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.
Drafting an LLC Operating Agreement: A Practical Guide
The operating agreement is the constitution of a limited liability company, and the default statutory rules that apply in its absence rarely match what the members actually intended. This guide works through the document section by section, explaining what each provision does, where the drafting choices lie, and what happens if the section is omitted. It covers formation and capital structure including the difference between capital and profits interests, allocation and distribution provisions and the tax rules that constrain them, management structure and the major decisions list that determines who really controls the company, and the transfer restrictions and buy-sell mechanics that decide what happens when a member dies, divorces, defaults, or simply wants out. Later sections address fiduciary duties and their modification under the Delaware and uniform acts, deadlock resolution, dissolution and winding up, tax provisions including the partnership representative, and the drafting errors that recur most often.
Statute of Limitations Diary Checklist: A Practical Checklist
More claims die on the calendar than on the merits, and the failure is almost never a forgotten date. It is an accrual assumption nobody tested, a repose period nobody looked for, or a notice-of-claim deadline that ran months before the limitations period anyone was tracking. This checklist builds the discipline that prevents each: an intake analysis that lists every claim with its own period and accrual rule, a calculation from the earliest defensible accrual date rather than the latest, three calendared warnings, and a closing memorandum that preserves the analysis for the related matter that surfaces years later. It also covers the defense side, where limitations is an affirmative defense that is waived if not pleaded.
Antitrust Compliance for Distribution and Pricing: Resale Price Maintenance, Colgate, and Territory Restrictions
Antitrust exposure in distribution is created by ordinary commercial conversations, and the difference between a lawful policy and a felony can be a single sentence in an email. This article explains where the lines are. It starts with the structural divide between horizontal conduct, which includes the per se offenses that carry criminal penalties, and vertical restraints, which are almost all judged under the rule of reason after Leegin. It then covers resale price maintenance and the minimum advertised price policies that companies use instead, the Colgate doctrine and the narrow protection a genuinely unilateral policy provides, and territorial and customer restrictions. Later sections address exclusive dealing, tying, most favored nation clauses, the Robinson-Patman Act and its recent revival, information exchange and trade association risk, no-poach and wage-fixing enforcement, and what a working compliance program contains, with a worked example, an email discipline guide, and an FAQ.
Divorce and Dissolution: Grounds, Property Division, Support, and Custody
Divorce is where family law, property law, tax law, and federal benefits law all meet, usually in front of a judge with a crowded docket and two people who cannot agree. This article explains how no-fault grounds and residency requirements work, the difference between equitable distribution and community property and why it matters less than people think, how marital and separate property are identified and how separate property gets converted through commingling, how retirement accounts and pensions are actually divided and why a QDRO is a separate document, how spousal support and child support are calculated and modified, how custody is decided under the best interests standard, and how the interstate statutes keep one court in charge.
Judgment Enforcement and Collections Toolkit
Winning a judgment and collecting one are different projects with different skills, and most judgments are never collected because nobody starts the second project. This toolkit covers it from the day judgment is entered. It begins with the steps that must happen immediately, including perfecting a lien before other creditors do, then covers finding assets through postjudgment discovery and public records, the enforcement mechanisms available against each asset type, and the exemptions that will defeat some of them. Later stages address judgment debtors who have moved assets, which raises fraudulent transfer law, debtors who have moved states, which requires domestication, entities whose owners may be personally reachable, and the bankruptcy filing that stops everything and raises the separate question of whether the debt is dischargeable.
Managing and Licensing a Deceased Person's Publicity Rights: A Practical Guide for Estates
This guide takes an executor, trustee, or family member step by step through managing a deceased person's name, image, voice, and likeness as an estate asset. It begins with the decisions to make before acting, then covers establishing and documenting domicile at death, mapping which states' laws protect the persona, building an inventory of identity assets and existing contracts, clearing title through probate, and registering claims in California and New York. Later steps cover building a trademark portfolio, choosing a licensing structure and agency, drafting license terms, adopting a written digital replica policy for AI voices and likenesses, running an enforcement program that separates commercial misuse from protected expression, and valuing the rights for estate tax. A timeline and cost table, a worked example following a fictional celebrity chef's estate, common mistakes, and an FAQ round out the guide. It also notes what users and licensees on the other side of the table should expect at each step.
Global Trademark Portfolio Toolkit: Filing Matrices, Bad-Faith Registration Responses, and Watch Programs
This toolkit supplies the working documents for building and defending a trademark portfolio outside the United States, each introduced by its purpose, its owner, and when to use it, with drafting commentary tied to the governing authority. The planning templates are a country-by-country filing matrix and a priority and deadline calendar that tracks the Paris window, the Madrid dependency period, refusal windows, renewals, and U.S. maintenance. The prosecution templates are a foreign agent instruction letter for new filings, a local counsel engagement checklist, and an instruction memo for responding to provisional refusals. The defensive templates are a distributor and manufacturer trademark clause, a letter to a bad-faith registrant, an outline for opposing or invalidating a bad-faith filing, and a term sheet for buying back a squatted registration. A watch program specification, a foreign customs recordation instruction, and a contingency plan for central attack and transformation complete the set, with a running example following an Oregon cookware company.
The DMCA Anti-Circumvention Provisions: Section 1201, Digital Locks, and the Triennial Exemptions
Section 1201 of the Copyright Act makes it unlawful to break a digital lock on a copyrighted work, and unlawful to sell tools that do the breaking, even when the underlying use would be perfectly lawful. That decoupling of circumvention from infringement is what makes section 1201 both powerful and controversial, and it catches security researchers, repair shops, tinkerers, and competitors far more often than it catches pirates. This article explains the structure of the statute, the difference between access controls and copy controls and why it matters, the two trafficking bans, the seven permanent exemptions, and the triennial rulemaking through which the Librarian of Congress grants temporary exemptions for uses like jailbreaking phones, repairing tractors, and preserving video games. It works through the leading appellate decisions, including Corley, Chamberlain, Lexmark, and MDY v. Blizzard, and explains the circuit split over whether a section 1201 claim requires a nexus to infringement. It closes with compliance guidance for device makers, software vendors, researchers, and repair businesses, plus a worked example, an FAQ, and related reading.
Deposition Designation and Errata Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist turns the life of a deposition transcript after the deposition ends into a sequence of concrete tasks, from the request for review made on the record to the edited clip that plays for the jury. The first phases cover errata practice under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 30(e): calendaring the 30-day window, separating transcription fixes from substantive changes, stating a reason for every change, and answering an opponent's errata with impeachment, a motion to strike, or a reopened deposition. The middle phases cover trial designations: choosing a Rule 32(a) route for each witness, proving unavailability, meeting the Rule 26(a)(3) and pretrial-order deadlines, cutting narrow designations, objecting and counter-designating without waiving anything, and obtaining rulings and offers of proof. Later phases cover building and checking video clips, presenting and impeaching at trial, citing depositions and errata at summary judgment without tripping the sham affidavit rule, and handling Rule 30(b)(6) testimony. Each item carries a short note with the governing rules and cases, and the checklist closes with red flags, an FAQ, and practical takeaways.
Obtaining and Enforcing a Protective Order
A protective order is available quickly, on limited evidence, and it can order a person out of their home, away from their children, and out of possession of their firearms within a day of the petition being filed. That combination of speed and consequence means the procedure is structured in two stages: an ex parte temporary order issued on the petitioner's affidavit alone, followed within days or weeks by a full hearing at which the respondent appears and contests. The relief available reaches well beyond a stay-away directive, and the federal full faith and credit provisions make an order entered in one state enforceable nationwide. This guide covers who qualifies, what relief to request, how to prepare and present the case, the firearm and immigration consequences, and how enforcement, modification, and renewal work.
Importing Goods Into the United States: A Practical Guide
This guide takes a company from its first import through a working compliance program. It covers the setup decisions that determine everything afterward, the classification work that should happen before the first purchase order, how to build a landed cost model that includes the tariffs people forget, the supplier documentation that origin and preference claims depend on, the entry process and the deadlines that follow it, and what to do when something goes wrong. It includes a first shipment sequence, contract clauses that allocate customs risk, and the duty savings analysis most importers never run.
Copyright Registration: A Comprehensive Guide
Copyright protection is automatic the instant you fix an original work in a tangible form, yet registration with the U.S. Copyright Office unlocks the powerful remedies that make copyright worth owning. This comprehensive guide explains why registration matters after the Supreme Court's decision in Fourth Estate, how statutory damages and attorney's fees under 17 U.S.C. 412 turn entirely on timing, and how the certificate's prima facie presumption under 17 U.S.C. 410(c) shifts the burden of proof in court. It walks step by step through the electronic registration system, the basic, group, supplementary, and renewal application types, the deposit, best-edition, and mandatory-deposit rules, fees, examination and refusals, the two-tier appeal, and specialized tools like preregistration, special handling, and customs recordation. Worked hypotheticals and a practical FAQ make the system understandable for creators, businesses, and lawyers alike. Read it as the master hub and follow the cross-links to the specialized copyright guides.