General IP — guides, checklists and articles
74 practical documents on General IP, newest first.
By document type
- Toolkits (22)
- Guides (18)
- Articles (18)
- Checklists (16)
Documents
- 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…
- IP Audit Checklist: Asset Inventory, Chain of Title, Encumbrances, Maintenance, Budget, and Board Reporting · Checklist — This checklist runs an intellectual property audit as a defined engagement, in the order the work actually proceeds. It opens with scoping and privilege…
- Advertising Agency and Creative Services Toolkit: Pitches, Ownership, Assets, and Exit · Toolkit — An advertising campaign is assembled from material owned by a dozen parties and delivered under an agreement that addresses almost none of them. This toolkit…
- Insurance Industry IP Toolkit: Wordings, Rating Models, Data Sources, and Distribution · Toolkit — An insurance product is a document, a model, and a distribution arrangement, and each of the three raises intellectual property questions that the sector has…
- Advising a Recycling or Circular Economy Business: A Practitioner's Guide to Recovery Processes, Recycled Content Claims, Take-Back Programmes, and Feedstock Agreements · Guide — A working guide to acting for recyclers, reprocessors, refurbishers, brands running take-back schemes, and the equipment vendors who supply them. It opens with…
- IP Audit and Portfolio Governance Toolkit: Inventory, Ownership, Cost, and Reporting · Toolkit — Most intellectual property audits answer the one question that is easy to answer and skip the three that produce decisions. This toolkit collects the whole…
- Information the Government Holds: Open Data, Public Records, and the Rights in Facts Anyone Can Request · Article — Public data feels free and frequently is not, and the ways in which it is not are unintuitive. Federal government works are outside copyright by statute, but…
- What the Border Asks: Tariffs, Origin, Forced Labour, and the Trade Compliance Layer Under Every Import · Article — Every imported product carries a compliance layer that most intellectual property lawyers never see and that can stop a shipment more effectively than any…
- Gray Market and Exhaustion Checklist: Chain of Sale, Material Differences, Contract Controls, Customs Recordation, and Enforcement · Checklist — This checklist runs a gray market matter from first detection through remedy selection. It begins by establishing the chain of sale, because whether the sale…
- Deciding It Privately: Arbitration, Mediation, and the IP Disputes That Never Reach a Courtroom · Article — Most intellectual property disputes with a contract at their centre end privately, and the choice to arbitrate is usually made years earlier by whoever drafted…
- Conducting a Cross-Regime IP Audit: A Practitioner's Guide to Inventory, Ownership Verification, Encumbrances, and Pruning · Guide — This guide sets out how to run an intellectual property audit as a defined engagement with a defined output. It covers scoping, the interview method that…
- The Solo and Small Firm IP Practice Toolkit: Running Trademark and Copyright Matters Efficiently · Toolkit — This toolkit reads the Rightsy corpus the way a lawyer running a practice reads it — as a production system rather than a body of doctrine. It covers matter…
- Public Data and Open Information Toolkit: Sources, Licences, Derived Rights, and Attribution · Toolkit — Public data is the most misunderstood input in modern product development, because "publicly available" describes an access condition and says nothing about…
- Insurance IP Checklist: Wording and Form Ownership, Rating Model Secrecy, Data Source Licences, Broker and Delegated Authority Terms, and Claims System Rights · Checklist — This checklist audits an insurance business in the order the exposure sits. It begins with the wording register, because no later decision can be made without…
- What Happens to the Material: Recycling, Reuse, and the Intellectual Property of the Circular Economy · Article — The circular economy runs on other people's discarded products, which puts it in permanent contact with rights that were never designed for a second life. This…
- Royalty Audit and Licence Compliance Toolkit: Clauses, Scope, Findings, and Settlement · Toolkit — Most licensors are underpaid, most know it, and most do nothing, because the audit right sits in a clause nobody has read since signature. This toolkit…
- IP and Antitrust Toolkit: Licensing Restraints, Pools, and Enforcement Conduct · Toolkit — Intellectual property confers a right to exclude and antitrust law constrains how that right is used, and the boundary between them sits in a narrower and more…
- The Brand Owner's Master Toolkit: A Complete Roadmap From Naming to Enforcement · Toolkit — This is the index to the entire Rightsy library, arranged in the order the work actually happens: naming, clearance, filing, examination, allowance,…
- Controlling a Distribution Channel Without Violating Exhaustion: A Practitioner's Guide to Authorized Sales, Material Differences, and Customs · Guide — This guide sets out how to build and defend a distribution channel once exhaustion is assumed. It starts from the design decisions - product differentiation,…
- Aftermarket and Repair IP Checklist: Part Classification, Design Filings, Repair Analysis, Software Access, and Enforcement Triage · Checklist — This checklist runs an aftermarket position from either side, in the order that eliminates work rather than the order that feels doctrinal. Phase one…
- Environmental Claims and Cleantech IP Checklist: Substantiation, Certification Marks, Patent Strategy, Carbon Credit Rights, and Supply Chain Evidence · Checklist — This checklist runs an environmental claims and cleantech IP position from the live estate inwards, because the gap between what a company has published and…
- Joint Development Agreement Checklist: Background IP, Foreground Allocation, Improvements, and Exit · Checklist — Joint development agreements fail on provisions nobody negotiated and obligations nobody administered. This checklist runs one in sixteen phases: identify the…
- What You Actually Own: Running an IP Audit That Produces Decisions Instead of Spreadsheets · Article — Most intellectual property audits produce a spreadsheet nobody reads and a bill nobody wants to pay twice, because they inventory assets without answering the…
- Layering Protection for a Product Design: A Practitioner's Guide to Sequencing Design Patents, Trade Dress, and Copyright · Guide — This guide is the operational half of the Rightsy article on design protection, and it assumes you know why product-design trade dress always requires…
- Advising an Insurer or Broker: A Practitioner's Guide to Policy Wordings, Rating Algorithms, Data Sources, and Distribution Agreements · Guide — This guide takes a practitioner through an insurance engagement in the order the work has to happen, beginning with the wording register because every later…
- The Sale That Ends Your Rights: Exhaustion, First Sale, and the Gray Market Across Three Regimes · Article — One authorized sale can end the right to control what happens next, and the rule differs across patent, copyright, and trademark in ways that decide real…
- Agency Engagement Checklist: Pitch and Spec Work Terms, Deliverable Ownership, Third-Party Asset Schedules, Approval Records, and Transition on Exit · Checklist — This checklist audits an agency relationship from either side. It is organised around a single structural fact: the standard ownership clause cannot mean what…
- Building or Defending an Aftermarket Position: A Practitioner's Guide to Design Filings, Repair Doctrine, Software Locks, and Parts Distribution · Guide — This guide builds an aftermarket position from either side, using the same analysis run in the same order. It starts by classifying the part, because the…
- Layered Design Protection Toolkit: Sequencing Design Patents, Trade Dress, and Copyright · Toolkit — A product design can be protected three different ways, each with a different term, a different test, a different remedy, and a different fatal flaw - and the…
- Choosing Your Protection Toolkit: Patent, Copyright, Trademark, or Trade Secret · Toolkit — Four regimes protect different things in different ways, and the most consequential intellectual property decisions are made by choosing among them before any…
- Advising a Cleantech or Energy Business: A Practitioner's Guide to Green Patents, Environmental Claims, Certification Marks, and Carbon Assets · Guide — This guide sets out how to run the legal side of a cleantech or energy business across its two very different exposures: the technology, which needs a patent…
- Mining, Energy, and Natural Resources IP Toolkit: Geological Data, Process Secrecy, and Ventures · Toolkit — Extractive businesses hold almost no patents and enormous intellectual property. The value sits in geological and geophysical data that took decades and…
- Structuring a Joint Development Agreement: A Practitioner's Guide to Background, Foreground, and Field Allocation · Guide — This guide structures a joint development agreement from the first conversation about shape through drafting, administration, and exit. It begins with the four…
- IP Antitrust Checklist: Restraint Classification, Misuse Screening, Pool Governance, and Enforcement Conduct Review · Checklist — This checklist reviews an intellectual property arrangement for competition exposure in the order the questions arise. It opens with relationship…
- The Wording Is the Product: Policy Language, Rating Models, and Intellectual Property in Insurance · Article — An insurance policy is a document, and the document is the product. That single fact makes insurance the only major industry whose core offering is a…
- Managing an Agency Relationship: A Practitioner's Guide to Pitch Material, Ownership, Third-Party Assets, and Termination · Guide — This guide is for counsel drafting or repairing an agency relationship, from either side. It starts from the observation that the standard ownership clause…
- Three Ways to Own a Shape: Design Patents, Trade Dress, and Copyright in Product Design · Article — A product's appearance can be protected three different ways, and the three regimes have different requirements, different terms, different remedies, and…
- Channel Partner IP Checklist: Mark Licence Scope, Territory and Exclusivity, Co-Branding Approvals, Lead and Data Rights, and De-Identification on Exit · Checklist — This checklist audits a channel or reseller programme from either side. It begins with the franchise threshold, because that is a structuring question and…
- Privilege and Work Product Toolkit for IP Matters · Toolkit — Intellectual property practice generates more privilege problems than most litigation, because the same people do legal and technical work, the same documents…
- The Part That Broke: Repair, Reconstruction, and Aftermarket Rights in Durable Goods · Article — The aftermarket is where intellectual property doctrine collides with the ordinary expectation that a thing you bought can be fixed, and the collision produces…
- Energy, Cleantech, and Environmental Claims Toolkit: Green Patents, Substantiation, and Certification · Toolkit — A cleantech business has two intellectual property problems and they point in opposite directions. The technology needs patents, which require disclosure and…
- Selling Green: Environmental Claims, Carbon Credits, and the Marks That Promise a Cleaner Product · Article — Environmental claims are the most heavily contested advertising category in the market, and the reason is structural: the claims are about attributes the buyer…
- Whose Invention Is It? Joint Development, Background IP, and the Ownership Default Nobody Wants · Article — Two companies collaborate, something valuable results, and nobody wrote down who owns it. The default rules that then apply are worse than almost any…
- Structuring IP Arrangements That Survive Antitrust Review: A Practitioner's Guide to Licensing Restraints, Pools, and Enforcement Conduct · Guide — This guide is the operational companion to the doctrine, and it is organised as work rather than as law. It sets out how to classify a proposed restraint, how…
- AI, Content, and IP Toolkit: Training Data, Generated Works, and the Ownership Gap · Toolkit — This toolkit is a curated research guide to what United States intellectual property law currently does — and refuses to do — with generative artificial…
- Circular Economy and Recycling IP Toolkit: Processes, Content Claims, Take-Back, and Feedstock · Toolkit — A circular business takes somebody else's product apart and sells the material back into the economy, which makes it an intellectual property practice…
- Extractive Industry IP Checklist: Geological Data Ownership, Process and Metallurgy Secrecy, Joint Venture Terms, Contractor Controls, and Community Agreements · Checklist — This checklist audits the intellectual property position of a mining, oil and gas, or natural resources business in the order the questions arise. It begins…
- Royalty Audit Checklist: Clause and Scope Review, Records Request Design, Revenue and Deduction Testing, Findings and Dispute Handling, and Remediation and Forward Terms · Checklist — A nine-phase working checklist for planning, running, and closing a royalty audit, usable by a licensor commissioning one or a licensee receiving notice.…
- Whose Campaign Is It: Advertising Agencies, Creative Services, and the Work Nobody Assigned · Article — An advertising campaign is assembled from dozens of separately owned components and delivered under an agreement that usually says the client owns everything.…
- IP Privilege Protection Checklist: Communication Hygiene, Agent Privilege, Common Interest, Opinion Waiver, and Production Controls · Checklist — This checklist runs the privilege questions that arise in IP practice, in the order they arise. It starts with the communication habits that determine whether…
- Structuring a Reseller or Channel Programme: A Practitioner's Guide to Mark Licences, Territory, Co-Branding, and Termination · Guide — This guide is for counsel building or repairing a channel programme. It starts from the proposition that the agreement is a trademark licence with a…
- Exhaustion and Gray Market Toolkit: First Sale, Parallel Imports, and Customs · Toolkit — One authorized sale ends the right to control what happens to that article next, and the rule differs across patent, copyright, and trademark in ways that…
- Tendering and Winning an IP Coverage Claim: A Practitioner's Guide to Notice, Reservation of Rights, Defense Costs, and Allocation · Guide — This guide is the operational half of the Rightsy article on advertising injury coverage, and it assumes you know what Coverage B covers and why the trade…
- Where Intellectual Property Stops and Antitrust Starts: Misuse, Tying, Pools, and Refusals to License · Article — Intellectual property confers a right to exclude and antitrust law constrains how that right is used, and the boundary between them is narrower and more…
- Reseller, Dealer, and Channel Partner IP Toolkit: Licences, Territory, Co-Branding, and Exit · Toolkit — A channel programme hands a brand to people the owner does not employ, in places the owner cannot see, and the paperwork that governs it is usually a sales…
- Advising a Mining or Energy Business: A Practitioner's Guide to Geological Data, Process Secrecy, Joint Ventures, and Community Agreements · Guide — This guide is for counsel taking responsibility for the intellectual property position of a mining, oil and gas, or natural resources business, and it starts…
- Conducting or Defending a Royalty Audit: A Practitioner's Guide to Audit Clauses, Scope, Findings, and Settlement · Guide — A working guide to running a royalty audit as licensor or defending one as licensee. It opens with the clause review that determines what is possible, since…
- Public Data Use Checklist: Source and Licence Verification, Restriction Screening, Derived Work Analysis, Attribution Compliance, and Refresh Obligations · Checklist — This checklist audits a product built on public data, and it is organised around the four ways such businesses actually fail: a feed stops, a share-alike…
- Trade Compliance Checklist: Product Classification Records, Origin Determination Evidence, Supply Chain Diligence Files, Recordation and Marking, and Detention and Seizure Response · Checklist — A nine-phase working checklist for a trade compliance programme, covering the records that have to exist before anybody asks for them. Phases one and two cover…
- Protecting Privilege in an IP Matter: A Practitioner's Guide to Patent Agents, Common Interest, Opinions, and Clawback · Guide — This guide builds a privilege programme for an IP practice and then runs it through the situations that break it. It starts with communication hygiene -…
- The Partner Who Sells for You: Resellers, Dealers, and the Brand You Hand to Someone Else · Article — A channel programme hands a brand to people the brand owner does not employ, cannot supervise closely, and will eventually want to remove. Every element of…
- IP Arbitration and Alternative Dispute Resolution Toolkit: Clauses, Forums, and Awards · Toolkit — Most intellectual property disputes with a contract at their centre end privately, and the choice to arbitrate is usually made years earlier by whoever drafted…
- IP Arbitration Checklist: Clause Review, Arbitrability Screening, Tribunal Selection, Evidence and Confidentiality, and Award Enforcement · Checklist — This checklist drafts, responds to, and runs an intellectual property arbitration, treating the clause as the strategic instrument that fixes forum, expertise,…
- Fair Use and Permissions Toolkit: Clearing Copyright, Trademark, and Publicity Rights · Toolkit — This toolkit is the curated shelf for anyone who has to decide whether a piece of content can ship — a marketing campaign, a documentary, a podcast, a product…
- IP Insurance and Risk Transfer Toolkit: Coverage, Tender, and Specialty Policies · Toolkit — An intellectual property lawsuit costs more than most of the damages that resolve it, and a meaningful share of that cost is recoverable from an insurer if…
- Circular Economy IP Checklist: Process and Sorting Technology, Recycled Content Substantiation, Take-Back and Refurbishment Terms, Feedstock Supply Agreements, and Certification Marks · Checklist — A ten-phase working checklist for recyclers, reprocessors, refurbishers, brands running take-back programmes, and their advisers. Phases one and two inventory…
- What Comes Out of the Ground: Mining, Energy, and the Intellectual Property in an Extractive Business · Article — An extractive business does not think of itself as an intellectual property client, and it is wrong about that in a way that costs money. The orebody is not…
- Customs, Tariffs, and Trade Compliance Toolkit: Classification, Origin, Diligence, and Detentions · Toolkit — Almost every serious customs problem reduces to the same sentence: a position was taken, it may have been correct, and there is no record supporting it. This…
- Who Pays for the IP Lawsuit? Advertising Injury Coverage and the Duty to Defend · Article — A trademark or copyright complaint arrives and the first question the client asks is what it will cost. The better first question is whether someone else…
- The Number on the Statement: Royalty Reporting, Under-Payment, and the Audit Nobody Exercises · Article — Almost every licence contains an audit right and almost nobody exercises it, which is why under-reporting is the norm rather than the exception. This article…
- Building a Product on Public Data: A Practitioner's Guide to Sourcing, Licence Terms, Derived Rights, and Attribution · Guide — This guide is for counsel advising a business that builds a product from public data, and it starts from an observation about how such businesses actually…
- What Your Adversary Gets to Read: Privilege, Work Product, and the Waivers That Happen in IP Matters · Article — IP matters generate more privilege problems than most litigation because the same people do legal and technical work, the same documents serve prosecution and…
- Building a Trade Compliance Programme: A Practitioner's Guide to Classification, Origin, Supply Chain Diligence, and Detention Response · Guide — A practitioner's guide to building a trade compliance programme from nothing, or repairing one that exists on paper only. It begins with governance — who…