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.
Making a FOIA Request and Litigating a Denial
The Freedom of Information Act gives any person a right of access to federal agency records, subject to nine exemptions, and it is a genuinely powerful tool that most businesses and litigators underuse. It produces inspection reports, complaint files, contract records, enforcement correspondence, communications with competitors, and the material an agency relied on in a rulemaking—frequently faster and cheaper than discovery, and available where no litigation exists. This guide covers how to draft a request that actually gets processed, the fee and expedited processing rules, the exemptions the agency will invoke and how each is contested, the administrative appeal that must precede suit, and how FOIA litigation is actually conducted. It closes with the reverse-FOIA problem facing companies whose own information has been requested.
Creditor Proof of Claim and Bankruptcy Response Checklist: A Practical Checklist
When a customer files for bankruptcy, a creditor has a short window in which nearly all of the available value is captured, and most of it is captured by knowing which of several parallel tracks apply. The unsecured claim is one track; the goods delivered in the twenty days before filing are another with a much better priority; the payments received in the ninety days before filing are a liability rather than an asset; and the personal guaranty is unaffected by the filing entirely. This checklist runs the first sixty days in order, identifies every deadline that cannot be extended, and flags the strategic decisions—filing a claim, asserting setoff, objecting to a plan—that carry consequences beyond the immediate recovery. This checklist walks each track in the order the deadlines arrive, from the first notice through plan confirmation and distribution.
Business Insurance and Coverage Disputes: CGL, E&O, Cyber, and D&O
Insurance is the only asset most businesses own that pays out precisely when everything else is going wrong, and it is the asset owners understand least. This article explains the policies a business actually needs, how each responds, and where coverage fights come from. It covers the commercial general liability policy in detail, including the difference between Coverage A for bodily injury and property damage and the much-overlooked Coverage B for personal and advertising injury, which is the provision that funds many intellectual property and defamation defenses. It explains occurrence versus claims-made triggers, retroactive dates, and why tail coverage matters at the end of a professional relationship. It then covers the duty to defend, which is broader than the duty to indemnify and is determined by the allegations rather than the facts, along with reservations of rights, independent counsel, and allocation between covered and uncovered claims. Sections on technology errors and omissions, cyber, directors and officers, employment practices, and the contractual insurance requirements that appear in every lease and vendor agreement follow, with claim-handling guidance, a worked example, an FAQ, and related reading.
Deposition Practice Toolkit: Taking, Defending, and Using Depositions in Federal Litigation
This toolkit is a roadmap for the full life cycle of a federal deposition, from deciding whom to depose through using the transcript at trial. It walks the strategic and procedural decisions in order—notice and logistics under Rule 30, preparing to take, outlining and exhibits, questioning technique, defending and preparing your own witness, objections, errata, and the use of deposition testimony on summary judgment and at trial. It gives special attention to remote depositions and to the distinctive mechanics of Rule 30(b)(6) corporate depositions. Each stage links to mclaw.io checklists and articles plus the governing rules and leading authorities (FRCP 27–32, FRE 611/612/613, and Hall v. Clifton Precision). It is written for litigators, paralegals, and self-represented parties who want both the big picture and the operative detail.
Startup Formation and Fundraising Toolkit: A Roadmap and Resource Guide
This toolkit is a high-level roadmap for founders and their counsel taking a company from a blank page through its early financing rounds. It walks the full arc—choosing and forming the right entity, papering founder relationships and equity with vesting, assigning intellectual property into the company, raising on SAFEs and convertible notes, closing a priced seed round, maintaining a clean cap table, fitting within securities exemptions, and bringing on later investors. Each stage links to detailed mclaw.io checklists and articles plus the primary authorities founders most often need, including Regulation D and Rule 506, Form D, IRC Section 83(b), and the Section 1202 qualified small business stock benefit. It is a navigation guide, not a substitute for securities or tax counsel on a specific deal.
Taking Down a Lookalike Domain in Days: A Practical Guide
This guide takes a business from the moment it discovers a lookalike domain through the first 72 hours and on to a decision about the UDRP, the URS, or federal court. It separates the money, the domain, and the possible mailbox compromise, because each has its own clock and its own owner. It gives step-by-step instructions on wire recalls and IC3 reports, on capturing evidence before it disappears, and on writing abuse reports that registrars, hosts, and CDNs can act on under ICANN's 2024 rules. It explains how to communicate internally and with customers, when to notify an insurer, and how to choose among takedown forums, with costs and trade-offs. It also covers the other sides of the dispute, including the trading partner who says you still owe the money and the registrant who was wrongly accused. It ends with common mistakes and a defensive program of monitoring, registrations, and contract terms.
Intervening in a Federal Case or Opposing Intervention: A Practical Guide
This guide takes a nonparty, and the parties who would rather keep it out, through a federal motion to intervene from the first docket alert to the appeal. It begins with the decisions to make before filing: whether intervention is needed at all, what alternatives exist, what it costs to become a party, and which form of intervention fits the goal. Nine numbered steps for the movant cover fixing the timeliness clock, choosing the scope of intervention, confirming standing and jurisdiction, building the inadequate-representation record, conferring with the parties, drafting the motion and the proposed pleading Rule 24(c) requires, offering conditions, arguing the motion, and acting on the ruling. Six steps for the opposing party cover each line of attack and the fallback of conditioned or limited participation. Separate sections address the recurring nonparty intervenors: competitors and trade associations, insurers, federal and state governments, and the press and public seeking to unseal records. A timeline and cost table, a worked example involving a solar trade association and a proposed consent judgment, common mistakes, an FAQ, and takeaways close the guide.
Force Majeure, Impracticability, and Frustration of Purpose
When something happens that makes performance impossible, ruinously expensive, or pointless, three separate doctrines may excuse it, and they operate on completely different premises. A force majeure clause is a contract term interpreted like any other and construed narrowly. Impracticability is a common-law and UCC doctrine that excuses performance made extraordinarily difficult by an event whose non-occurrence was a basic assumption of the contract. Frustration of purpose excuses a party whose performance is still possible but whose reason for contracting has evaporated. This article separates them, explains the elements courts actually apply, works through the pandemic-era decisions that tested each of them, and covers the procedural requirements—notice, mitigation, and allocation—that decide most disputes before the substantive standard is ever reached.
Clean Room Toolkit: Protocols, Team Certifications, and Specification Records
This toolkit collects the working documents for a clean-room software development project, each with its purpose, owner, timing, a fill-in template, and drafting commentary tied to the governing authority. It includes a master clean-room protocol, a project charter, an element list worksheet, an exposure interview script, clean-team and dirty-team certifications, a former-employee wall memo, lab notebook and specification entry formats, the gatekeeper review standard and log, a question and answer log, communications rules, AI coding tool rules, test reports, an exposure incident record, a closing certification, and a litigation-ready file index. The templates follow one invented project, a robotics company building a driver compatible with a competitor's motion-controller protocol. The commentary explains why each record matters to proving independent creation and defeating trade secret and contract claims, and where privilege and production decisions should be made. A short FAQ and practical takeaways close the toolkit.
AI Vendor Procurement and Governance Checklist: A Practical Checklist
Buying an AI tool is buying a probabilistic system whose behavior changes when the vendor updates a model. This checklist covers the diligence and the contract terms that make that manageable. It begins with use-case classification, because the controls that matter for a drafting assistant differ from those for a system that screens job applicants or prices credit. It then covers data rights and the training-exclusion terms that are the single most negotiated point, output ownership and IP indemnity, accuracy and evaluation, human oversight for consequential decisions, security and subprocessors, model change management, and the regulatory overlays that now apply to deployers rather than just developers. A final phase addresses ongoing governance: the AI inventory, shadow AI discovery, incident handling, and periodic review.
Obtaining and Defending a Protective Order: A Practical Guide
This guide runs a protective order case from both chairs. The petitioner track covers the first hours, what to preserve and how, drafting a petition that satisfies the statute, the emergency ex parte appearance, service, preparing exhibits and a timeline for a hearing that will last under an hour, testifying, what relief to request and how to word it, and enforcing, renewing, and modifying the order afterward. The respondent track covers what to do in the first forty eight hours, why absolute compliance with an ex parte order matters more than anything else you will do, gathering evidence, whether to cross petition, the firearms surrender obligation, and presenting a defense. A shared section covers advocates, costs, and the parallel criminal case.
Design Patents vs. Trade Dress: Two Ways to Protect How a Product Looks
A product's appearance can be protected two very different ways: a design patent, which gives a 15-year monopoly on an ornamental look the moment it issues, and trade dress, which protects an appearance that consumers have come to recognize as a brand signal and can last forever. This accessible guide compares the two regimes side by side—what each protects, how rights arise, how long they last, what they cost, how functionality bars each one, how infringement is proven, and what remedies are available. It explains the landmark cases every practitioner should know, including Wal-Mart v. Samara, TrafFix, Qualitex, Two Pesos, Egyptian Goddess, and Samsung v. Apple, and shows how the two regimes can be layered to give a product both early-term and long-term protection. A running sneaker hypothetical ties the doctrine together, and a closing FAQ answers the questions clients ask most. For the deeper case-law treatment of the patent-versus-trade-dress conflict for product configurations, this guide cross-links a companion analysis.