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)
- Gray Market and Parallel Import Toolkit: Controlling Genuine Goods · Toolkit — This toolkit is the curated tour of everything in the Marksy corpus that bears on genuine goods sold outside an authorized channel, from the first suspicious…
- Filing a Patent Internationally: A Practitioner's Guide to the PCT, the National Stage, and Country Selection · Guide — Foreign filing is usually the largest single expense in a patent portfolio and it is decided under time pressure with incomplete information. This guide runs…
- Accessibility and Inclusive Content Toolkit: Exceptions, Formats, Circumvention, and Procurement · Toolkit — Accessibility is the strongest position in copyright and almost nobody in the field treats it that way, which is why organisations buy converted files they are…
- Protecting Trade Dress: A Practitioner's Guide to Product Packaging, Product Design, and Registration · Guide — This guide walks a trade dress matter from intake to enforcement in ten stages, assuming the doctrine and spending its length on execution. It shows how to…
- Building or Defending an Aftermarket Position: A Practitioner's Guide to Design Filings, Repair Doctrine, Software Locks, and Parts Distribution · Guide — This guide builds an aftermarket position from either side, using the same analysis run in the same order. It starts by classifying the part, because the…
- Patent Infringement Contention Checklist: Element-by-Element Charting, Equivalents, and Indirect Theories · Checklist — Contentions are the most consequential documents in a patent case after the claims themselves, because they bind and they are served before the evidence…
- Standard-Essential Patents and FRAND Toolkit: Declarations, Licensing, and Injunction Limits · Toolkit — A product that implements a published standard practices patents nobody can design around, and the entire system rests on a licensing commitment that…
- Trademark Survey Design and Challenge Checklist: Universe, Controls, and Admissibility · Checklist — This checklist runs a trademark survey program from the first "should we survey at all" memo through the motion to exclude, in twelve phases a litigator can…
- Advertising and Marketing Law Toolkit: Claims, Endorsements, and Competitor Challenges · Toolkit — Every advertising dispute is really one of four fights, and knowing which one you are in determines the forum, the evidence, and the price. This toolkit maps…
- Where Patent Cases Are Fought: Venue, Standing, and the Economics of Assertion · Article — Where a patent case is filed determines how fast it moves, what it costs, and what it settles for, often more than the merits do. This article explains the…
- Trade Secret Litigation Toolkit: Identification, Seizure, Injunctions, and Trial · Toolkit — A trade secret case is decided by evidence that expires within weeks of the departure that starts it and by an identification document written before anyone…
- Layered Design Protection Toolkit: Sequencing Design Patents, Trade Dress, and Copyright · Toolkit — A product design can be protected three different ways, each with a different term, a different test, a different remedy, and a different fatal flaw - and the…
- Drafting and Negotiating a Confidentiality Agreement: A Practitioner's Guide to Scope, Term, and Residuals · Guide — This guide takes a confidentiality agreement from the decision to send one through negotiation, execution, administration, and enforcement. It starts with the…
- Choosing Your Protection Toolkit: Patent, Copyright, Trademark, or Trade Secret · Toolkit — Four regimes protect different things in different ways, and the most consequential intellectual property decisions are made by choosing among them before any…
- Proving Copyright Infringement: Access, Substantial Similarity, and the Idea-Expression Divide · Article — A copyright plaintiff must prove two things, ownership of a valid copyright and copying of constituent elements that are original, and the second splits into…
- The Car That Reports Back: Vehicle Data, Connected Features, and Who Owns What the Car Knows · Article — A modern vehicle generates, stores, and transmits more data than most enterprise systems, and almost none of the law that governs it was written with vehicles…
- Employee, Founder, and Mobility IP Toolkit: Covenants, Departures, and Ownership Disputes · Toolkit — People carry intellectual property in their heads and on their laptops, and every hire and every departure moves some of it. This toolkit maps the whole area:…
- Incident Response Checklist: Containment, Forensics, Notification Triggers, and Documentation · Checklist — The decisions that determine how a breach ends are made in the first four hours by people who do not know they are making them. This checklist runs the…
- Digital Health and Health Data Toolkit: HIPAA Boundaries, Apps, Clinical Data, and Enforcement · Toolkit — Health data is regulated by whoever holds it rather than by what it says, which means the same blood glucose reading is protected health information in one…
- Advising a Cleantech or Energy Business: A Practitioner's Guide to Green Patents, Environmental Claims, Certification Marks, and Carbon Assets · Guide — This guide sets out how to run the legal side of a cleantech or energy business across its two very different exposures: the technology, which needs a patent…
- Clearing and Licensing Name, Image, and Likeness: A Practitioner's Guide for Brands, Creators, and Athletes · Guide — This guide is the operational companion to Marksy's right of publicity article: it assumes the doctrine and spends its length on execution, walking a single…
- What You Are Actually Buying: SaaS Agreements, Service Levels, and the IP Underneath · Article — A software-as-a-service agreement is not a software license, and treating it as one produces the recurring disappointments of technology procurement. This…
- Professional Services Branding Toolkit: Firm Names, Credentials, Advertising Rules, and Departures · Toolkit — Professional firms are branded under two regimes at once: trademark law, which asks whether a name is distinctive and available, and professional regulation,…
- Licensing or Litigating a Standard Essential Patent: A Practitioner's Guide to Declarations, FRAND Rate Setting, and Injunction Limits · Guide — This guide runs a standard essential patent matter from the declaration decisions that create the position through the licence or the judgment that ends it. It…
- Mining, Energy, and Natural Resources IP Toolkit: Geological Data, Process Secrecy, and Ventures · Toolkit — Extractive businesses hold almost no patents and enormous intellectual property. The value sits in geological and geophysical data that took decades and…
- Cosmetics and Personal Care IP Checklist: Name Clearance, Claim Substantiation, Packaging and Trade Dress, Ingredient Listing, and Influencer Review · Checklist — This checklist builds a cosmetics or personal care legal position in the order that prevents the sector's two recurring failures: a claim that drifts across…
- Structuring a Joint Development Agreement: A Practitioner's Guide to Background, Foreground, and Field Allocation · Guide — This guide structures a joint development agreement from the first conversation about shape through drafting, administration, and exit. It begins with the four…
- Podcasting and Audio Rights Toolkit: Music, Guests, Marks, and Distribution · Toolkit — A podcast is a download and an on-demand stream, which engages the reproduction, distribution, and public performance rights at once, and none of the…
- Secondary Meaning Evidence Checklist: Building the Acquired Distinctiveness Record · Checklist — This checklist runs a Section 2(f) acquired distinctiveness file from the day the refusal arrives to the Section 15 declaration that finally retires the…
- IP Antitrust Checklist: Restraint Classification, Misuse Screening, Pool Governance, and Enforcement Conduct Review · Checklist — This checklist reviews an intellectual property arrangement for competition exposure in the order the questions arise. It opens with relationship…
- The Letters You Licensed: Fonts, Typefaces, and the Software Nobody Reads the Terms For · Article — A typeface is not protected by copyright in the United States, the font software that renders it is, and almost every dispute in this field lives in the gap…
- Crowdfunding and Pre-Launch IP Toolkit: Filing Timing, Backer Terms, and Copycats · Toolkit — A crowdfunding campaign is a public disclosure of an unreleased product to a global audience that includes the people who will copy it. That single sentence…
- Trademark Portfolio Management Toolkit: Budgets, Audits, Docketing, and Reporting · Toolkit — This toolkit treats a trademark portfolio as an operating program with a budget, a control environment, and a reporting line, rather than as a pile of…
- Selling Something You Cannot Own: Data Licensing, Database Rights, and the Contracts That Substitute for Property · Article — Data is the asset most often licensed and least often owned, and the gap between commercial expectation and legal reality is where data deals go wrong. This…
- Running a Travel or Loyalty Brand: A Practitioner's Guide to Programme Terms, Co-Brands, Distribution Channels, and Reviews · Guide — This guide sets out how to run the legal side of a travel or hospitality brand, where almost nothing the brand depends on is under its direct control. It…
- Recruitment and Workforce Data Toolkit: Automated Decisions, Bias Audits, and Employee Rights · Toolkit — Human resources holds the most sensitive personal data in most organisations and was excluded from privacy programmes for structural rather than principled…
- Website and App Launch Legal Checklist: IP, Terms, Privacy, and Compliance · Checklist — This checklist takes a website or mobile app from naming to the post-launch docket in ten phases and roughly 110 concrete actions, each one a filing, a…
- Running a Keyword and Paid-Search Trademark Program: A Practitioner's Guide to Monitoring, Complaints, and Enforcement · Guide — This guide is the operating manual for a paid-search trademark program, built around sixteen numbered stages that run from setting the internal rule to closing…
- Protecting and Clearing a Game: A Practitioner's Guide to Mechanics, Assets, User Content, Streaming, and Mods · Guide — This guide runs the legal work of a game studio as a programme rather than a series of emergencies. It starts with the asset register, because provenance is…
- Labelling and Packaging Compliance Checklist: Origin Substantiation, Required Disclosures, Marking and Notices, State Warnings, and Artwork Review · Checklist — This checklist runs a labelling and packaging position from the bill of materials outwards, because that single document resolves the origin question in all…
- Color, Sound, Scent, and Motion: Registering Non-Traditional Trademarks · Article — Non-traditional trademarks — a color, a jingle, a smell, an animated logo — are registrable in the United States, but almost never on the terms applicants…
- Trademark Clearance Search Checklist: From Knockout to Written Opinion · Checklist — This is the working document for clearing a trademark, in twelve phases from the intake call to the docketed file, with every step stated as an action you can…
- Event and Sponsorship IP Checklist: Mark Filings, Sponsor Exclusivity, Venue and Ticket Terms, Athlete Rights, and Ambush Monitoring · Checklist — This checklist runs an event intellectual property programme against the calendar, because every protection worth having has a deadline before the event…
- Two Courts, One Dispute: Parallel Proceedings, Anti-Suit Injunctions, and the Race to Judgment · Article — Intellectual property rights are national, and the products they cover are not, which means a single commercial dispute frequently becomes several lawsuits in…
- Working With Traditional Knowledge and Cultural Materials: A Practitioner's Guide to Consultation, Consent, Labels, and Contracts · Guide — This guide sets out how a company, an institution, or a researcher should approach the use of traditional knowledge or cultural material, in the order the work…
- Regulated Industry Branding Toolkit: Cannabis, Alcohol, Firearms, Supplements, and Fintech · Toolkit — This toolkit is a guided tour of everything in the Marksy corpus that bears on branding a business whose products are licensed, scheduled, approved, or…
- Section 2 Refusal Response Checklist: Diagnosis, Evidence, and Filing · Checklist — This checklist walks a Section 2 office action from the day it issues to the day the mark registers, abandons, or goes up on appeal, in eleven phases that a…
- The Wording Is the Product: Policy Language, Rating Models, and Intellectual Property in Insurance · Article — An insurance policy is a document, and the document is the product. That single fact makes insurance the only major industry whose core offering is a…
- Online Terms Enforceability Checklist: Assent Flow, Notice Design, Modification, Arbitration, and Evidence of Acceptance · Checklist — This checklist establishes whether a company's online terms can actually be enforced, and then builds the capability where they cannot. It opens with the…
- Delay Defense Checklist: Building or Breaking a Laches, Acquiescence, and Estoppel Record · Checklist — Thirteen phases for either chair in a case where somebody waited. It starts with the two dates that determine everything - when the plaintiff knew and when the…
- Protecting an Aerospace or Drone Programme: A Practitioner's Guide to Technical Data, Airworthiness, Export Control, and Suppliers · Guide — This guide builds an intellectual property programme for an aerospace or uncrewed systems business, in the order the work has to be done. It starts with export…
- The State Privacy Wave: What the Comprehensive Consumer Statutes Actually Require · Article — Twenty-odd states now have comprehensive consumer privacy statutes that share a common architecture and differ in the places that cost money. This article sets…
- Online Brand Protection Toolkit: Domains, Marketplaces, Platforms, and Search Ads · Toolkit — Online brand abuse arrives on six surfaces at once — domains, marketplaces, hosted platforms, paid search, social handles, and the gray channel — and each…
- Filing Mills, Fake Specimens, and the Trademark Scam Economy · Article — A meaningful share of the applications filed at the USPTO every year are not attempts to protect a brand. They are the output of an industrial process that…
- Advising a Maritime or Shipbuilding Business: A Practitioner's Guide to Vessel Designs, Classification Records, Shipyard Contracts, and Voyage Data · Guide — A working guide to advising owners, yards, designers, equipment suppliers, and charterers on the intellectual property that attaches to vessels. It covers…
- Robotics and Autonomy IP Checklist: Component and Stack Mapping, Training Data Provenance, Safety Documentation, Integrator Terms, and Field Data Rights · Checklist — This checklist audits the intellectual property position of a robotics or autonomous systems business in the order the questions arise. It begins with the…
- Fitness, Wellness, and Class Format IP Toolkit: Sequences, Instructors, Music, and Studios · Toolkit — You cannot copyright a workout, which is the single most important sentence in this practice and the one most fitness founders refuse to accept. This toolkit…
- Prosecuting and Enforcing a Design Patent: A Practitioner's Guide to Drawings, Claim Scope, Obviousness, and Total-Profits Damages · Guide — This guide runs a design patent from the moment an appearance is selected to the moment it is enforced, and it is written for a practitioner who has done…
- Fitness and Wellness IP Checklist: Format and Sequence Documentation, Instructor and Trainer Terms, Music and Streaming Licences, Studio Trade Dress, and Certification Programmes · Checklist — A ten-phase working checklist for studios, format owners, trainers, wellness brands, and content platforms. Phases one and two run the inventory and the naming…
- Building a Domain Name Portfolio and Enforcement Program: A Practitioner's Guide to Sunrise, Claims, URS, and Recovery · Guide — This guide builds a domain program from an audit to an enforcement calendar, and it is organized around the finding that most domain loss is administrative…
- Where the Box Went: Logistics, Freight Technology, and the Data That Moves With the Goods · Article — Freight is an information business that happens to move objects. The margin in logistics comes from knowing where capacity is, what it costs, and when…
- What a Trademark Win Is Worth: Injunctions, Profits, Damages, and Fees Under Section 35 · Article — Winning a trademark case and collecting money from a trademark case are two different achievements, and Section 35 of the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1117,…
- Open Innovation and Prize Competition Toolkit: Submissions, Firewalls, Rules, and Handover · Toolkit — An open innovation programme is an invitation for strangers to send you ideas, and the legal risk runs almost entirely in one direction. This toolkit assembles…
- Restrictive Covenant and Departure Checklist: Drafting, Onboarding, Exit, and Enforcement · Checklist — Eighteen phases covering the whole life of a restrictive covenant program, from the state matrix that replaces the national template to the injunction motion…
- Learning About Your Competitor Lawfully: Reverse Engineering, Benchmarking, and the Line Trade Secret Law Draws · Article — Every company wants to know what its competitors are doing, and most of the ways of finding out are perfectly lawful. This article draws the line trade secret…
- Duty of Candor Checklist: Who Is Bound, What Is Material, Timing, Cross-Citation, and Litigation Overlap · Checklist — This checklist installs a candor programme designed so that nobody has to exercise judgment under pressure, which is the failure mode the doctrine punishes. It…
- Launching a Wine, Beer, or Spirits Brand: A Practitioner's Guide to Label Approval, Appellations, Distribution Tiers, and Marketing Rules · Guide — This guide is for counsel advising a wine, beer, or spirits business through a brand launch. Its organising principle is that the order of operations decides…
- Registering a Copyright: A Practitioner's Guide to Applications, Deposits, and Group Registration · Guide — This guide is the operational manual for getting a copyright registered: the sequence of decisions, the forms, the fees, the deposits, and the failure modes.…
- Structuring a Brand Licensing Program Without Creating a Franchise: A Practitioner's Guide · Guide — This guide is the operational half of the Marksy article on accidental franchises, and it assumes you know the three elements and the control paradox. It…
- Copyright Ownership and Chain-of-Title Checklist: Assignments, Work-for-Hire, and Termination Windows · Checklist — This checklist runs a copyright portfolio from an unexamined pile of files to a title package a buyer or lender will accept, in eleven phases. It builds the…
- Sports Technology and Athlete Data Toolkit: Consent, Wearables, League Rules, and Commercial Rights · Toolkit — A professional athlete is measured continuously by devices they did not choose, under terms they did not negotiate, by an employer whose decisions about them…
- Fashion and Apparel IP Toolkit: Separability, Design Filings, Trade Dress, and Counterfeits · Toolkit — American law protects a printed textile and leaves the dress it becomes almost entirely unprotected, which is why fast fashion is a business rather than a…
- Who Owns the Data? Scraping, Databases, and the Limits of Ownership · Article — Clients arrive with a firm conviction that they own their data, and the law's answer is that almost nobody owns data as such. This article explains what…
- Preparing for a Trade Show: A Practitioner's Guide to Filing Timing, Booth Design, On-Site Enforcement, and Confidential Meetings · Guide — A working guide to running the intellectual property side of an exhibition programme. It opens with the coordination problem that causes almost every loss in…
- Buying a Model: AI Vendor Contracts, Training Rights, Output Ownership, and the Indemnity That Is Not There · Article — Buying access to a model is not buying software and the standard technology agreement does not fit it. This article works the five terms that actually matter -…
- Content Liability Checklist: Pre-Publication Review, Source and Substantiation Records, Retraction and Correction Handling, Anti-SLAPP Assessment, and Insurance Tender · Checklist — This checklist audits the content liability position of a publisher, newsletter, research firm, or review business in the order the work has to be done. It…
- Slogans, Hashtags, and Titles: The Marks the USPTO Treats Differently · Article — Three kinds of matter sit in an awkward place at the trademark office: slogans, which may or may not be brands; hashtags, which add a symbol that contributes…
- Trademark Remedies Toolkit: Injunctions, Profits, Damages, and Attorney's Fees · Toolkit — This toolkit is a guided tour of everything Marksy publishes on what a trademark owner can actually get out of a court, organized around Sections 34 and 35 of…
- Open Innovation Programme Checklist: Submission Terms and Consent, Evaluation and Firewall Records, Prize and Competition Rules, Contributor Assignments, and Commercialisation Handover · Checklist — A ten-phase working checklist for any organisation that receives ideas from outside it. Phase one settles the programme's purpose, which determines every…
- Negotiating a Book Publishing Agreement: A Practitioner's Guide to Grant of Rights, Royalties, and Reversion · Guide — A negotiation guide for book contracts, organized by what is actually obtainable rather than by the order clauses appear in the form. It opens with the grant…
- Navigating Section 1201: A Practitioner's Guide to Access Controls, Statutory Exceptions, Triennial Exemptions, and Repair Programs · Guide — This guide runs a Section 1201 matter for either side, in the order the questions should be asked rather than the order the statute is written. It classifies…
- What Happens to the Rights When Someone Dies: Intellectual Property in Estates, Divorce, and Personal Succession · Article — Intellectual property passes on death like other property in most respects and unlike it in several that matter enormously. Copyright carries a statutory…
- False Advertising Under the Lanham Act: Literal Falsity, Implied Deception, and the Lexmark Zone of Interests · Article — Section 43(a)(1)(B) of the Lanham Act is the most powerful private weapon in American advertising law, and the least understood by the people it protects. This…
- The Case Is in the Files: Electronic Discovery, Source Code Review, and the Evidence That Decides IP Cases · Article — The evidence that decides intellectual property cases is almost never created by lawyers. This article covers the modern discovery landscape — chat platforms,…
- Financial Services Branding Checklist: Naming, Disclosures, Approvals, and Advertising Review · Checklist — Sixteen phases for naming and marketing a regulated financial brand, starting with the entity status map that every later question is answered from. The…
- Character and Franchise Rights Checklist: Delineation Evidence, Chain of Title, Layered Protection, and Licensing Controls · Checklist — This checklist runs a character or franchise from evidence-building through diligence, protection, licensing, and enforcement. It opens with the delineation…
- Building an International Filing and Anti-Squatting Program: A Practitioner's Guide to China, the EU, and Emerging Markets · Guide — This guide is the operational half of the Marksy article on first-to-file systems, and it assumes you know why foreign use creates no local rights. It builds…
- The Nice Classification System: Why Your Identification of Goods Decides Your Trademark's Reach · Article — The 45 Nice classes are an administrative filing system, not a grant of rights — but the sentence you write inside a class is the legal instrument that fixes…
- Managing an Agency Relationship: A Practitioner's Guide to Pitch Material, Ownership, Third-Party Assets, and Termination · Guide — This guide is for counsel drafting or repairing an agency relationship, from either side. It starts from the observation that the standard ownership clause…
- Patent Term Management Toolkit: Adjustment, Extension, and Double Patenting · Toolkit — Patent term looks like arithmetic and behaves like strategy, and the differences between two patents in the same family can be years. This toolkit sets out the…
- Suing a Foreign Infringer: A Practitioner's Guide to Jurisdiction, Service, Extraterritorial Reach, and Collection · Guide — This guide is the operational half of the Marksy article on extraterritoriality, and it assumes you know why Abitron changed the question from "who was harmed…
- When the Platform Turns You Off: Account Suspension, Verification, and Brand Presence · Article — A brand can lose its entire online presence in an afternoon, and the law offers less protection than most people assume. Terms of service are contracts drafted…
- The Technology That Cannot Leave the Room: Export Controls, Deemed Exports, and the Foreign Filing License · Article — Export control law reaches intellectual property in two ways most IP lawyers do not expect: showing controlled technology to a foreign national inside the…
- Building an Invention Assignment and Reward Programme: A Practitioner's Guide to Agreements, Statutory Limits, Disclosure Processes, and Compensation Schemes · Guide — A practitioner's guide to building the programme that makes an employer actually own what its people invent. It begins with the agreement itself — present…
- Three Ways to Own a Shape: Design Patents, Trade Dress, and Copyright in Product Design · Article — A product's appearance can be protected three different ways, and the three regimes have different requirements, different terms, different remedies, and…
- Channel Partner IP Checklist: Mark Licence Scope, Territory and Exclusivity, Co-Branding Approvals, Lead and Data Rights, and De-Identification on Exit · Checklist — This checklist audits a channel or reseller programme from either side. It begins with the franchise threshold, because that is a structuring question and…
- Children's and Youth Privacy Toolkit: COPPA, Age Assurance, and Design Codes · Toolkit — Children's privacy is the area where the gap between a company's belief about its audience and the regulator's view of it produces the largest enforcement…
- Establishing and Proving Common-Law Trademark Rights: A Practitioner's Guide to Use, Priority, and Territory · Guide — This guide is the operational companion to Marksy's article on the geography of common-law trademark priority, and it assumes that doctrine rather than…
- Cleaning the Register: Expungement, Reexamination, and Letters of Protest After the Trademark Modernization Act · Article — For seventy-five years the only way to remove a registration that was never used was to file a TTAB cancellation and litigate it. The Trademark Modernization…
- Athlete Data Checklist: Consent and Collective Agreement Terms, Wearable and Sensor Vendor Rights, League and Competition Data Rules, Medical and Biometric Handling, and Commercial Licensing Controls · Checklist — A ten-phase working checklist for athlete data, usable by a club, a league, a sports technology vendor, or an athlete's adviser. Phase one establishes the…