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)
- The Show Itself: Theatre, Live Performance, and the Rights in Something That Happens Once · Article — A live performance is the only major art form whose central product is not a copy, which makes it the one where the rights are least understood and most often…
- Running an Open Source Compliance Program: A Practitioner's Guide to Inventory, Policy, Review, and Remediation · Guide — This guide is the operational half of the Marksy article on open source licensing, and it assumes you know why license conditions are enforceable as copyright…
- Privilege and Work Product Toolkit for IP Matters · Toolkit — Intellectual property practice generates more privilege problems than most litigation, because the same people do legal and technical work, the same documents…
- The Device and the Approval: Medical Device and Diagnostic IP Across Two Regulatory Clocks · Article — A medical device lives under two clocks that rarely align - the patent clock, which starts at filing and runs whether or not the product can be sold, and the…
- Overcoming a Section 101 Rejection: A Practitioner's Guide to Alice Step Two, Technical Improvement, and Claim Amendment · Guide — A Section 101 rejection is not the end of an application, and it is also not something to argue with generically. This guide walks the response in twelve…
- Running a Digitisation and Access Programme: A Practitioner's Guide to Diligent Search, Section 108, Risk Tiers, and Takedown · Guide — This guide builds a digitisation and access programme as an operating system rather than a clearance exercise, because clearance at collection scale cannot be…
- Trade Dress and the Functionality Doctrine: Why Good Design Sometimes Cannot Be Owned · Article — Trade dress protects the look and feel of a product, its packaging, or a place of business, but two doctrines decide almost every case before anyone reaches…
- Section 112 Compliance Checklist: Enablement, Written Description, Definiteness, and Means-Plus-Function · Checklist — Section 112 is the quietest way a valuable patent dies, and almost all of it is decided before filing. This checklist runs the analysis in twelve phases: map…
- Commissioning and Attacking a Trademark Survey: A Litigator's Guide to Design, Universe, and Daubert · Guide — This guide walks a litigator through commissioning a trademark survey and through dismantling the other side's, stage by stage, from the retention letter to…
- Accessibility and IP Checklist: Authorised Entity Status, Format Conversion, Circumvention Exemptions, Vendor Terms, and Records · Checklist — This checklist builds and audits an accessible content programme against the statutory permission most organisations do not realise they hold. Phase one writes…
- The Priority Chain: Provisional Applications, Foreign Filing, and the Deadlines That End Patent Rights · Article — A patent's priority date decides which prior art applies, whether a competitor's earlier filing blocks it, and whether foreign rights exist at all. It is set…
- Education and EdTech IP Toolkit: Faculty Works, Classroom Use, Platforms, and Student Data · Toolkit — Educational copyright is ordinary copyright with two narrow exemptions attached, and almost every institutional failure in the sector comes from believing…
- Regulated-Industry Trademark Filing Checklist: Cannabis, Alcohol, Firearms, and Supplements · Checklist — This checklist is the working, phase-by-phase procedure for filing and prosecuting trademarks for businesses whose goods are regulated by TTB, ATF, FDA, or the…
- The Part That Broke: Repair, Reconstruction, and Aftermarket Rights in Durable Goods · Article — The aftermarket is where intellectual property doctrine collides with the ordinary expectation that a thing you bought can be fixed, and the collision produces…
- Trade Dress and Product Design Toolkit: Look, Feel, and the Functionality Wall · Toolkit — This toolkit is a curated research guide to trade dress and product design protection, assembling the Marksy corpus on look and feel into one ordered shelf. It…
- Building or Defeating a Patent Infringement Case: A Practitioner's Guide to Claim Charts, Equivalents, and Indirect Liability · Guide — An infringement case is an element-by-element proof exercise, and it is won by the party with better technical evidence on the contested element. This guide…
- Patent Portfolio Management Toolkit: Harvesting, Budgeting, Maintenance, and Pruning · Toolkit — A patent portfolio is a recurring expense that either supports the business or does not, and most portfolios contain a substantial fraction that does neither.…
- Patent Damages Checklist: Marking, Notice, Royalty Base, and Willfulness Evidence · Checklist — Patent damages are decided by a handful of documents that already exist and by three analyses that can be finished in the first month. This checklist runs the…
- Patent Assertion Defense Toolkit: Demand Letters, NPEs, and Cost-Effective Response · Toolkit — Most patent assertions are decided by cost rather than by merit, and the defense that works is the one built around that fact. This toolkit runs a defense from…
- Trademark Dispute Resolution Toolkit: Declaratory Judgments, Settlement, and Coexistence · Toolkit — Almost every trademark dispute ends in an agreement, and almost every agreement is drafted after the parties have spent more than the agreement is worth. This…
- The Agreement Everyone Signs and Nobody Reads: What a Nondisclosure Agreement Actually Does · Article — A nondisclosure agreement is the most frequently signed and least frequently read document in commercial practice, and the clauses that decide disputes are…
- Technology Contracts Toolkit: SaaS, Licensing, Service Levels, and Exit · Toolkit — Technology agreements fail on eight provisions and the license grant is not one of them. This toolkit runs a deal from intake through renewal and exit, and…
- Privacy and Marketing Data Toolkit: Notices, Consent, Adtech, and Rights · Toolkit — Marketing runs on data, and the rules governing that data now come from a dozen state statutes, several sectoral regimes, a body of contract law, and a wave of…
- Chemical and Materials IP Checklist: Genus and Species Scope, Data Sufficiency, Formulation Secrecy, Regulatory Confidentiality, and Freedom to Operate · Checklist — This checklist runs a chemical or materials IP position from the analytical bench outwards, because the single most consequential decision in the field —…
- Running a Data Breach Response: A Practitioner's Guide to Forensics, Privilege, Notification, and Regulators · Guide — This guide runs a data breach from the first phone call to the post-incident review. It opens with the four hours in which containment, preservation, and the…
- Energy, Cleantech, and Environmental Claims Toolkit: Green Patents, Substantiation, and Certification · Toolkit — A cleantech business has two intellectual property problems and they point in opposite directions. The technology needs patents, which require disclosure and…
- Claiming Acquired Distinctiveness at the USPTO: A Practitioner's Guide to Secondary Meaning Evidence · Guide — This guide is the operational manual for claiming acquired distinctiveness at the USPTO, from the moment a Section 2(e) refusal lands to the Section 15…
- Selling Green: Environmental Claims, Carbon Credits, and the Marks That Promise a Cleaner Product · Article — Environmental claims are the most heavily contested advertising category in the market, and the reason is structural: the claims are about attributes the buyer…
- Travel, Hospitality, and Loyalty Programme Brand Toolkit: Flags, Points, Channels, and Reviews · Toolkit — Travel brands are operated by parties who do not own them, sold through channels the brand does not control, and judged on platforms the brand cannot edit.…
- Post-Mortem Rights Checklist: Domicile, Term, Registration, Chain of Title, and Licensing · Checklist — Whether a personality's rights survive death depends on where they lived when they died, and most of what an estate loses is lost in the first year through…
- The Promise You Made to the Standards Body: FRAND Commitments, Essentiality, and What a Patent Is Worth in a Standard · Article — A patent declared essential to a standard is worth something quite different from the same patent outside one, and the difference is a promise made to a…
- Telecommunications and Network Infrastructure IP Toolkit: Spectrum, Equipment, Standards, and Subscriber Data · Toolkit — A carrier owns almost nothing that makes its network work. The spectrum is licensed from the state, the equipment is licensed from vendors, the protocols are…
- Launching a Cosmetics or Personal Care Brand: A Practitioner's Guide to Naming, Claims, Packaging, and Ingredient Disclosure · Guide — This guide takes a cosmetics or personal care brand from formulation to launch and through its first enforcement problems, in the order the decisions arise. It…
- Trademark Due Diligence Checklist: Chain of Title, Encumbrances, and Deal Risk · Checklist — This is the working checklist for the lawyer running a trademark diligence workstream, from the scope memo in week one to the last foreign recordal six months…
- Whose Invention Is It? Joint Development, Background IP, and the Ownership Default Nobody Wants · Article — Two companies collaborate, something valuable results, and nobody wrote down who owns it. The default rules that then apply are worse than almost any…
- Traditional Knowledge and Cultural Expressions Toolkit: Consultation, Consent, Labels, and Objections · Toolkit — Intellectual property law was built around identifiable authors, fixed works, novel inventions, and finite terms, and traditional knowledge fits none of those…
- Structuring IP Arrangements That Survive Antitrust Review: A Practitioner's Guide to Licensing Restraints, Pools, and Enforcement Conduct · Guide — This guide is the operational companion to the doctrine, and it is organised as work rather than as law. It sets out how to classify a proposed restraint, how…
- Translation and Localisation Checklist: Grant Scope, Vendor Ownership, Moral Rights, Marks and Transliteration, and Territory Control · Checklist — This checklist builds a localisation position that produces owned assets instead of a decade of unattributed derivative works. Phase one establishes the…
- Content Moderation and Platform Policy Toolkit: Rules, Appeals, Transparency, and Regulators · Toolkit — Content moderation began as a customer service function and became a regulated activity, and most platforms are still operating processes designed for the…
- Music, Film, and Creative Industry IP Toolkit · Toolkit — This toolkit assembles the Marksy corpus on intellectual property in creative production — music, film, television, games, and advertising — into one ordered…
- Technology Transfer Checklist: Sponsored Research Terms, Material Transfers, Bayh-Dole Compliance, Licence Diligence, and Spin-Out Formation · Checklist — This checklist works a technology transfer relationship from first contact to spin-out financing, in the order the decisions arise. It opens by sorting terms…
- Points, Flags, and Bookings: Brand Control in Travel, Hotels, and Loyalty Programmes · Article — Travel is an industry where almost nobody owns the thing the customer buys. A hotel guest books a brand operated under licence at a property owned by a third…
- Auctions, Collectibles, and Trading Cards IP Toolkit: Provenance, Grading, Images, and Platforms · Toolkit — The collectibles market runs on three questions that participants routinely collapse into one: can the seller convey title, is the object genuine, and what may…
- Your Face Is Not Public Domain: The Right of Publicity, NIL, and the State-Law Patchwork · Article — This article explains the American right of publicity: a state-by-state body of law, invented by a federal judge in 1953 to solve a baseball-card problem, that…
- Running a Full Trademark Clearance Search: A Practitioner's Guide to Screening, Analysis, and the Written Opinion · Guide — This is the working protocol for clearing a trademark, from the intake call to the signed opinion letter, carried through one annotated matter over seventeen…
- Rules of the Game: Why Game Mechanics Are Free, Clones Are Hard to Stop, and Everything Around Them Is Protected · Article — A game is two things at once - a set of rules, which copyright does not protect, and an audiovisual work, which it protects well. This article explains where…
- Getting a Label Right: A Practitioner's Guide to Origin Claims, Packaging Disclosures, Environmental Marketing, and State Warnings · Guide — This guide sets out how to get a product label right, in the order that keeps the decisions cheap. It begins with the observation that a single product has…
- Trademark Fair Use Audit Checklist: Clearing Third-Party Marks in Advertising and Content · Checklist — This checklist walks a campaign, catalog, site, or content calendar through eleven phases of trademark fair use review, from opening the audit file to signing…
- Running or Protecting an Event Sponsorship Programme: A Practitioner's Guide to Marks, Clean Zones, Ticket Terms, and Ambush Response · Guide — This guide builds and defends an event sponsorship programme in the order the deadlines actually fall, starting with the mark portfolio and the official…
- IP Appeal Checklist: Jurisdiction and Timing, Issue Preservation, Standard of Review Mapping, Record and Briefing, and Post-Decision Options · Checklist — This checklist runs an intellectual property appeal from adverse judgment to mandate, in the sequence the work must actually be done. It opens with the…
- Buying a Competitor's Name: Keyword Advertising and the Death of Initial Interest Confusion · Article — Buying a competitor's trademark as a search keyword is lawful in most of the United States, and this article traces the two questions every keyword case turns…
- Borrowed Patterns: Traditional Knowledge, Cultural Expressions, and the Gaps in Western Intellectual Property · Article — Intellectual property law was built around identifiable authors, fixed works, novel inventions, and finite terms, and traditional knowledge fits none of those…
- Launching a Website or App Without Legal Debt: A Practitioner's Guide to the Pre-Ship Legal Stack · Guide — This guide sequences the legal work that has to happen before a website or app ships, as fifteen numbered stages on a T-minus calendar running from six months…
- Certification, Collective, and Membership Marks Toolkit · Toolkit — Certification marks, collective marks, and collective membership marks are the three instruments the Lanham Act gives an organization that wants a mark to…
- Trademark Abandonment Evidence Checklist: Building or Breaking the Non-Use Case · Checklist — This checklist is the working document for a trademark non-use dispute, usable from either chair, and it assumes the doctrine rather than teaching it. Ten…
- Raising and Defeating a Laches Defense: A Practitioner's Guide to Delay, Prejudice, and Progressive Encroachment · Guide — This guide runs a laches defense through eleven stages, from the answer that pleads it to the judgment that limits the remedy, and it works both chairs at once…
- Financial Technology IP Checklist: Eligibility Screening, Market Data Terms, Model and Algorithm Governance, Open Banking Interfaces, and Customer Data Rights · Checklist — This checklist audits a financial technology business in the order the exposure actually sits, which is not the order the client expects. It begins with the…
- Building Terms of Service That Survive a Motion to Compel: A Practitioner's Guide to Assent Design, Notice, Modification, and Records · Guide — This guide takes a company from a terms of service that cannot be enforced to one that can, and it is written for the lawyer who will have to sign the…
- Cleared for Takeoff: Aviation, Aerospace, and the Intellectual Property That Cannot Fly Without Approval · Article — An aircraft part is worthless without a piece of paper saying it may be installed, and that paper is issued to a person rather than attached to the part. This…
- AI, Content, and IP Toolkit: Training Data, Generated Works, and the Ownership Gap · Toolkit — This toolkit is a curated research guide to what United States intellectual property law currently does — and refuses to do — with generative artificial…
- Registered Somewhere Else: Ships, Naval Architecture, and Intellectual Property on the Water · Article — A ship spends its life in waters no country owns, flying the flag of a state chosen for reasons that have nothing to do with intellectual property, built to…
- Outbound Marketing Compliance Checklist: Channel Rules, Consent Evidence, Opt-Out Handling, and Vendor Flow-Down · Checklist — This checklist audits and then rebuilds an outbound messaging program, in the order the work has to happen and with gates at the points where a mistake creates…
- Concurrent Use and Consent Agreement Checklist: Territory, Conditions, and Filing · Checklist — Fourteen phases covering the three instruments people confuse with one another - the concurrent use registration, the consent agreement filed to overcome a…
- Building a Robotics or Autonomous Systems Programme: A Practitioner's Guide to Sensor Data, Models, Safety Files, and Integration · Guide — This guide is written for the person responsible for the intellectual property position of a robotics or autonomous systems business, and it proceeds in the…
- What Copyright Registration Actually Buys You: Statutory Damages, Fees, and the Right to Sue · Article — Copyright attaches the instant an original work is fixed in a tangible medium, without a filing, a fee, or a government stamp, and yet an unregistered…
- Circular Economy and Recycling IP Toolkit: Processes, Content Claims, Take-Back, and Feedstock · Toolkit — A circular business takes somebody else's product apart and sells the material back into the economy, which makes it an intellectual property practice…
- The Patent Nobody Files: Design Patents, the Ordinary Observer, and What LKQ Changed · Article — A design patent costs a fraction of a utility patent, issues in about half the time, and gives an exclusive right measured by what a product looks like rather…
- Protecting a Fitness or Wellness Business: A Practitioner's Guide to Format Protection, Instructor Agreements, Music Licensing, and Franchise Structures · Guide — A working guide to acting for studios, format owners, trainers, wellness brands, and the platforms that distribute their content. It opens by reframing the…
- After .COM: New gTLDs, the Trademark Clearinghouse, and the Modern Domain Portfolio · Article — The domain name system stopped being a list of .COM registrations more than a decade ago, and most corporate domain strategies never caught up. This article…
- Extractive Industry IP Checklist: Geological Data Ownership, Process and Metallurgy Secrecy, Joint Venture Terms, Contractor Controls, and Community Agreements · Checklist — This checklist audits the intellectual property position of a mining, oil and gas, or natural resources business in the order the questions arise. It begins…
- Political Campaign and Advocacy Media Toolkit: Clearance, Likeness, Platforms, and Disclaimers · Toolkit — A campaign advertisement is assembled at speed, from other people's material, by an organisation that will disband after the election. It is then published to…
- Managing the Duty of Candor Across a Portfolio: A Practitioner's Guide to IDS Practice, Cross-Citation, and Supplemental Examination · Guide — This guide builds a candor program that does not depend on anyone exercising judgment under pressure, which is what fails. It starts by naming who is actually…
- Genomic Data Checklist: Consent Scope and Withdrawal, Sample and Data Retention, Research and Commercial Use Terms, Third-Party Access Requests, and Reidentification Response · Checklist — A ten-phase working checklist for consumer genomics companies, clinical laboratories, biobanks, and the partners who license genomic databases. Phases one…
- Drafting and Enforcing Restrictive Covenants: A Practitioner's Guide to Scope, Consideration, and Choice of Law · Guide — A drafting and enforcement guide for the covenants that survive modern state law, written for counsel maintaining agreements across many jurisdictions. It…
- Overcoming a Section 2 Refusal: A Practitioner's Guide to Surname, Geographic, and Deceptiveness Arguments · Guide — A Section 2 office action is rarely one problem; it is a stack of them, and the response that wins is built in a fixed order — diagnose which bar you actually…
- Approved on the Label: Wine, Spirits, and the Branding Rules That Precede the Trademark · Article — An alcohol beverage brand faces a regulatory gate before it reaches the trademark question, and the order matters. A label must be approved by a federal…
- Utilities and Grid Technology IP Toolkit: Metering Data, Vendors, Standards, and Critical Infrastructure · Toolkit — A meter reporting every fifteen minutes produces a record of how a household lives, and the rules governing it come from a state utility commission rather than…
- Semiconductor and Hardware IP Toolkit: Mask Works, Chip Patents, Foundries, and IP Cores · Toolkit — Semiconductor intellectual property runs on four regimes at once, and practitioners trained in any one of them routinely misjudge the others. This toolkit…
- Software Copyright Checklist: Registration, Deposit, Evidence, and Comparison · Checklist — Seventeen phases covering software copyright from the registration program a company should run before any dispute exists to the settlement structures these…
- Life Sciences Patent Litigation Checklist: Listing, Notice Letters, Stays, Exclusivity, and Launch Risk · Checklist — This checklist runs a regulatory patent matter for either side, from the listing decision to judgment or settlement, on the statutory timetable that drives…
- Everything on the Stand Is a Disclosure: Trade Shows, Exhibitions, and the Rights You Spend by Showing Up · Article — A trade show is a controlled disclosure event that most companies treat as a marketing exercise. This article explains what showing something publicly actually…
- Managing Defamation and Content Liability: A Practitioner's Guide to Pre-Publication Review, Retraction, Anti-SLAPP, and Insurance · Guide — This guide is for counsel building a content liability programme for a publisher, newsletter, research firm, review site, or any business whose product is…
- Startup and Founder Brand Toolkit: The First Two Years of Trademark Decisions · Toolkit — This toolkit sequences every trademark decision a new company makes between the naming workshop and the Series A data room, month by month, and routes each one…
- The Publishing Deal: Rights, Royalties, and What Authors Actually Sign · Article — A publishing contract is a copyright transfer dressed as a business arrangement, and most authors sign one without understanding which of the two it is. This…
- The DMCA's Other Half: Section 1201, Access Controls, Repair, and the Exemptions Nobody Reads · Article — Section 1201 creates liability for getting around a technological protection measure even where no copyright is infringed, which makes it a distinct regime…
- Running an Open Innovation or Prize Competition Programme: A Practitioner's Guide to Submission Terms, Evaluation Records, Prize Rules, and Downstream Rights · Guide — A working guide to designing, running, and defending a programme that receives ideas from outside the organisation. It opens with the question every programme…
- Crowdfunding IP Checklist: Pre-Disclosure Filing Sequence, Campaign Content Clearance, Backer and Reward Terms, Manufacturing Agreements, and Copycat Enforcement · Checklist — This checklist audits a crowdfunding project in the order the work must happen, and the order is set by a single irreversible event. The campaign launch is a…
- Where Your Trademark Rights End: Tea Rose-Rectanus, Dawn Donut, and the Geography of Common-Law Priority · Article — American trademark rights begin as local rights: at common law a mark is owned only where it is used and known, so two businesses can lawfully own the same…
- Royalty Audit Checklist: Clause and Scope Review, Records Request Design, Revenue and Deduction Testing, Findings and Dispute Handling, and Remediation and Forward Terms · Checklist — A nine-phase working checklist for planning, running, and closing a royalty audit, usable by a licensor commissioning one or a licensee receiving notice.…
- Protecting and Licensing a Character or Franchise: A Practitioner's Guide to Delineation, Layered Rights, and Merchandising · Guide — This guide takes a character from creation to commercial exploitation and sets out what has to be built at each stage. It begins with the delineation evidence…
- Clearing and Launching a Financial Services Brand: A Practitioner's Guide to FINRA, SEC, and Bank Naming Rules · Guide — A build guide for naming and marketing a regulated financial brand, sequenced so the regulatory constraints are applied before creative investment rather than…
- Whose Campaign Is It: Advertising Agencies, Creative Services, and the Work Nobody Assigned · Article — An advertising campaign is assembled from dozens of separately owned components and delivered under an agreement that usually says the client owns everything.…
- Duty of Candor and IDS Practice Toolkit · Toolkit — The duty of candor is the one prosecution obligation whose breach can render an entire patent family unenforceable, and it is administered day to day by…
- Who Owns What Your Engineer Thought Of: Invention Assignment, Shop Rights, and Inventor Compensation · Article — Most companies believe their employees' inventions belong to them, and most are relying on a document that was signed once, filed nowhere, and drafted from a…
- IP Privilege Protection Checklist: Communication Hygiene, Agent Privilege, Common Interest, Opinion Waiver, and Production Controls · Checklist — This checklist runs the privilege questions that arise in IP practice, in the order they arise. It starts with the communication habits that determine whether…
- Co-Branding Agreement Checklist: Ownership, Approvals, Term, and Exit · Checklist — A co-branding deal fails in the same four places every time: nobody said who owns what the collaboration creates, the approval clause has no clock, exclusivity…
- Transfers, Licenses, and Termination Rights: A Practitioner's Guide to Copyright Ownership Paperwork · Guide — This is the execution manual for copyright ownership paperwork, in twelve stages, from the first employee offer letter to the last closing deliverable in an…
- Structuring a Reseller or Channel Programme: A Practitioner's Guide to Mark Licences, Territory, Co-Branding, and Termination · Guide — This guide is for counsel building or repairing a channel programme. It starts from the proposition that the agreement is a trademark licence with a…
- State Privacy Compliance Toolkit: Applicability, Rights, and Assessments · Toolkit — The state privacy statutes look interchangeable in summary and differ in ways that decide compliance work, and building to a single strictest standard is…
- Advising a Sports Technology Business or Team: A Practitioner's Guide to Athlete Data Rights, Wearables, League Terms, and Commercial Exploitation · Guide — A practitioner's guide to advising in sports technology, written for the four clients who appear in this practice — a club, a league, a vendor, and an athlete.…