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)
- Workforce Data Checklist: System Inventory and Classification, Automated Decision Screening, Bias Audit Records, Vendor and Subprocessor Terms, and Employee Rights Handling · Checklist — This checklist audits an organisation's workforce data estate in the order the work has to happen, beginning with the inventory because every later…
- Exhaustion and Gray Market Toolkit: First Sale, Parallel Imports, and Customs · Toolkit — One authorized sale ends the right to control what happens to that article next, and the rule differs across patent, copyright, and trademark in ways that…
- Music Clearance Checklist: Sync, Master, Mechanical, Sample, and Performance · Checklist — This is the working checklist for clearing music in any medium, in eleven phases, from the cue specification you write before making a single call through the…
- Plant and Agricultural IP Checklist: Route Selection, Deposit and Description, Seed Agreements, Exhaustion, and Enforcement Evidence · Checklist — This checklist runs a plant and agricultural intellectual property programme against the deadlines that actually bind, starting with the disposition diary…
- What Can Actually Be Patented: Section 101, Alice, and the Abstract Idea Problem · Article — Before a patent examiner asks whether an invention is new, whether it is obvious, or whether the application describes it properly, a threshold question comes…
- The Rights You Cannot Trace: Orphan Works, Mass Digitisation, and the Cultural Institution's Problem · Article — A cultural institution holds millions of items and can identify the rights holder for a small fraction of them, which is the central operating problem of the…
- Registering a Cannabis-Adjacent Trademark: A Practitioner's Guide to Hemp, CBD, State Registrations, and Ancillary Goods · Guide — This guide is the execution manual for filing a trademark program in the cannabis, hemp, and CBD space, and it assumes you already understand why the USPTO…
- Drafting a Patent Specification That Survives: A Practitioner's Guide to Support, Definiteness, and Claim Scope · Guide — The specification is the only part of a patent that cannot be changed after filing, which makes drafting the highest-leverage hour in patent practice. This…
- Gray Market Enforcement Checklist: Proving Material Differences and Controlling Distribution · Checklist — This checklist is the operational distillation of the Marksy gray market cluster: eleven phases, each a set of concrete actions, that take a parallel-import…
- Building an Accessible Content Programme: A Practitioner's Guide to Section 121, Marrakesh, Technical Measures, and Procurement · Guide — This guide builds an accessible content programme in the order that removes work rather than the order that feels legal. It starts with the authorised entity…
- Freedom-to-Operate Checklist: Scope, Search, Claim Charting, and Design-Around · Checklist — A freedom-to-operate analysis fails in predictable places: the wrong search is run, the product is never decomposed, hits are charted before they are screened,…
- Museums, Libraries, and Cultural Heritage IP Toolkit: Collections, Digitisation, and Access · Toolkit — Cultural institutions hold objects they own and rights they mostly do not, and the gap between those two positions is where every difficult decision in the…
- Anticounterfeiting and Border Enforcement Toolkit · Toolkit — Counterfeiting is the only corner of trademark practice where five separate enforcement systems can be working the same shipment at once — Customs and Border…
- Nonprofit IP Checklist: Mark Filings, Chapter and Affiliate Terms, Volunteer and Contractor Ownership, Donor Data, and Enforcement · Checklist — This checklist audits and builds a nonprofit or membership brand programme in the order these organisations actually fail. Phase one files the marks, including…
- Proving Patent Infringement: Literal Reading, Equivalents, and the Limits of the Doctrine · Article — Infringement is the simplest question in patent law to state and the hardest to prove. Every limitation of a claim must be found in the accused product, and a…
- International Patent Toolkit: PCT, National Stage, and Country Strategy · Toolkit — Patents are territorial, the deadline to preserve foreign rights runs twelve months from the first filing, and nearly every expensive mistake in international…
- Proving Patent Damages: A Practitioner's Guide to Royalty Models, Apportionment, and Enhanced Damages · Guide — This guide runs a patent damages case from the first month to the post-verdict royalty, from both sides. It starts with the three analyses that fix the length…
- Patent Damages and Remedies Toolkit: Royalties, Lost Profits, Injunctions, and Enhancement · Toolkit — Patent damages are decided by a handful of documents that already exist and by three analyses answerable in the first month. This toolkit runs remedies from…
- Virtual Goods and Digital Brand Toolkit: NFTs, Game Items, and Online Identity · Toolkit — A brand that exists only in physical goods now has an infringement problem in places it never sold anything, and the doctrine governing those places is a mix…
- Trade Secret Litigation Checklist: Identification, Seizure, Protective Orders, and Damages · Checklist — 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…
- Estate and Legacy Rights Toolkit: Post-Mortem Publicity, Catalogs, and Succession · Toolkit — The right of publicity is the only major intellectual property interest whose survival after death depends on where the person happened to live, and most of…
- Consumer Surveys in Trademark Cases: What Eveready and Squirt Actually Measure · Article — Likelihood of confusion is an empirical question about what strangers believe, and a consumer survey is the only tool that measures it directly. This article…
- Protecting a Chemical or Materials Invention: A Practitioner's Guide to Claim Drafting, Unexpected Results, Formulation Secrecy, and Regulatory Disclosure · Guide — This guide takes a chemical or materials invention from laboratory notebook to enforceable position, in the order the decisions actually arise. It starts with…
- Brand Transition Toolkit: Rebranding, Name Changes, and Sunset Plans · Toolkit — A rebrand is a legal project disguised as a marketing project, and the legal decisions - clearance, filing sequence, transition licensing, and what happens to…
- Executing a Rebrand: A Practitioner's Guide to Clearance, Filings, Transition Licenses, and Sunset Plans · Guide — This guide is the operational half of the Marksy article on rebranding, and it assumes you know why a name change does not tack and why a small senior user is…
- Trademark Due Diligence in Mergers and Acquisitions: An IP Buyer's Guide · Guide — This guide walks a buyer's counsel through trademark due diligence in an acquisition, stage by stage, from the day the letter of intent is signed to the day…
- The First Seventy-Two Hours: Data Breach Notification and What the Law Actually Requires · Article — A data breach is a legal problem disguised as a technical one, and most of the mistakes are made in the first three days by people trying to be helpful. This…
- Biotechnology and Synthetic Biology IP Toolkit: Sequences, Deposits, Scope, and Genetic Resources · Toolkit — Biotechnology sits at the point where three doctrines are hardest: eligibility, because the invention often begins with something found in nature; written…
- Running an E-Commerce Counterfeit Enforcement Program: A Practitioner's Guide to Test Buys, TROs, Asset Freezes, and Platform Takedowns · Guide — This guide is the operational half of the Marksy article on Schedule A litigation, and it treats litigation as the last of eight layers rather than the first.…
- The First Amendment and Trademark Toolkit: Expressive Use, Content Bars, and Speech-Adjacent Enforcement · Toolkit — Trademark law regulates words, and words are speech - which is why the First Amendment runs through this field in three separate places that practitioners…
- Biotechnology IP Checklist: Eligibility and Scope, Sequence Listings and Deposits, Written Description Evidence, Resource Provenance, and Collaboration Terms · Checklist — This checklist builds a biotechnology IP position in the order that makes the later steps possible, and it begins where the losses actually happen. Phase one…
- Copyleft and Consequences: Open Source Licensing and the Software Supply Chain · Article — Almost every modern software product is assembled rather than written, and the assembly is governed by licenses most engineering teams have never read. This…
- Real Estate and Development Branding Toolkit: Property Marks, Naming Rights, and Images · Toolkit — A building outlives its owner, its developer, its architect, and usually its name, and the intellectual property attached to it changes hands independently of…
- Administering a Deceased Personality's Rights: A Practitioner's Guide to Descendibility, Registration, and Licensing · Guide — This guide runs a deceased personality's rights from the first month of administration through a mature licensing program. It begins with the domicile evidence…
- When a Trademark License Becomes a Franchise: The FTC Rule, State Registration, and the Accidental Franchisor · Article — Every franchise contains a trademark license, and a surprising number of trademark licenses turn out to be franchises. This article explains the three-element…
- Fair Use Risk Assessment Checklist: Four Factors, Documentation, and Escalation · Checklist — This checklist takes one proposed or completed use of a third party's copyrighted work and drives it to a signed, dated decision — proceed, proceed with…
- Robotics and Autonomous Systems IP Toolkit: Stacks, Sensor Data, Safety Files, and Integration · Toolkit — A robot is four assets pretending to be one: hardware, a software stack, a corpus of sensor and field data, and a safety file that is the actual barrier to…
- Clean, Natural, Dermatologist-Tested: The Words That Sell Cosmetics and the Proof They Require · Article — Cosmetics sit at the intersection of three regimes that use the same words differently, and most of the sector's legal exposure comes from a single question:…
- Tendering and Winning an IP Coverage Claim: A Practitioner's Guide to Notice, Reservation of Rights, Defense Costs, and Allocation · Guide — This guide is the operational half of the Marksy article on advertising injury coverage, and it assumes you know what Coverage B covers and why the trade dress…
- IP Tax and Holding Structure Toolkit: Entities, Transfers, Royalties, and Documentation · Toolkit — Where a company's intellectual property sits determines who is taxed on the income it produces, and the evidence that decides the question is generated almost…
- Interoperability and Reverse Engineering Checklist: Clean Room, Documentation, Terms, and Circumvention · Checklist — A reverse engineering project is defensible or indefensible on decisions made in its first week, and none of them is doctrinal. This checklist runs the work in…
- Where Intellectual Property Stops and Antitrust Starts: Misuse, Tying, Pools, and Refusals to License · Article — Intellectual property confers a right to exclude and antitrust law constrains how that right is used, and the boundary between them is narrower and more…
- Overcoming an Ornamentality or Failure-to-Function Refusal: A Practitioner's Guide to Placement, Secondary Source, and Evidence · Guide — This guide is the operational half of the Marksy article on failure to function, and it assumes you know the four ornamentality factors and the secondary…
- Localising Content for Foreign Markets: A Practitioner's Guide to Translation Rights, Dubbing and Subtitles, Moral Rights, and Vendor Contracts · Guide — This guide builds a localisation programme that produces owned assets rather than a decade of unattributed derivative works. It begins with the clearance…
- Defamation and Content Liability Toolkit: Review, Retraction, Anti-SLAPP, and Coverage · Toolkit — Copyright tells a publisher what it may reproduce. It says nothing about the far larger risk of being sued for what a piece actually says. This toolkit…
- Trademark Litigation Toolkit: From Complaint to Judgment in Federal Court · Toolkit — This toolkit is a guided tour of everything in the Marksy corpus that bears on a federal trademark case, arranged in the order a case actually happens. It…
- Negotiating University and Research Institution Agreements: A Practitioner's Guide to Sponsored Research, Material Transfers, and Licences · Guide — This guide sets out how to negotiate with a university or research institution, starting from the observation that most of the terms a company objects to are…
- Reseller, Dealer, and Channel Partner IP Toolkit: Licences, Territory, Co-Branding, and Exit · Toolkit — A channel programme hands a brand to people the owner does not employ, in places the owner cannot see, and the paperwork that governs it is usually a sales…
- Real Estate Branding Checklist: Name Clearance, Naming Rights Terms, Signage and Renderings, Association Marks, and Transfer on Sale · Checklist — This checklist runs a property brand from the naming meeting to the disposal, in the order that keeps each decision cheap. Phase one asks the four questions…
- First to File Wins: Trademark Squatting, Bad Faith, and Brand Protection Outside the United States · Article — In most of the world, trademark rights belong to whoever files first, and use counts for very little. American brand owners discover this when a stranger in…
- From Descriptive to Distinctive: How a Weak Mark Acquires Secondary Meaning · Article — A descriptive mark is not registrable on the Principal Register and not enforceable in court unless consumers have come to treat it as a brand name rather than…
- How Far Does a U.S. Trademark Reach? Abitron, Extraterritoriality, and the Global Brand · Article — In 2023 the Supreme Court erased a ninety-million-dollar trademark judgment and, with it, seventy years of assumptions about how far American trademark law…
- Fashion IP Checklist: Design Documentation, Separability Analysis, Filing Sequence, Season Calendar, and Counterfeit Response · Checklist — This checklist runs a fashion intellectual property programme season by season, in the order the deadlines actually fall. It opens with the design…
- Made Where? Country-of-Origin Claims, Assembly, and the Label That Has to Be True · Article — A country-of-origin claim is one of the few statements on a package that has a legal definition, and the definition is stricter than almost anyone selling a…
- Office Action Response Toolkit: Refusals, Deadlines, and the Arguments That Work · Toolkit — An office action is not a rejection; it is an examining attorney's opening argument, and almost every one can be answered if you diagnose it correctly and file…
- The Marketing Nobody Paid For: Event Marks, Sponsorship Exclusivity, and Ambush Advertising · Article — Ambush marketing is the practice of associating a brand with an event it has not paid to sponsor, and most of it is perfectly lawful. This article explains…
- The Legal Layers of a Website: IP, Contracts, Privacy, and the DMCA Before You Ship · Article — A website or app is not one legal object but five stacked layers, and each layer answers to a different body of law. This article maps what is actually…
- Taking an IP Case Up on Appeal: A Practitioner's Guide to Preservation, Standards of Review, Briefing, and the Federal Circuit · Guide — This guide takes an intellectual property case from adverse judgment through mandate, in the order the work actually has to be done. It covers deciding whether…
- IP Holding Structure Checklist: Entity and Ownership Mapping, Transfer Documentation, Royalty Terms, Substance and Recordation, and Audit Files · Checklist — This checklist tests whether an intellectual property ownership structure is supported by the documents that actually exist, which is the question every…
- Trademark Clearance Searching: What a Knockout Search Can and Cannot Tell You · Article — A free search of the USPTO database is a screening tool, not clearance, and the difference between the two is measured in six figures. This article explains…
- Raising a Trademark Fair Use Defense: A Practitioner's Guide to Classic Fair Use, Nominative Use, and Comparative Advertising · Guide — This guide is the execution manual for a trademark fair use defense, from the hour the demand letter arrives to the verdict form. It works through twelve…
- Expressive Use and Parody Risk Checklist: Clearing Creative Uses of Third-Party Marks · Checklist — This checklist runs a creative project that uses somebody else's trademark through a twelve-phase clearance screen, from intake to sign-off, in the order the…
- Waiting Too Long: Laches, Acquiescence, and Estoppel in Trademark Law · Article — The Lanham Act contains no statute of limitations, which sounds like good news for trademark owners until you understand what replaced it. In its place sit…
- Terms That Actually Bind: Online Contract Formation, Arbitration Clauses, and Why Courts Refuse to Enforce Your Terms of Service · Article — A company's terms of service are worth exactly as much as its ability to prove a particular user agreed to a particular version on a particular day, and most…
- Advising a Fintech or Payments Business: A Practitioner's Guide to Patentability, Market Data Licences, Model Governance, and Vendor Terms · Guide — This guide takes a practitioner through a financial technology engagement in the order the work actually has to happen, which is not the order the client…
- Website and App Launch IP Toolkit: The Pre-Ship Legal Stack · Toolkit — This toolkit is the curated route through everything Marksy publishes on getting a website or mobile app legally ready to ship, organized as the nine…
- Building a Marketing Communications Compliance Program: A Practitioner's Guide to Consent Capture, Suppression, Vendors, and Litigation Defense · Guide — This guide builds a messaging compliance program from an unaudited marketing list to one that can be defended, and it is written for the lawyer who will have…
- Bringing a Concurrent Use Proceeding: A Practitioner's Guide to Territory, Consent, and the Board's Jurisdiction · Guide — A working guide to the rarest inter partes proceeding at the Board, written from both chairs. It starts with the four jurisdictional prerequisites that…
- Agricultural Technology IP Checklist: Farm Data Ownership, Equipment and Repair Access, Agronomic Model Terms, Grower and Cooperative Agreements, and Trial Data Provenance · Checklist — This checklist audits an agricultural technology position in the order the exposure sits, and it opens by setting aside the question the client will raise.…
- The Machine That Decides: Robotics, Autonomy, and the Rights in a System That Acts · Article — A robot is not one invention but a stack, and the legal questions differ at every layer of it. The mechanical platform is patentable in the ordinary way; the…
- The Section 2 Bars: Surnames, Geography, Deception, and the First Amendment · Article — Section 2 of the Lanham Act, 15 USC 1052, is where most trademark applications die, and it does not treat all failures alike. This article walks the whole…
- Maritime and Shipbuilding IP Toolkit: Designs, Yards, Classification, and Voyage Data · Toolkit — A ship is designed in one country, built in another, registered in a third, classed by a private society, and operated worldwide, which makes it the hardest…
- You Cannot Copyright a Workout: Fitness Formats, Studio Brands, and the Rights in Moving People Around a Room · Article — A fitness business believes it owns its format, and it almost certainly does not. This article explains why a sequence of exercises falls into the gap between…
- Trademark Settlement Checklist: Scope, Territory, Quality, and the Terms People Forget · Checklist — Sixteen phases for drafting a trademark settlement that still works in 2040. It opens with the one-page valuation table that decides whether to settle at all,…
- Children's Privacy Compliance Checklist: Audience Analysis, Age Gates, Parental Consent, Data Minimization, and Ad Tech · Checklist — This checklist audits a product for children's privacy exposure and then remediates it, starting where enforcement actually starts rather than where the…
- Advising a Mining or Energy Business: A Practitioner's Guide to Geological Data, Process Secrecy, Joint Ventures, and Community Agreements · Guide — This guide is for counsel taking responsibility for the intellectual property position of a mining, oil and gas, or natural resources business, and it starts…
- Trade Show and Exhibition IP Toolkit: Disclosure Timing, Booths, Enforcement, and Meetings · Toolkit — A trade show stand is a public disclosure, a marketing asset, an enforcement venue, and an intelligence exercise conducted simultaneously by everybody present.…
- Where an Employee Can Go: Noncompetes, Restrictive Covenants, and Employee Mobility · Article — The law of employee mobility changed more between 2020 and 2026 than in the previous fifty years, and most form agreements still reflect the older world. This…
- Candor and Its Consequences: The Duty to Disclose, Inequitable Conduct, and Life After Therasense · Article — Inequitable conduct was once pleaded in nearly every patent case and rendered whole patents unenforceable on thin showings. Therasense changed that, and the…
- Advising a Genetic Testing or Genomics Business: A Practitioner's Guide to Consent Architecture, Research Use, Database Licensing, and Law Enforcement Requests · Guide — A working guide to acting for consumer genomics companies, clinical testing laboratories, biobanks, and the partners who license their databases. It opens with…
- Proving and Defeating Trademark Abandonment: A Litigator's Guide to Non-Use, Intent to Resume, and Excusable Non-Use · Guide — This guide is the operational companion to Marksy's abandonment article, and it assumes the doctrine rather than re-teaching it. It walks a single invented…
- Jewellery and Watch IP Checklist: Design Filings, Hallmark and Marking Compliance, Serialisation and Authentication, Resale and Servicing Terms, and Counterfeit Response · Checklist — This checklist audits the intellectual property position of a jewellery or watch business in the order the questions arise. It starts with the design portfolio…
- Employee Invention and Inventor Compensation Toolkit: Agreements, Statutes, Disclosure, and Awards · Toolkit — An invention belongs to the person who made it until a document moves it, and the document is frequently missing, misdrafted, or unsigned. This toolkit…
- Data Licensing and Rights Toolkit: Provenance, Scope, Derived Data, and Compliance · Toolkit — 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 an ANDA or BPCIA Case: A Practitioner's Guide to Paragraph IV Notices, the Thirty-Month Stay, the Patent Dance, and Exclusivity · Guide — This guide runs a regulatory patent case from the listing decision through judgment or settlement, for either side, on the statutory timetable that drives…
- Proving or Defending a Software Copyright Claim: A Practitioner's Guide to Filtration, Access, and Expert Analysis · Guide — A litigation guide for software copyright disputes on either side, ordered the way these cases are actually won rather than the way they are pleaded. It starts…
- Franchise System IP Checklist: Mark and System Documentation, Disclosure and Registration Records, Standards and Inspection Evidence, Territory and Transfer Terms, and Post-Termination De-Identification · Checklist — A ten-phase working checklist for franchisors, franchisees, master franchisees, and licensors who may have become franchisors without noticing. Phases one…
- The Sentence That Costs You: Defamation, Publisher Risk, and the Liability That Copyright Does Not Cover · Article — Content businesses spend their legal budgets on copyright and get sued for defamation. The two risks look similar from a distance and behave nothing alike:…
- Trademark License Quality Control Checklist: Standards, Inspection, and Recordkeeping · Checklist — This checklist is the working document for running a United States trademark license so that the licensee's use keeps inuring to the owner under 15 U.S.C. §…
- Visual Content Clearance Checklist: Rights, Releases, Metadata, and Usage Limits · Checklist — Fifteen phases that take visual content from the commissioning engagement to the demand letter, with a campaign clearance workflow built around five gates that…
- Ideas Sent to You: Open Innovation, Hackathons, and the Submissions Nobody Wanted to Receive · Article — An organisation that invites ideas from outside creates an obligation it did not have before, and an organisation that receives them unasked creates a…
- Copyright Preemption Checklist: Subject Matter, Equivalence, Extra Elements, and Claim-by-Claim Screening · Checklist — This checklist screens every state-law count in a copying case before the complaint is filed, and attacks one that was filed without the analysis. It runs the…
- Running a Crowdfunding Campaign Without Losing Your IP: A Practitioner's Guide to Filing Timing, Backer Terms, Manufacturing, and Copycats · Guide — This guide is for counsel advising a crowdfunding project, and it is organised around one irreversible event. The campaign launch is a public disclosure of an…
- Clearing a Track: A Practitioner's Guide to Sync, Mechanical, Master, and Sample Licenses · Guide — This guide is the operational walkthrough for clearing music: thirteen numbered stages running from the use specification you write before making a single…
- Who Owns the Work: Employees, Contractors, Joint Authors, and Work Made for Hire · Article — Copyright vests initially in the author, and paying someone to create a work almost never makes the payer the author. This article explains the two exclusive…
- Owning a Character: Protectable Characters, Fictional Worlds, and the Line Between Idea and Icon · Article — A character can be protected independently of the work it appears in, and the tests courts use are narrower and more demanding than merchandising practice…
- Conducting or Defending a Royalty Audit: A Practitioner's Guide to Audit Clauses, Scope, Findings, and Settlement · Guide — A working guide to running a royalty audit as licensor or defending one as licensee. It opens with the clause review that determines what is possible, since…
- Branding Money: Trademarks, Advertising, and Naming in Financial Services · Article — Financial services is the other industry where a brand name has to clear regulators before it can clear the market. Unlike pharmaceuticals, the gatekeepers…
- Public Data Use Checklist: Source and Licence Verification, Restriction Screening, Derived Work Analysis, Attribution Compliance, and Refresh Obligations · Checklist — This checklist audits a product built on public data, and it is organised around the four ways such businesses actually fail: a feed stops, a share-alike…
- Anticounterfeiting Program Checklist: Recordation, Marketplace Takedowns, and Seizure Response · Checklist — This checklist turns counterfeiting doctrine and border-enforcement mechanics into a ten-phase program a practitioner can work top to bottom, from the…