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.
Workplace Injury Response and Workers Compensation Checklist: A Practical Checklist
A workplace injury sets four clocks running at once: the compensation notice deadline, the OSHA reporting window, the FMLA designation obligation, and the third-party statute of limitations. This checklist runs all four in parallel, with separate tracks for the injured worker and the employer, because their tasks differ at every stage. It covers the first shift, the first week, the benefit calculation audit that is worth thousands of dollars and takes an hour, the medical control and utilization review appeal mechanics that decide whether treatment happens, the return-to-work steps that avoid a retaliation claim, and the settlement evaluation that should never be made without pricing future medical care.
Sponsoring a PERM Labor Certification and Employment-Based Green Card
The employment-based green card process for most professional workers runs through a labor market test administered by the Department of Labor, and it is unusual among immigration processes in that the employer, not the worker, is the applicant and the entire exercise is designed to determine whether a qualified United States worker is available. That framing explains every requirement: the wage floor, the specific recruitment steps, the prohibition on tailoring the job to the foreign national, and the obligation to consider every applicant on job-related grounds. This guide walks the process from strategy through permanent residence, covering category selection, the prevailing wage determination, the requirements analysis that most often causes denials, the recruitment sequence and its timing, filing and audit response, and the immigrant petition and adjustment steps that follow. It closes with the employer obligations, the recordkeeping that an audit will test, and a realistic assessment of how long each stage actually takes.
Motion to Compel and Rule 37 Sanctions Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist breaks federal discovery enforcement into phases that a litigation team can work through in order, from preventive steps at the Rule 26(f) conference to a motion for sanctions under Rule 37(b). Each item is a concrete task tied to the governing rule or case, with short notes on how courts apply it. The requesting party's phases cover reviewing responses, writing the deficiency letter, conferring and recording the conference, choosing the procedure, drafting and supporting the motion, requesting and proving expenses, and enforcing the order. Separate phases cover the responding party's defense and cure, nonparty enforcement under Rule 45, and the specialized routes of Rules 37(c), (d), and (e). Red-flag boxes, a deadlines table, a short worked example, and a list of common failure points complete the checklist.
Fair Housing and Lending Toolkit: Testing, Complaints, and Litigation
A working kit for fair housing practice on both sides. Section A is a protected class and coverage matrix mapping federal, common state, and common local protections against the transactions each reaches. Section B holds complainant instruments: an incident log, a tester report form, a HUD complaint narrative template, an accommodation request letter, and an appraisal reconsideration request. Section C holds provider instruments: model screening criteria, an advertising review guide, an accommodation response letter, an interactive process log, and an FCRA adverse action notice. Section D holds litigation instruments: a discovery request set, a disparate impact worksheet, a comparator chart, and a position statement outline. Section E collects the primary authorities.
Surviving an IRS Audit: A Practical Guide for Businesses
An audit notice is not an accusation and is rarely a catastrophe, but the way a business responds in the first month determines how long it lasts and how much it costs. This guide walks the examination process from the initial contact through appeals and, if necessary, litigation. It covers the three types of examinations and what each signals, how to read an information document request and respond in a way that narrows rather than expands the inquiry, and the representation and privilege issues that arise when the accountant who prepared the return is also the person explaining it. It then covers the statute of limitations and the decision whether to extend it, the penalty structure and the reasonable cause defense, and the agreed and unagreed paths at the close of an examination. Later sections address IRS Appeals, the choice between Tax Court and a refund forum, employment tax and worker classification examinations, and collection alternatives.
Technology Project Dispute Toolkit: Notice of Breach Letters, Cure Plans, and Project Record Protocols
This toolkit provides ten working templates for customers and vendors in a troubled or failed software implementation, from the go-live reservation of rights through the final settlement and transition agreement. Each template states its purpose, owner, and timing, uses bracketed placeholders, and is followed by drafting commentary tied to the governing authority, including material breach and cure doctrine, UCC acceptance and adequate assurance, Rule 37(e) preservation duties, copyright assignment requirements, Rule 408, and the case law on limitation-of-liability carve-outs. The templates include a change order log, a notice of material breach and demand for cure, a vendor response, a cure plan, a project record protocol and litigation hold notice, a termination notice with transition demand, a tolling and standstill agreement, a damages model outline, and a settlement and transition agreement. A running example involving an outdoor retailer and its order management integrator shows how the documents fit together. An index table at the top lets the reader go directly to the template needed.
Rule 30(b)(6) Deposition Preparation Checklist: A Practical Checklist
A Rule 30(b)(6) deposition is a deposition of the organization rather than of a person, and the duty is to prepare the organization's answer rather than to produce someone who happens to know things. Producing an unprepared designee is treated as a failure to appear, with sanctions that include a second deposition at the organization's expense and preclusion of testimony on the topics the witness could not address. This checklist runs both sides of the exercise: for the noticing party, drafting topics with reasonable particularity, conferring as the 2020 amendment requires, and building the examination that establishes either the organization's position or its unpreparedness; and for the responding party, objecting and conferring, designating and allocating topics in writing, and running a preparation process that is measured in days rather than hours. It closes with the post-deposition steps, including errata practice, supplementation, and the sanctions motion whose preclusion component is what actually changes cases.
Intellectual Property Disputes Concerning Superheroes
Superheroes are among the most valuable intellectual property on earth, and the fights over who owns them are some of the most dramatic and consequential battles in copyright and trademark law. This article explains how a fictional character becomes protectable property, why creators and their heirs keep returning to court decades after a character is born, and how copyright and trademark protect a hero from completely different angles. We walk through the marquee disputes: the decades-long Superman termination wars between the Siegel and Shuster heirs and Warner/DC, Marvel's victory over the Jack Kirby estate on work made for hire, the Ninth Circuit's ruling that the Batmobile is itself a copyrightable character in DC Comics v. Towle, the Gaiman-McFarlane fight over Spawn, and the 2024 collapse of Marvel and DC's jointly owned "Super Hero" trademark. Along the way we cover fan works and fair use after Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith, cosplay and costume copyright after Star Athletica, and what all of it means for ordinary creators. The piece closes with practical takeaways, hypotheticals, a plain-English FAQ, and links to related guides.
How to License Your Patent: From Valuation to Term Sheet
This guide walks the full arc of monetizing a patent through licensing, from honestly assessing whether your patent is a licensing candidate, to valuing it under the cost, market, and income approaches, to structuring and papering the deal. It explains the Georgia-Pacific reasonable-royalty framework and the apportionment rules that constrain it, the choice between exclusive and non-exclusive grants and the field-of-use and territorial hybrids in between, and the royalty architecture of upfronts, running royalties, minimums, and milestones. It covers the protective machinery of audits, representations, warranties, and indemnity, and the doctrinal landmines every licensor must know: the Brulotte/Kimble bar on post-expiration royalties, the Lear right of a licensee to challenge validity, patent exhaustion, and patent misuse. It includes an annotated term sheet and addresses university licensing under Bayh-Dole and standard-essential patents under FRAND. It is educational, not legal advice.
Eminent Domain and Regulatory Takings: Just Compensation, Inverse Condemnation, and Penn Central
The Fifth Amendment permits the government to take private property for public use on payment of just compensation, and almost every word in that clause has generated its own body of law. Direct condemnation is a procedure—the government files, deposits an estimate, takes title, and litigates value. Regulatory takings are harder, because a regulation that destroys value is sometimes compensable and usually is not, and the line between them runs through a multi-factor test the Supreme Court has repeatedly declined to make more predictable. This article covers the public use requirement after Kelo, the categorical rules for physical occupations and total economic wipeouts, the Penn Central balancing test, the exaction cases, the mechanics of a condemnation action, and how just compensation is actually measured.
Third-Party Litigation Funding: Structures, Privilege, and Disclosure Obligations
Litigation funding has moved from a curiosity to an ordinary feature of large commercial disputes, and the legal framework has not entirely caught up with it. The doctrinal obstacles that once made these arrangements unenforceable—champerty, maintenance, and usury—have eroded unevenly, so that an arrangement lawful in one state may be void in the next. The live questions today are less about legality than about disclosure, privilege, and control: whether the funding agreement must be produced, whether sharing case assessments with a funder waives work product, and how much influence a funder can exercise before it compromises counsel's independent professional judgment. This article covers the structures in use, the doctrinal state of play, the disclosure rules now emerging in federal and state courts, and the diligence a party should do before signing.
Buying Commercial Real Estate: Contract, Diligence, Title, and Closing
Buying a commercial building is a diligence exercise with a contract wrapped around it, and the contract exists mainly to define how long you have to discover problems and what happens when you do. This article walks the transaction in order. It covers the letter of intent and the purchase and sale agreement, the deposit structure and the difference between refundable and hard money, and the due diligence period that is the single most negotiated term. It then covers title review in detail, including how to read a commitment and its exceptions, what an ALTA survey shows that a title report does not, and the endorsements worth buying. Later sections address environmental assessment and the innocent landowner defense, zoning and land use verification, tenant estoppels and lender documents for leased property, financing, entity and tax structuring including 1031 exchanges, and the closing itself, with a worked example, a diligence checklist, and an FAQ.