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.
Indirect Infringement Toolkit: Knowledge Evidence, Direction or Control Proof, and Substantial Noninfringing Use Analyses
This toolkit collects the working documents for proving or defending an indirect patent infringement claim, each introduced by its purpose, its owner, and when to use it, and followed by drafting commentary tied to the governing cases. It opens with a claim-by-actor chart that sorts every claim step by the party who performs it and maps the theories that follow. The knowledge templates include a dated knowledge timeline with a willful blindness worksheet, two versions of a patentee's notice letter, the accused infringer's response and hold notice, an opinion-of-counsel request with a good-faith noninfringement memo outline, an instruction and marketing audit matrix, and a discovery set aimed at knowledge and intent. The direction-or-control templates include an Akamai proof matrix, a terms-of-service and onboarding review with alternative clause language, and pleading paragraphs paired with a motion-to-dismiss response map. The noninfringing-use templates include an analysis memo that begins by defining the component and a protocol for telemetry and survey studies, and the toolkit closes with special verdict questions, indemnity tender letters, an FAQ, and practical takeaways.
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.
Settlement Negotiation Tactics: Principled Negotiation, Anchoring, and Handling Hardball in Litigation
This article explains how litigation settlements actually get negotiated and how lawyers can do it better, combining the interest-based method of Getting to Yes with the distributive realities of the dance of numbers. It covers BATNA and the zone of possible agreement in a lawsuit, anchoring and first offers, reactive devaluation and other cognitive barriers, and decision-tree risk analysis. It then turns to mediator techniques such as brackets and the mediator's proposal, the common hardball tactics and how to answer each one, and the ethical limits on what a negotiator may say under Model Rule 4.1 and ABA Formal Opinion 06-439. Separate sections address confidentiality under Federal Rule of Evidence 408 and the ADR Act, offers of judgment under Rule 68 and fee-shifting leverage, settlement dynamics in patent, trademark, and copyright cases, and enforcement after Kokkonen. An extended worked example follows a trademark dispute from opening demand to signed term sheet, and the article closes with common mistakes, an FAQ, and practical takeaways.
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.
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.
Investment Management Regulatory Toolkit: Advisers, Funds, and Broker-Dealers
A regulatory toolkit for investment advisers, private 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.
Video Privacy Protection Act Compliance Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist turns Video Privacy Protection Act compliance into phased, check-off tasks for a business that delivers video on a website or app. It runs from confirming whether the statute applies, through inventorying video and testing what actually leaves the browser, to choosing a fix for each surface. It then covers the statutory elements of consent, vendor terms, retention, and arbitration terms. The last phases cover what to do when a demand letter or complaint arrives, and what to re-check when the Supreme Court decides Salazar v. Paramount Global. Each task names its authority, and red-flag boxes mark the mistakes that create the most exposure.
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.
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.
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.
Minors Online Toolkit: Applicability Matrices, Age Assurance Vendor Terms, and Parental Consent Flows
This toolkit gives operators and counsel working papers for complying with, or challenging, age verification and minors' online safety laws. It includes an applicability matrix by law type, a feature worksheet, an injunction status log, a response decision matrix, and a geoblock decision memo. It provides a vendor diligence questionnaire and a clause bank for age assurance contracts, plus an impact assessment template tailored to age checks. It sets out parental consent flows, notices, support scripts, a minors' feature review, and an app store release gate. It closes with an attorney general response plan and a declaration outline for an as-applied challenge. Each item names its purpose, owner, and timing, and each carries drafting notes tied to authority.
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.