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.
Motion Practice Toolkit: Dispositive, Discovery, and In Limine Motions
Motions are how a case is actually shaped, and most motions fail for reasons that have nothing to do with the merits. This toolkit covers the mechanics that determine outcomes: reading the local rules and the judge's standing order before drafting a word, satisfying the meet-and-confer requirement in a way that creates a usable record, structuring a brief so that the relief requested is obvious on the first page, and building a factual record that supports the standard actually being applied. It walks the major motion types in the order a case encounters them, from Rule 12 through discovery motions and sanctions to summary judgment and in limine practice, and closes with the craft questions that separate a persuasive brief from a competent one. A worked example runs a single commercial dispute through four motions to show how the pieces connect in practice.
HSR Premerger Notification: When a Deal Must Be Reported and What Happens Next
Premerger notification is a procedural statute with substantive consequences, and the most common failures are not analytical but administrative: a filing that was required and not made, a document that should have been produced and was not, or conduct between signing and closing that the agencies treat as an unlawful transfer of control. This article explains the mechanics and the review that follows. It covers the two jurisdictional tests, the exemptions that most often excuse a filing, and the valuation rules that make an apparently small transaction reportable. It works through the filing itself, including the Item 4(c) and 4(d) document production that drives most substantive review, the waiting period, and what happens when a second request issues. Later sections address the substantive Clayton Act Section 7 standard and current merger analysis, remedies, gun jumping, interlocking directorates, and non-reportable deals that agencies still challenge, with a worked example, a timeline checklist, and an FAQ.
Responding to Interrogatories Checklist: A Practical Checklist
Interrogatories are written questions a party must answer in writing and under oath, governed by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 33. A clumsy response waives objections, invites a motion to compel, or locks a client into an admission that surfaces at summary judgment. This checklist walks responding counsel through the disciplined process: calendaring the 30-day deadline, reading local and judge-specific rules, counting the interrogatories including discrete subparts against the 25-question limit, conducting the reasonable inquiry, drafting specific objections that state whether anything is withheld, deciding whether to answer by producing business records under Rule 33(d), preparing a privilege log, verifying the answers under oath, diarying the continuing duty to supplement, and conferring in good faith before any motion. Each phase is paired with the reason it matters and the post-2015 rules that killed boilerplate, anchored in primary authority and the case law that decides interrogatory disputes.
Search and Seizure: The Fourth Amendment in Everyday Life
The Fourth Amendment is the constitutional provision ordinary people encounter most often, usually at the side of a road and usually without knowing what it requires. This article explains what counts as a search after Katz and Jones, when a person is seized and when they are free to leave, what reasonable suspicion and probable cause actually mean, how the warrant requirement works and the exceptions that swallow much of it, why consent is the most consequential and least understood doctrine in the area, how the automobile exception and Arizona v Gant interact, what Riley and Carpenter did to digital privacy, when the exclusionary rule applies and when good faith and attenuation defeat it, and what a person can and should do during an encounter.
Elder Law Toolkit: Benefits, Housing, Capacity, and Elder Abuse Response
A working kit for elder law practice and for families managing it themselves. Section A compares the benefit programs side by side and maps which one pays for what. Section B holds worksheets: the transfer penalty calculation, the spousal impoverishment snapshot, and a care cost comparison. Section C is templates: power of attorney provisions that matter, a personal services caregiver agreement, a facility site visit script, an admission agreement addendum, a Medicare expedited appeal request, a Medicaid fair hearing request, a discharge appeal, an estate recovery hardship waiver request, an APS report, a power of attorney revocation, and an accounting demand. Section D collects the primary authorities.
Copyright Registration Toolkit: A Roadmap and Research Guide
This toolkit is a high-level roadmap and curated library guide for registering copyrights with the United States Copyright Office. It walks the entire process from establishing authorship and ownership, through fixation, work-for-hire analysis, and protectability, to selecting the right application, satisfying deposit requirements, and registering specific categories of works such as photographs, software, songs, websites, books, and games. It explains why timing matters for statutory damages and attorney's fees and surveys renewal and termination of transfer. At each stage it links to mclaw.io checklists and articles plus primary and official authorities. Verify all current fees, forms, and deadlines at copyright.gov before filing. This is general information, not legal advice.
Challenging Agency Action Under the Administrative Procedure Act
Challenging what a federal agency has done is a distinctive kind of litigation with its own gatekeeping requirements, its own standards of review, and its own remedies. The claim is usually not that the agency violated a statute directly but that it acted arbitrarily, exceeded its authority, or failed to follow required procedure—and the case is tried on the administrative record rather than through discovery. This guide covers the threshold requirements that dispose of most challenges before the merits, the standards of review including what the Supreme Court's abandonment of Chevron deference changed, the procedural requirements that rulemaking must satisfy, and how the record is compiled and supplemented. It then addresses remedies, timing, and the strategic choices that determine where and when a challenge should be brought.
False Advertising and Lanham Act Section 43(a): Competitor Claims in Technology Marketing
This article is the definitive guide to competitor false-advertising claims under Section 43(a)(1)(B) of the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. 1125(a), with a focus on technology marketing. It works through the five elements, the standing framework the Supreme Court set in Lexmark v. Static Control, the decisive literal-falsity versus implied-falsity distinction (including the "necessary implication" doctrine), establishment versus non-establishment claims, the contested limits of puffery, materiality, and the full menu of remedies under Section 35. It explains why POM Wonderful v. Coca-Cola lets competitors sue even when a federal regulator polices the same label, surveys the recurring technology battlegrounds (cybersecurity, benchmarks, AI claims, and greenwashing under the FTC Green Guides), compares the NAD self-regulatory alternative with its actual filing fees and burdens, and maps the California and New York overlays. It is written for marketing and legal teams that need to make aggressive but defensible claims.
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.
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.
Website Accessibility Lawsuits: What the ADA Requires, What Breaks in the Code, and What to Do When the Letter Arrives
This article explains website accessibility litigation from both the legal and the engineering side, written by an IP and technology attorney who is also a former software engineer. It covers what Title III of the ADA requires, the circuit split over whether a website is a place of public accommodation, the DOJ's 2024 Title II web rule and its 2026 compliance-date extension, state damages statutes such as California's Unruh Act, and the unresolved tester-standing question. It then explains what WCAG actually is and walks through the four code failures that generate most claims (mouse-only controls, broken navigation menus, inaccessible modals, and checkout forms), with working HTML and JavaScript fixes. The second half covers the first week after a demand letter arrives, the economics of these cases, mootness and the voluntary cessation doctrine, the repeat-target problem, why overlay widgets fail, and how to run a remediation program under privilege. A worked example, common mistakes, an FAQ, and takeaways close the article.
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.