ATLAS/BRIEFINGLaw, organized for consequential decisions.

ALL BRIEFS · PAGE 9

Brief index

Every ATLAS brief, in desk order. Use the desk rail to filter by practice area, or the research console for a direct query.

IMMImmigration Strategy & StatusIMM desk →FINFinancial Regulation & Digital AssetsFIN desk →CORPCorporate Operations & RiskCORP desk →LITLitigation & Dispute ResolutionLIT desk →EMPEmployment & WorkforceEMP desk →FAMFamily TransitionsFAM desk →PROPProperty & DevelopmentPROP desk →PRIVPrivacy, Cyber & AIPRIV desk →IPIntellectual Property & MediaIP desk →ESTEstate, Tax & SuccessionEST desk →CRIMConsumer & Criminal ProcedureCRIM desk →

IP-06 · 113

Copyright Termination Rights: Recapturing Transferred Rights

10 MIN · IP

Federal law lets an author undo a copyright grant decades after signing it, regardless of what the contract says. The right is unwaivable, but it is also unforgiving about arithmetic and paperwork.

  • A grant an author made on or after 1 January 1978 can be terminated during a five-year window opening 35 years after execution.
  • Notice must be served at least two and no more than ten years before the chosen effective date, and recorded before that date.
  • Works made for hire cannot be terminated at all, which makes the hire question the first thing to answer, not the last.
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IP-07 · 114

Music and Podcast Licensing: Which Rights You Actually Need

8 MIN · IP

Almost every music clearance failure comes from clearing one copyright and forgetting the other. This brief separates the composition from the recording and matches each use to the licences it needs.

  • Music carries two separate copyrights: the underlying composition and the specific sound recording, usually owned by different people.
  • Audiovisual use needs a synchronisation licence for the composition and a master use licence for the recording, negotiated separately.
  • Podcasts have no blanket or compulsory route for music; direct licences or production-library music are the workable options.
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IP-08 · 115

Advertising Claims: Substantiation and False Advertising Exposure

10 MIN · IP

Two systems police advertising claims at once: an agency that asks whether you had proof before you spoke, and competitors who can sue you for the sales you took.

  • The FTC requires a reasonable basis for an objective claim before it is disseminated, not assembled afterwards in response to an inquiry.
  • The claim being tested is what consumers reasonably take away, including implied messages, not the literal words the advertiser chose.
  • Lanham Act 43(a) lets a competitor sue over false or misleading commercial advertising and recover damages, profits, and sometimes fees.
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IP-09 · 116

Fair Use in Commercial Content: Applying the Four Factors

10 MIN · IP

Fair use is a defence decided case by case, not a rule with safe amounts. This brief works through the four statutory factors as a commercial publisher has to apply them.

  • Section 107 lists four factors and no safe harbours; there is no percentage, word count, or number of seconds that is automatically fair.
  • The first factor asks whether the new use has a genuinely different purpose, weighed against its commercial character as a matter of degree.
  • In 2023 the Supreme Court's Warhol decision tightened that analysis where a secondary use substitutes for the original's own licensing market.
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IP-10 · 117

Patent Marking, Virtual Marking, and the Damages Consequence

9 MIN · IP

Marking is a housekeeping task with a seven-figure consequence. Without it, a patentee's damages often start at the demand letter or the complaint rather than at first infringement.

  • Where a patented product is sold, marking is a precondition to recovering damages for infringement occurring before actual notice was given.
  • Virtual marking is permitted: the word patent plus a web address that associates the article with the relevant patent numbers.
  • Claims to a method alone carry no marking duty, because there is no article to mark; mixed patents follow what is asserted and sold.
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EST-03 · 118

Grantor Trusts: Who Pays the Income Tax, and Why Planners Want That Result

8 MIN · EST

Grantor trust status is a deliberate choice, not an accident. This brief explains which retained powers trigger it, what the tax payment does for the family, and how the structure unwinds.

  • A grantor trust is ignored for income tax while remaining a completed gift for transfer tax, which is the whole point of the structure.
  • The grantor pays tax on trust income from personal funds, and the IRS has ruled that payment is not an additional taxable gift to beneficiaries.
  • Sales and loans between a grantor and a grantor trust are disregarded, so no gain is recognized when assets are swapped or sold for a note.
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EST-04 · 119

Portability of the Estate Tax Exclusion: The Election, the Deadline, and the Late Fix

7 MIN · EST

Portability is not automatic. It is an election made on a federal estate tax return that most families think they do not need to file, and the omission is discovered years too late.

  • The unused exclusion of a deceased spouse transfers to the survivor only if the executor makes an election on a timely filed Form 706.
  • The return must be filed even when the estate owes no tax and falls far below the filing threshold, which is where most families go wrong.
  • A revenue procedure gives estates that were not otherwise required to file a simplified late-election route measured in years, not months.
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EST-05 · 120

Family Limited Partnerships and Valuation Discounts: Where They Hold and Where They Break

7 MIN · EST

A discount on a family entity interest is an appraisal conclusion the government tests against how the entity was actually run. This brief separates the facts that support it from the facts that destroy it.

  • Discounts rest on two economic facts: a minority holder cannot control the entity, and no ready market exists for the interest.
  • The main federal attack is IRC section 2036, which pulls transferred assets back into the estate where the transferor kept enjoyment or control.
  • The statutory escape is a bona fide sale for full consideration, which courts read to require a legitimate and significant non-tax purpose.
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EST-06 · 121

Changing an Irrevocable Trust: Decanting, Reformation, and Beneficiary Consent

7 MIN · EST

Irrevocable does not mean unchangeable. This brief sets out the six routes state law provides for altering a trust, what each one requires, and where the federal tax overlay bites.

  • Decanting authority comes from state statute, common law, or the trust's own terms; a trustee with no distributive discretion generally cannot decant at all.
  • The Uniform Trust Decanting Act, adopted in a number of states, ties what a trustee may change to how broad the distribution standard is.
  • Consent modification and nonjudicial settlement agreements are often faster than court, but they cannot defeat a material purpose of the trust.
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EST-07 · 122

Fiduciary Income Tax: Form 1041, the Distribution Deduction, and Schedule K-1

8 MIN · EST

An estate or trust is a taxpayer with unusually compressed rates. This brief explains how the distribution deduction shifts income to beneficiaries and which elections have to be made on time.

  • An estate or trust files Form 1041 and is taxed as a separate entity, but reaches the top federal rate at a very low level of retained income.
  • The distribution deduction moves income out to beneficiaries, who report it on Schedule K-1 with its original character preserved.
  • Distributable net income caps the deduction and the beneficiaries' inclusion, so income cannot be shifted beyond what the entity actually earned.
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EST-08 · 123

Irrevocable Life Insurance Trusts: Incidents of Ownership, Crummey Rights, and Common Failures

8 MIN · EST

An insurance trust works only if the insured owns nothing and the trustee actually administers it. This brief maps the two statutes that decide the outcome and the housekeeping that fails first.

  • IRC section 2042 includes policy proceeds in the estate where the insured held any incident of ownership at death, or where proceeds are payable to the estate.
  • Incidents of ownership include the right to change beneficiaries, surrender, assign, pledge, or borrow against the policy — not just formal title.
  • Transferring an existing policy starts a three-year lookback; if the insured dies inside it, the proceeds come back into the estate.
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EST-09 · 124

Succession for Farms and Illiquid Real Property: Keeping the Land Out of a Forced Sale

8 MIN · EST

Land is worth a great deal and produces very little cash. This brief sets out the federal relief provisions and the state title problems that decide whether a farm survives a generation.

  • Succession for land is state property and probate law with a federal tax overlay; the title problem is usually older and harder than the tax problem.
  • Special use valuation lets qualifying farm and business real property be valued at its actual use, subject to a long recapture period.
  • Where a closely held business is a large enough share of the estate, the tax on that interest can be paid in installments over many years.
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CRIM-03 · 125

The Grand Jury: Subpoenas, Witness Status, and What Secrecy Actually Covers

7 MIN · CRIM

A grand jury subpoena is the first visible step in an investigation that has usually been running for months. This brief explains what it compels, what it does not, and the sequence that follows.

  • Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6 governs the grand jury, and its secrecy obligation binds prosecutors, jurors, and court staff — not witnesses.
  • Recipients should establish immediately whether they are a witness, a subject, or a target, because the three call for different responses.
  • A company has no privilege against self-incrimination, and its records custodian generally cannot refuse to produce on personal Fifth Amendment grounds.
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CRIM-04 · 126

Miranda and Custodial Interrogation: Custody, Interrogation, Waiver, and Invocation

8 MIN · CRIM

Miranda applies only where custody and interrogation overlap. This brief separates the two elements, explains what a valid waiver looks like, and identifies what a violation does and does not achieve.

  • Warnings are required only when a person is both in custody and subject to interrogation; either element alone does not trigger the rule.
  • Custody is an objective test asking whether a reasonable person would feel free to end the encounter and leave, not what the officer intended.
  • The Supreme Court held in Berghuis v. Thompkins (2010) that silence is not an invocation and that a suspect must speak up unambiguously.
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