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.
Amended Pleading and Relation Back Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist turns the federal rules on amended and supplemental pleadings into a sequence of concrete tasks, from the first scheduling conference through trial. It covers protecting the right to amend at the outset, choosing the correct route (amendment as a matter of course, consent, or leave), testing each relation-back route under Rule 15(c), and drafting, filing, and serving the amended pleading. A separate phase gives the opposing party's tasks, and later phases address supplemental pleadings under Rule 15(d) and amendments during and after trial under Rule 15(b). Red-flag boxes mark the points where amendments most often fail, and a deadlines table collects the governing time limits. The checklist closes with common failure points and a short worked example involving a misnamed corporate defendant.
Bringing or Defending a False Endorsement Claim: A Practical Guide
This guide walks a claimant, a defendant, and a marketing team through a false endorsement dispute in the order decisions actually arrive. Claimants get steps for preserving proof, calendaring short state limitations periods, testing the claim, building recognizability evidence, commissioning a survey that will survive Rule 702, and modeling damages. Defendants get a sequence for preservation and takedown, insurance tender, vendor recourse, Rogers and pleading motions, survey attacks, and clean settlement offers. A clearance section covers releases, stock images, sound-alikes, and AI voices before anything runs. Sample language, trade-offs, worked hypotheticals, and common mistakes are included for both sides.
Overcoming a Failure-to-Function or Ornamental Refusal: A Practical Guide
This guide walks an applicant and its counsel, step by step, from the day a failure-to-function or ornamental refusal arrives to registration, appeal, or a better-planned refiling. It starts with the decisions to make before drafting anything: which refusal is really driving the case, what the client actually needs from a registration, and which cures are available for that refusal. The numbered steps cover docketing, auditing the specimen against the drawing and goods, classifying the refusal, gathering facts and analyzing the examining attorney's third-party evidence, choosing among substitute specimens, amendment to an intent-to-use basis, inherent distinctiveness and secondary source arguments, Section 2(f), and the Supplemental Register, and building declarations and other evidence. Later steps cover drafting and filing the response, handling a final refusal by reconsideration and ex parte appeal to the TTAB, review in the Federal Circuit or district court, and refiling with a better mark or specimen, plus the tools available to third parties who want to stop a message from being registered. A timeline and cost table, an extended worked example involving an outdoor apparel and guiding business, common mistakes, an FAQ, and takeaways close the guide.
Utility Patent Basics
A utility patent is the workhorse of the patent system—the kind most people mean when they say "patent"—and this guide explains what it covers, what it costs, and how to get one. We walk through the four statutory categories of patentable subject matter under 35 U.S.C. 101, the requirements of usefulness, novelty (Section 102), non-obviousness (Section 103), and adequate disclosure (Section 112), all in plain English with worked examples. We dissect the anatomy of a real utility patent—specification, claims, and drawings—and explain why the claims are the part that actually matters. We compare provisional and nonprovisional applications, walk through examination and the 20-year term, and contrast utility patents with design patents, plant patents, and trade secrets. The goal is a single, trustworthy primer a founder, an inventor, or a curious judge can read start to finish.
Recovering or Defending a Social Media Account or Handle: A Practical Guide
This guide walks a business, a creator, or their lawyer through recovering a social media account or handle in the four situations that cause most disputes (a hacked account, an account held by a former employee or agency, an impersonating account, and a squatted handle), plus a suspension by the platform itself. It begins with the decision points that set the strategy: what kind of problem it is, who can prove ownership, what the client actually needs, and which channel will move fastest. Ten numbered steps then cover evidence capture, securing the accounts that remain, platform recovery and law enforcement for hacks, demand letters and injunctions against insiders, agency disputes, impersonation reports and lawsuits, squatted handles, and suspension appeals. A separate step addresses the other side: the employee, creator, agency, or parody account accused of holding or misusing an account. A timeline and cost table, a worked example running through each step, common mistakes, an FAQ, and practical takeaways close the guide.
Managing a Cap Table: Options, SAFEs, Conversions, and 83(b) Elections
A capitalization table is the company's ledger of who owns what, and it is the document most likely to be wrong at the moment it matters most. Errors accumulate quietly—a grant approved but never papered, a SAFE with a side letter nobody filed, an option repriced by email, an 83(b) election that was never mailed—and they surface during diligence when the leverage has already shifted. This guide covers the structure of a cap table and the difference between authorized, outstanding, and fully diluted shares, the instruments that populate it and how each behaves, the tax elections and valuations that must accompany them, the mechanics of converting SAFEs and notes at a priced round, and the waterfall analysis that translates ownership percentages into actual dollars. It closes with a maintenance discipline and the errors that recur.
Service of Process: Domestic and International Methods That Work
Service is the step that seems clerical and is jurisdictional, and a case can be dismissed years in because nobody checked whether the person who accepted the papers was authorized to receive them. This guide covers the mechanics that work. It starts with waiver of service, which is faster and cheaper than anyone expects and which most litigants ignore, then the methods for serving individuals, corporations, limited liability companies, partnerships, and government entities, including the state law alternatives Rule 4 incorporates. It covers the ninety-day deadline and the good cause and discretionary extension standards, service on evasive defendants and by publication, and the due process floor. The second half addresses international service under the Hague Service Convention, including the central authority process, the Article 10 mail question the Supreme Court resolved in Water Splash, service in China and other objecting states, and the court-ordered alternative service that has become common for foreign online defendants.
TCPA Text Message Marketing Compliance Checklist: A Practical Checklist
The Telephone Consumer Protection Act pays five hundred dollars per message with no cap, which turns an ordinary marketing campaign into eight-figure exposure and makes the compliance question purely evidentiary: can you produce, for every number on the list, proof of what the person saw and agreed to. This checklist builds that capability. It covers consent capture and the disclosure elements that must appear adjacent to the checkbox, the records and version history that must be retained, suppression across every sending system in the company, revocation handling under the FCC's current standard, curfews measured by the recipient's actual time zone, vendor and lead-source diligence, and the governance that keeps a franchisee or a second platform from creating exposure nobody knew existed. It closes with vendor and lead-source diligence, the source of most litigated exposure and the hardest evidence to reconstruct after a demand arrives.
Who Owns the Brand: Trademark Ownership Disputes Between Co-Founders, Bands, Licensees, and Distributors
This article explains who owns a trademark when the people who built a brand stop agreeing, and why the answer so often surprises them. It starts from the rule that ownership flows from use and control of quality, not from coining the name, paying for the logo, or filing the application, and then shows what happens to a registration filed by the wrong person. The core of the article tells the stories of the leading disputes: bands from the Kingsmen and New Edition to the Platters, the Drifters, Exposé, and the Commodores; founders who filed in their own names; distributors who claimed a foreign maker's mark; and licensees, franchisees, and joint venturers who tried to keep a brand after the relationship ended. Separate sections cover employees and social media accounts, domain names, bankruptcy after Mission Product Holdings v. Tempnology, divorce and death, and priority and tacking after Hana Financial. An extended worked example, common mistakes, an FAQ, and practical takeaways close the article.
Ransomware Readiness and Response Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist turns ransomware readiness and response into specific, assignable tasks, each tied to the governing authority. The readiness phases cover governance and the incident response plan, technical resilience and backups, insurance terms that decide whether a ransom and its related costs are covered, pre-arranged counsel and vendor relationships, and a regulatory map built before it is needed. The response phases cover the first twenty-four hours, investigation and law enforcement contact, the short-clock regulatory reports, negotiation and sanctions screening, the payment decision, execution of a decision to pay or not to pay, breach notification, and litigation and post-incident work. Red-flag boxes mark the points where responses most often fail, and a deadlines table collects the clocks in one place. A short worked example involving a North Carolina county and a list of common failure points close the checklist.
Defending a Foreclosure: A Practical Guide for Homeowners
This guide is a step-by-step defense plan for a homeowner facing foreclosure, written to be used rather than admired. It starts with the four facts you must establish in the first week, then moves through the free administrative tools that produce the loan file and stop the clock, the loss mitigation application that must be complete to trigger federal protection, the audit of the reinstatement quote that removes improper fees, and the litigation options in judicial and nonjudicial states. It explains what a defense realistically accomplishes, which arguments courts reject and why pursuing them is dangerous, when bankruptcy is the right tool, and how to exit with dignity and money when keeping the house is not possible.
Planning for Incapacity: Guardianship, Conservatorship, and the Alternatives
Guardianship removes a person's legal right to make decisions about their own life and gives it to someone else, which is why every modern statute treats it as a last resort available only where less restrictive alternatives will not work. The alternatives are substantial and most of them must be put in place while the person still has capacity—a durable power of attorney, a health care proxy, a funded revocable trust, a supported decision-making agreement, and beneficiary and payee designations that route income without a court. Where those documents do not exist and the person can no longer manage, the court process begins with a petition, a capacity evaluation, and a hearing at which the respondent has counsel and the right to contest. This guide covers the alternatives, when a proceeding is genuinely necessary, how one runs, and what a guardian must do once appointed.