Launching a Website or App Without Legal Debt: A Practitioner's Guide to the Pre-Ship Legal Stack
By Casey Scott McKay ·
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 out to launch day. It covers brand clearance and the knockout-to-opinion ladder, domain and handle acquisition including what to do when the name is already taken, the intent-to-use application and the identification of goods, contractor and employee IP assignments with model granting language that works for foreign authors, the open source audit and the AGPL decision, assent-screen design and the evidence architecture that wins arbitration motions two years later, the terms of service clause by clause, the script inventory that has to precede the privacy policy, consent tooling and Global Privacy Control, data processing agreements and transfer mechanics, the six-dollar DMCA designated-agent registration and the takedown workflow behind it, the accessibility audit, advertising and endorsement review including ROSCA subscription flows, the vulnerability disclosure policy and incident runbook, and the copyright and trademark filing calendar you leave behind. It carries one worked example — Brindle Labs shipping NINEBAR — through every stage, and closes with a launch-day go/no-go table, consolidated cost and timeline ranges for bootstrapped and funded teams, and a triage list for the founder who has three thousand dollars and three weeks. The doctrine lives in the companion article; this is the execution.
IP and Technology > Internet | Guide | Published 13 September 2024 - Updated 1 November 2025 | Casey Scott McKay - marksy.us
Summary. This is the sequence: fifteen numbered stages on a T-minus calendar from six months before launch to the docket you hand over after it. Each stage gives you the move, the governing rule, the realistic cost and elapsed time, and the trap that eats the stage. You get model granting language for contractor assignments (including authors in civil-law countries whose copyright you cannot buy), an assent-screen specification and the evidence architecture behind it, a service-provider restriction clause that satisfies both Article 28 and the CCPA regulations, a repeat-infringer policy paragraph, a vulnerability-disclosure safe harbor, and a ROSCA pre-billing block. Decision trees cover the three forks that actually stop teams: a yellow-light clearance result, a domain someone else already owns, and an AGPL package in the core service. One worked example — Brindle Labs shipping NINEBAR on 15 April 2025 — runs through all of it, with a launch-day go/no-go table and cost ranges at the end. The doctrine is in the companion article; this is the execution.
Keywords: website launch legal stack · trademark clearance search · intent-to-use application · domain and handle acquisition · contractor ip assignment · open source license audit · software bill of materials · clickwrap assent design · terms of service drafting · privacy policy data map · cookie consent management platform · global privacy control · data processing agreement · dmca designated agent registration · repeat infringer policy · wcag accessibility audit · ftc endorsement guides · rosca subscription disclosure · incident response plan · copyright group registration
This is premium Marksy content — the full document is available to subscribers.