks by a full hearing at which the respondent appears and contests. The relief available reaches well beyond a stay-away directive, and the federal full faith and credit provisions make an order entered in one state enforceable nationwide. This guide covers who qualifies, what relief to request, how to prepare and present the case, the firearm and immigration consequences, and how enforcement, modification, and renewal work.

Casey Scott McKayFebruary 6, 202526 min read

CommercialInternational Trade

Importing Goods Into the United States: A Practical Guide

This guide takes a company from its first import through a working compliance program. It covers the setup decisions that determine everything afterward, the classification work that should happen before the first purchase order, how to build a landed cost model that includes the tariffs people forget, the supplier documentation that origin and preference claims depend on, the entry process and the deadlines that follow it, and what to do when something goes wrong. It includes a first shipment sequence, contract clauses that allocate customs risk, and the duty savings analysis most importers never run.

Casey Scott McKayFebruary 4, 202528 min read

Intellectual PropertyCopyright

Copyright Registration: A Comprehensive Guide

Copyright protection is automatic the instant you fix an original work in a tangible form, yet registration with the U.S. Copyright Office unlocks the powerful remedies that make copyright worth owning. This comprehensive guide explains why registration matters after the Supreme Court's decision in Fourth Estate, how statutory damages and attorney's fees under 17 U.S.C. 412 turn entirely on timing, and how the certificate's prima facie presumption under 17 U.S.C. 410(c) shifts the burden of proof in court. It walks step by step through the electronic registration system, the basic, group, supplementary, and renewal application types, the deposit, best-edition, and mandatory-deposit rules, fees, examination and refusals, the two-tier appeal, and specialized tools like preregistration, special handling, and customs recordation. Worked hypotheticals and a practical FAQ make the system understandable for creators, businesses, and lawyers alike. Read it as the master hub and follow the cross-links to the specialized copyright guides.

Casey Scott McKayFebruary 4, 202548 min read

Intellectual PropertyCopyright

Copyright Licensing and Clearance Toolkit: Permissions, Rights, and Chain of Title

Clearance is the practice of knowing, before publication, exactly who owns each element of a work and exactly what you are permitted to do with it. This toolkit builds that practice. It starts with the inventory step that most projects skip, which is listing every separately owned element in a work, then works through identifying the owner and confirming chain of title, determining whether a license is needed at all, negotiating the license terms that actually matter, and documenting the result in a form that survives a distributor audit or an insurance underwriter. Separate stages cover the media-specific traps in music, photography, film, software, and user-generated content, the special problems of orphan works and public domain determinations, and what to do when clearance fails and the choice is between redesigning, relying on fair use, or accepting the risk.

Casey Scott McKayFebruary 3, 202514 min read