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: When Someone Uses Your Name, Image, or Likeness Without Permission
A right of publicity claim arises when someone uses another person's name, image, likeness, voice, or other identifying characteristic for commercial benefit without that person's consent. It protects the economic value of a person's identity, the principle being that individuals have the right to control how their personal attributes are exploited commercially and to benefit from that exploitation.
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: What Songwriters Assign, What They Keep, and How the Money Splits
Every dollar a song earns is split between two shares. The writer's share (50 percent of total income) belongs to the songwriter. The publisher's share (the other 50 percent) belongs to whoever controls the publishing rights. A publishing agreement determines who owns or administers that publisher's share, how much of it the songwriter keeps, and what the publisher does in exchange.
Read articleProducer Agreements: Points, Credits, Letters of Direction, and the Business Behind the Board
A producer's contribution to a recording can range from delivering a pre-made instrumental track to shaping every element of the final master, from arrangement and instrumentation through vocal production and mixing. What the producer receives in return depends on the agreement.
Read articleRecording and Distribution Agreements: Labels, Distributors, and How Revenue Reaches the Artist
A recording agreement is the contract that determines who owns the master recordings, who funds the marketing and distribution, how revenue is split, and how long the relationship lasts. It's the most consequential document a recording artist will sign, and the terms the artist accepts at signing govern the economics of every recording delivered under the deal for years or decades after the ink dries.
Read articleSynchronization Licensing: Placing Music in Film, Television, Advertising, and Video Games
Synchronization licensing is the process of pairing music with visual media. Every time a song plays during a television scene, a film sequence, a commercial, a video game, or a trailer, someone negotiated a sync license to make that happen.
Read articleManagement Agreements: What Managers Earn, What They Control, and How the Relationship Ends
A manager advises and counsels the artist across every aspect of the artist's career in the entertainment industry. The manager negotiates deals, coordinates the professional team (booking agents, attorneys, accountants, publicists), develops strategy, manages day-to-day business decisions, and serves as the primary point of contact between the artist and every third party that wants the artist's time, talent, or money.
Read articleChain of Title in Music: How to Verify Who Owns What Before Any Money Changes Hands
Every license, every acquisition, every sync placement, and every royalty payment depends on one foundational question: who owns the rights? If the answer is wrong, incomplete, or undocumented, the deal can collapse, the royalties can freeze, and the parties can spend more on litigation than the catalog is worth.
Read articleInternet & eCommerce
Website Terms of Service: How to Draft Terms That Bind Your Users and What Happens When They Don't
A website's terms of service are a contract between the business and every person who uses the site. If the terms are enforceable, they govern the relationship: where disputes are resolved, what the business's liability is, whether claims go to arbitration or court, what intellectual property rights attach to user content, and what happens when the relationship ends.
Read articleSaaS Agreements: What Belongs in the Subscription Contract Your Customers Click Through
A SaaS agreement governs access to software delivered over the Internet rather than installed on the customer's hardware. Unlike a traditional software license (where the customer receives a copy of the code and runs it locally), a SaaS relationship means the provider controls the infrastructure, the customer's data lives on the provider's servers, and the service can be modified, interrupted, or terminated by the provider at any time unless the contract provides otherwise.
Read articleCAN-SPAM Compliance for Online Businesses: What the Law Requires for Every Marketing Email You Send
Every commercial email sent in the United States is governed by the CAN-SPAM Act (15 U.S.C. §§ 7701-7713), regardless of whether the recipient opted in, whether the email was sent by the business or by a third party on the business's behalf, and whether the recipient is a consumer or a business contact.
Read articleFTC Endorsement Guides and Influencer Disclosure: What Online Businesses Must Disclose About Paid Relationships
If someone has a relationship with a brand and publicly recommends that brand's product, the relationship must be disclosed to the audience. That's the core principle of the FTC's Endorsement Guides (16 CFR Part 255), and it applies to every business that pays for endorsements, sponsors content, provides free products for review, or engages influencers, affiliates, or brand ambassadors in any capacity.
Read articleAuto-Renewal and Subscription Compliance: The Rules That Govern Recurring Charges Before Customers Click Subscribe
If your business charges customers on a recurring basis, federal and state regulators treat the sign-up flow, the renewal process, and the cancellation mechanism as compliance events. Every subscription enrollment that doesn't meet disclosure and consent requirements is a potential enforcement action.
Read articleSection 230 and Content Moderation: What Protects Your Platform When Users Post and When Protection Ends
If your online business allows users to post content, whether that's product reviews, comments, forum discussions, marketplace listings, or social media posts, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (47 U.S.C. § 230) is the statute that determines whether you're liable for what they say.
Read articlePrivacy Law
Privacy Policies for Online Businesses: What the Law Requires and What Platforms Demand
No single federal statute requires every U.S. website to have a privacy policy. But the combined effect of state privacy laws, FTC enforcement authority, and platform requirements means that every online business collecting personal information from users needs one, and the policy must accurately describe the business's data practices.
Read articleCOPPA Compliance for Websites and Apps: What You Must Do Before Collecting Data from Children Under 13
COPPA (the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, 15 U.S.C. §§ 6501-6506) places parents in control of what personal information is collected from their children online. If your website, app, or online service is directed to children under 13 or has actual knowledge that it's collecting personal information from a child under 13, you must comply with COPPA's notice, consent, and data protection requirements before any collection occurs.
Read articleTexas Data Privacy and Security Act: What It Requires, Who It Covers, and How Texas Businesses Comply
Most Texas businesses that collect personal data from consumers are subject to the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act (TDPSA), codified at Texas Business and Commerce Code Chapter 541. Effective July 1, 2024, the TDPSA regulates how businesses collect, use, store, sell, share, and process the personal data of Texas residents.
Read articleData Breach Notification Under Texas Law: What You Must Do When Personal Information Is Compromised
When a business discovers that sensitive personal information in its possession has been accessed by an unauthorized person, two clocks start running simultaneously. Under Texas Business and Commerce Code § 521.053, the business must notify affected individuals within 60 days of determining that the breach occurred.
Read articleData Processing Agreements: What Your Vendor Contracts Must Include When Third Parties Handle Customer Data
When a business shares customer data with a vendor (a payment processor, a cloud hosting provider, an analytics platform, a CRM system, an email marketing service, or any other third party that receives, stores, or processes personal information on the business's behalf), the relationship must be governed by a written contract that specifies how the vendor handles the data, what it can and can't do with it, and what happens when the relationship ends.
Read articleState Privacy Laws Beyond Texas: What Businesses That Sell Nationwide Must Comply With
As of mid-2026, 20 states have enacted comprehensive consumer data privacy laws, with more legislation pending. There's no federal comprehensive privacy statute, which means every business that collects personal data from customers in multiple states must navigate a patchwork of state laws with different applicability thresholds, different consumer rights, different enforcement mechanisms, and different cure periods.
Read articleSweepstakes Law
Social 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 in mobile apps, and loot-box-style reward mechanics all make promotional experiences more engaging. They also introduce chance in ways that many sponsors fail to analyze.
Read articleThe Alternate Method of Entry and the Equal Dignity Rule
A sweepstakes that sells entries is legal only when you also offer a free way to enter that works as well as the paid one. Regulators and plaintiffs test that free method first, and the equal dignity rule requires it to match purchase entry in odds, entries, prizes, and prominence.
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 Versus Sweepstakes and When You Can Charge to Enter
Removing chance instead of consideration lets a sponsor charge an entry fee, but states draw the line between skill and chance differently, and one random drawing anywhere in the winner selection can convert a paid contest into an illegal lottery.
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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