IP, Internet & Compliance
Intangible value. Concrete protection.
For an online or brand-driven business, the assets that carry the most value are intangible, the name customers recognize, the content and software you own, the data you collect, and the promotions and platforms that drive revenue. Hank has spent more than 29 years protecting those assets and keeping the businesses that depend on them inside the rules, from the first trademark filing through the compliance question a regulator or a plaintiff eventually raises.
Protection begins with the intellectual property. Hank registers and enforces trademarks, copyrights, trade dress, and rights of publicity, recovers infringing domain names through UDRP proceedings and the federal Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, and litigates the disputes when an asset is copied, diluted, or misappropriated. Owning a right and being able to enforce it are different things, and the difference shows up in how the asset was registered, documented, and licensed before the conflict arrived.
Beyond the assets, an online business answers to a stack of rules built for the medium. Hank drafts the terms of service and privacy policy that bind your users and disclose what you collect, builds the clickwrap acceptance that makes those terms enforceable, and maps which of Section 230, the DMCA, CAN-SPAM, COPPA, the state privacy statutes, and the FTC's advertising and auto-renewal rules reach your business. When you run a sweepstakes or contest, he structures the promotion around the prize, chance, and consideration line that separates a legal giveaway from an illegal lottery, and handles the registrations a national promotion requires.
Hank has counseled software and SaaS companies, eCommerce sellers, recording artists and entertainment clients, consumer brands, and the marketers who run their promotions, often as the outside counsel they call when a takedown, an infringement, or a compliance question arrives. Every engagement works toward the same result, intellectual property and an online business you can build on, license, and defend without a regulator, a platform, or a competitor deciding the terms for you.
Services Include
- Trademarks and brand protection
- Copyrights and content rights
- Domain name disputes
- Software and IP licensing
- Internet and eCommerce law
- Privacy policies and website terms
- Sweepstakes and skill contests
- IP litigation and enforcement
IP, Internet & Compliance Insights
Intellectual Property
Trade Secret Protection for Texas Businesses: What Qualifies, What You Must Do to Keep It, and What Happens When Someone Takes It
A trade secret is the one form of intellectual property that a single disclosure can destroy in an instant, with nothing you or any court can do to get it back. A patent expires 20 years from filing and, as long as maintenance fees are paid, stays enforceable no matter how widely the holder discloses the invention. A trademark can last indefinitely as long as it's used in commerce and renewed.
Read articleTrademark Basics for Business Owners: How Federal Registration Works and Why It's Worth More Than Common Law Rights
A trademark is any word, name, symbol, design, or combination that identifies the source of goods or services and distinguishes them from those offered by others. Your company name, your logo, your product names, your taglines, and even distinctive product packaging can function as trademarks.
Read articleRight of Publicity in Texas for Names, Images, and Digital Replicas
Texas protects commercial identity through common law misappropriation and Texas Property Code Chapter 26. The governing rule turns on whether the person is living, which identity attribute the defendant used, and how.
Read articleTrademarks
What a Trademark Is and the Rights Federal Registration Provides
A trademark is any word, phrase, symbol, design, or combination of these that identifies the source of goods or services and distinguishes them from those offered by others. The name on the label, the logo on the packaging, the slogan in the advertising, and even the distinctive shape of a product or its packaging can all function as trademarks if consumers associate them with a particular source.
Read articleWhy Some Trademarks Are Stronger Than Others
Every trademark falls somewhere on a spectrum of distinctiveness that runs from fanciful (the strongest) to generic (the weakest, and unprotectable). A business that picks a strong mark from the start spends less on lawyers and more on growth. Understanding the spectrum is the single most important step a business owner can take before choosing a brand name.
Read articleWhy a Trademark Clearance Search Comes Before Everything Else
A trademark clearance search answers one question before a business commits money to a brand name. Can you use this mark and register it without running into someone who got there first? The search comes before the domain registration, before the logo design, before the business cards, before the website, and before the USPTO filing.
Read articleHow Federal Trademark Registration Works at the USPTO
The United States Patent and Trademark Office processes roughly 750,000 trademark applications per year. Each application follows a defined sequence from filing through examination, publication, opposition period, and (if everything goes well) registration.
Read articleCommon Trademark Mistakes That Cost Businesses Time and Money
Most trademark problems are preventable. The businesses that end up in expensive disputes, abandon applications, or lose the right to use their own brand names almost always made an avoidable mistake early in the process, usually before they consulted a trademark attorney.
Read articleTTAB Proceedings and How They Differ from Federal Court
The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board handles disputes over the right to register a mark. TTAB proceedings look like litigation in many ways, but the Board can only decide registrability. It can't award damages, issue injunctions, or order anyone to stop using a mark.
Read articleEnforcing Your Trademark Rights
A federal trademark registration provides the owner a set of enforcement tools that common law rights alone don't offer. Nationwide constructive notice, a presumption of validity, access to federal court, the ability to record with U.S. Customs, and the potential for statutory damages in counterfeiting cases all flow from registration.
Read articleTrademark Protection for Architectural Works & Other Designs
Architects, owners and developers can benefit from understanding the role that intellectual property law plays in protecting architectural plans and building designs. Copyright law lends itself more to the types of protections that architects would tend to seek, while trademark law is generally more applicable to building or business owners.
Read articleTrademark Licensing and Quality Control
A trademark license is a contractual grant of permission to use a mark in connection with specified goods or services, without transferring ownership. Licensing allows a brand owner to expand into new markets, new product categories, and new territories by authorizing a third party to manufacture, sell, or distribute products bearing the licensor's mark, in exchange for royalties or other compensation.
Read articleCopyrights
Copyright Duration and the Public Domain
Copyright expires. Every copyrighted work eventually enters the public domain, where anyone can use it without permission, without a license, and without paying royalties. But "eventually" can mean very different things depending on when the work was created, whether it was published, who created it, and whether the copyright owner followed the formalities that older law required.
Read articleCopyright Assignments and Transfers
Copyright is a bundle of exclusive rights. Reproduction, distribution, public performance, public display, and the right to create derivative works are all separate sticks in the bundle, and each can be transferred, licensed, or retained independently.
Read articleCopyright Registration and Why Timing Determines What You Can Recover
Copyright exists the moment an original work is fixed in a tangible medium. Registration with the U.S. Copyright Office is voluntary. But the remedies available in an infringement suit depend almost entirely on whether the owner registered, and when.
Read articleCopyright Ownership and the Work-for-Hire Doctrine
Copyright belongs to the person who creates the work. 17 U.S.C. § 201(a). That default rule governs every photograph, every line of code, every design, and every written document produced by anyone, anywhere, unless an exception applies. For businesses, the most important exception is the work-for-hire doctrine, which vests copyright in the employer or commissioning party rather than in the individual who created the work.
Read articleProving Copyright Infringement
A copyright infringement claim requires proof of two things. First, the plaintiff must own a valid copyright in the work. Second, the defendant must have copied protectable elements of that work. Both elements must be established before a court reaches the question of remedies, and both involve layers of analysis that determine whether a claim survives a motion to dismiss, survives summary judgment, and ultimately prevails at trial.
Read articleFair Use, the Four-Factor Test, and When It Doesn't Protect You
Fair use is the most commonly invoked and most commonly misunderstood defense in copyright law. Under 17 U.S.C. § 107, the fair use of a copyrighted work for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research is not infringement.
Read articleDMCA Takedown Notices
A DMCA takedown notice is the most commonly used copyright enforcement tool on the Internet. Under Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a copyright owner who finds infringing material on a website or platform can send a written notice to the service provider's designated agent, and the provider must expeditiously remove or disable access to the material.
Read articleCopyright Licensing
A copyright owner who never licenses the work owns an asset that produces no revenue. A copyright owner who licenses without proper documentation may discover that the licensee claims broader rights than the owner intended to grant, or that the license is unenforceable, or that the owner inadvertently transferred ownership instead of granting permission.
Read articleCopyright Termination Rights Under Section 203
An author who assigns a copyright or grants an exclusive license often does so early in the work's life, before the work's value is known. A songwriter signs a publishing deal for a modest advance. A novelist assigns all rights to a publisher for a royalty that seems reasonable at the time.
Read articleMusic Copyright, Sampling, and Licensing
Every recorded song involves two separate copyrights. One protects the musical composition, the notes, melody, harmony, rhythm, and lyrics. Another protects the sound recording, the specific recorded performance of that composition. Different people typically own each copyright, and different rules govern how each can be used, licensed, and enforced.
Read articleArtificial Intelligence and Copyright
Artificial intelligence is producing text, images, music, code, and video at an unprecedented scale, and copyright law has not caught up. Two foundational questions are in active litigation across the federal courts. First, can a work generated by AI be copyrighted, and if so, who is the author?
Read articleCopyright Protection for Architectural Works & Other Designs
Architects, owners and developers can benefit from understanding the role that intellectual property law plays in protecting architectural plans and building designs. Copyright law lends itself more to the types of protections that architects would tend to seek, while trademark law is generally more applicable to building or business owners.
Read articleDomain Name Disputes
Reverse Domain Name Hijacking and When the Trademark Owner Goes Too Far
ICANN designed the UDRP to protect trademark owners from cybersquatters who register domain names in bad faith. But during the drafting process, commentators raised a concern that went in the other direction. A streamlined administrative proceeding that can transfer a domain name in 60 days, with no discovery, no live hearing, and no monetary consequences for losing, could also be used by trademark owners to take domain names from registrants who had every right to keep them.
Read articleTyposquatting, Brandjacking, and Domain-Based Brand Abuse
Typosquatting is the registration of domain names that exploit predictable user errors, misspellings, transpositions, missing characters, and wrong TLD extensions, to intercept traffic intended for a trademark owner's legitimate site. It's one of the most common forms of cybersquatting, and it's also one of the hardest to police because the number of possible permutations for any given brand name runs into the hundreds or thousands.
Read articleDomain Disputes Beyond .com, New gTLDs, Country Code TLDs, and the URS
Most domain name disputes involve .com, and for good reason. It's the most commercially valuable extension, the one consumers type by default, and the one cybersquatters target first. But the domain name system has expanded far beyond .com, and brand owners who limit their monitoring and enforcement to a single TLD leave significant exposure unaddressed.
Read articleDomain Strategy and Trademark Protection for Online Brand Security
Domain name disputes are reactive by nature. A cybersquatter registers your mark, you file a UDRP complaint or an ACPA lawsuit, and you recover the domain after spending money and time on a problem that didn't need to exist. Every article in this series describes a tool for fixing a problem after it's happened.
Read articleHow the UDRP Process Works and What You Need to Prove
A trademark owner who discovers that a cybersquatter has registered a domain name incorporating the owner's mark has two primary enforcement options. One is federal litigation under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, which is covered in a separate article.
Read articleThe Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act and When to Sue in Federal Court
Most domain name disputes can be resolved through a UDRP proceeding at WIPO or another provider. A UDRP complaint costs $1,500, takes roughly two months, and can transfer the domain name to the trademark owner. For many cybersquatting cases, that is sufficient.
Read articleIn Rem Actions Under the ACPA and How to Recover a Domain When You Can't Find the Registrant
Cybersquatters frequently conceal their identities. They register domain names using aliases, provide false contact information to registrars, hide behind privacy or proxy registration services, and operate from jurisdictions where U.S. courts cannot reach them.
Read articleHow UDRP Panels and Federal Courts Decide Bad Faith Registration and Use
Bad faith is the element that determines most domain name disputes. Confusing similarity between the domain name and the trademark is usually easy to establish. Rights or legitimate interests can often be addressed through burden-shifting.
Read articleLegitimate Interests and When the Registrant Has a Right to Keep the Domain
A registrant can incorporate someone else's trademark in a domain name and still have every right to keep it. Domain names consist of words, and words have meanings beyond their trademark significance. A registrant who selected a domain name for its dictionary meaning, who operates a legitimate business under that name, or who uses it for noncommercial commentary has rights or legitimate interests that defeat a UDRP complaint, regardless of how famous the complainant's mark may be.
Read articleEntertainment & Media
Music Publishing Agreements and Songwriter Rights
Music publishing agreements determine who owns or administers the composition copyright, who collects publishing income, how advances recoup, how long the publisher controls the song, and whether and when copyright interests revert to the songwriter.
Read articleProducer Agreements: Points, Credits, Letters of Direction, and Master Rights
Producer agreements turn a recording session into a business relationship. A producer may bring a beat, build the track, shape the vocal, arrange the recording, hire musicians, mix the record, or perform some combination of those jobs.
Read articleRecording and Distribution Agreements: Labels, Distributors, and How Artists Get Paid
A recording agreement determines who owns or controls the master recordings, who pays for recording and marketing, who makes release decisions, and how the artist receives recording-side revenue. A distribution agreement usually has a narrower purpose.
Read articleSynchronization Licensing for Film, Television, Advertising, and Video Games
Pairing music with film, television, advertising, video games, trailers, or online video requires permission from the people who control the music. Rights owners negotiate those permissions.
Read articleArtist Management Agreements and What Managers Earn, Control, and Owe
A manager can influence every part of your career without owning a song or master. Your management agreement sets which activities the manager handles, which income supports a commission, how much authority the manager receives, and what happens to the relationship after termination.
Read articleChain of Title in Music and How to Verify Ownership
A music catalog can generate royalties from several rights owned by different people. Before you buy, sell, license, finance, or distribute that catalog, you need documents showing who created each composition and recording, who first owned each copyright, and how each interest passed to the current claimant.
Read articleInternet & eCommerce
CAN-SPAM Compliance for Online Businesses: What the Law Requires for Every Marketing Email You Send
CAN-SPAM regulates commercial email whose primary purpose is advertising or promoting a commercial product or service. The law covers individual messages and bulk campaigns alike, including messages to business contacts, existing customers, subscribers, and consumers.
Read articleWebsite Terms of Service and Online Contract Formation
Your terms of service bind only the users who received legally sufficient notice and assented to them. When a dispute arrives, the company holding the arbitration clause has to prove which terms it offered, how the screen presented them, what action signified acceptance, who took that action, and which version governed the transaction.
Read articleSaaS Agreements for Providers and Their Customers
When you deliver software as a service, a product sale becomes an ongoing relationship. You host the application, control the infrastructure, release updates, process customer data, and keep the service available.
Read articleFTC Endorsement Guides and Influencer Disclosure
If someone has a relationship with a brand and publicly recommends that brand's product, the relationship may require disclosure. The FTC's Endorsement Guides, [16 C.F.R. Part 255](https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-16/chapter-I/subchapter-B/part-255), explain how Section 5 of the FTC Act applies to endorsements and testimonials. They cover social media posts, reviews, podcasts, videos, affiliate content, demonstrations, tags, and other messages consumers may understand as reflecting someone else's views or experience.
Read articleAuto Renewal and Subscription Compliance
If your business charges customers on a recurring basis, the enrollment page, confirmation, renewal notices, and cancellation process each create compliance obligations. Federal law and state statutes focus on material disclosures, informed consent, and a usable way to stop recurring charges.
Read articleSection 230 and Content Moderation
If your online business lets users post reviews, comments, listings, messages, or other material, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act can limit when a claim treats you as the publisher or speaker of another person's content. The statute provides no blanket immunity for everything a platform does. The claim, the duty alleged, and the source of the information control the analysis.
Read articlePrivacy Law
Privacy Policies for Online Businesses and Platform Requirements
No single federal privacy statute requires every U.S. website to post a privacy policy. If your site collects personal information, your policy should match your data flows, tracking tools, vendor relationships, state privacy obligations, FTC risk, and platform requirements.
Read articleCOPPA Compliance for Websites and Apps
COPPA gives parents control over personal information collected online from children under 13. If your website, app, game, ecommerce store, social platform, learning tool, or software service targets children under 13, the product needs notice, parental consent, data minimization, security, and retention controls before collection begins.
Read articleTexas Data Privacy and Security Act
Texas doesn't use the California model for consumer privacy coverage. The Texas Data Privacy and Security Act applies without a $26.625 million revenue trigger, a 100,000 consumer threshold, or a requirement that data sales drive half the business.
Read articleTexas Data Breach Notification
Texas divides a covered data breach into two notice tracks. A business generally has no more than 60 days after determining that a breach occurred to notify affected individuals. A breach involving at least 250 Texas residents also requires an electronic report to the Texas Attorney General as soon as practicable and no later than 30 days after that determination.
Read articleData Processing Agreements for Vendors That Handle Customer Data
When you give a vendor access to customer data, your services agreement rarely limits how the vendor may use that data. A data processing agreement defines the permitted processing, security duties, assistance obligations, and end of service procedures.
Read articleState Privacy Laws Beyond Texas for Businesses That Sell Nationwide
As of July 30, 2026, 20 state consumer privacy laws have taken effect, including Florida's narrower Digital Bill of Rights. Alabama, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Vermont have enacted four more laws with future effective dates, bringing the enacted total to 24 under that counting method.
Read articleSweepstakes Law
The Alternate Method of Entry and the Equal Dignity Rule
A purchase-entry sweepstakes depends on a free method that provides nonpaying entrants the same genuine opportunity to enter and win. That requires attention to entry limits, odds, prizes, timing, disclosure, and how the promotion operates in practice.
Read articleSocial Media Giveaways, Lottery Law, and Platform Promotion Rules
A promotion is an illegal lottery when it combines a prize, chance, and consideration. Every state prohibits privately operated lotteries, and federal law prohibits mailing or transporting lottery materials in interstate commerce. A lawful sweepstakes avoids the lottery classification by removing consideration, and a lawful contest avoids it by removing chance.
Read articleSweepstakes Casinos and the Failure of the Dual-Currency Model
Sweepstakes casinos sell virtual currency packages and award cash-redeemable entries as a promotional bonus, structured to satisfy sweepstakes law by separating the purchase from the prize. As of mid-2026, the model is failing. At least 13 states have banned or effectively shut down sweepstakes casino operations through legislation, attorney general enforcement, or pre-existing gambling laws.
Read articleApp-Based Games, Gamified Promotions, and the Lottery Line
Spin-the-wheel popups, digital scratch-off cards, match-three games, prize wheels, and loot boxes make promotions more engaging. They also introduce chance in ways sponsors can miss.
Read articlePrize Fulfillment, Tax Reporting, and What a Sponsor Owes After the Winner Is Picked
Selecting a winner starts a second compliance sequence of verification documents, tax forms, withholding decisions, delivery duties, and state filings. Sponsors who plan the promotion without planning the aftermath tend to discover these obligations with a deadline already running.
Read articleSkill Contests, Sweepstakes, and When You Can Charge to Enter
You can charge an entry fee for some skill contests. Whether you can charge depends on how participants win, how you fund the prize, and every state where you accept entries.
Read articleWhat Makes a Promotion a Sweepstakes, a Contest, or an Illegal Lottery
Every promotional giveaway in the United States fits into one of three legal categories, and the classification determines whether the promotion is lawful. A lottery exists when a promotion combines a prize, an element of chance, and consideration (something of value the participant provides to enter).
Read articleWhat Sweepstakes Official Rules Need to Include
Official rules define the terms of every sweepstakes and contest and serve as the first document a regulator or plaintiff reads when a promotion goes wrong. Template rules downloaded from the Internet routinely omit required provisions and fail to match the promotion's actual mechanics.
Read articleSweepstakes Registration and Bonding Requirements by State
Florida and New York require you to register a sweepstakes and post a surety bond once total prize value exceeds $5,000, and Rhode Island requires registration for retail promotions over $500. Most sponsors learn about these filings after the promotion is live and the deadline has passed.
Read articleRelated Work
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