We're Closing. Thank You.

Doug Cook is retiring and Steve Cook has moved to an in-house counsel position. As such, we are no longer accepting new clients. Thank you.

Can The FBI Make Apple Rewrite iOS?

Great analysis by Harvard Law professor Susan Crawford regarding the FBI's demands of Apple:

The president  —  our Law Professor in Chief  — has to know the DOJ is on shaky ground. He’s probably got this rule of statutory construction rolling around in his mind as he watches college basketball this week: Specific statutes trump general ones. Generalia specialibus non derogant.

When it comes down to it, the legal question has nothing to do with encryption or national security, rather, the question is one of statutory interpretation, which forms the bedrock of our legal system:

[Do] specific statutes trump general ones.

Yes they do. The FBI cannot force Apple to rewrite iOS based upon a centuries-old gap-filler.

Federal Trademark AttorneySteve Cook is a trademark lawyer at Cook & Cook. Although his main office is located in Mesa, Arizona, he represents clients throughout the United States..

Contact Us

If you are a current client of this firm, please do not send confidential or otherwise sensitive information via this site. Further, if you are not an existing client of this firm, unsolicited emails containing confidential or sensitive information cannot be protected from disclosure as no attorney-client relationship exists.

LLC, Corporation, Trade Name, Trademark: Which Do I Need? February 16, 2017 You want to protect your business, but what legal strategy will help you to protect it best? This might sound a little like something Yoda would say,... More» Fraudulent Conveyances & Asset Protection February 9, 2017 Although the idea of asset protection, i.e. protecting assets from creditors of the a person who owns them, may seem simple at first glance, it's... More»
Areas of Practice