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TC Heartland (2017) didn’t kill forum shopping—it changed its zip code. Eight years later, the map looks different, but the incentives behind venue selection remain much the same. Patent plaintiffs adapted, and so did defense counsel. Understanding the map is still half the game. Standard-essential patent (SEP) cases, for example, have doubled in the past […]

Anyone who’s bought a car knows the “name your price” trap. Start too high and you’re leaving money on the table. Start too low and you’ll be laughed off the dealership lot and labelled a “grinder.” Dealers want to move units—ideally at a healthy profit—not debate depreciation and market conditions. They’ll gladly move on to

Sun Tzu wrote that “strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory.” Non-compete agreements are one such tactic—enabling employers to protect valuable trade secrets and secure a competitive advantage. But cross-border non-competes resemble a chess match more than a duel. Success depends not on brute force but on aligning many moving parts, each capable

SEP litigation is surging. According to a LexisNexis report (August 27, 2025), SEP cases have nearly doubled in the past decade—from 118 in 2014 to 223 in Q4 2024. Patent assertion entities (PAEs) have driven much of the growth.   For seasoned litigators, this isn’t the first rodeo. For technology implementers—especially in emerging sectors—the stakes

Winston Churchill once advised that we should “[l]et our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.” Nowhere is this truer than in estate planning—especially when assets cross national borders. Different legal systems treat property, taxes, and succession in very different ways. For entrepreneurs with international ties, careful planning is essential to ensure that both their

Will Rogers said that “[t]he road to success is dotted with many tempting parking spaces.” Perhaps too many. Like many cities, Austin had a minimum parking requirement for decades. Establishments were required to provide a set number of parking spaces proportional to their square footage. This parking-minimum requirement made construction expensive and discouraged the supply

“From the infancy of copyright protection, some opportunity for fair use of copyrighted materials has been thought necessary to fulfill copyright’s very purpose, ‘[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts….’” Campbell v. Acuff-Rose, 510 U.S. 569, 575 (1994). The question, however, is how much—particularly given the use of books and other materials to

Anyone who’s dealt with contracts knows that governing law and dispute resolution are where the money’s at. If something goes wrong, this clause—or these clauses, if broken up—determine how and where the dispute is resolved. This decision can have massive implications on how a case gets resolved and who wins and loses. But practitioners are

A little over 200 years ago, Lord Byron wrote that “[t]his is the patent age of new inventions for killing bodies, and for saving souls. All propagated with the best intentions.” While Lord Byron foresaw the dangers of patentable technology, he didn’t imagine that invention itself could endanger the very notion of patentability. Patents depend

It’s easy to think that the ship has sailed. You’ve signed an MSA or sales agreement, you’ve begun doing business, and the contract feels very much in the rear-view mirror. You realize, however, that your data terms are dated. GDPR and the CCPA aren’t covered in sufficient detail. Personal data and storage specifications don’t cover