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)
- Inventorship and Patent Ownership Disputes Toolkit · Toolkit — Inventorship is the most consequential determination in patent practice that is routinely made by administrative default, and the consequences of getting it…
- Trade Compliance Checklist: Product Classification Records, Origin Determination Evidence, Supply Chain Diligence Files, Recordation and Marking, and Detention and Seizure Response · Checklist — A nine-phase working checklist for a trade compliance programme, covering the records that have to exist before anybody asks for them. Phases one and two cover…
- Structuring a Co-Branding or Joint Venture Brand Arrangement: A Practitioner's Guide · Guide — A structuring and drafting guide for arrangements where two companies put their marks on one product. It begins with structure selection - simple co-branding,…
- Protecting Privilege in an IP Matter: A Practitioner's Guide to Patent Agents, Common Interest, Opinions, and Clawback · Guide — This guide builds a privilege programme for an IP practice and then runs it through the situations that break it. It starts with communication hygiene -…
- The Partner Who Sells for You: Resellers, Dealers, and the Brand You Hand to Someone Else · Article — A channel programme hands a brand to people the brand owner does not employ, cannot supervise closely, and will eventually want to remove. Every element of…
- Marketing Communications Toolkit: TCPA, CAN-SPAM, and Consent Records · Toolkit — Marketing communications carry the largest per-message statutory damages exposure in ordinary commercial practice, and the liability turns almost entirely on…
- Federal Contract IP Checklist: Rights Categories, Assertions Table, Legends, Subject Inventions, and Deliverable Review · Checklist — This checklist runs the intellectual property questions in a federal contract from pre-proposal through delivery, challenge, and transaction. It begins with…
- Every Step Recorded: Sports Technology, Athlete Data, and the Body as a Data Source · Article — An athlete at the top of any professional sport is measured continuously — position, acceleration, heart rate, sleep, recovery, sometimes blood chemistry — by…
- Entity Name and DBA Checklist: Formation, Registration, Clearance, and Conflicts · Checklist — Business naming goes wrong in a predictable order, and this checklist reverses it. It runs eight phases: generate and screen candidates, knock them out, clear…
- Deploying Recruitment and Workforce Technology: A Practitioner's Guide to Automated Decisions, Bias Audits, Vendor Terms, and Employee Data · Guide — This guide takes a practitioner from an empty page to a functioning workforce data programme, in the order the work actually has to happen. It starts with the…
- Anticircumvention and Repair Toolkit: Section 1201, Exemptions, and Right to Repair · Toolkit — Section 1201 prohibits circumventing technological measures independently of whether any copyright is infringed, which makes it the provision that reaches…
- Keyword Advertising, SEO, and Search Marketing Toolkit · Toolkit — Search is where most American trademark disputes now happen, and almost none of them resolve the way clients expect. This toolkit maps the whole subject — the…
- Protecting and Licensing Plant and Agricultural Innovation: A Practitioner's Guide to Filing Routes, Seed Contracts, and Enforcement · Guide — This guide runs a plant and agricultural intellectual property programme as operational work rather than as doctrine. It starts with route selection and the…
- Architectural IP Checklist: Registration Scope, Drawing Deposits, Ownership Terms, Photography Rights, and Infringement Comparison · Checklist — This checklist runs an architectural practice's intellectual property against the dates that actually decide outcomes. It opens with the two registrations most…
- The Bargain of Disclosure: Enablement, Written Description, and Why Broad Claims Fail · Article — A patent is a bargain: the public grants exclusivity and the inventor grants a disclosure that teaches the invention. Section 112 is where that bargain is…
- Fighting or Defending Parallel Imports: A Practitioner's Guide to Material Differences, Customs, and Distribution Control · Guide — This guide is the execution manual for a gray market problem on either side of it, and assumes the doctrine covered in the companion article rather than…
- Making Works Reachable: Accessibility Exceptions, Assistive Technology, and the Formats Nobody Licenses · Article — Accessibility is the strongest position in copyright and almost nobody treats it that way, which is why organisations buy converted files they are entitled to…
- Running a Freedom-to-Operate Analysis: A Practitioner's Guide to Searching, Claim Charts, and Written Opinions · Guide — This guide runs a freedom-to-operate analysis end to end, in fifteen stages, from the scoping conversation that determines the cost to the report that an…
- Architecture and Construction IP Toolkit: Buildings, Drawings, Contracts, and Images · Toolkit — Architectural intellectual property runs on two overlapping copyright regimes plus a set of contract and professional conventions that decide most disputes…
- Protecting a Nonprofit or Membership Brand: A Practitioner's Guide to Chapter Licences, Volunteer Works, and Fundraising Compliance · Guide — This guide builds a nonprofit brand programme in the order that matches how these organisations actually fail. It starts with registration, including the…
- Claim Construction Checklist: Term Selection, the Intrinsic Record, and Proposed Constructions · Checklist — Claim construction decides most patent cases and it is worked on a schedule that starts months before the hearing. This checklist runs it in thirteen phases:…
- IP Arbitration and Alternative Dispute Resolution Toolkit: Clauses, Forums, and Awards · Toolkit — Most intellectual property disputes with a contract at their centre end privately, and the choice to arbitrate is usually made years earlier by whoever drafted…
- Genericness Defense and Prevention Checklist: Evidence, Style Rules, and Survey Design · Checklist — This checklist runs a genericness matter from prevention through trial in twelve phases a practitioner can work top to bottom. Phases 1 through 7 build the…
- Freedom-to-Operate and Patent Clearance Toolkit · Toolkit — A freedom-to-operate analysis answers one question: can we sell this without being sued successfully. It is the most requested and most misunderstood patent…
- IP Arbitration Checklist: Clause Review, Arbitrability Screening, Tribunal Selection, Evidence and Confidentiality, and Award Enforcement · Checklist — This checklist drafts, responds to, and runs an intellectual property arbitration, treating the clause as the strategic instrument that fixes forum, expertise,…
- What a Patent Is Worth in Court: Reasonable Royalties, Lost Profits, and Apportionment · Article — A patent damages award answers a narrow question: what would the patentee have had if the infringement had not happened. The statute sets a floor of a…
- PTAB Practice Toolkit: Inter Partes Review, Post-Grant Review, and Parallel Proceedings · Toolkit — The Board is a second forum for validity, on a preponderance standard, with a fixed schedule and a hard bar, and the decision to use it is made in the first…
- Fair Use and Permissions Toolkit: Clearing Copyright, Trademark, and Publicity Rights · Toolkit — This toolkit is the curated shelf for anyone who has to decide whether a piece of content can ship — a marketing campaign, a documentary, a podcast, a product…
- Brand Licensing Program Toolkit: Structure, Franchise Risk, and Insolvency · Toolkit — A licensing program turns a brand into revenue and, if built badly, into a lawsuit or an abandoned trademark. This toolkit maps the four structural risks that…
- Litigating a Trade Secret Misappropriation Claim: A Practitioner's Guide to Pleading, Seizure, and Injunctions · Guide — This guide runs a trade secret case from the departure that starts it through trial and remedies, from both chairs. It opens with the seventy-two hours of…
- Digital Replica and Synthetic Media Toolkit: Consent, Contracts, and Enforcement · Toolkit — A convincing synthetic performance can be produced from a few minutes of recorded voice and a handful of photographs, and the legal response has been a…
- The Lawful Use Requirement: Why the USPTO Refuses Cannabis, Kratom, and Vape Marks · Article — Federal trademark registration requires use in commerce, and the USPTO has long read that phrase to mean lawful use in commerce — a requirement that appears…
- IP Insurance and Risk Transfer Toolkit: Coverage, Tender, and Specialty Policies · Toolkit — An intellectual property lawsuit costs more than most of the damages that resolve it, and a meaningful share of that cost is recoverable from an insurer if…
- Claiming a Compound: Markush Groups, Ranges, and the Chemistry of Patent Scope · Article — Chemical and materials inventions are claimed in a language of genus and species that no other field uses, and the whole of their commercial value turns on how…
- Biometric Data Checklist: Inventory, Notice, Written Consent, Retention, and Deletion · Checklist — Biometric exposure enters a company through a purchase order and is discovered through a lawsuit. This checklist runs the compliance work in twelve phases:…
- Automotive, Mobility, and Connected Vehicle IP Toolkit: Data, Suppliers, Software, and Parts · Toolkit — A modern vehicle is a computer that generates data continuously, assembled from components supplied by dozens of tier one and tier two vendors, sold to an…
- Trade Names and the Non-Trademark Layer Toolkit: Entities, DBAs, and Business Identity · Toolkit — Four different names attach to a single business, they live in four different systems, and only one of them gives the right to stop a competitor. This toolkit…
- Protecting a Biotechnology Invention: A Practitioner's Guide to Sequence Claims, Deposits, Written Description, and Genetic Resources · Guide — This guide takes a biotechnology invention from laboratory result to defensible position, in the order the decisions actually arise. It starts with publication…
- Generative AI IP Compliance Checklist: Policy, Provenance, Disclosure, and Contracts · Checklist — This checklist takes a company from "our designers started using Midjourney last spring" to a defensible IP file, in eleven phases a competent practitioner can…
- Rights That Outlive You: Post-Mortem Publicity, Descendibility, and the Estate's Toolkit · Article — The right of publicity is the only major intellectual property interest whose survival after death depends on where the person happened to live. This article…
- Fonts, Stock Assets, and Design Libraries Toolkit: Licences, Embedding, Audits, and Clearance · Toolkit — Typefaces are not protected by copyright in the United States and font software is, which is the single fact that explains almost everything about how this…
- Space and Satellite IP Toolkit: Jurisdiction, Payloads, Launch, and Earth Observation Data · Toolkit — Patent law is territorial and space is not anyone's territory, which is the structural problem underneath every intellectual property question in this sector.…
- Digital Health Data Checklist: Regulatory Classification, Business Associate Terms, Consent and Tracking, Breach Analysis, and Vendor Diligence · Checklist — This checklist builds a digital health data position starting from the determination that governs everything else: covered entity, business associate, or…
- Running a Reverse Engineering or Interoperability Program: A Practitioner's Guide to Clean Rooms, Contracts, and Section 1201 · Guide — This guide runs a reverse engineering or interoperability project from the decision to start through release and the litigation that may follow. It begins with…
- Cross-Border IP Litigation Toolkit: Parallel Proceedings, Section 1782, Evidence, and Recognition · Toolkit — Intellectual property rights are national and the products they cover are not, so a single commercial dispute becomes several lawsuits in several countries…
- International Trademark Toolkit: Madrid, Paris, and Country-by-Country Strategy · Toolkit — There is no such thing as an international trademark, and every good foreign filing decision starts from that fact. This toolkit maps the four routes a U.S.…
- Assertion and Funding Checklist: Plaintiff Structure, Standing, Funding Disclosure, Privilege, and Fee-Shifting Evidence · Checklist — This checklist runs the defence of an assertion-entity case in the order the decisions actually arise, with the front-loaded steps that determine the cost…
- Saying It in Another Language: Translation, Dubbing, and the Derivative Work Nobody Cleared · Article — A translation is a new copyrighted work made out of somebody else's copyrighted work, which means every localisation project is a derivative work project…
- Furniture, Homewares, and Interior Design IP Toolkit: Separability, Filings, and Reproduction · Toolkit — Furniture is the hardest category in copyright because a chair is a useful article and the law protects only what can be perceived separately from its…
- Trademarks in the Deal: Chain of Title, Security Interests, and the Anti-Assignment-in-Gross Rule · Article — A trademark is not a piece of property that travels on its own — it is a symbol of goodwill, and United States law refuses to let the symbol move without the…
- From Laboratory to Licence: University Technology Transfer, Sponsored Research, and the Spin-Out · Article — University research produces a great deal of patentable subject matter and comparatively few commercial products, and the gap between them is filled by a body…
- Esports, Streaming, and Competitive Gaming IP Toolkit: Licences, Broadcasts, Players, and Sponsors · Toolkit — Competitive gaming is the only major spectator sport whose playing field is a copyrighted work owned by a private company that can withdraw permission.…
- Branding a Real Estate Development: A Practitioner's Guide to Property Marks, Naming Rights, Renderings, and Community Names · Guide — This guide takes a development brand from the naming meeting to the disposal, in the order the decisions actually arise. It begins with the question that…
- Protecting a Fashion or Apparel Line: A Practitioner's Guide to Separability, Design Patents, Trade Dress, and Fast-Fashion Enforcement · Guide — This guide builds intellectual property protection around a fashion line as an operating process rather than a doctrinal survey. It starts with the triage that…
- Professional Services Branding Checklist: Entity and Firm Name, Credential and Superlative Claims, Advertising Review, Directory Listings, and Partner Departure · Checklist — This checklist runs a professional firm's brand under the two regimes that govern it at once — trademark law and the profession's own advertising and naming…
- Running a Fair Use Analysis: A Practitioner's Guide for Content, Software, and AI Training · Guide — This guide is the working procedure for clearing a use under Section 107 before anyone gets sued, and for defending it afterward. It walks through thirteen…
- Food and Beverage IP Checklist: Name Clearance, Label Review, Trade Dress Evidence, Recipe Protection, and Supplier Terms · Checklist — This checklist runs a food, beverage, or restaurant intellectual property programme in the order the deadlines fall. It opens with dual clearance - the…
- The View From Above: How Intellectual Property Cases Are Won and Lost on Appeal · Article — An appeal is not a second trial, and the single most consequential fact about appellate practice is that the questions available on appeal were decided months…
- Structuring IP Ownership for Tax and Business Reasons: A Practitioner's Guide to Holding Companies, Migration, Royalties, and Documentation · Guide — This guide sets out how to build and maintain an intellectual property ownership structure that the intellectual property file can actually support. It works…
- Descriptive and Nominative Fair Use: When You Can Legally Use Someone Else's Trademark · Article — American trademark law recognizes two distinct doctrines that both go by the name "fair use," and confusing them is one of the most expensive mistakes a…
- Litigating Expressive-Use Trademark Disputes: A Practitioner's Guide After Jack Daniel's v. VIP Products · Guide — This guide is the operational companion to Marksy's doctrinal article on Rogers and Jack Daniel's, and it assumes that doctrine rather than repeating it. It…
- Podcast and Audio Production Checklist: Show Name Clearance, Music and Sound Licensing, Guest Releases, Clip and Fair Use Review, and Distribution Terms · Checklist — This checklist runs an audio series from the naming decision to the archive, in the order the decisions arise and with gates at the points where a show should…
- Certification and Collective Mark Application Checklist: Standards, Governance, and Filing · Checklist — Twelve phases take a certification or collective mark from the first client meeting to the tenth-year renewal, every item written as an action you can complete…
- Brand Enforcement Toolkit: Watching, Warning, and Escalating · Toolkit — This toolkit assembles the Marksy corpus into one enforcement operating system: what to watch, how to triage what the watch returns, and how far up the…
- Platform Content Liability Checklist: Section 230 Elements, Carve-Outs, Moderation Records, and Escalation · Checklist — This checklist runs the platform-liability posture end to end, in the order the work should actually be done - before a complaint arrives, and again the week…
- Money Is Software Now: Payments, Trading Systems, and the Intellectual Property Inside Financial Technology · Article — Financial technology occupies the least hospitable corner of the patent system and one of the most contested corners of data licensing, which is an unusual…
- Declaratory Judgment Checklist: Case or Controversy, Venue, and the Race to the Courthouse · Checklist — Fourteen phases that take a threatened party from the demand letter on the desk to a judgment, a covenant, or a coexistence agreement. The order is deliberate…
- Two Owners, One Mark: Concurrent Use and the Geography of Coexistence · Article — American trademark law is unusual in allowing two unrelated companies to own federal registrations for the same mark, each limited to its own slice of the…
- Permission to Reach Someone: The TCPA, CAN-SPAM, and the Consent Records Nobody Keeps · Article — The federal statutes that govern calling, texting, and emailing customers are short, old, and carry per-message statutory damages that turn an ordinary…
- Advising an Agricultural Technology Business: A Practitioner's Guide to Farm Data Rights, Equipment Interfaces, Agronomic Models, and Grower Agreements · Guide — This guide takes a practitioner through an agricultural technology engagement in the order the work has to happen, and it begins by setting aside the question…
- Space and Satellite IP Checklist: Registry and Jurisdiction, Payload and Instrument Rights, Launch and Hosted Terms, Data Licensing, and Export Screening · Checklist — This checklist audits a space or satellite business in the order the questions actually arise, beginning with export classification and registration because…
- Filing on a Foreign Basis: A Practitioner's Guide to Section 44 Priority Claims, Home Registrations, and Scope Traps · Guide — This guide is the operational half of the Marksy article on Section 44, and it assumes you know the difference between a 44(d) priority claim and a 44(e)…
- Use It or Lose It: Trademark Abandonment, Non-Use, and the Three-Year Presumption · Article — American trademark rights are built on use, and they dissolve when use stops. This article explains the statutory definition of abandonment in 15 U.S.C. §…
- Building an Influencer and Endorsement Compliance Program: A Practitioner's Guide to Disclosures, Contracts, and Enforcement · Guide — This guide is the operational half of the Marksy article on endorsement law, and it assumes you know what a material connection is. It builds a working…
- Agricultural Technology IP Toolkit: Farm Data, Machinery, Agronomic Models, and Grower Terms · Toolkit — A modern combine harvester generates more data per hectare than most software products generate per customer, and the question of who owns it has never been…
- Settling a Trademark Dispute: A Practitioner's Guide to Coexistence Terms, Consent Judgments, and Enforcement · Guide — This guide runs a trademark settlement from the first valuation memo to the enforcement motion three years later, and it is written on the premise that the…
- Circular Economy IP Checklist: Process and Sorting Technology, Recycled Content Substantiation, Take-Back and Refurbishment Terms, Feedstock Supply Agreements, and Certification Marks · Checklist — A ten-phase working checklist for recyclers, reprocessors, refurbishers, brands running take-back programmes, and their advisers. Phases one and two inventory…
- Building a Children's and Teen Privacy Program: A Practitioner's Guide to Age Assurance, Verifiable Parental Consent, and Product Design · Guide — This guide builds a children's and teen privacy program from an unexamined product to one that can answer a regulator, and it starts where the exposure…
- What Comes Out of the Ground: Mining, Energy, and the Intellectual Property in an Extractive Business · Article — An extractive business does not think of itself as an intellectual property client, and it is wrong about that in a way that costs money. The orebody is not…
- Changing the Name on the Door: The Law and Logistics of a Rebrand · Article — A rebrand looks like a marketing project and behaves like a legal one. This article explains what actually happens to a company's rights when it changes its…
- Drafting a Trademark License That Survives: A Practitioner's Guide to Quality Control, Scope, and Royalties · Guide — This guide is the clause-by-clause execution manual for a United States trademark license, built around one deal carried from term sheet to termination: a…
- Schedule A Defendants: Mass Joinder, Frozen Accounts, and the Rise of the SAD Scheme · Article — A single complaint names four hundred anonymous online sellers, is filed under seal, and produces an ex parte order within days that freezes every one of their…
- Franchise System IP Toolkit: Marks, Standards, Territory, Transfers, and Termination · Toolkit — A franchise is a trademark licence with an operations manual attached, and the intellectual property questions inside it decide whether the network holds…
- The Most Personal Data There Is: Consumer Genomics, Research Consent, and What Happens to a Sample · Article — A tube of saliva produces a dataset that identifies its subject permanently, implicates relatives who consented to nothing, and cannot meaningfully be…
- Marketing Privacy Compliance Checklist: Notices, Consent, Vendors, and Rights Requests · Checklist — Sixteen phases for the privacy work a consumer brand's marketing stack actually generates, ordered by risk reduction per dollar rather than by statute. Phase…
- Inventorship Determination Checklist: Claim-by-Claim Analysis, Conception Records, Correction Papers, and Assignment Gaps · Checklist — This checklist determines who the inventors are, proves it, and fixes it when the answer changes - with gates at the points where an error stops being…
- Protecting a Jewellery or Watch Brand: A Practitioner's Guide to Design Filings, Hallmarks, Serialisation, Resale, and Counterfeits · Guide — This guide is for counsel responsible for a jewellery or watch brand. It is built around a fact that shapes everything else: the designs that matter most are…
- Bringing, Defending, or Opting Out of a Copyright Claims Board Proceeding: A Practitioner's Guide · Guide — This guide is the operational half of the Marksy article on the Copyright Claims Board, and it assumes you know the thirty-thousand-dollar cap and the…
- University and Research Institution IP Toolkit: Sponsored Research, Bayh-Dole, and Spin-Outs · Toolkit — A company negotiating with a university for the first time usually assumes it is negotiating with a company, and roughly two-thirds of the terms it objects to…
- Customs, Tariffs, and Trade Compliance Toolkit: Classification, Origin, Diligence, and Detentions · Toolkit — Almost every serious customs problem reduces to the same sentence: a position was taken, it may have been correct, and there is no record supporting it. This…
- The Dance Before the Drug: Hatch-Waxman, the Orange Book, Biosimilars, and Litigation on a Statutory Clock · Article — Life sciences patent litigation runs on a statutory timetable that most patent practitioners never encounter, and the timetable drives the strategy more than…
- Protecting a Trademark License Against Insolvency: A Practitioner's Guide to Drafting, Diligence, and Bankruptcy Court · Guide — This guide is the operational half of the Marksy article on Mission Product Holdings, and it assumes you know that rejection is breach rather than rescission.…
- Operating a Franchise System: A Practitioner's Guide to Disclosure, System Standards, Territory, Transfers, and Termination · Guide — A working guide to advising a franchisor, a franchisee, or a licensor who may have become one without noticing. It opens with the three reviews every franchise…
- DMCA Takedown Notice Checklist: Statutory Elements, Counter-Notice, and Repeat-Infringer Policies · Checklist — An eleven-phase working checklist for the notice-and-takedown machinery of 17 U.S.C. 512, written to be run top to bottom by a practitioner with a real matter…
- Copyright in Code: Structure, Sequence, and Organization After Google v. Oracle · Article — Software has never fit comfortably inside copyright, and the Supreme Court's decision in Google v. Oracle resolved less than most people believe. This article…
- Furniture and Homewares IP Checklist: Separability Analysis, Design Filing Sequence, Trade Dress Evidence, Licensing and Reissue Terms, and Copy Response · Checklist — This checklist audits the intellectual property position of a furniture or homewares business in the order the questions arise. It starts with the separability…
- Who Pays for the IP Lawsuit? Advertising Injury Coverage and the Duty to Defend · Article — A trademark or copyright complaint arrives and the first question the client asks is what it will cost. The better first question is whether someone else…
- Patent Assertion and Litigation Funding Toolkit: Plaintiff Structures, Funding, and Defence Economics · Toolkit — An assertion campaign is an economic exercise before it is a legal one, and the defendants who understand that settle for a fraction of what the ones who start…
- Pleading Around Preemption: A Practitioner's Guide to the Extra Element, Contract Claims, and Removal Strategy · Guide — This guide drafts a complaint that survives a preemption motion and attacks one that does not, working the two-prong analysis count by count before anything is…
- Licensing and Clearing Visual Content: A Practitioner's Guide to Stock, Commissions, Releases, and Usage Terms · Guide — An operational guide to visual content on both sides of the transaction, built around the documents that actually govern rather than the categories marketing…