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.
Data Breach Litigation Readiness Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist turns data breach litigation readiness into tasks that can be assigned and checked off, before an incident and after one. The pre-incident phases cover vendor contracts, class waivers, data minimization, and evidence retention, since those are hard to fix later. The post-incident phases cover privilege structure, the notice letter, complaint triage, forum, motions, discovery, class issues, and settlement, with a separate phase for plaintiffs' counsel. Every task names its authority, and red flags mark the points where cases have actually been lost. It is designed to print and sit on a desk during an incident.
Venture Financing Toolkit: From SAFE to Series A and Beyond
A venture-backed company's legal history is a chain in which every link constrains the next, and the mistakes that surface at a Series B were nearly always made at formation. This toolkit walks the whole arc: forming the right entity in the right state with vested founder stock and filed 83(b) elections, raising on convertible instruments while understanding how they will convert, negotiating the priced round terms that determine economics and control, closing it, and then living with the covenants, valuations, and reporting the round created. It closes with later rounds, bridge and down-round mechanics, secondary liquidity, and the waterfall that translates every term above into what each holder actually receives at exit. It ends with the diligence and cleanup work that a later round or an acquisition will require, which is far cheaper to do continuously than retroactively.
Responding to Patent Office Actions: Strategies for Overcoming Rejections
An office action is not a rejection of you—it is an invitation to negotiate, and the patent system is built to give applicants the second, third, and fourth word. This guide teaches you to read an office action the way an examiner reads your claims: by statutory basis (anticipation under Section 102, obviousness under Section 103, eligibility under Section 101, and the disclosure and clarity demands of Section 112), and then to choose among argument, amendment, declaration evidence, the examiner interview, and the appeal. It covers the full procedural toolkit through 2026—restriction and rejoinder practice, Rule 1.130 declarations that knock out prior art, requests for continued examination, after-final practice in a world without AFCP 2.0, and the complete appeal track to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board and beyond—with worked examples, an annotated sample response, and the 2025 fee changes that reshaped post-final strategy. The aim is to turn rejections into granted patents whose claims are still worth owning. Written for patent attorneys handling their first prosecution, inventors trying to understand what their counsel is doing, and in-house professionals stewarding a portfolio.
Removing Yourself From People-Search Sites and Evaluating a Publicity Claim: A Practical Guide
This guide takes someone who has just found their name, photo, or home address on a people-search site through what to do, in order. It starts with a triage decision among safety, removal, and a possible claim, then covers evidence capture, site opt-outs, California's DROP platform and other deletion rights, upstream sources, and re-checking. A dedicated section addresses survivors of domestic violence, judges, prosecutors, and police officers, including address confidentiality programs and Daniel's Law notices after the 2026 decisions in New Jersey and the Fourth Circuit. A second part explains how to evaluate a publicity or Fair Credit Reporting Act claim honestly, including who saw the page, deadlines, arbitration traps, and what a claim is worth. A final part gives operators and sales-intelligence vendors a sequence of risk controls and litigation decisions. Sample language, trade-off tables, worked hypotheticals, and a list of common mistakes are included.
Negotiating an Equipment Lease: A Practical Guide
An equipment lease looks like a rental and frequently functions as a secured loan, and the difference determines the parties' rights on default, in bankruptcy, and at the end of the term. Whether a transaction is a true lease or a disguised security interest is decided by a statutory test that turns on economic reality rather than the document's label, and the answer drives the accounting, the tax treatment, and whether the lessor must file to protect itself. Beyond that threshold, the negotiation runs through a small set of provisions that carry nearly all of the economic risk: the hell-or-high-water covenant, the stipulated loss schedule, the end-of-term options, and the return conditions. This guide covers the classification analysis, the structures in use, the terms worth negotiating and the ones that are not, and the diligence a lessee should complete before signing.
Filing and Litigating a Workers Compensation Claim: A Practical Guide
This guide walks a workers compensation claim from the moment of injury through hearing, appeal, and settlement, from both sides of the table. It explains what to say and to whom in the first forty-eight hours, how the average weekly wage is calculated and why it is worth auditing, how medical control and utilization review actually determine the course of treatment, what happens at a compensation hearing and how it differs from civil court, and how to evaluate a settlement offer against the future medical exposure it extinguishes. It covers the parallel obligations under the FMLA and the ADA that employers routinely miss, the retaliation exposure that dwarfs the claim itself, and the coordination of a third-party case with the compensation lien.
Negotiating a Marital Settlement Agreement
A marital settlement agreement resolves in one document what would otherwise take a trial: how property is divided, whether support is paid and for how long, how retirement accounts are split, who takes which debts, and how the children's arrangements are structured. It is a contract that becomes a court judgment, and the two characters carry different consequences for modification and enforcement that the drafting must address deliberately. The work that determines the outcome happens before the negotiation—assembling complete financial disclosure, valuing the assets that need valuing, and understanding the tax consequences of each proposed transfer, several of which are irreversible. This guide covers the preparation, the substantive issues in the order they should be negotiated, the drafting provisions that prevent later disputes, and the mechanics of entry and enforcement.
Proving Damages in Civil Litigation: Certainty, Causation, and the Numbers That Survive
A plaintiff can prove every element of liability and still walk out with nothing. Damages is a separate element with its own rules of proof, and the rule that kills more cases than any other is reasonable certainty: the fact of injury must be proved with reasonable certainty, and the amount must be proved with enough evidence to permit a just and reasonable estimate. This article explains how courts distinguish the fact of damage from its amount, why the foreseeability rule of Hadley v. Baxendale still decides consequential damages disputes, how mitigation shifts the arithmetic, what a damages expert must do to survive a Daubert challenge, why a damages model must match the liability theory after Comcast v. Behrend, and where the constitutional ceiling on punitive damages sits. Worked examples run the numbers.
Copyright Claim Timeliness Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist turns a copyright limitations question into phased, check-off tasks that fit on a desk. It starts with the forum's accrual rule and claim classification, then works through infringement accrual, online and software acts, ownership repudiation, tolling, and the damages window. Separate phases cover the plaintiff's filing decisions, the defendant's response, motions, trial, and appellate preservation. Each task names its authority, and red flags mark the traps most likely to end a claim or waste a defense. It works for lawyers and for in-house teams doing a first pass.
Writing a Demand Letter: The Basics
A demand letter is the workhorse of pre-litigation practice: a written notice that lays out the facts, the legal basis for a claim, and a specific demand with a deadline, often resolving a dispute long before a lawsuit is filed. This guide explains what a demand letter is, why it works, and how to draft one that is firm, credible, and legally safe. It covers the anatomy of an effective letter, the settlement-privilege questions that surround Federal Rule of Evidence 408, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act traps that catch anyone collecting a consumer debt, the duty to preserve evidence that a demand letter can trigger, the statutes that require a pre-suit demand, and the critical line between vigorous advocacy and unlawful extortion (never threaten criminal charges to gain a civil advantage). A complete model letter, a worked hypothetical, and an FAQ round out the discussion. The article is general legal information, not legal advice.
Drafting a Maternity Leave Policy: Five Things You Should Know
A maternity leave policy is one of the most legally layered documents a small employer will ever write, sitting at the crossroads of at least five federal statutes and a thicket of state programs. This guide walks through the five things every employer should understand before drafting one: the legal floor set by the FMLA, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, the 2023 Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, the PUMP Act, and the ADA; why offering more than the minimum is often the smartest business move you can make; how to plan operationally for predictable absences; why the policy is only the beginning of being truly family-friendly; and the legal danger of writing a "mothers only" policy in a world that increasingly expects parental-leave equality. It reflects the law as it stands in mid-2026, including the permanent, enhanced Section 45S paid-leave tax credit and the 2025 court decisions shaping the PWFA. Written for owners, HR professionals, and the lawyers who advise them, it explains every term of art in plain language and flags where the law is unsettled or varies by state. Worked hypotheticals show how the statutes interact in real life, and a closing FAQ tackles the questions employers ask most. This is general legal information, not legal advice.
Legal Research Guide: Case Law
Case law is the body of law built from judicial decisions, and learning to find it, read it, and confirm it is still "good law" is the single most useful research skill a lawyer or curious non-lawyer can have. This guide walks through the American court systems and the doctrine of precedent (stare decisis), the anatomy of a written opinion, and the crucial distinction between a holding and mere dicta. It explains reporters, parallel citations, and how to read a case citation at a glance, then shows you how to brief a case and how to find decisions by topic, by citation, and through statutory annotations. It closes with the indispensable step that separates competent research from malpractice: using a citator to verify that a case has not been reversed, overruled, or quietly undermined. Free tools (CourtListener, Google Scholar, govinfo) and paid platforms (Westlaw, Lexis, Bloomberg Law) are compared throughout. This is the deeper companion to our beginner's guide to legal research.