About Thomas James, Esq.
Thomas James (also known as Tom james) is an attorney located in Cokato, Minnesota (USA) with over thirty years of experience as a sole practitioner. His practice is focused on trademark and copyright registration and protection, small business and nonprofit organization formation, and applications for 501(c) tax-exempt status. Also an author and continuing legal education course developer and instructor.
The Law Office of Tom James
Education
Cokato attorney Thomas B. James (less formally known as Tom James, or Thomas James) is a lawyer at the Law Office of Tom James in Cokato, Minnesota. He received his Juris Doctorate (J.D.) degree from Southwestern University in Los Angeles, California. He received his undergraduate (Bachelor of Arts) degree from the University of California – Berkeley. He has been practicing law full-time since 1995.
Attorney Thomas James has also completed training in arbitration, mediation, TESOL (Teaching English as a Second Language), TEYL (Teaching English to Young Learners), and TBE (Teaching Business English). He has developed and taught several continuing legal education courses for the Minnesota State Bar Association, Echion CLE, NALA, and Minnesota State University. You can read more about some of the courses he has developed and taught on the Courses page.
Bar Admissions
Although he is a Cokato attorney and Cokato is a very small rural town in greater Minnesota, attorney Thomas James is admitted to the bar of the United States Supreme Court. He is also admitted to practice in the Federal and 8th Circuit Courts of Appeals, Minnesota state and federal courts, and is authorized to represent clients nationally in the U.S. Trademark Office, the U.S. Copyright Office, and before the United States Trademark Trials and Appeals Board (TTAB) and the Copyright Claims Board (CCB).
Pro Bono Work
An attorney in private practice since 1995, Mr. James also teaches continuing legal education (CLE) courses for attorneys and other legal professionals. Over the course of his career, Tom James has volunteered many hours of pro bono work to nonprofit organizations. For example, he was a volunteer lawyer for Central Minnesota Legal Services for many years. Initially, he provided pro bono services to family law clients. While he no longer handles family law matters, Minnesota attorney Thomas James now performs pro bono services and advises small businesses and nonprofit organizations through SCORE and the LegalCORPS programs. Most recently, he has performed trademark work for the National Parents Organization. He has served as a judge in high school mock trial competitions, and has previously served as a volunteer arbitrator for the Dispute Settlement Board in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Professional Memberships
Minnesota attorney Thomas James is a member of the American Bar Association and a long-standing member of the Minnesota State Bar Association, and the county bar associations. Currently a member of the National Parents Advisory Council, Cokato lawyer Tom James has previously served on the Central Minnesota Legal Services Advisory Council and the NAMI Legislative Committee.
Member of the ABA Copyright and Emerging Technology Committee.
Books by Cokato Attorney Thomas James
Books authored by Cokato, Minnesota attorney include IP Law for Non-IP Attorneys (an overview of intellectual property law covering basic principles of copyright, trademark, patent, and trade secret laws) and E-Commerce Law (a legal compliance handbook for online businesses). Although he no longer practices family law, Thomas B. James is also the author of Domestic Violence: The 12 Things You Aren’t Supposed to Know (out of print) and The History of Custody Law. He is a member of the Nonfiction Authors Association. Read more about his books.
Articles by Minnesota Lawyer Thomas James
Law review articles Cokato attorney Tom James has written include:
- “Child Custody Presumptions: From Fault and Gender to Equal Time,” Georgia State University Law Review article (vol. 42, Spring 2026) tracing the origin and historical development of child custody presumptions in child custody law from ancient times to modern-day America, from the maternal preference to new “equal shared parenting time” statutes. The article also includes the latest research on joint custody and equal shared parenting time.
- “Overruling Rostker v. Goldberg: Toward an Equal Obligation to Register for Selective Service,” Nebraska Law Review (May, 2021) Here, Minnesota attorney Tom James argues that the male-only Selective Service registration requirement violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution, and explains why Rostker v. Goldberg, the 1980 Supreme Court decision upholding it, should be overruled.
- “Sales and Use Tax Nexus: The Way Forward for Legislation,” Mitchell-Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy & Practice, vol. 41, no. 1 (2020) Cokato lawyer Thomas James critiques the United States Supreme Court’s establishment of volume thresholds for use in Due Process and Commerce Clause analysis of state sales and use taxes on interstate sales. He concludes the article by suggesting ways Congress could relieve the burden of multiple state and local tax obligations on businesses that sell online.
- “Assisted Reproduction: Reforming State Statutes After Obergefell v. Hodges and Pavan v. Smith,” University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender & Class, vol. 19 (2020) Cokato attorney, Tom James, discusses the impact of Obergefell v. Hodges and Pavan v. Smith on state family law statutes pertaining to paternity and parentage determinations. He discusses the changes state legislatures will need to make to accommodate the constitutional requirement that parents in same-sex couples be treated the same as parents in opposite-sex couples.
- “Protecting Copyrights in Professional and Academic Writing,” Pulse (2020). Attorney Tom James explains the rights of academic and professional authors in their works and how to protect them after they are published.
- “Copyright Enforcement: Time to Abolish the Pre-Litigation Registration Requirement,” Illinois Law Review (Fall, 2019). The United States is one of the few countries that requires its citizens to register the copyrights in their works before enforcing them in court. The Copyright Office can sometimes take a year or more to issue a registration certificate. Cokato attorney Thomas James argues that this has unfair consequences for authors and other copyright owners. He suggests that the time has come for Congress to abolish the pre-litigation registration requirement.
- “E-Commerce Sales Taxes: What Your Online Business Needs to Know,” AllBusiness.com (June 17, 2019) Post-Wayfair tax information for small businesses and individuals who sell online.
- “Use Tax Nexus: The Illusory Utility of Volume Thresholds,” Tax Notes – State (April 29, 2019). Cokato attorney Thomas James critiques the United States Supreme Court’s adoption of volume thresholds to assess the constitutionality of state sales and use taxes under the Due Process and Commerce clauses of the United States Constitution.
- Minnesota Bench and Bar.
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Avvo Legal Guides:
- 10 Key Points to Cover in an Employment Contract (Avvo, 2021)
- 10 Essential Legal Steps in Starting a Business (Avvo, 2021)
Tom James in the News
- NPO announces Cokato, Minnesota attorney Tom James is co-recipient of the 2025 Ned Holstein Shared Parenting Research Award for his law review article on child custody presumptions, published in the Georgia State University Law Review in 2026.
- “Claiming Medical Leave Rights Retroactively,” a Washington Post article about Ellshoff v. Department of the Interior. In this case, attorney Thomas James succeeded in persuading the Merit Systems Protection Board that depression is an illness covered by the Family Medical Leave Act and that the client’s employer had violated the client’s rights under the Act.
- “Divorced Dad Wins Fight Over Bible Lessons.” In this case, attorney Thomas James secured a reversal on appeal of a family court order that enjoined his client from talking about the Bible in front of his children. Although not a fundamentalist himself, Tom James believes the First Amendment’s Free Exercise clause applies to everybody, even noncustodial fathers.
- Hansen v. Todnem, an appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court seeking to vindicate a single father’s parental rights.
- “Relative Foster Care and Adoption.” Radio station WJON AM 1240 write-up of a course that attorney Tom James developed and hosted for Echion CLE.
- TTAB Order dismissing an opposition to a trademark registration application that attorney Thomas James filed on behalf of a client.
- Representing Relatives in Post-Permanency Proceedings, a 2022 CLE co-presented with Rhia Bornmann Spears; hosted by the Minnesota State Bar Association (MinnesotaCLE).
Legal News and Updates: a collection of news items about law and lawyers.
Attorney Tom James is indexed in Martindale-Hubbell, and also in Findlaw, and in Lawyers.com, among others. He has a 9.1 rating on Avvo.com.
Who Tom James is not (Disambiguation).
The Law Blog of Thomas James
The Cokato Copyright Attorney is the official law blog of Minnesota attorney Thomas B. James. Visit this page for news and commentary on the latest developments in copyright and trademark law.
A sampling of recent blog posts:
- Fair Use Decision in Thomson Reuters v. Ross Intelligence. A landmark AI fair use decision that included a determination of the copyrightability of Westlaw headnotes, to boot.
- Corbello v. Valli: Copyright Estoppel and Asserted Truths. You can claim a copyright in fiction, but no one can claim a copyright in facts. What happens if somebody copies something you claimed to be fact but it turns out to be fiction?
- The Copyright Discovery Rule Stands. The Copyright Act imposes a 3-year limitations period for copyright infringement claims. But when does a claim accrue? The United States Supreme Court recently addressed this (potentially) million-dollar question.
- Top Copyright Cases of 2024. A summary of the most significant copyright decisions of 2024.
- Top Copyright Cases of 2022. A summary of the most significant copyright cases of 2022.
- Voice Cloning. Copyright and other approaches to the problem of voice cloning.
- The Philosophy of Copyright. The deontological and utilitarian foundations of copyright protection.
- The New Copyright Circumvention Rules. A look at some of the exemptions from the anti-circumvention rules that the Librarian of Congress has recently either created or renewed.
- Can We Talk Here? Trademark Speech Rights. In recent years, the United States Supreme Court has been grappling with the thorny question of how the First Amendment applies to trademarks. In this blog post, I highlight significant recent decisions and attempt to make logical sense of them.
- Copyright Infringement Damages. Are damages for copyright infringement always limited to the three-year period before suit is filed?
- AI Lawsuits Roundup. A review of 24 pending lawsuits against AI companies and what they’re about.
- What Is in the Public Domain. How to determine what is in the public domain and what is not.
- Copyright as Killjoy: Can You Be Sued for Sharing a Joke?
- Suggestive Trademarks Where is the line between suggestiveness and descriptiveness, and why does it matter?
- AI Legal Issues. AI has been trained not just to perform customer service tasks, but also to perform analytics and diagnostic tests; to repair products; to update software; to drive cars; and even to write articles and create images and videos. Here I describe significant new legal issues AI is raising.
- Photographers’ Rights: Warhol Case Tests the Limits of Transformative Use – When does a modified work go from being an illegal derivative work to a legal “transformative” work?
Other blog posts:
- The Ubiquitous Thomas James, Medium. If you laid out all the Tom Jameses in the country from toe to head on I-94, you would have a lot of angry motorists.
- Scraping Bias, Medium. When it comes to generative AI, as with many things, it is garbage in, garbage out.
- Supreme Court Ethics and the Separation of Powers, Medium. The Supreme Court rules, but who rules the Supreme Court?
- Is ChatGPT Really HAL from 2001? Medium. Well, is he?
- Job Search Scam Red Flags, Medium. Criminals and deadbeats prey on the elderly, the disabled, and people who are looking for legitimate work. Here are some things to watch out for.
- Dobbs: What Happened and What It Means, Medium. In some quarters, this is the most despised Supreme Court decision to come down the chute since Korematsu v. United States. It is important to understand what the Court actually held and what it did not hold, though.
- Trauma-Informed Law Practices, Medium.
- Free Speech, Medium. A perennial favorite or least-favorite, depending on whether a person’s views are currently in vogue or not.
- The Fixation Requirement, Medium. “You stole my singing banana performance!” How many times have we heard that? In this post, I explain why it is important to write things down or record them if you want to be able to enforce copyrights in them.
Awards and Recognition for Cokato Attorney Tom James
Former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura awarded a Certificate of Commendation for Contribution to the Administration of Justice to Cokato attorney Thomas B. James in recognition of his pro bono work for Central Minnesota Legal Services. Before then, Tom James was a recipient of the Hennepin County District Court Judges Outstanding Service Award. As a law student, he received Top Student awards in constitutional law and other subjects. Attorney Tom James is also a past recipient of the American Jurisprudence Legal Scholarship Award. Most recently, Minnesota attorney Thomas James received the 2025 Ned Holstein Shared Parenting Research Award sponsored by the National Parents Organization.
The Law Office of Tom James is located at 440 North Broadway Avenue in Cokato, Minnesota (USA).
Thomas James is the only attorney at the Law Office of Tom James. He is a sole practitioner.
Not in the courts of every state, but yes, he can represent clients from any state in US Trademark Office (part of the USPTO), US Trademark Trials and Appeals Board (TTAB), US Copyright Office (USCO), and Copyright Claims Board (CCB) proceedings. To represent a client in U.S. Trademark Office, TTAB, USCO, and CCB proceedings, an attorney must be an active member in good standing of the bar of the highest court of any U.S. state, commonwealth, or territory, or the District of Columbia. Thomas James is an active member in good standing of the bar of the Minnesota Supreme Court, so he can represent (and has represented) clients from all over the country and the world in these kinds of proceedings. In addition to Minnesota courts, Thomas James is also admitted to the bar of the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals and the United States Supreme Court. An attorney admitted to the bars of these courts can file a brief and represent a party in them even if not licensed in the specific state in which the client resides. This means, for example, that although he is not licensed to represent clients in a Nevada or Wyoming state court, he can represent them in U.S. Trademark Office, TTAB, USCO, and CCB proceedings, and in appeals to the United States Supreme Court.
No, Thomas James has never been suspended or disbarred. Mr. James’s disclosure about this, which he has published to attorney directories as well, is: An individual I do not know and who does not know me has published a statement on the Internet that I have been suspended twice. I have never been suspended, let alone twice. I do not know why he is doing this, or whether this is an extortion or defamation mill of some kind. In any event, this individual’s statement is false, malicious, and defamatory. The truth is that in 2008, I was reprimanded for neglect of a client matter in 2005. I was unaware at the time that I was experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), triggered by exposure to parents who killed or wished their children dead. I am not representing that this client was one of those parents. PTSD is an insidious condition, but as many veterans can attest, it is not a permanent disability. I completed treatment for it successfully and voluntarily transitioned to business and IP law. There have been no further problems or recurrences.”
Yes. I have developed and presented continuing legal education courses on a variety of topics.
Since 1995. For five years prior to that, I was a court deputy (clerk) for Hennepin County, Minnesota.
Copyright and trademark registration and related issues, business and non-profit organizations, tax-exempt status applications.
Costs can vary widely. In addition to my fee, they include such things as trademark and copyright application fees, court filing fees, and the like. My fee depends on the amount of time expended on the case. That is affected by the nature and complexity of the matter, the strength of the claim, the existence or absence of opposition, the likelihood of opposition, the nature of the representation, full representation vs. unbundled services such as legal research, trademark search, drafting a response to an office action, pro-se assistance, etc., among other things.
I charge a competitive hourly rate. For simple, routine matters, I charge a flat fee. I do not offer contingent fee plans.
I am not actively seeking litigation clients. My practice is currently focused on trademark registration, copyright registration, and securing tax-exempt status for nonprofit organizations. I also have considerable appellate practice experience and will consider writing an amicus brief in an appropriate case. This page will be updated if the situation changes.
Get in touch!
Use this form to contact me. Submitting your information through this web form does not establish an attorney-client relationship. Information submitted through this web form is not confidential, not subject to attorney-client privilege, and will not preclude this law firm from representing a different client in the same legal matter. I do not represent you until you meet with me and sign a fee agreement. Do not send any confidential information until we meet.