Casey Scott McKay
Attorney · Technology and IP Law · MC Law, PLLC
Software engineer turned IP attorney, Casey advises technology and science companies — and the investors behind them — from first patent to successful exit. He previously built cybersecurity systems at Fannie Mae and consulted on data science and machine learning at Thunken, Inc. He is the attorney of record for the trademark matters Marksy refers to MC Law, PLLC, and writes the knowledge base's guides, checklists and toolkits.
- Admitted: Tennessee (#034028)
- Practice: Patent, trademark and copyright; practice before the USPTO
- Affiliation: MC Law, PLLC — how the referral works
- Full profile
Marksy is not a law firm and is not a substitute for an attorney or law firm. Marksy is an automated online service and an advertising business. Marksy does not provide legal advice, does not practice law, and no attorney–client relationship is formed with Marksy. Where attorney services are involved, they are provided by independent, licensed attorneys who are solely responsible for the legal services they render.
Documents by Casey Scott McKay (926)
- How to File a Notice of Opposition · Guide — This is the working manual for stopping a conflicting application before it registers, from the morning the watch alert lands to the day the Board enters…
- Federal Court vs. TTAB: Where to Bring Your Dispute · Article — The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board decides one question — who gets a registration — and a federal district court decides everything else, including whether…
- What Happens After You File: The Examination Timeline · Article — This article walks a United States trademark application through every stage between the moment you hit submit and the moment a registration certificate lands…
- How to Draft a Trademark License Agreement · Guide — This guide walks a practitioner from the intake call to a signed, docketed trademark license: how to decide whether a license is even the right instrument, how…
- Docketing Deadlines: Never Miss a Renewal · Article — A reliable docketing system is the difference between a living portfolio and a lapsed one, and this article explains the law that makes that sentence true…
- Designating Countries Under the Madrid System · Guide — A working guide to the single most consequential decision in an international trademark filing: which countries to name in a Madrid application, in what order,…
- Cybersquatting and the ACPA · Article — The Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1125(d), gives a trademark owner something no arbitration panel can give: a federal judgment,…
- Trademark Coexistence Agreement — Template · Form — Two owners agree to use similar marks without conflict — this is the agreement that says so, drafted to survive both the USPTO and the parties' own growth…
- Trademark Cease-and-Desist Letter — Template · Form — This template supplies a complete, sendable trademark cease-and-desist letter with every variable bracketed, plus the reasoning behind each paragraph and the…
- Sending an Effective Cease-and-Desist Letter · Guide — A well-drafted cease-and-desist letter resolves most trademark disputes without a lawsuit, and this guide is the working manual for writing one that does. It…
- Building and Managing a Trademark Portfolio · Guide — This guide is the working manual for taking a company from one trademark to a managed portfolio of twenty. It runs twelve numbered stages — brand architecture,…
- Assignments vs. Licenses: What's the Difference? · Article — One document moves ownership; the other rents permission — and almost every downstream question about a brand turns on which one you signed. This article…
- Trademark Assignment Recordal Checklist · Checklist — A phase-by-phase working checklist for recording a trademark assignment with the USPTO, from pulling the current record through closing the matter file. It…
- Trademark Assignment Agreement — Template · Form — A complete, recordable model trademark assignment agreement that transfers ownership of a mark from one party to another, together with the goodwill the mark…
- Annual Trademark Portfolio Review Checklist · Checklist — Once a year someone has to sit down and find out what actually happened to the portfolio, because the register does not update itself and the business does not…
- UDRP vs. Federal Lawsuit: Picking the Right Weapon for Domain Disputes · Article — Someone registered your brand as a domain, and you have two real choices: a UDRP complaint that can move the name in about sixty days for a four-figure fee, or…
- Genericide: How Escalator, Aspirin, and Thermos Lost Their Trademarks · Article — Genericide is the one trademark defect that gets worse the better your marketing works: when the public adopts your brand name as the name of the product…
- Clearing and Contracting for Digital Replicas: A Practitioner's Guide to Consent, Scope, and Duration · Guide — This guide takes a digital replica from the decision to use one through the consent, the contract, the production, and the enforcement that may follow. It…
- Art Market and Collections Toolkit: Title, Provenance, Consignment, and Reproduction · Toolkit — An artwork carries two separable bundles of rights and a history that may or may not be documented, and most disputes in this market arise from the gap between…
- The App That Knows Your Diagnosis: Health Data Outside HIPAA and the Rules That Fill the Gap · Article — Most health data in the United States is not governed by the statute everyone names. This article maps the actual boundary of HIPAA — which reaches covered…
- Technology Agreement Checklist: License Scope, Service Levels, Data Rights, Indemnity, and Exit · Checklist — Technology agreements fail on eight provisions, and the license grant is not one of them. This checklist runs a subscription or licensing deal in fourteen…
- Contract Manufacturing, OEM, and Private Label IP Toolkit: Tooling, Specifications, Secrecy, and Exit · Toolkit — A contract manufacturing relationship transfers designs, specifications, process knowledge, tooling, and trademarks to a party in another jurisdiction, usually…
- Who Is Really Suing You: Patent Assertion Entities, Litigation Funding, and the Economics Behind the Complaint · Article — The economics behind a patent complaint determine how it will be litigated far more reliably than the merits do, and the first question in any assertion case…
- Moving for a TRO or Preliminary Injunction in a Trademark Case: A Practitioner's Guide · Guide — This guide is the operating manual for the first thirty days of a trademark case in which somebody needs to stop. It walks through twelve stages from the…
- Jewellery, Watches, and Luxury Goods IP Toolkit: Designs, Marking, Authentication, and Resale · Toolkit — Luxury goods sit at the intersection of the oldest marking regimes in commercial law and the newest authentication technology, and a practitioner who knows…
- Advising in the Art Market: A Practitioner's Guide to Consignment, Title, Authentication Risk, and Reproduction Rights · Guide — This guide sets out how to advise across the art market's principal relationships — collector, artist, dealer, auction house, and institution — in the order…
- Conducting a Cross-Regime IP Audit: A Practitioner's Guide to Inventory, Ownership Verification, Encumbrances, and Pruning · Guide — This guide sets out how to run an intellectual property audit as a defined engagement with a defined output. It covers scoping, the interview method that…
- The Solo and Small Firm IP Practice Toolkit: Running Trademark and Copyright Matters Efficiently · Toolkit — This toolkit reads the Marksy corpus the way a lawyer running a practice reads it — as a production system rather than a body of doctrine. It covers matter…
- Public Data and Open Information Toolkit: Sources, Licences, Derived Rights, and Attribution · Toolkit — Public data is the most misunderstood input in modern product development, because "publicly available" describes an access condition and says nothing about…
- Font and Design Asset Checklist: Inventory, Licence Scope, Embedding and Web Use, Audit Response, and Substitution Planning · Checklist — This checklist builds a licensed asset position from the only starting point that works: an inventory of what the organisation actually serves, embeds,…
- Trademark Clearance and Brand Selection Toolkit: Vetting a Name Before You Spend a Dollar · Toolkit — This toolkit is the curated route through everything Marksy publishes on picking a brand name and proving it is safe to use, arranged in the order the work…
- Data Licensing Checklist: Provenance, Rights to Grant, Scope, Derived Data, De-Identification, and Exit · Checklist — This checklist runs a data licence from provenance tracing to exit, in the order the terms should actually be settled. It opens with the source table that…
- Best Lawyers, Board Certified, Award-Winning: Professional Branding Under Rules That Are Not Trademark Law · Article — Professional firms are branded under two regimes at once: ordinary trademark law, and the advertising and naming rules of the profession itself, which are…
- Who Owns What the Machine Made: Copyright Authorship in the Age of Generative AI · Article — This article explains who owns the output of a generative AI system under United States copyright law, and why the answer is so often that nobody does. It…
- You Cannot Own a Recipe: Food, Beverage, and Restaurant Intellectual Property · Article — A recipe is a list of ingredients and a set of directions, and neither is protectable, which is why the food industry runs on secrecy, brands, and contracts…
- Contracting With a Manufacturer: A Practitioner's Guide to Tooling Ownership, Specification Control, Overruns, and Exit · Guide — This guide sets out how to contract with a manufacturer so that the brand retains the ability to make its own product somewhere else — which is the practical…
- From Notice of Allowance to Registration: A Practitioner's Guide to Statements of Use and Extension Requests · Guide — This guide walks a Section 1(b) application from the day the notice of allowance issues to the day the registration certificate arrives, in the order a…
- Cross-Border IP Litigation Checklist: Forum Mapping, Service and Jurisdiction, Section 1782 Applications, Evidence Transfer, and Judgment Recognition · Checklist — This checklist runs a multinational intellectual property dispute from the first commercial complaint to a global settlement, in the sequence the decisions…
- Everything You Hear: Music, Guests, and Clips in Podcast and Audio Production · Article — A podcast is a download and an on-demand stream, which means it engages the reproduction, distribution, and public performance rights at once, and none of the…
- Non-Traditional Trademark Application Checklist: Drawing, Description, and Evidence · Checklist — This checklist runs a United States non-traditional trademark application from intake to registration and out the other side, in twelve phases, with a single…
- Right of Publicity and Personal Brand Toolkit: NIL, Endorsements, and Digital Replicas · Toolkit — This toolkit is a guided tour of everything in the Marksy library about controlling a person's name, face, voice, and persona as commercial property, organized…
- The Twenty-Six Words and Their Limits: Section 230, Platform Immunity, and What It Never Covered · Article — Section 230 is twenty-six words of statutory text that decide whether a platform case ends at the pleadings or costs seven figures, and almost every published…
- Suing First: Declaratory Judgment Actions in Trademark Disputes · Article — A cease-and-desist letter is not only a demand. It is an invitation to be sued in a forum the sender did not choose. This article explains declaratory judgment…
- Bringing and Defending a Federal Dilution Claim: A Practitioner's Guide · Guide — This guide is the operational companion to the Marksy article on dilution doctrine, and it assumes you already know what blurring and tarnishment are. It walks…
- Trademark Monetary Recovery Checklist: Proof of Profits, Damages, Corrective Advertising, and Fees · Checklist — This checklist is the working sequence for the money side of a federal trademark case, twelve phases from the intake call to collected funds. It starts where…
- Running a Compliant Promotion: A Practitioner's Guide to Official Rules, Registration, Bonding, Prizing, and Winner Verification · Guide — This guide runs a promotion from the first email to the closed file, in the sequence the work actually has to happen. It starts with the four intake questions…
- Overcoming a False Connection, Insignia, or Name Refusal: A Practitioner's Guide to Consent, Connection, and the First Amendment · Guide — A guide to the three content-based refusals that survived Tam and Brunetti, written for the lawyer holding the office action rather than the one writing the…
- Insurance IP Checklist: Wording and Form Ownership, Rating Model Secrecy, Data Source Licences, Broker and Delegated Authority Terms, and Claims System Rights · Checklist — This checklist audits an insurance business in the order the exposure sits. It begins with the wording register, because no later decision can be made without…
- Owning Something in Orbit: Satellites, Launch, and the Law of Intellectual Property Beyond the Atmosphere · Article — A patent is enforceable in the territory that granted it, and orbit is not the territory of anyone. This article explains what follows from that: why a space…
- Financial Technology and Payments IP Toolkit: Eligibility, Market Data, Models, and Interfaces · Toolkit — Financial technology sits at the intersection of the least favourable patent eligibility environment in the system and the most heavily licensed data in…
- What Happens to the Material: Recycling, Reuse, and the Intellectual Property of the Circular Economy · Article — The circular economy runs on other people's discarded products, which puts it in permanent contact with rights that were never designed for a second life. This…
- Trademark Filing Integrity Checklist: Counsel Verification, Specimen Vetting, and Scam Solicitation Response · Checklist — Thirteen phases that keep a trademark practice clean on both sides of the filing-integrity problem - vetting what you file and answering what others filed. The…
- State Privacy Law Applicability and Readiness Checklist: Thresholds, Notices, Rights Workflow, Assessments, and Processor Terms · Checklist — This checklist establishes whether a company is actually subject to the comprehensive state privacy statutes, then builds the capability to comply with them,…
- Certification and Collective Marks: Owning a Standard Instead of a Brand · Article — Certification and collective marks are the Lanham Act's answer to a problem ordinary trademarks cannot solve: how to let a word vouch for a standard rather…
- Advising a Telecommunications or Network Business: A Practitioner's Guide to Spectrum, Equipment, Interconnection, and Subscriber Data · Guide — This guide is written for counsel taking responsibility for the intellectual property position of a carrier, network operator, or communications infrastructure…
- Consumer Genomics and Genetic Data Toolkit: Consent, Research Use, Databases, and Access Requests · Toolkit — A genetic sample is the only dataset that identifies people who never consented to anything, because it identifies relatives. This toolkit assembles the…
- Who Actually Invented It: Inventorship, Conception, and the Error That Voids a Patent · Article — Inventorship is determined claim by claim, it is a question of law with heavy factual underpinnings, and getting it wrong is one of the few remaining ways to…
- The Data Behind the Marketing: Privacy Law for Brands · Article — Every consumer brand now runs a data-processing operation whether or not anyone at the company describes it that way, and the marketing stack is where the…
- Building a Retail Media or Shopper Data Business: A Practitioner's Guide to Data Rights, Supplier Terms, Measurement Claims, and Privacy Obligations · Guide — A working guide to standing up, defending, or buying from a retail media network. It opens with the intake that establishes what the client actually has. It…
- Logistics Technology IP Checklist: Shipment Data Rights, Platform and API Terms, Carrier and Shipper Agreements, Benchmarking Outputs, and Customs Interfaces · Checklist — This checklist audits the intellectual property position of a freight, logistics, or supply chain technology business in the order the questions arise. It…
- Royalty Audit and Licence Compliance Toolkit: Clauses, Scope, Findings, and Settlement · Toolkit — Most licensors are underpaid, most know it, and most do nothing, because the audit right sits in a clause nobody has read since signature. This toolkit…
- IP and Antitrust Toolkit: Licensing Restraints, Pools, and Enforcement Conduct · Toolkit — Intellectual property confers a right to exclude and antitrust law constrains how that right is used, and the boundary between them sits in a narrower and more…
- Managing Patent Term Across a Family: A Practitioner's Guide to PTA Calculation, PTE Elections, Terminal Disclaimers, and Safe Harbor · Guide — This guide manages patent term as a portfolio discipline rather than a prosecution detail, starting from the family expiration map that most owners have never…
- Competitive Intelligence Checklist: Source Classification, Reverse Engineering Documentation, Clean Room Procedures, Hiring and Onboarding Controls, and Contamination Escalation · Checklist — A ten-phase working checklist for building, running, and defending a competitive intelligence function. Phases one and two map who collects and classify every…
- Building a Trade Secret Program That Survives Litigation: A Practitioner's Guide to Reasonable Measures, Onboarding, and Exit · Guide — This is the build manual for a trade secret program, written for the lawyer who has to make one exist and then defend it under oath. It runs fifteen numbered…
- Advising on VARA and Moral Rights: A Practitioner's Guide to Waivers, Removal, and Site-Specific Work · Guide — A practitioner's guide to the narrowest statute in Title 17 and the very large judgments it occasionally produces. It opens with a five-question coverage…
- The Chair Nobody Can Copyright: Furniture, Homewares, and Design Protection for Objects You Sit On · Article — A chair is a useful article, and useful articles are outside copyright except to the extent their design features can be identified separately from and exist…
- Food, Beverage, and Hospitality IP Toolkit: Marks, Trade Dress, Labelling, and Supply · Toolkit — A recipe is a list of ingredients and a set of directions, and neither is protectable, which is why this industry runs on secrecy, brands, and contracts…
- Nobody Cleared the Soundtrack: Political Campaigns, Advocacy Media, and the Rights Behind the Message · Article — Political and advocacy media is produced at speed, under pressure, by people whose first concern is the message. The rights underneath it are the same rights…
- Data Collection and Scraping Risk Checklist: Sources, Terms, Access, and Output · Checklist — Sixteen phases for a data collection program, organized around the source register that replaces a single scraping policy. The early phases classify the…
- AI Procurement Checklist: Use Case Review, Data Rights, Output Terms, Indemnity, Evaluation, and Monitoring · Checklist — This checklist procures a model service and then builds the controls that actually reduce the risk, which are not in the agreement. It opens by identifying the…
- Running a Content Moderation Programme: A Practitioner's Guide to Policy Drafting, Appeals, Transparency, and Regulatory Exposure · Guide — This guide is for counsel building or repairing a content moderation programme. It is organised around the observation that legitimacy in this function comes…
- Goods and Services Identification Checklist: Classes, Scope, and Specimen Fit · Checklist — This checklist runs a United States trademark identification of goods and services from client intake to portfolio maintenance in eleven phases, each item…
- The Name the FDA Has to Approve: Proprietary Name Review for Drugs and Devices · Article — In most industries a brand name has to clear the trademark office and the market. In pharmaceuticals it has to clear a third gatekeeper whose criteria have…
- Is It in the Public Domain? Duration, Restoration, Formalities, and How to Actually Tell · Article — Whether a work is in the public domain is a question of arithmetic and formalities, and getting it wrong costs a client the entire economics of a project. This…
- Executing an IP Carve-Out: A Practitioner's Guide to Asset Identification, Shared Rights, Transition Services, and Brand Migration · Guide — A working guide to running the intellectual property workstream in a carve-out, divestiture, or spin-off, on either side. It opens with the timeline that…
- Personal IP Succession Checklist: Asset Identification, Valuation Basis, Transfer Documentation, Termination Right Preservation, and Ongoing Administration · Checklist — This checklist audits the intellectual property position of an estate, a divorce, or a living client planning succession, and it starts with the items lost by…
- The Brand Owner's Master Toolkit: A Complete Roadmap From Naming to Enforcement · Toolkit — This is the index to the entire Marksy library, arranged in the order the work actually happens: naming, clearance, filing, examination, allowance,…
- Resolving a Founder or Partnership Brand Dispute: A Practitioner's Guide to Ownership, Priority, and Separation · Guide — A practitioner's guide to the dispute that arrives when a business breaks up and nobody documented who owns the name. It opens with the ownership analysis that…
- IP Discovery Checklist: Litigation Hold Scope, ESI Protocol Negotiation, Source Code Review Conditions, Privilege and Clawback Terms, and Production and Sanctions Risk · Checklist — A ten-phase working checklist for discovery in an intellectual property dispute, usable by either side. Phases one to three cover the preservation trigger, the…
- Controlling a Distribution Channel Without Violating Exhaustion: A Practitioner's Guide to Authorized Sales, Material Differences, and Customs · Guide — This guide sets out how to build and defend a distribution channel once exhaustion is assumed. It starts from the design decisions - product differentiation,…
- Playing for an Audience: Esports, Streaming, and the Rights in Watching Someone Else Play · Article — An esports broadcast is a performance of somebody else's copyrighted work. It is transmitted on a platform that imposes its own terms, by a player under…
- Platform Liability and Section 230 Toolkit · Toolkit — Section 230 is narrower than its critics assume and broader than most complaints allow for, and the difference between those two propositions decides whether a…
- The DMCA Safe Harbor: How Section 512 Shields Platforms and Binds Rights Holders · Article — Section 512 of the Copyright Act is the deal Congress struck in 1998: online service providers get near-total immunity from monetary liability for their users'…
- Platform Account Risk Checklist: Ownership, Verification, Backups, and Appeal Readiness · Checklist — Every business that depends on a platform is one automated decision away from a very bad month, and the work that determines the outcome happens before the…
- Keeping the Lights On: Utilities, Grid Technology, and the Data a Meter Sends Home · Article — A smart meter reports household electricity use at fifteen-minute intervals, and that stream reveals when people wake, when they leave, what appliances they…
- Export Control Checklist: Jurisdiction, Classification, Deemed Export Screening, Licenses, and Recordkeeping · Checklist — This checklist runs the export control questions a technology company has to answer, in the order they arise. It begins with jurisdiction and classification,…
- Advising in the Collectibles Market: A Practitioner's Guide to Authentication, Grading, Reproduction Rights, and Platform Enforcement · Guide — This guide is for counsel advising a dealer, auction house, grader, platform, or collector. It begins with title rather than authenticity, because a thief…
- AI Procurement and Governance Toolkit: Vendors, Models, Data, and Output · Toolkit — Buying artificial intelligence looks like buying software and is not, because the contract has to allocate rights in data going in and output coming out, and…
- Live Performance Checklist: Underlying Rights and Grand Rights, Creative Team Agreements, Performer and Union Terms, Recording and Streaming Rights, and Venue and Insurance · Checklist — This checklist audits a production's rights position from the option to the archive, in the order the decisions arrive. Phase one splits the music question…
- Trade Dress Protection Checklist: Documenting, Registering, and Enforcing Product Look and Feel · Checklist — This is the working checklist for a live trade dress matter, from the ninety-minute intake through registration, maintenance, and enforcement, in eleven phases…
- Medical Device IP Checklist: Eligibility Screening, Filing Timing, Safe Harbour Use, Design and Trade Dress, and Labelling Review · Checklist — This checklist runs a medical device intellectual property programme against the regulatory calendar, because that is what actually governs the timing. It…
- Prior Art in a First-Inventor-to-File World: Novelty, Grace Periods, and What Counts Against You · Article — The single most expensive misunderstanding in patent practice is the belief that an inventor gets a year to file after telling people about an invention. That…
- Appealing a Final Refusal: Ex Parte Appeals to the TTAB and Beyond · Article — When a trademark examining attorney issues a final refusal, the application dies unless the applicant acts, and the action that preserves it is an ex parte…
- Teaching From Someone Else's Book: Copyright in Classrooms, Course Materials, and Learning Platforms · Article — Educational copyright is not a general exception and never was, which is why the confident classroom folklore about ten percent rules and educational purpose…
- Prosecuting a Patent Application from Filing to Issue: A Practitioner's Guide to Office Actions, Interviews, and Appeals · Guide — This guide runs a patent application from filing receipt to issued patent, and then to the continuation that keeps the family alive. It works in sixteen…
- Pleading and Proving Trademark Fraud: A Practitioner's Guide to a Claim That Almost Never Wins · Guide — This is the operational companion to the doctrinal article on fraud at the USPTO, and it assumes you already know that In re Bose requires subjective intent to…
- Protecting a Toy or Juvenile Product Line: A Practitioner's Guide to Design Filings, Licensing, Safety, and Counterfeits · Guide — This guide protects a toy or juvenile product line by working the calendar rather than the doctrine, because in this industry almost every instrument that…
- Patent Priority and International Filing Checklist: Provisionals, PCT Deadlines, and Foreign Filing Licenses · Checklist — Priority is a chain of filings and deadlines, and almost every loss in this area is a calendar failure rather than a legal one. This checklist runs the chain…
- Toys, Juvenile Products, and Merchandising IP Toolkit: Design, Licensing, Safety, and Counterfeits · Toolkit — The toy business looks like ordinary consumer goods trademark practice and behaves nothing like it, because most of the rules that govern it are not trademark…