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.

Intellectual PropertyPatent

Patent FAQs: Frequently Asked Questions About Patents

A friendly, plain-English question-and-answer guide to the patent questions inventors and small-business owners actually ask, from "Do I even need a patent?" to "Can I patent my app?" and "How much will this cost?" It explains the difference between patents, trademarks, and copyrights; walks through provisional versus nonprovisional filings; demystifies prior art, patent searches, and the famous Alice software-eligibility test; and covers timelines, fees, international protection, licensing, and infringement. It also tackles the traps that quietly kill rights—public disclosures, the on-sale bar, missed deadlines, and the myth of the "poor man's patent." Written so a curious layperson, a busy founder, and a legal professional can all follow along, with concrete worked examples and links to deeper resources. For the procedural deep dive into USPTO mechanics, this guide points you to our companion hub. As always, it is general information, not legal advice.

Casey Scott McKayNovember 5, 202445 min read

LitigationEvidence

Expert Disclosure and Daubert Challenge Checklist: A Practical Checklist

Expert practice fails in two places: the disclosure, which is mechanical and unforgiving, and the reliability challenge, which the December 2023 amendment to Rule 702 made materially easier to win. This checklist covers both, from selecting an expert whose qualifications match the specific opinion through preparing the report, taking and defending the deposition, and briefing or opposing a motion to exclude. It incorporates the amended rule's two changes: the proponent must demonstrate admissibility by a preponderance, and the opinion must reflect a reliable application of the methodology, which forecloses the once-standard argument that application questions go only to weight. Each phase is paired with the reason it matters and the governing rule or case.

Casey Scott McKayNovember 4, 20248 min read

Intellectual PropertyTrademark

Section 8 Declaration of Continued Use: A Practical Checklist

A federal trademark registration is a living asset that must be maintained on a schedule set by the Lanham Act, and the Section 8 declaration of continued use is the heart of that schedule. This checklist walks a registrant and its counsel through the year-six and year-ten (and every-decade) Section 8 windows, confirming current use class by class, gathering compliant specimens, pruning deadwood, drafting the verified declaration, filing through the USPTO, and surviving a random proof-of-use audit. It covers the narrow excusable-nonuse escape hatch, the Section 71 counterpart for Madrid-based registrations, and the value of combining the filing with a Section 15 incontestability declaration. WHY notes and traps accompany each phase. Verify current fees, deadlines, and forms on the USPTO site before filing.

Casey Scott McKayNovember 1, 20247 min read

Labor and EmploymentEmployee Data and Privacy

Employee Monitoring and Workplace Privacy: A Practical Guide

Employers can monitor a great deal and are prohibited from monitoring some of it, and the line is drawn by a patchwork of federal wiretap law, state statutes with sharply different consent rules, labor law, and the employer's own policies. This guide covers what is permitted and what the practice requires. It starts with the reasonable expectation of privacy framework and the notice and policy foundation that eliminates most exposure, then works through the categories: computer and email monitoring, productivity and keystroke software, video surveillance, location tracking, telephone and video call recording, and biometric systems. It covers the statutes that impose the strictest requirements, including all-party consent recording laws and state biometric privacy acts with private rights of action, and the state consumer privacy laws that now reach employee data. Later sections address personal devices, remote work, social media and off-duty conduct, testing, and investigations.

Casey Scott McKayOctober 29, 202426 min read

FinanceFinancial Services Regulation

Banking and Payments Regulation for Fintech Companies

A payments or lending product built by a technology company is regulated as financial services from the first transaction, and the regulatory obligations attach whether or not anyone at the company has read them. The framework is fragmented across federal prudential regulators, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, FinCEN, OFAC, and fifty state banking departments, and the same product can be lawful in one structure and unlicensed money transmission in another. This article maps the regime: when a product requires money transmitter licensing and when it does not, how bank partnership structures work and where they fail, the consumer protection statutes that apply to accounts and credit, the anti-money-laundering program every covered company must build, and the third-party risk management expectations that now govern what a sponsor bank will let a fintech do. Two obligations run through all of it without any size or licensing threshold: sanctions screening under OFAC and the prohibition on unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts and practices.

Casey Scott McKayOctober 28, 202425 min read

Intellectual PropertyCopyright

Understanding Copyright Registration for a Song: A Comprehensive Guide for Bands

Every recorded song contains two distinct copyrights -- the musical work (the underlying composition of notes and lyrics) and the sound recording (the master that captures a particular performance) -- and each must be registered separately with the U.S. Copyright Office. This guide explains who owns what when a band creates a song, including how members become joint authors under 17 U.S.C. 201(a), how session musicians and producers fit in, and why work-made-for-hire status matters and so often fails for music. It walks step by step through registering both copyrights through the eCO system, covering the single application, standard application, the modern group-registration options (the GRAM option for albums and the group option for unpublished works), preregistration for works still in production, deposit requirements, and fees. It explains the concrete legal payoffs of timely registration -- registration as a prerequisite to suit under 17 U.S.C. 411 after Fourth Estate v. Wall-Street.com, eligibility for statutory damages and attorney's fees under 17 U.S.C. 412, and access to the Copyright Claims Board. Finally, it covers band agreements, split sheets, sampling and interpolation clearance, the royalty pipeline (PROs, the Section 115 blanket mechanical license and the MLC, and SoundExchange), and provides a worked example and an action checklist.

Casey Scott McKayOctober 26, 202454 min read

Real EstateResidential

Home Purchase and Sale Checklist: A Practical Checklist

A deadline-driven checklist for a residential closing, run from both sides. The buyer sequence covers budget and pre-approval, the eight negotiable offer terms, the first seventy-two hours after acceptance, the inspection set to order, the written response that preserves the contingency, reading the title commitment where the surprises live, appraisal gaps, underwriting discipline, the three-day Closing Disclosure comparison, the walkthrough, and post-closing confirmation. The seller sequence covers the pre-listing title search and permit history, the listing agreement terms to negotiate, honest disclosure, evaluating offers on more than price, and escrow management. A shared section covers wire fraud prevention and deal failure.

Casey Scott McKayOctober 24, 20249 min read

Intellectual PropertyTrademark

Trademark Overview: Substantive Standards for Protection

This is Part 2 of our four-part Trademark Overview series, and it answers the question that decides every trademark fight before it starts: which designations the law is actually willing to protect, and which it turns away at the door. We begin with the affirmative requirement of distinctiveness--the Abercrombie spectrum from generic to fanciful, and the secondary-meaning doctrine that lets a weak descriptive term grow into a protectable mark. Then we walk the statutory gauntlet of Lanham Act Section 2, the list of bars that sink most applications: mere descriptiveness and deceptive misdescriptiveness under Section 2(e)(1), primarily geographically descriptive and deceptively misdescriptive marks under Section 2(e)(2) and (3), primarily-merely-a-surname refusals under Section 2(e)(4), the functionality bar that keeps useful product features out of trademark law, the likelihood-of-confusion bar of Section 2(d), and the deception and "names" bars of Section 2(a)--including what survived the First Amendment earthquake of Matal v. Tam, Iancu v. Brunetti, and Vidal v. Elster. Throughout we supply the actual legal tests examiners and courts apply, with citations, plus worked hypotheticals and a practical FAQ. Read it alongside Part 1 (subject matter), Part 3 (obtaining protection and licensing), and Part 4 (infringement).

Casey Scott McKayOctober 23, 202441 min read

Intellectual PropertyTrademark

Trademark Registration Guide

This is the practical, step-by-step playbook for filing a federal trademark application at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. It walks you through pre-filing clearance, the spectrum of distinctiveness, choosing your goods and services using the USPTO ID Manual and the international Nice classification, the difference between TEAS Plus and TEAS Standard, the 2025 fee restructure, and the drawing and specimen rules that trip up more applicants than anything else. It explains how to pick a filing basis, what happens inside the examination pipeline, how to answer an examining attorney's Office Action under the post-2022 three-month deadline regime, how publication and opposition work, and how to keep a registration alive for the rest of its life through Sections 8, 15, and 9. Worked examples, primary citations, and plain-English definitions appear throughout so a first-time founder, a seasoned paralegal, and a judge can all follow along. Read it as the how-to companion to our broader lifecycle and basics articles.

Casey Scott McKayOctober 21, 202452 min read

FinanceBankruptcy

Chapter 7 Liquidation and Creditors' Rights: Claims, Exemptions, and the Discharge

Chapter 7 is a liquidation, and understanding it means keeping two very different proceedings straight: an individual case, which is mostly about the discharge, and a business case, where there is no discharge and the entire exercise is about collecting and distributing assets. This article covers both from the perspectives that matter — the debtor deciding whether to file, and the creditor deciding what to do about a filing that just landed. It works through the estate and the automatic stay, what the trustee actually does, how claims are filed and paid in priority order, the exemption system and its state-by-state variation, and the categories of debt that survive a discharge along with the deadlines for challenging them. It closes with the alternatives to filing at all, which are frequently better for a small business than a bankruptcy case nobody will fund.

Casey Scott McKayOctober 21, 202425 min read

HealthcarePrivacy and Data Security

HIPAA Security Rule Risk Analysis Checklist: A Practical Checklist

The risk analysis is the foundational requirement of the HIPAA Security Rule and the single most frequently cited failure in Office for Civil Rights enforcement, and the reason is almost always scope rather than effort. Organizations analyze the electronic health record and omit the imaging system, the research database, the billing vendor, the shared drives, and the laptops. This checklist runs an enterprise-wide analysis in the sequence the regulation contemplates: build a complete inventory of every system and location where electronic protected health information lives, identify the threats and vulnerabilities to each, assess the safeguards actually in place, determine likelihood and impact, and document the result. Later phases cover risk management, the addressable specifications that must be either implemented or justified in writing, and the review cycle that keeps the analysis current.

Casey Scott McKayOctober 17, 20249 min read

Legal ResourcesChoosing a Lawyer

Types of Lawyers: A Field Guide to Legal Specialties (and How to Hire the Right One)

The American legal profession is enormous and deeply specialized, and the lawyer who is perfect for one problem may be the wrong choice for another. This guide is a friendly, plain-English tour of the major practice areas--personal injury, criminal defense, family law, estate planning and probate, business and corporate, intellectual property, employment, immigration, real estate, bankruptcy, tax, civil litigation, and more--explaining what each kind of lawyer actually does, the kinds of problems that send people to their door, the law that runs underneath the work, and a relatable example for each. It then turns practical: how to choose and vet a lawyer, how the major fee structures (hourly, contingency, flat fee, retainer, and the growing family of hybrids and alternative fee arrangements) really work and what they cost, and how to read an engagement letter before you sign. Throughout, it links to deeper mclaw.io resources on specific topics so you can keep reading where your problem lives. The aim is to leave you confident about what kind of help you need and how to find the right person to provide it.

Casey Scott McKayOctober 16, 202439 min read