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.
Developing a Privacy Compliance Program
A privacy compliance program is the operating system that keeps a company on the right side of an exploding patchwork of data-protection laws. This guide explains how to build one from the ground up: governance and a privacy officer, data mapping, the legal patchwork (CCPA/CPRA, the growing list of state laws, GDPR, HIPAA, GLBA, COPPA, and FTC Section 5), privacy notices, consumer-rights request handling, vendor and data-processing agreements, impact assessments, security and breach response, training, retention, and documentation. It anchors the program to the NIST Privacy Framework and the Fair Information Practice Principles, and it threads in worked examples a layperson, a lawyer, and a judge can all follow. The aim is a program that is defensible on paper and real in practice. Treat it as a map, not legal advice for your specific situation.
Workplace Harassment and Hostile Work Environment Claims
Harassment law is misunderstood in both directions. Employees often believe any unpleasant boss violates the law, and employers often believe a written policy is a defense by itself. Neither is right. This article explains what a hostile work environment claim actually requires, why the severe or pervasive standard is objective and subjective at once, and how the Supreme Court's decisions from Meritor through Oncale built the modern framework. It covers the Faragher-Ellerth affirmative defense in detail, including why it is unavailable when a tangible employment action occurred and why Vance v. Ball State made the definition of supervisor decisive. It then addresses retaliation, which is now the most frequently alleged claim in EEOC charges and which reaches conduct the harassment standard would not, and the expansion of protected characteristics after Bostock and of the adverse action standard after Muldrow. The second half is operational: the anti-harassment policy and complaint procedure that actually earn the defense, how to run an investigation, what to document, the recent federal statutes limiting arbitration and nondisclosure of harassment claims, and the administrative process from charge through right-to-sue letter. It closes with a worked example, checklists, an FAQ, and related reading.
USPTO Trademark Classes: A Guide to the Nice Classification
A trademark is not protected for everything under the sun—it is protected for the goods and services you actually sell, and the USPTO sorts all of commerce into 45 standardized buckets called the Nice Classification. This guide explains what those 45 classes are, why two companies can share the identical name in different classes, and how class choices drive the cost, scope, and conflict profile of your registration. It tours all 45 classes in plain language, walks through the USPTO Trademark ID Manual, explains the dramatically reformed 2025 per-class fee structure, and shows how "coordinated" and related classes can sink an application even when the class numbers differ. It also clears up a subtle but crucial point of law—that classification itself is "strictly ministerial" and does not define your rights, even though it drives your fees and your search obligations. Worked examples follow a hypothetical company through real classification decisions. The article closes with common mistakes, a short FAQ, and links to the rest of mclaw.io's trademark library.
Hallucinated Citations, Rule 11, and Generative AI in Legal Filings: What Courts Are Actually Doing
In 2023 a New York lawyer filed a brief containing six cases that did not exist, produced by a chatbot he had asked to find supporting authority and then asked whether the cases were real. The resulting sanctions opinion became the most widely read order in American legal practice that year, and it did not stop the problem. Courts across the country have since sanctioned lawyers, referred them to disciplinary authorities, struck filings, and in a growing number of cases denied relief outright because the supporting authority was fabricated. This article explains what actually happened in the leading cases, why large language models produce citations that look correct and are not, and what the governing rules require. It covers Rule 11 and its safe harbor, section 1927, inherent authority, the ethics rules that apply including competence, candor, confidentiality, supervision, and fees, and the ABA formal opinion addressing generative AI. It then turns to practice: the standing orders and local rules courts have adopted, what a defensible verification workflow looks like, how retrieval-based tools differ from open-ended chatbots, what to do if a fabricated citation has already been filed, and how to supervise the people who use these tools. It closes with a firm policy outline, a worked example, an FAQ, and related reading.
Filing or Opposing Post-Trial Motions Under Rules 50, 59, and 60: A Practical Guide
This guide walks a trial team on either side of a federal jury verdict through post-trial practice in the order it actually happens. It begins with the record that must be built during trial (specific Rule 50(a) motions, Rule 51 objections, offers of proof, and verdict-form checks), then covers the day of the verdict, the calendar that runs from entry of judgment, and how to choose among Rules 50(b), 59(a), 59(e), 52(b), and 60. It explains how to draft a renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law and a new trial and remittitur motion, how the verdict winner should oppose them, and what happens at the hearing, in the ruling, and in the remittitur election. It then covers stays and supersedeas bonds, costs and fee motions, and the notice of appeal under Appellate Rule 4(a)(4), with the deadlines no court can extend. A day-by-day patent verdict example, cost and timing realities, common mistakes, and an FAQ close the guide.
Remote Deposition Toolkit: Stipulated Protocols, Exhibit Plans, and Technology Scripts
This toolkit collects the working papers for a remote video deposition in federal civil litigation, each introduced by its purpose, its owner, and when to use it, and each followed by drafting commentary tied to the governing rules and cases. The core template is a stipulated remote deposition protocol that can be signed under Rule 29 or entered as an order. Further templates supply notice and subpoena language, an exhibit plan with a naming convention and sealed-exhibit transmittal letter, a technology rehearsal script, an on-the-record opening script for the officer and examiner, a witness instruction letter, break questions and a coaching objection script with a preservation demand, an interpreter protocol, a cross-border remote deposition memo, a short motion for a remote deposition order, and a closing script. A running fictional example, a template index, and practical takeaways frame the collection.
Expert Witness Toolkit
Expert testimony decides most technical cases, and the fights over it are decided by rules rather than by science. A qualified expert whose report omits a basis is excluded. A methodology that is generally accepted but was not reliably applied to the facts is excluded. A disclosure served a week late is stricken. This toolkit covers the expert workstream end to end: deciding what experts the case needs and when to retain them, the distinction between consulting and testifying experts and what it protects, satisfying Rule 26 disclosure and the report requirements, preparing the expert for deposition, bringing and defending a Daubert challenge under the amended Rule 702, and presenting and cross-examining expert testimony at trial.
Crisis Management and Business Continuity Toolkit
Most business continuity programs are documents rather than capabilities, and the difference surfaces at the worst possible moment. The plan describes a structure nobody has rehearsed, the contact list is two years old, the backup has never been restored, and the whole thing lives on the network that is down. This toolkit builds the capability instead: the business impact analysis that determines what must be recovered and how fast, the dependency map that finds single points of failure, the crisis structure that names who decides and with what spending authority, the communications and contractual notice obligations that must be extracted in advance, the technology and facilities and supply chain recovery capability, the insurance that responds and the gaps between policies, and the exercise regime that turns the document into something that works. It closes with the first four hours of a real event and with a note on keeping the program proportionate, because a thirty-person company needs a day of work a year rather than a program office.
A History of Computer Law
Computer law was not handed down on stone tablets; it was improvised, decade by decade, as judges and legislators wrestled new machines into old legal categories. This narrative history traces the story from the first fights over whether software could be copyrighted at all (CONTU and Apple v. Franklin) through the long war over software patents (Diehr, State Street, Bilski, Alice), the rise and reinterpretation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (Van Buren), the DMCA, the twenty-six words that made the modern internet (Section 230), the Crypto Wars, the open-source revolution, the legalization of the electronic signature, the birth of data-privacy law, and the arrival of artificial intelligence. Along the way it explains each milestone in plain language for lawyers and non-lawyers alike. The aim is to show that today's hardest tech-law questions are the latest chapters in a very old argument about how to fit the future into the rules we already have.
Responding to Requests for Admission Checklist: A Practical Checklist
Requests for admission under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 36 invert the usual discovery instinct: the greatest danger is not saying too much but saying too little. A missed 30-day deadline hands your opponent binding admissions automatically, and a reflexive denial of an obvious fact can cost your client the other side's attorney's fees. This checklist walks responding counsel through the disciplined process: calendaring the unforgiving deadline, choosing among the four permissible forms of response (admit, deny, qualified, and lack of knowledge after reasonable inquiry), making only the narrow objections the rule permits, handling document-authentication and application-of-law-to-fact requests, watching the conclusive effect of admissions, and avoiding the cost-shifting penalty of Rule 37(c)(2). Each step is paired with the reason it matters and the case law that decides admission disputes. The strategic skill lies in distinguishing the requests that must be contested from the ones that should simply be conceded.
Onboarding a Competitor's Employee Without Importing Its Secrets: A Practical Guide
This guide walks a hiring company through a competitor hire in order, from the first recruiter call through the first 90 days of employment, and then through the two moments that decide most disputes: discovering that material came in and receiving a cease-and-desist letter. It assigns tasks to the recruiter, hiring manager, counsel, HR, and IT, and supplies sample language, scripts, and cost trade-offs at each step. It explains what can be asked in an interview, what to tell a recruit before resignation, how to set up machines and roles so old material stays out, and how to quarantine material without destroying evidence. It also takes the former employer's seat, setting out how to evaluate a claim, when the DTSA's three-year clock starts after Insulet v. EOFlow, and how to avoid a bad faith fee award. Common mistakes and two worked hypotheticals show the sequence under pressure.
Managing Discovery in a Trade Secret Case: A Practical Guide
Discovery in a trade secret case runs on a different clock from ordinary commercial litigation: the evidence is at risk in the first days, the plaintiff must describe its secrets before it can probe the defendant's, and every exchange of information risks a second misappropriation. This guide walks through the process step by step, from preservation and pre-suit investigation, through emergency relief and early forensic orders, the protective order, the identification statement, the discovery plan, and the neutral forensic examination, to written discovery, depositions, experts, discovery disputes, and narrowing the case for trial. Each step explains what to file, what to say, which rules and cases govern, and the decision points for both the trade secret owner and the accused employee or competitor. It includes a timeline and budget table, a worked example involving a contract manufacturer accused of using a customer's process, common mistakes, and an FAQ. It is the procedural companion to the cluster's article, checklist, and toolkit.