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 Rightsy 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
Rightsy is a software company. Rightsy is not a law firm and is not a substitute for an attorney or law firm. Rightsy operates an intellectual-property search platform and the intake, document and payment software behind the services sold here; it does not provide legal services or legal advice, does not practice law, and no attorney–client relationship is formed with Rightsy. Where a service involves the practice of law, it is provided by MC Law, PLLC (mclaw.io), an independent law firm that is solely responsible for the legal services it renders.
Documents by Casey Scott McKay (925)
- Education Copyright Checklist: Faculty Ownership, Classroom Use, Course Packs, Platform Terms, and Student Work · Checklist — This checklist audits and then builds copyright compliance at an educational institution across the four systems that actually matter. Phase one interrogates…
- Freedom to Operate: What a Patent Clearance Search Can and Cannot Tell You · Article — A patentability search asks whether you can get a patent. A freedom-to-operate search asks whether you can sell your product without being sued. They are…
- Medical Device and Diagnostics IP Toolkit: Claims, Regulatory Timing, and Aftermarket Control · Toolkit — Medical device and diagnostic intellectual property runs on two clocks that rarely align, and most portfolio failures in the sector come from treating them as…
- The Name a Mission Depends On: Trademarks, Chapters, and Donor Data in Nonprofit Organisations · Article — A nonprofit's name is frequently its only asset that appreciates, and it is the asset most often held without a filing, licensed without a document, and…
- Litigating Claim Construction: A Practitioner's Guide to Markman Briefing, Experts, and Indefiniteness · Guide — Claim construction is where most patent cases are decided, and it runs on a procedural schedule that begins months before the hearing. This guide works it in…
- Patent Prosecution Toolkit: From Provisional to Issued Claim · Toolkit — Prosecution is where a patent's scope is actually decided, and nearly all of it happens in writing that will be read by adversaries for twenty years. This…
- Aftermarket, Repair, and Spare Parts IP Toolkit: Design Rights, Repair Doctrine, and Software Locks · Toolkit — The aftermarket is where intellectual property doctrine collides with the ordinary expectation that a thing you bought can be fixed, and the collision produces…
- Arbitrating an IP Dispute: A Practitioner's Guide to Clause Drafting, Forum Selection, Confidentiality, and Enforcement · Guide — This guide drafts and runs an intellectual property arbitration, treating the clause as the strategic instrument it is rather than as boilerplate. It works the…
- PTAB Petition Checklist: Grounds, Prior Art, Expert Declarations, and the Institution Decision · Checklist — A petition to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board is the entire case, filed once, under a hard statutory bar, with no discovery to fill gaps and no appeal from a…
- Claim Construction Toolkit: Terms, the Record, and Markman Strategy · Toolkit — Claim construction decides more patent cases than any other event, and it is decided almost entirely on documents written years earlier by people who were not…
- You’ve Been Served a Cease-and-Desist: How to Respond Without Panicking · Article — A trademark cease-and-desist letter looks terrifying and is engineered to. This guide explains why the letter is the opening bid in a negotiation rather than…
- Willful Infringement: Treble Damages, Profits, and Enhanced Recovery · Article — Trademark liability turns on likelihood of confusion, but the size of the check turns on willfulness. This Rightsy guide explains what willful infringement…
- Who Pays the Lawyers? Attorney’s Fees Under Section 35 of the Lanham Act · Article — Section 35(a) of the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1117(a), lets a court award reasonable attorney's fees to the prevailing party in "exceptional cases," and the…
- Who Gets Paid When a Song Streams: Music Licensing in the Streaming Era · Article — Every track you stream carries two separate copyrights, the musical work (the song as written) and the sound recording (the master), and each is owned and…
- Where Your Trademark Rights End: The Geography of Common-Law Protection · Article — A trademark is not a flag that radiates protection across the whole country; at common law it is a local right that ends somewhere, and knowing where is the…
- When You Win: Remedies and Damages for Trademark Infringement · Article — A finding of infringement settles who was right; it does not settle what the win is worth. This guide maps the full remedial menu of the Lanham Act, organized…
- When Should You Trademark Your Brand? Timing the Filing Decision · Article — Deciding when to trademark a brand is, at bottom, a timing decision, and the founders who treat it as an afterthought routinely pay for the delay in lost…
- What’s Protectable in a Mobile App: An IP Field Guide · Guide — A mobile app looks like one product, but the law sees a habitat full of separately protectable species, each tagged by a different IP regime. This field guide…
- Use It or Lose It: How Trademarks Are Abandoned · Article — Trademarks are the one form of intellectual property that can last forever, but only for an owner who keeps using the mark and keeps it pointing to a single…
- Understanding the Nice Classes: A Guide to USPTO Trademark Classification · Article — A federal trademark does not lock up a word for every purpose under the sun; it protects a name only for the particular goods and services a business actually…
- TTAB Trial Period Checklist: Evidence, Testimony, and Briefing · Checklist — The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board decides oppositions and cancellations on a written record with no live trial, so the trial period is where you convert…
- TTAB Discovery Checklist: From Initial Disclosures to Close of Discovery · Checklist — This checklist walks a party through the entire discovery phase of a Trademark Trial and Appeal Board opposition or cancellation, from the institution order…
- Transferring a Trademark: The Assignment Recordation Checklist · Checklist — When a trademark changes hands, the deal is only half done until the assignment is papered correctly and recorded with the USPTO. This checklist walks counsel…
- Trademarks in the Metaverse: Protecting Brands in Virtual Goods and Digital-First Commerce · Article — Virtual worlds, NFTs, and digital fashion have pushed trademark law into territory its nineteenth-century architects never imagined, and this guide maps both…
- Trademark Strategy for Startups and Founders Toolkit · Toolkit — This toolkit is a guided research roadmap for founders who want to turn a brand into a durable, financeable asset instead of a liability they discover too…
- Trademark Settlement and Coexistence Agreement Checklist: Negotiating Brand Peace · Checklist — Most trademark disputes end not in a verdict but in a signed agreement that lets two brands live side by side. This Rightsy checklist walks both sides through…
- Trademark Remedies and Monetary Recovery Toolkit: Injunctions, Profits, and Damages · Toolkit — A finding of infringement decides who was right; the remedies phase decides what the win is worth, and it is governed by a separate body of law that most…
- Trademark Portfolio Management: Auditing and Budgeting a Brand Portfolio · Article — A trademark portfolio is one of the largest off-balance-sheet assets most companies own, and almost nobody manages it as an asset. This Rightsy article treats…
- Trademark Overview: What Trademark Law Actually Protects · Article — This is the opening installment of Rightsy's four-part overview of United States trademark law, and it answers the question every brand owner eventually asks -…
- Trademark Overview: The Substantive Standards for Protection · Article — Part 2 of Rightsy's four-part Trademark Overview series tackles the question that quietly decides every branding dispute: which designations the law is…
- Trademark Overview: Obtaining Protection and Licensing Your Mark · Article — This guide is the third installment in Rightsy's four-part trademark overview, and it covers the two halves of a brand owner's life: acquiring rights and then…
- Trademark Overview: Infringement, Dilution, and Related Rights · Article — This is the enforcement installment of Rightsy's trademark overview, covering what happens once a mark is misused and how an owner fights back. It opens with…
- Trademark Maintenance and Renewal Toolkit: Keeping a Registration Alive · Toolkit — Keeping a federal trademark registration alive is two jobs at once: feeding the USPTO maintenance calendar so the credential is never cancelled by the clock,…
- Trademark Maintenance and Renewal: A Deadline-by-Deadline Checklist · Checklist — A deadline-by-deadline checklist for keeping a federal trademark registration alive and strong under the Lanham Act maintenance calendar. It walks the Section…
- Trademark Licensing and Assignment Toolkit: Monetizing and Transferring Marks · Toolkit — This toolkit is Rightsy's guided research roadmap for the business end of a trademark: renting it out, selling it, and borrowing against it without destroying…
- Trademark Licensing Agreements: Quality Control and Avoiding Naked Licensing · Article — A trademark license is the closest thing brand law has to a money machine, and the closest thing it has to a self-destruct button. The difference is control.…
- Trademark Licensing Agreement Checklist: Quality Control and Key Terms · Checklist — A trademark license can multiply a brand's reach or quietly destroy it, and the dividing line is control. This Rightsy checklist walks licensors and licensees…
- Trademark Infringement Litigation Toolkit: Building and Trying the Case · Toolkit — A federal trademark infringement case is really two contests stacked in one caption: a fact-soaked fight over likelihood of confusion and a separate, often…
- Trademark FAQs: Straight Answers to the Questions Brand Owners Actually Ask · Article — A plain-spoken question-and-answer guide to United States trademark law for founders, small-business owners, in-house counsel, litigators, judges, and the…
- Trademark Distinctiveness and Protectability Toolkit: From Generic to Famous · Toolkit — Distinctiveness is the master question of trademark law: it decides both whether a designation can be owned at all and how fiercely the law will defend it.…
- Trademark Dilution Under the TDRA: Blurring, Tarnishment, and Famous Marks · Article — Trademark dilution is the law's special shield for a tiny club of nationally famous marks, and it works on a logic completely different from ordinary…
- Trademark Damages and Profits: An Evidence and Proof Checklist · Checklist — Winning on liability is only half the battle; collecting a real judgment depends on the evidence you marshal for damages and profits. This checklist walks…
- Trademark Counterfeiting: Civil and Criminal Remedies · Article — Counterfeiting is trademark infringement's aggravated cousin, and the law answers it with a far heavier arsenal than ordinary brand disputes ever see. This…
- Trademark Coexistence and Settlement Agreements: Negotiating Brand Peace · Article — Most trademark disputes end not in a courtroom verdict but in a signed agreement that lets two brands live side by side, and negotiating that peace well is one…
- Trademark Clearance and Search Toolkit: Vetting a Mark Before You Commit · Toolkit — A guided research roadmap that organizes Rightsy's clearance and search library into one path for vetting a brand name before you spend a dollar building on…
- Trademark Basics: What a Mark Is and How Rights Begin · Article — A plain-English foundation course in trademark law for founders, creators, litigators, and the merely curious. It explains what a trademark actually is - a…
- Trademark Assignment Due-Diligence Checklist: Validating Chain of Title · Checklist — Before you wire money for a brand, you have to prove the seller actually owns it—cleanly, completely, and in a way a court and the USPTO will both recognize.…
- Trademark Application and Prosecution Toolkit: From Filing to Office Actions · Toolkit — A guided research roadmap that organizes Rightsy's library for the federal trademark application and prosecution journey, from deciding whether a mark is even…
- Trade Secrets and the DTSA: Protecting What You Can’t Register · Article — A trade secret is valuable business information that draws its value from being secret and that its owner takes reasonable steps to keep secret. This article…
- Trade Dress and Product Configuration Toolkit: Protecting Look and Feel · Toolkit — Trade dress is the legally protected look and feel of a product, its packaging, or a place of business, and product configuration is the hardest, most heavily…
- Trade Dress: Protecting Brand Identity Without Tripping Over Functionality · Article — Trade dress is the legally protected look and feel of a product or business—its packaging, shape, color, decor, and total commercial impression—when consumers…
- The TTAB Practice Toolkit: Oppositions, Cancellations, and Appeals from Pleading to Decision · Toolkit — This toolkit is a stage-by-stage field manual for litigating before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, the USPTO tribunal that decides one thing only: who…
- The Trademark Registration Toolkit: A Roadmap from Brand Idea to Maintenance · Toolkit — This toolkit is a modular, stage-by-stage roadmap for taking a brand name from a napkin sketch all the way to a federal trademark registration and through the…
- The Trademark Registration Guide: Turning a Brand Into a Federal Right · Article — This is Rightsy's hands-on field manual for converting a brand you already use into a federal trademark right at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. It walks…
- The Trademark Lifecycle Master Toolkit: Your Complete Research Roadmap · Toolkit — This master toolkit is the guided card catalog to Rightsy's entire trademark library, threading every guide, toolkit, checklist, and case study into a single…
- The Trademark Lifecycle: From First Search to Registration and Renewal · Article — This guide follows a single U.S. trademark across its entire life, from a founder's first clearance search to the renewal filings that keep a registration…
- The Trademark Enforcement Toolkit: From Watching to Verdict and Appeal · Toolkit — This toolkit walks a brand from quiet vigilance all the way to a courtroom verdict and the appeal that follows, treating each enforcement option as a modular…
- The Trademark Clearance Search, Done Right: From Knockout to Full Legal Opinion · Article — A practitioner-grade walkthrough of trademark clearance, the pre-launch discipline of proving a name is free to use and register before a business spends a…
- The Trademark Clearance Search Checklist: A Knockout-to-Opinion Workflow · Checklist — This checklist turns trademark clearance into a repeatable knockout-to-opinion workflow that moves a short list of candidate names from a fast triage pass,…
- The Shield of Good Faith: How Clearance Searches and Opinions Defeat Willfulness · Article — Willfulness stopped being an absolute gate to a profits award after Romag Fasteners, Inc. v. Fossil, Inc., 590 U.S. 212 (2020), yet a defendant's state of mind…
- The Self-Executing Sanction: Rule 37(c)(1) and Undisclosed Evidence · Article — Rule 37(c)(1) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure may be the most underestimated sanction in a litigator's path: a party that fails to disclose…
- The Polaroid Factors at Summary Judgment in the Second Circuit · Article — In the Second Circuit, every trademark infringement claim ultimately turns on one question: are consumers likely to be confused? The answer is governed by the…
- The First Sale Doctrine and Gray Market Goods · Article — The first-sale doctrine—trademark law's exhaustion rule—lets anyone resell a genuine branded good without the markholder's permission, because a truthful mark…
- The Dawn Donut Rule: Why a Federal Registration Doesn’t Always Let You Sue · Article — A federal trademark registration grants nationwide priority, but the Dawn Donut rule holds that a registrant cannot always immediately enjoin a remote,…
- The Abercrombie Spectrum: From Generic to Fanciful · Article — Every brand name lives somewhere on a single ladder of distinctiveness, and that position decides whether the name can be owned at all and how fiercely the law…
- Tea Rose-Rectanus: How Far Common-Law Trademark Rights Really Reach · Article — The Tea Rose-Rectanus doctrine explains how two unrelated businesses can lawfully own the same trademark in different parts of the country: a common-law mark…
- Superheroes and Their Lawyers: The Great IP Battles of the Comic Book World · Article — Superheroes are some of the most valuable property on the planet, and the fights over who owns them are among the most dramatic episodes in copyright and…
- Stopping the Infringer: Trademark Injunctions After eBay · Article — In trademark litigation the order to stop is usually the real prize, but since eBay Inc. v. MercExchange a finding of infringement no longer guarantees one —…
- Stopping Counterfeits at the Border: Recording Your Mark with CBP · Article — Recording a federally registered trademark with U.S. Customs and Border Protection turns the government into a standing partner that intercepts counterfeit and…
- Stone Creek v. Omnia: When Knowledge Destroys Good Faith · Article — In Stone Creek, Inc. v. Omnia Italian Design, Inc., 875 F.3d 426 (9th Cir. 2017), the Ninth Circuit answered a question the Supreme Court had left open since…
- Setting Up a Trademark Watch and Policing Program: A Checklist · Checklist — A trademark is only as strong as the owner's willingness to watch the market and act on what it finds. This checklist builds a complete watch-and-policing…
- Sending a DMCA Takedown Notice: A Compliance Checklist · Checklist — A phase-by-phase compliance checklist for sending a DMCA takedown notice that a hosting provider cannot ignore, grounded in 17 U.S.C. Section 512. It runs the…
- Running the Likelihood-of-Confusion Analysis: A Factor-by-Factor Checklist · Checklist — Likelihood of confusion is the controlling question in nearly every trademark dispute, and answering it well is a disciplined, factor-by-factor exercise rather…
- Responding to a Trademark Infringement Lawsuit: An Answer and Defenses Checklist · Checklist — A trademark infringement complaint is a clock, not a verdict, and the defendant who treats the first three weeks as triage usually controls everything that…
- Registering a Copyright: A Step-by-Step Tour of the Copyright Office · Article — A copyright springs into existence the instant an original work is fixed in a tangible medium, yet the unregistered copyright is a right you cannot fully…
- Recording a Trademark with U.S. Customs: A Border Enforcement Checklist · Checklist — This checklist walks a brand owner step by step through recording a federally registered trademark with U.S. Customs and Border Protection so that customs…
- Reclaiming a Hijacked Domain: The UDRP Complaint, Step by Step · Article — A step-by-step, practitioner-grade guide to clawing a domain name back from a cybersquatter through ICANN's Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy. It…
- Proving or Defeating Trademark Abandonment: An Evidence Checklist · Checklist — Abandonment is the rare trademark theory that can destroy a valuable mark outright, and it is won or lost on evidence rather than rhetoric. This Rightsy…
- Protecting Product Configuration: Where Innovation Meets Competition · Article — Product configuration -- the shape and overall look of the product itself -- can be protected as trade dress, but only inside boundaries the Supreme Court has…
- Preparing a Trademark Specimen the USPTO Will Accept: A Checklist · Checklist — A working checklist for assembling trademark specimens that survive USPTO examination, which is quietly the most common reason a clean application stalls. It…
- Preliminary Injunctions in Trademark Cases: The Four-Factor Test · Article — A preliminary injunction is the order most trademark plaintiffs actually want: a court command, entered near the front of a lawsuit, that freezes the…
- Preliminary Injunction Motion Checklist for Trademark Cases: Declarations, Bond, and Notice · Checklist — This checklist runs a trademark preliminary injunction motion from the first phone call to post-order compliance, in eleven phases a practitioner can work top…
- Picking a Mark That Can Be Protected: A Selection Checklist · Checklist — Protectability is not decided at the trademark office; it is decided at the naming whiteboard, the moment a founder picks a word. This checklist walks business…
- Patent Basics: Utility, Design, and Plant Patents in Plain English · Article — A patent is a time-limited right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention, granted in return for teaching the public how that invention…
- Overcoming Patent Rejections: A Practitioner’s Guide to Office Action Responses · Article — An office action is the patent examiner’s written verdict-in-progress: the list of rejections and objections standing between an application and an issued…
- Online Brand Protection and Anti-Counterfeiting Toolkit · Toolkit — This toolkit is a guided research roadmap to defending a brand across the internet and against counterfeiters, organizing Rightsy's library into a single…
- Nominative and Comparative Advertising: Using Someone Else’s Trademark · Article — You are allowed to use other people’s trademarks far more often than most businesses assume—the law protects against confusion, not against being mentioned by…
- Moving for a Preliminary Injunction in a Trademark Case: A Checklist · Checklist — A preliminary injunction is the remedy most trademark plaintiffs actually want: a fast court order that stops the infringement now, while the lawsuit grinds…
- Marking Done Right: Patent and Trade Dress Notice Requirements · Article — Marking is the public-notice system that runs underneath every category of U.S. intellectual property, and the rules are not interchangeable. This Rightsy…
- Madrid Protocol International Filing Checklist: Extending Your Mark Abroad · Checklist — This is the operational, start-to-finish checklist for taking a U.S. trademark across the border through the Madrid Protocol—the WIPO-administered system that…
- The Madrid Protocol: International Trademark Registration Through the USPTO · Article — Trademark rights stop at the border, and the Madrid Protocol is the most efficient bridge across it—one application, filed in one language and paid for in one…
- Likelihood of Confusion Toolkit: The Multifactor Test Across the Circuits · Toolkit — Likelihood of confusion is the single question that decides almost every trademark dispute, but the test for it changes shape as you move from one federal…
- Likelihood of Confusion: A Brand Owner’s Field Map · Article — Likelihood of confusion is the question that decides almost every trademark dispute, yet it is far subtler than asking whether two marks look alike. This field…
- Keeping Your Registration Alive: Maintenance, Renewals, and the Deadlines That Kill Marks · Guide — A federal trademark registration is not a trophy but a living credential the USPTO will cancel the instant you stop proving you still use the mark. This…
- IP Fundamentals Toolkit: Copyright, Patent, Trademark, and Trade Secret · Toolkit — Intellectual property is not one body of law but four—copyright, patent, trademark, and trade secret—and the single most valuable habit a creator or business…
- Intent-to-Use Applications: Claiming a Trademark Before You Sell · Article — An intent-to-use (ITU) application under Section 1(b) of the Lanham Act lets a business claim a trademark before it has sold anything, reserving nationwide…
- How Trade Dress Law Grew Up: A Case-Law History of Product Design Protection · Article — This Rightsy deep-dive tells the coming-of-age story of trade dress law for product shape and configuration, tracing how four Supreme Court decisions handed…
- How Brand Rights Are Born, Built, and Lost: A Field Guide to Trademark Use · Article — A trademark is the quiet shorthand a business uses to tell a buyer "this came from us," and the law that protects it rests on one stubborn idea: rights flow…
- Got a Cease-and-Desist? A Response Checklist for Trademark Owners · Checklist — A calm, strategic, step-by-step checklist for trademark owners and businesses who open the mail to find a cease-and-desist letter. It walks through the…
- Goods, Services, and the Nice Classes: A Classification Checklist · Checklist — A trademark protects only the goods and services you actually claim, and the USPTO files every offering into the 45 standardized drawers of the Nice…
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