Blog

Trademark, IP & AI Law: Insights for Founders and Tech Companies

Practical guidance on protecting your brand, navigating AI compliance, and building IP that holds up when it matters.

Black and white infographic with a scale balancing past IP contribution and future execution, representing how equity is divided between technical and business co-founders

Article

How to Structure Equity When Co-Founders Contribute IP to a Startup

Founder vesting schedule chart showing 4-year timeline with 1-year cliff, illustrating how equity vests over time and prevents departed founders from keeping unearned equity and creating IP risk

Article

What Is a Founder Vesting Schedule and Why It Matters for IP Ownership

Infographic showing how startups protect trade secrets using layered safeguards, including access controls, confidentiality measures, vendor agreements, and employee protocols

Article

How to Protect Your Startup's Trade Secrets from Day One

Diagram showing how intellectual property from founders, contractors, and employees is transferred to a startup through an IP assignment agreement so the company owns the IP

Article

Why Your Startup Needs IP Assignments Before You Raise Money

Series A IP due diligence diagram showing checks on ownership, registration, trade secrets, and third-party IP, with clean or risk outcomes affecting whether a startup’s funding closes smoothly

Article

What Investors Look for in IP Due Diligence Before a Series A

Side-by-side comparison of Delaware and Wyoming LLC formation, showing Delaware's advantages for venture-backed startups including the Court of Chancery, investor preference, equity flexibility, and IPO readiness, versus Wyoming's advantages for asset protection, privacy, no state income tax, and simple governance.

Article

Delaware vs. Wyoming LLC: Which Entity Is Right for Your Startup

Diagram showing AI liability flowing through a three-party supply chain of developer, deployer, and user, with four sector-specific liability frameworks below covering healthcare, financial services, employment, and autonomous systems.

Article

Liability for AI Errors: Who Is Responsible When an AI Gets It Wrong

Infographic showing key provisions in AI licensing agreements, including license scope, data rights, IP ownership, liability, and model performance, and how they impact business risk

Article

AI Contracts: What to Include When You're Licensing AI Technology

Diagram showing four protectable AI trade secret assets on the left — model weights, training data, fine-tuning methods, and prompt engineering — connected through a central DTSA protection standard to four required protective measures on the right — access controls, confidentiality agreements, vendor agreements, and departure protocols.

Article

AI and Trade Secrets: Protecting Your Model, Your Data, and Your Outputs

Diagram showing FTC AI enforcement authority at the top, five high-risk areas in the center including AI claims, fake reviews, automated decisions, data practices, and chatbots, and four parallel regulatory frameworks below including EEOC, CFPB, state AGs, and the EU AI Act.

Article

FTC AI Regulations: What Your Business Needs to Do Now

Six-step AI governance policy framework diagram showing inventory, risk classification, data rules, accountability structure, output regulation, and team training, with risk tiers and accountability roles expanded below and regulatory drivers at the bottom

Article

How to Build an AI Governance Policy for Your Company

Diagram showing AI training data copyright law across three panels: left shows training-phase and output-phase infringement theories plus the four fair use factors; center lists five active cases including NYT v. OpenAI and Getty v. Stability AI; right shows a five-level risk spectrum from web scraping at highest risk to fine-tuning on proprietary data at lowest

Article

AI Training Data and Copyright: What Your Company Needs to Know Before You Build

Three-column diagram answering who owns AI-generated content: left shows copyright protection spectrum based on human authorship level; center shows platform ownership terms for OpenAI, Midjourney, Adobe Firefly, and GitHub Copilot; right shows infringement risk factors including training data provenance, indemnification limits, and commercial stakes.

Article

Who Owns AI-Generated Content? A Legal Guide for Tech Companies

Decision flow diagram showing the AI inventor question branching into two paths: AI-assisted invention leading to patentable outcomes with USPTO 2024 requirements, and AI-generated invention leading to no patent with trade secret as an alternative. Center table shows jurisdiction rulings across US, UK, EPO, Australia, and South Africa

Article

Can AI Be an Inventor? What Patent Law Says and Why It Matters for Your Business

Patent litigation trends diagram showing three major court decisions on the left, two structural trends in the center including rising NPE filings and venue shifting

Article

Patent Litigation Trends: What the Latest Federal Court Rulings Mean for Your IP Strategy

Three-column diagram showing how patent trolls operate through a four-step demand letter cycle on the left, judicial pushback tools including Rule 11 and fee awards in the center, and four business defense strategies on the right including IPR petitions and freedom-to-operate analysis.

Article

Patent Trolls: How They Operate, What Courts Are Doing, and How to Protect Your Business

Five-stage horizontal timeline for US trademark filing by foreign attorneys, showing representation requirement, domicile rules, clearance search standards, application requirements, and maintenance deadlines above the line, with the corresponding common pitfall at each stage shown below

Article

US Trademark Filing for Foreign Attorneys: A Practical Guide to USPTO Requirements

Six-step trademark registration process shown as a two-row card grid: step 1 decide what to trademark, step 2 clearance search, step 3 identify classes, step 4 file via TEAS, step 5 monitor the application, step 6 maintain and enforce

Article

How to Trademark a Name: A Step-by-Step Guide for Business Owners

Trademark dispute resolution escalation diagram showing five paths from direct negotiation through cease and desist, mediation, TTAB or arbitration, to federal litigation, with preparation requirements for each stage and four prevention measures at the bottom

Article

How to Resolve a Trademark Dispute Without Going to Court

Three-tier trademark renewal diagram: top row shows the renewal timeline with year 5-6, year 9-10, every 10 years, and grace period windows; middle row shows four required documents including declaration of use, current specimen, ownership update, and fee payment; bottom row shows five common mistakes including outdated specimens, mismatch, miscounting classes, stale ownership records, and last-minute filing

Article

How to Renew a Trademark: Deadlines, Documents, and What Not to Miss in 2026

Grid showing seven common trademark registration mistakes: skipping the search, choosing a descriptive mark, no monitoring, no international filing, vague descriptions, DIY filing, and inconsistent use — each with the specific problem and fix clearly labeled inside its own card

Article

The 7 Biggest Trademark Registration Mistakes in 2026 (and How to Avoid Them)

Startup trademark registration guide showing eight steps across the top from search to maintenance, with timeline and cost summary and five common startup mistakes in the middle row, maintenance requirements at the bottom, and a when-to-hire-a-lawyer footer

Article

How to Register a Trademark for Your Startup (Step-by-Step Guide)