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.
Cryptocurrency and Digital Asset Regulation in the United States
Digital asset regulation in the United States is not a single regime but the collision of several older ones, each of which was written for something else and each of which claims part of the field. This article works through the claims in order: when a token is a security under the Howey test and what the Ripple and Terraform decisions actually held, where the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's authority begins and ends, why every meaningful intermediary is a money services business with Bank Secrecy Act and sanctions obligations, how the federal payment stablecoin framework changed the analysis for issuers, what the tax rules require now that broker reporting and per-wallet basis tracking are in effect, and how customer assets are treated when an exchange fails. The organizing insight is that no regulator supervises digital assets as such; each older statute asks whether a particular transaction or relationship falls within its own definitions. The practical consequence is that analysis begins with what a business does, not with what it holds.
Clearing Expressive Works Against Right of Publicity Claims: A Practical Guide
This guide walks producers, publishers, game studios, brands, and their lawyers through clearing an expressive work that uses a real person's name, likeness, voice, or story, and shows the people depicted how to respond. It is organized as ten chronological steps: inventory the people and the uses, fix the governing law, run the publicity analysis use by use, review for defamation and privacy, decide whether to buy life rights or releases, apply the rules for each medium, review titles and marketing, choose disclaimers that actually help, assemble the clearance file for errors and omissions insurance, and handle objections and demand letters. Each step explains the decision points, the documents to create, and what the work typically costs and how long it takes, with the leading authority from Zacchini and Comedy III through de Havilland, Jordan v. Jewel, and Hepp v. Facebook. A separate playbook covers the subject's side, from first notice of a project to a pre-release demand and the claims worth bringing. A costs and timelines table follows, and a worked example clears a documentary-drama hybrid about two surfers, one living and one deceased, with archival footage, an AI-recreated narration, a podcast companion, and merchandise. The guide closes with common mistakes, an FAQ, and practical takeaways.
Damage Statistics: Intellectual Property Litigation
Intellectual property verdicts make headlines for their size, yet the median IP recovery is far more modest than the billion-dollar awards suggest. This guide walks through how courts actually compute damages across the four IP regimes—patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets—from the reasonable-royalty hypothetical negotiation and the Georgia-Pacific factors to copyright statutory damages, Lanham Act profit disgorgement after Romag v. Fossil, and the unjust-enrichment and exemplary measures of the Defend Trade Secrets Act. It explains why IP awards swing so violently, what enhanced and treble damages add, and the decisive role of the damages expert. It frames "damage statistics" honestly: most cases settle, distributions are wildly skewed, and headline verdicts are often slashed on appeal. The aim is to give a judge, a practitioner, and a curious business owner a shared, accurate mental model of what an IP case is worth and why.
Contributory and Vicarious Copyright Liability After Cox v. Sony: Who Pays When Someone Else Infringes
This article explains who can be held liable for another person's copyright infringement now that Cox Communications v. Sony Music Entertainment has limited contributory liability to inducement and services tailored to infringement. It traces the doctrine from Kalem and the dance hall cases through Sony, Napster, Grokster, and the knowledge-plus-material-contribution era that produced a $1 billion verdict. It reads the majority opinion and Justice Sotomayor's concurrence closely and separates what the Court decided from what it left open. It then reports how lower courts applied Cox through early November 2026, including the emerging disagreements over knowledge and over what counts as the tailored service. It explains why vicarious liability, direct infringement, and DMCA section 512 still matter, with sector notes for ISPs, hosts, marketplaces, app stores, payment companies, and AI developers. Rightsholders get a realistic account of what can still be pleaded.
Small Claims Filing and Hearing Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist runs a small claims case from the decision to file through collection of the judgment. It begins with the four threshold questions that determine whether the claim belongs in small claims court at all, then covers the defendant identification research that decides more cases than any argument, the demand letter, filing and fee waivers, the service rules that self represented plaintiffs most often get wrong, exhibit preparation, the hearing itself, and the post judgment collection tools including the abstract of judgment that quietly does most of the work. A separate section covers defending a claim.
Handling a DUI Case: A Practical Guide from the Stop to Sentencing
This guide runs a drunk driving case in order, on both of its clocks. It covers what to do and not do at the roadside, the paperwork handed over at release and the license hearing deadline hidden in it, hiring counsel and what to ask, the discovery request that produces the records the case turns on, reviewing body camera footage against the report, building the minute by minute timeline that supports a rising blood alcohol argument, the suppression motions worth filing and in what order, the administrative hearing, plea negotiation and the five consequences to price into any offer, mitigation and sentencing, and the license reinstatement and record relief work that follows.
Elder Law and Long-Term Care: Medicaid, Nursing Homes, and Protecting an Aging Parent
Long-term care is the largest uninsured financial risk most American families face, and the rules that govern it are counterintuitive at every turn. Medicare does not pay for long-term custodial care. Medicaid does, but only after a strict income and asset test, a five-year lookback on transfers, and a promise that the state will seek repayment from the estate. This article explains the documents that must be signed while capacity still exists, what guardianship costs when they were not, how Medicaid eligibility and transfer penalties actually work, the spousal impoverishment protections that keep a healthy spouse from destitution, the federal rights every nursing home resident holds, what an admission agreement may and may not require, and how to recognize and respond to elder abuse and financial exploitation.
Artificial Intelligence Key Legal Issues: A Comprehensive Overview for Businesses and Legal Professionals
Artificial intelligence has moved from research laboratories into the operational core of businesses across every industry, creating a fast-moving legal landscape that spans intellectual property, products liability, data privacy, employment, antitrust, professional ethics, and regulatory compliance. This guide examines the key legal issues arising from the commercial development and deployment of AI: protecting AI through patents, copyrights, and trade secrets; the unresolved questions of AI inventorship and authorship after Thaler v. Vidal and Thaler v. Perlmutter; the landmark 2025 copyright rulings on AI training data; products-liability frameworks for autonomous systems; biometric and data-protection duties under BIPA, the GDPR, and the EU AI Act; workplace-discrimination risk from AI hiring tools under Title VII and the four-fifths rule; the professional-responsibility duties that ABA Formal Opinion 512 and Mata v. Avianca impose on lawyers using generative AI; antitrust exposure from algorithmic pricing; and the treatment of AI assets in transactions and bankruptcy. It reflects developments through early 2026, including the November 2025 USPTO inventorship guidance, the December 2025 federal executive order targeting state AI laws, and the EU's Digital Omnibus proposal to defer high-risk AI deadlines. It follows a single hypothetical company to make the doctrine concrete and is written for executives, in-house counsel, and outside practitioners alike.
Trade Secret Protection Toolkit: Building and Defending a Confidentiality Program
This toolkit is a high-level roadmap and curated library guide for protecting a company's confidential information as trade secrets and enforcing those rights when they are stolen. It walks the full program life cycle: identifying and inventorying secrets, implementing the "reasonable measures" the law requires, papering relationships with NDAs and invention-assignment agreements, controlling access, managing remote work and cloud risk, disciplined onboarding and offboarding, incident response, and litigation under the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act and state Uniform Trade Secrets Act. At each stage it links the firm's articles and checklists alongside the controlling statutes (DTSA, UTSA, the Economic Espionage Act). It is written for in-house counsel, founders, HR and security leaders, and litigators. Read the roadmap, then follow the links into the operational checklists. The non-compete landscape is unsettled—treat reasonable measures, not non-competes, as the backbone of protection.
Software Licensing Agreements
Software is almost never sold; it is licensed, and that single legal choice drives nearly everything that follows. This guide explains the difference between a license and a sale and why it matters under copyright's first-sale doctrine (Vernor v. Autodesk), then walks through the anatomy of a software license agreement: the license grant and its scope, exclusivity, field, territory, and term; the major commercial models from perpetual to subscription to SaaS; and the proprietary-versus-open-source divide. It then tackles the enforceability of clickwrap and browsewrap contracts (ProCD v. Zeidenberg, Specht v. Netscape, Nguyen v. Barnes & Noble), the heavily negotiated risk-allocation clauses (warranties, IP indemnity, limitation of liability), and the operational terms that quietly decide outcomes (maintenance and SLAs, source-code escrow, audit rights, assignment and change of control, and data and privacy). It closes with a negotiation-focused FAQ. The goal is a single resource a developer, a buyer, a judge, or a curious founder can all read and actually use.
Beyond the UDRP: Uniform Rapid Suspension, Country-Code Domain Disputes, In Rem ACPA Actions, and Reverse Domain Name Hijacking
The UDRP resolves most domain disputes, but a meaningful share of real cases fall outside it: a brand squatted under .io or .ai, a .uk or .de registration, an anonymous registrant beyond any court's reach, or a domain investor who has just been branded a cybersquatter and wants the decision undone. This article explains the alternatives in detail. It covers the Uniform Rapid Suspension System and its clear-and-convincing standard, the country-code policies that govern .us, .uk, .ca, .eu, .cn, .au, .de, .io, .co, and .ai, and the in rem action under 15 U.S.C. § 1125(d)(2) that lets a trademark owner sue the domain itself in the Eastern District of Virginia. It then turns to the registrant's side: reverse domain name hijacking findings under UDRP Rule 15(e), the federal cause of action in 15 U.S.C. § 1114(2)(D)(v), and the ten-business-day window that stops a transfer. A decision matrix compares every option on cost, speed, remedy, standard of proof, and appeal, and two worked examples show how the choices play out.
Trademark Fraud Toolkit: Use Audits, Deletion Records, and Pleading Frameworks
This toolkit collects working papers for preventing, correcting, pleading, and defending trademark fraud claims. It includes a filing inventory, a good-by-good use audit worksheet, a class-by-class proof table, a specimen provenance record, a Section 15 proceedings check, signatory instructions and a confirmation form, a vendor diligence sheet, and a deletion decision record. For disputes, it provides TTAB and federal pleading frames for procurement, maintenance, and specimen fraud, an answer and defense bank, a motion-to-dismiss outline, discovery topics for both sides, a signer deposition outline, a demand-response letter, and a show cause response outline. Each template states its purpose, owner, and timing and ends with drafting notes tied to authority. All bracketed text must be replaced with true facts specific to your matter. The law and fees are stated as of 6 November 2026.