Something arrived. What do I do this week?

What is my actual deadline?

Find the real date before anything else, and do not take it from an answer on the internet, including this one.

In federal court a response to a complaint is generally due 21 days after service. That date moves with a waiver of service and with extensions, and it belongs to your particular court and your particular case. The day the envelope reached your desk and the day you were legally served are also not always the same day.

Confirming it is a short task for a lawyer and it sets the shape of everything else in the week. A missed response deadline can lose a case that had a good answer in it, before anyone has looked at whether you infringe.

What do I have to stop doing today?

Suspend routine automatic deletion of anything touching the accused product, today, before you have chosen a lawyer.

That means email retention rules, chat histories that clear themselves after thirty or ninety days, backup rotations, and the cleanup script somebody wrote years ago that nobody thinks about. It also means telling the people who touch the product, in writing, to keep what they have.

Courts treat destroyed documents very seriously, and a preservation problem is one of the few things that can do a company more harm than the underlying dispute would have. It is also entirely avoidable, and this is the week to avoid it.

Should I call my insurance?

Yes, this week. Some business policies cover intellectual property defense, and late notice can forfeit that coverage entirely.

Call the broker rather than guessing from the policy summary, and ask them to look at every policy the business holds rather than the one that sounds relevant. Coverage in this area frequently sits somewhere nobody expects.

Asking costs nothing. Not asking, and finding out eighteen months later that the notice window closed, costs whatever the defense costs.

Can I email my team about this?

Not about whether you infringe. That email is discoverable, and the other side will read it.

Engineers and founders theorize in writing, instinctively and in complete good faith. Six months later a sentence written at midnight arrives in front of a jury with the context stripped off it, and it does more damage than anything the other side found on its own. Have that conversation with counsel, out loud, where it is protected.

Practical email is fine and necessary. Preserving documents. Who holds what. Scheduling. The line is speculation about the merits.

What should I put together before I call anyone?

Four things, and you can gather every one of them without a lawyer and without spending anything.

• The patent numbers being asserted. They are in the complaint or the letter.
• Everything you have received, with the date each item arrived and how it arrived.
• A plain description of how your product actually works, written by someone who built it.
• Who built it, roughly when, and what they were working from at the time.

That packet turns a vague first phone call into a useful one, with any lawyer you speak to. It also tells you something about them, because a lawyer who does not want to look at how the product works before quoting you a strategy has told you what kind of strategy it is.

How many lawyers should I talk to?

More than one. Interview at least two, and notice how differently the same facts get described.

First conversations are usually free, and there is nothing disloyal about having several. The difference between lawyers on a patent matter is often technical depth, and twenty minutes of the right questions will surface it. So will the opposite: a confident manner with nothing underneath it sounds excellent for about ten minutes.

Nobody honest will promise you an outcome in a first meeting, and anyone who hands you a number for cost or duration is guessing. Hearing the guess named as a guess is a good sign.

What do I ask them?

Six questions, and the answers will tell you more than any biography.

• Can you understand our technology at the level it was built, or will you depend on an expert to translate it for you?
• Will you read the patent's full prosecution history yourself?
• Can you explain what this means for the business in language our board can use?
• How will you explain this technology to a judge or a jury who has never seen it?
• What would you decline to spend our money on?
• How do you create pressure without letting the cost run away?

Ask them of everyone you interview, including Jesse.

Is a letter as serious as a lawsuit?

A demand letter carries no court deadline, and it is not nothing either.

It opens a range of outcomes that runs from a license negotiation to litigation, and it starts real obligations, including preserving documents. Whether silence is a sound response or an expensive one depends on who sent it and what they actually want, and both of those are knowable before you decide.

One more thing worth holding on to, whichever arrived. Being sued is not a finding of anything. A complaint is one side's allegation, companies of every size and every degree of care receive them, and most patent disputes end in a negotiated resolution rather than a verdict.