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.

Real EstateResidential Leasing

Residential Landlord-Tenant Law: A Practical Guide for Small Landlords

Owning a rental property is a regulated business, and the regulations are local, unforgiving, and largely invisible until something goes wrong. This guide covers the residential landlord-tenant relationship from screening through possession. It starts with the fair housing rules that govern advertising and tenant selection, including the source-of-income and criminal-history restrictions that many landlords have never heard of, then the lease itself and the provisions that are void by statute in most states. It covers security deposits, where the penalties for a late or unitemized return frequently exceed the deposit itself, and the implied warranty of habitability and the tenant remedies that follow from a breach. Later sections address entry, retaliation, and the eviction process in detail, including the self-help prohibition that converts a rent dispute into a damages claim against the landlord.

Casey Scott McKayFebruary 1, 202527 min read

TechnologyIntellectual Property

Mobile App Launch Legal Checklist: A Practical Checklist

You finished building the app — now the legal work begins, and most of it should happen before the launch party. This checklist walks the founder, in-house lawyer, and curious layperson through everything between "feature complete" and "live in the store," roughly in the order the risks bite: a liability-shield entity, signed IP assignments from every contractor, surviving Apple's and Google's developer agreements in a post-Epic v. Apple world, enforceable EULA/terms via conspicuous clickwrap, a privacy policy that matches the store labels, the auto-renewal/ROSCA subscription minefield, ADA/WCAG accessibility, COPPA for kids' data, advertising truthfulness, open-source license compliance, and export/encryption rules. Each phase pairs checkboxes with the WHY and the traps, plus common mistakes, primary authority, and related mclaw.io resources. The law here is fast-moving in 2026; treat this as a sophisticated map, not a substitute for counsel.

Casey Scott McKayFebruary 1, 202512 min read

Intellectual PropertyCopyright

Music Licensing in the Streaming Era: Mechanical Royalties, the MLC, and Direct Licensing Deals

Every time a listener presses play, one stream sets in motion one of the most intricate rights-clearance systems ever built, implicating two separate copyrights, four collective organizations, and reporting obligations across dozens of countries. This article explains how music licensing actually works in the streaming era—what rights exist, who holds them, how they are licensed at statutory and negotiated rates, and what every participant must navigate—by following an independent songwriter and a fictional streaming service through the whole machine. It covers the two copyrights in every recording, the mechanical right and the §115 compulsory license, the disaster that preceded the Music Modernization Act of 2018, the blanket license and the Mechanical Licensing Collective, the performance world of the PROs and the ASCAP/BMI consent decrees, sound-recording licensing and SoundExchange under §114, sync and master-use licensing, controlled composition clauses, and the direct deals running outside the collective system. It incorporates the 2024–2026 developments, including the Phonorecords IV all-in rate (15.1% rising to 15.35% of revenue) running through 2027, the dismissal—and partial revival—of the MLC's bundling suit against Spotify, and the majors' "around-the-bundle" deals.

Casey Scott McKayJanuary 31, 202543 min read

Intellectual PropertyCopyright

Copyright Notice Checklist: A Practical Checklist

A copyright notice is the familiar line, c 2026 Acme Corp., that announces who owns a work and when it was published. For works published after March 1, 1989, notice is optional, but it still delivers concrete legal benefits, chiefly foreclosing an infringer's innocent-infringement plea that can otherwise drop statutory damages to as little as $200 per work. This checklist walks a creator or adviser through composing a complete and correct notice, choosing the right symbol for copies versus sound recordings, naming the actual owner, dating revisions honestly, placing the notice where people look and embedding it in digital files, and handling derivative, collective, and government-work situations. It also pairs notice with timely registration. Confirm the date a work was first published, since the legal effect of notice turns on it.

Casey Scott McKayJanuary 31, 20256 min read

Legal ResourcesProfessional Responsibility

Running an Ethical and Profitable Law Practice: A Practical Guide

This guide covers the operational side of practicing law: the systems that prevent discipline and the practices that make a firm financially sustainable. It works through intake and conflicts, the engagement letter and what its scope section must exclude, fee structures and how to choose among them, the trust accounting routine that must run monthly, docketing redundancy, file and document management, client communication cadence, and the financial metrics a small firm should actually track. It then covers the risk side: malpractice coverage, cybersecurity obligations, remote and multijurisdictional practice, and succession planning that most jurisdictions now expect.

Casey Scott McKayJanuary 29, 202527 min read

CorporateBankruptcy

Intellectual Property Licenses in Bankruptcy: Section 365(n), Mission Product, and Protecting Your License

When a licensor files for bankruptcy, the license that a licensee's entire business depends on becomes a contract the debtor may reject. Congress addressed part of that problem in 1988 by adding section 365(n), which lets a licensee of intellectual property elect to retain its rights after rejection. But the Bankruptcy Code's definition of intellectual property omits trademarks, which left trademark licensees exposed for three decades. The Supreme Court closed most of that gap in Mission Product Holdings v. Tempnology, holding that rejection is a breach rather than a rescission and therefore does not terminate rights the contract already conveyed. This article explains the whole framework: when a license is an executory contract, what rejection actually does, how section 365(n) elections work and what they cost, why trademarks were left out and what Mission Product did and did not fix, the separate and often more dangerous question of whether a license can be assumed and assigned over the licensee's objection under section 365(c), and what a section 363 sale free and clear means for a licensee. It closes with drafting and diligence measures that actually protect a licensee, a worked example, an FAQ, and related reading.

Casey Scott McKayJanuary 29, 202525 min read

LitigationClass Actions

Responding to a Consumer Class Action Demand Letter

A pre-suit demand letter asserting class claims is a very different document from an individual demand, because the sender is not trying to resolve one customer's problem — they are testing whether a practice is worth suing over. The recipient's response, or the absence of one, tells them. This guide covers what to do in the first two weeks, how to evaluate the underlying claim and the realistic class exposure rather than the number in the letter, the statutory notice-and-cure provisions that make a prompt response genuinely valuable, how arbitration clauses and class waivers change the analysis and where mass arbitration has changed it back, when to settle individually and when doing so invites the next letter, and what a classwide resolution actually requires. It closes with serial demand programs, the regulatory track that runs alongside the private one, and the internal relationships that make a fast factual answer possible.

Casey Scott McKayJanuary 28, 202525 min read

Intellectual PropertyTrade Secret

Protection of Trade Secrets

Trade secrets are the only form of intellectual property you create simply by keeping something valuable secret and guarding it sensibly, and they can last forever if you do. This guide explains what qualifies as a trade secret under the Defend Trade Secrets Act (18 U.S.C. 1836) and the Uniform Trade Secrets Act, how misappropriation works, and the full menu of remedies, including the DTSA's dramatic ex parte civil seizure power and the case law that governs when courts actually grant it. It walks through the practical "reasonable measures" program that separates a protectable secret from an unprotectable one, the enforcement playbook from forensic investigation through injunction, and the tangle of NDAs and non-competes (including the now-dead FTC non-compete rule and the patchwork of state law). It covers the inevitable-disclosure doctrine, the Economic Espionage Act criminal track, the lessons of Waymo v. Uber, and the strategic choice between patenting an invention and keeping it secret. The aim is a single, readable map of U.S. trade secret law that a judge, a lawyer, and a curious founder can all follow.

Casey Scott McKayJanuary 28, 202549 min read

Labor and EmploymentWorkers Compensation

Workplace Injury Response and Workers Compensation Checklist: A Practical Checklist

A workplace injury sets four clocks running at once: the compensation notice deadline, the OSHA reporting window, the FMLA designation obligation, and the third-party statute of limitations. This checklist runs all four in parallel, with separate tracks for the injured worker and the employer, because their tasks differ at every stage. It covers the first shift, the first week, the benefit calculation audit that is worth thousands of dollars and takes an hour, the medical control and utilization review appeal mechanics that decide whether treatment happens, the return-to-work steps that avoid a retaliation claim, and the settlement evaluation that should never be made without pricing future medical care.

Casey Scott McKayJanuary 27, 20258 min read

ImmigrationBusiness Immigration

Sponsoring a PERM Labor Certification and Employment-Based Green Card

The employment-based green card process for most professional workers runs through a labor market test administered by the Department of Labor, and it is unusual among immigration processes in that the employer, not the worker, is the applicant and the entire exercise is designed to determine whether a qualified United States worker is available. That framing explains every requirement: the wage floor, the specific recruitment steps, the prohibition on tailoring the job to the foreign national, and the obligation to consider every applicant on job-related grounds. This guide walks the process from strategy through permanent residence, covering category selection, the prevailing wage determination, the requirements analysis that most often causes denials, the recruitment sequence and its timing, filing and audit response, and the immigrant petition and adjustment steps that follow. It closes with the employer obligations, the recordkeeping that an audit will test, and a realistic assessment of how long each stage actually takes.

Casey Scott McKayJanuary 27, 202526 min read

Real EstateFair Housing

Fair Housing and Lending Toolkit: Testing, Complaints, and Litigation

A working kit for fair housing practice on both sides. Section A is a protected class and coverage matrix mapping federal, common state, and common local protections against the transactions each reaches. Section B holds complainant instruments: an incident log, a tester report form, a HUD complaint narrative template, an accommodation request letter, and an appraisal reconsideration request. Section C holds provider instruments: model screening criteria, an advertising review guide, an accommodation response letter, an interactive process log, and an FCRA adverse action notice. Section D holds litigation instruments: a discovery request set, a disparate impact worksheet, a comparator chart, and a position statement outline. Section E collects the primary authorities.

Casey Scott McKayJanuary 27, 202514 min read

CorporateTax

Surviving an IRS Audit: A Practical Guide for Businesses

An audit notice is not an accusation and is rarely a catastrophe, but the way a business responds in the first month determines how long it lasts and how much it costs. This guide walks the examination process from the initial contact through appeals and, if necessary, litigation. It covers the three types of examinations and what each signals, how to read an information document request and respond in a way that narrows rather than expands the inquiry, and the representation and privilege issues that arise when the accountant who prepared the return is also the person explaining it. It then covers the statute of limitations and the decision whether to extend it, the penalty structure and the reasonable cause defense, and the agreed and unagreed paths at the close of an examination. Later sections address IRS Appeals, the choice between Tax Court and a refund forum, employment tax and worker classification examinations, and collection alternatives.

Casey Scott McKayJanuary 26, 202525 min read