IP, Internet & Compliance
Intangible value. Concrete protection.
For an online or brand-driven business, the most valuable assets are often 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 apply to 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
Artificial Intelligence
AI Vendor Terms, Training Rights, and What the Contract Has to Say
The terms governing an AI product’s model provider determine whether customer data may be used for training, how long prompts persist, and who answers for an infringing output. Those answers depend on the service, the agreement, and the settings your business uses.
Read articleCOPPA for AI Products That Serve Children or Process Their Information
COPPA treats information a child submits to an AI product differently from information an adult supplies about that child. The distinction determines the operator’s duties concerning consent, vendor contracts, notices, and retention.
Read articleData Retention and Deletion in AI Products
An AI product may retain customer information in uploaded files, saved conversations, generated responses, search indexes, vendor logs, and backups. A deletion request requires the business to identify the information covered by the request, determine where it is held, and apply the duties and exceptions that govern each location.
Read articlePrivacy Policy Accuracy for AI Products
An AI product’s privacy policy must describe what happens to personal information when the business and its vendors process it. Statements about model training, human access, retention, and deletion need to account for the services and settings the product uses.
Read articleAI Claims in Product and Marketing Copy Under Section 5 of the FTC Act
A claim that an AI product identifies fraud, achieves a stated accuracy, replaces a professional, or verifies a user’s age makes a factual promise about the product. Your business needs evidence that supports the promise before customers see it. That applies to claims in advertising, sales presentations, app listings, and the product’s interface.
Read articleInternal AI Use Policies for Businesses
A written AI use policy addresses how employees handle confidential information, use generated content, and evaluate people with automated tools. It identifies approved accounts, limits what employees may submit, and assigns responsibility for reviewing output and responding to incidents.
Read articleIntellectual 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
Trademark strength depends on both inherent distinctiveness and marketplace recognition. Fanciful, arbitrary, and suggestive marks begin with an advantage, while descriptive terms require acquired distinctiveness and generic terms can't function as trademarks for the relevant goods or services.
Read articleWhy a Trademark Clearance Search Comes Before Everything Else
A trademark clearance search evaluates whether a proposed mark conflicts with earlier rights before a business commits money to the name. The review should cover federal records, state records, domain records, and unregistered uses that a USPTO search won't reveal.
Read articleHow Federal Trademark Registration Works at the USPTO
Federal trademark registration proceeds through filing, examination, publication, and either registration or a notice of allowance. Applicants must select the filing basis, identify the goods and services, submit any required specimen, meet response deadlines, and maintain the registration after issuance.
Read articleCommon Trademark Mistakes That Cost Businesses Time and Money
Trademark errors often begin before filing and may affect whether a business can use, register, and enforce its mark. A sound process addresses distinctiveness, clearance, filing basis, specimens, deadlines, consistent use, monitoring, and maintenance.
Read articleTTAB Proceedings and How They Differ from Federal Court
The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board decides whether a party may obtain or retain a federal trademark registration. Opposition and cancellation proceedings resemble civil litigation, but the Board can't decide infringement, award damages, or prohibit trademark use.
Read articleEnforcing Your Trademark Rights
A federal trademark registration provides nationwide constructive notice, evidentiary presumptions, and several enforcement tools. The owner remains responsible for finding unauthorized uses, assessing whether they threaten the registered rights, and selecting a response suited to the conduct.
Read articleTrademark Protection for Buildings and Store Designs
A building exterior, interior, or store layout may function as protectable trade dress when consumers perceive it as identifying a source. Protection depends on source identifying use, distinctiveness, nonfunctionality, and likely confusion rather than architectural originality alone.
Read articleTrademark Licensing and Quality Control
A trademark license authorizes another business to use a mark within agreed limits. Quality control, enforcement rights, royalty terms, and termination provisions determine how the parties manage that permission and protect the brand.
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, a license, or royalty payments. The expiration date depends on when the work was created, whether and when it was published, who authored it, and whether the owner satisfied the formalities that prior copyright 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 upon fixation, but a United States work ordinarily requires registration or refusal before an infringement suit. Registration timing also determines whether statutory damages and attorney's fees are available.
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 Factors, 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
Section 512 provides conditional liability protection to online service providers that follow the DMCA notice and counter notification process. A compliant notice may result in removal without a court ruling, while a counter notification begins the 10 to 14 business day restoration period.
Read articleCopyright Licensing
A copyright owner may exploit a work directly or license specified rights to others. The license terms determine who may use the work, for what purposes, and for how long.
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
Recorded music commonly involves two distinct works, the musical composition and the sound recording. Each has its own authors, owners, exclusive rights, and licensing requirements.
Read articleArtificial Intelligence and Copyright
Copyright protects qualifying human contributions to works made with artificial intelligence. Separate questions govern whether copying works for AI training or publishing model outputs infringes existing rights.
Read articleCopyright Protection for Architectural Plans and Buildings
An architectural project may involve separate copyrights in its technical drawings and its building design. Ownership, contractual permission, protectable design elements, registration, and the statutory rules for photographs and alterations determine the rights in each work.
Read articleDomain Name Disputes
Reverse Domain Name Hijacking Under the UDRP
The UDRP can protect trademark owners from cybersquatting, while Rule 15(e) addresses complaints brought in bad faith to deprive registrants of domain names.
Read articleTyposquatting, Brandjacking, and Domain-Based Brand Abuse
A misspelled or deceptive domain can divert customers, imitate login pages, redirect traffic, or support fraudulent email. This article explains UDRP proceedings, ACPA claims, abuse reports, monitoring, and defensive registration.
Read articleDomain Disputes Beyond .com, New gTLDs, Country Code TLDs, and the URS
The domain extension can determine which administrative procedure applies, what a complainant must prove, and whether the available remedy is suspension or transfer.
Read articleDomain Strategy and Trademark Protection for Online Brand Security
A domain dispute often begins months before anyone files a complaint. You announce a product before acquiring the matching domain, a web developer registers the name through a personal account, or a renewal notice goes to an employee who left the company.
Read articleThe UDRP Process and Its Required Elements
An abusive domain registration may be resolved through the UDRP without a federal lawsuit. The complainant must establish trademark rights and similarity, the respondent's lack of rights or legitimate interests, and registration and use in bad faith.
Read articleThe Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act and When to Sue in Federal Court
A domain name dispute may require more than transfer of the registration. The Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy offers a focused administrative procedure when the trademark owner seeks transfer or cancellation. It offers no damages, discovery, or injunction against registrations beyond the domains named in the complaint.
Read articleIn Rem Actions Under the ACPA and How to Recover a Domain When You Can't Find the Registrant
A domain registrant may hide behind false information, a privacy service, or an address outside the United States. Those circumstances can prevent a trademark owner from identifying a defendant or establishing personal jurisdiction. The Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act addresses that problem through an in rem action against the domain name itself.
Read articleHow UDRP Panels and Federal Courts Decide Bad Faith Registration and Use
Bad faith often determines the outcome of a domain dispute because similarity alone says little about why someone selected a domain.
Read articleLegitimate Interests and When a Registrant May Keep a Domain
A domain can resemble a trademark without belonging to the trademark owner.
Read articleEntertainment & Media
Production Incentive Diligence Under Texas SB 22 and Ireland's Section 481
Texas grants and Irish film tax credits use different eligibility, payment, and company structures. Production financing depends on a separate diligence file for each program.
Read articleWhat a Talent Attachment Means in Film and Television
The word attached can describe a binding services agreement, a conditional deal memo, an expression of interest, or an expired option. The signed file determines what the package can claim.
Read articleDigital Replicas, Synthetic Performers, and Consent in Production Agreements
A producer may own the footage and lack the right to create a new performance from a performer's face or voice. Guild counsel, a distributor, or a buyer may first find the defect during review or a subsequent transfer of the replica files.
Read articleFilm and Television Chain of Title and Rights Clearance
A film or television project needs a complete rights file covering the screenplay, underlying property, performances, footage, music, artwork, and other protected material before release.
Read articleTalent Migration Between Competing Projects
Film and television projects often compete for the same subject and talent. Recruiting from another production requires separate reviews of ownership, prior agreements, confidentiality, interference, and agency licensing.
Read articleMusic 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 for 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 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 sound recording revenue. A distribution agreement usually has a narrower purpose.
Read articleSynchronization Licensing for Film, Television, Advertising, and Video Games
Absent an applicable copyright exception, a production using a preexisting copyrighted recording of a protected composition must own the relevant rights or obtain permission to use both the composition and the sound recording.
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
A brand relationship may require disclosure when someone recommends the brand’s product. The FTC evaluates the connection, the audience’s expectations, the claim, and the placement and wording of the disclosure.
Read articleAuto Renewal and Subscription Compliance
If your business charges consumers on a recurring basis, the enrollment page, confirmation, renewal notices, and cancellation process each require compliance review. Federal and state laws regulate disclosures, consent, reminders, fee changes, cancellation, and the records supporting each charge.
Read articleSection 230 and Content Moderation
If your online business lets users post reviews, comments, listings, messages, or other material, Section 230 limits when a claim may treat 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 alleged duty, 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
Under COPPA, parents control the online collection of personal information from children under 13. A website, app, game, ecommerce store, social platform, learning tool, or software service directed to children under 13 must implement notice, parental consent, data minimization, security, and retention controls before collection begins.
Read articleTexas Data Privacy and Security Act
Texas uses a broad coverage test for consumer privacy. The Texas Data Privacy and Security Act applies without a $26.625 million revenue threshold, a 100,000 consumer threshold, or a requirement that data sales generate half of a business's revenue.
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 free alternate method of entry must provide nonpaying entrants the same opportunity to enter and win. Entry weight, limits, timing, prize eligibility, disclosures, and processing all affect that analysis.
Read articleSocial Media Giveaways, Lottery Law, and Platform Promotion Rules
A social media giveaway operates under several sets of rules at once. State lottery law governs the promotion's structure, each platform controls the mechanics it permits, advertising law governs influencer disclosures, and privacy law may regulate the entry data.
Read articleSweepstakes Casinos and the Limits of the Dual Currency Model
Sweepstakes casinos divide play between two virtual currencies. One provides entertainment play without stated cash value, while the other may be used in casino games and redeemed after the player satisfies the operator's rules.
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
Prize, chance, and consideration are the traditional elements of a lottery. A private commercial promotion offering a prize must eliminate consideration or chance to avoid operating as an illegal lottery.
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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