Idaho Injuries Dictionary

Legal and insurance terms explained plainly

A reading at or above this cutoff can mean an arrest, a license suspension, higher insurance costs, and stronger evidence against you in both a criminal case and any related...

DICTIONARY 2026-03-22

blood draw warrant

A judge's written order allowing police to take a person's blood as evidence. "Judge's written order" matters because officers usually need probable cause and court approval...

DICTIONARY 2026-04-02

bond hearing immigration

You might see this in a notice from immigration court, hear it from a detention officer, or hear a lawyer say, "We need to ask for a bond hearing." It means a court proceeding...

DICTIONARY 2026-03-23

calibration log

Insurance companies and defense lawyers often go straight to a machine's paperwork when they want to challenge test results, arguing that missing entries, late checks, or...

DICTIONARY 2026-04-01

cease and desist letter

Like a warning flag on a dangerous stretch of trail, a cease and desist letter tells someone to stop doing something now and not start again. In legal use, it is a written...

DICTIONARY 2026-03-27

chain of custody blood sample

Not the same thing as the blood test result itself, and not just a label on a tube. A chain of custody blood sample is the documented trail showing who collected a blood...

DICTIONARY 2026-04-02

copyright fair use

Not a free pass to copy anything found online just because it is for education, commentary, or "not making money." That is the most common bad advice. Fair use is a limited...

DICTIONARY 2026-03-25

copyright registration

Defense lawyers or insurance adjusters may point to a missing copyright registration and argue that a person has no real ownership claim, no right to sue, or no leverage over...

DICTIONARY 2026-03-24

DMCA takedown notice

You just got a letter that says your video, photo, post, or website content has been reported for copyright infringement, and a platform may remove it fast. A DMCA takedown...

DICTIONARY 2026-03-24

evidentiary breath test

Miss this for a roadside puff into a handheld device, and the damage can pile up fast: a driver may assume the number does not really count, refuse the wrong test, or fail to...

DICTIONARY 2026-04-01

gas chromatography

You just got a letter that says your blood sample was analyzed by gas chromatography, and the result will be used as evidence. Gas chromatography is a laboratory method that...

DICTIONARY 2026-04-02

gouge marks

Two years is the usual deadline to file a personal injury lawsuit in Idaho after a crash, and that clock can start running long before damaged pavement gets documented. What...

DICTIONARY 2026-03-21

Intoxilyzer

Not a blood test, and not a generic label for every breath machine police use. An Intoxilyzer is a brand or model of breath-testing instrument that estimates a person's blood...

DICTIONARY 2026-03-29

licensing agreement

The nightmare version is finding out too late that someone else can legally use your logo, software, design, or product idea in ways you never meant to allow - or learning you...

DICTIONARY 2026-03-27

likelihood of confusion test

Money can turn on this issue because it often decides whether a business can keep using a name, logo, packaging style, or slogan without paying damages or being forced to...

DICTIONARY 2026-03-24

non-compete vs non-solicitation

A non-compete restricts someone from working for or starting a competing business for a certain time and in a certain area, while a non-solicitation clause is narrower and...

DICTIONARY 2026-03-23

observation period

The part people get wrong most often is thinking an officer has to stare at someone nonstop, without blinking, for the whole period. That is not usually the real standard. An...

DICTIONARY 2026-03-30

patent infringement

Money exposure can be immediate and severe: a successful claim can lead to injunctive relief, lost-profit damages, a reasonable royalty, and, in exceptional cases, up to treble...

DICTIONARY 2026-03-28

patent prosecution

Often confused with patent litigation, patent prosecution is the process of applying for, examining, amending, and securing a patent through the U.S. Patent and Trademark...

DICTIONARY 2026-03-27

prior art search

Missing this step can cost real money fast. A business may spend thousands developing a product, filing a patent application, or fighting over ownership, only to learn someone...

DICTIONARY 2026-03-27

proof of loss

Sixty days is a common deadline in insurance policies before a person can lose benefits for failing to submit the form and records the insurer demands. The phrase comes from...

DICTIONARY 2026-03-22

royalty agreement

A royalty agreement is a contract that lets one party use, sell, license, or profit from another party's intellectual property or resource in exchange for ongoing payments,...

DICTIONARY 2026-03-25

sight distance

Everyone says crashes are all about speed, but actually what a driver could see - and when - often tells the fuller story. The term came out of road engineering, where...

DICTIONARY 2026-03-22

standardized field sobriety testing

Miss this issue after a crash, and an officer's roadside observations may end up carrying more weight than expected. Standardized field sobriety testing is a set of three...

DICTIONARY 2026-04-03

Temporary Protected Status

People often confuse Temporary Protected Status with asylum, but they are not the same. Temporary Protected Status (TPS) is a temporary immigration protection the federal...

DICTIONARY 2026-03-23

trade dress protection

Defense lawyers and insurance companies may use this phrase to argue that a product's look was just ordinary packaging, purely functional design, or too generic to deserve...

DICTIONARY 2026-03-26

trade secret misappropriation

People often confuse trade secret misappropriation with patent infringement, but they protect different kinds of business information. A patent protects an invention that has...

DICTIONARY 2026-03-28

trademark infringement

It often shows up in a cease-and-desist letter, a complaint, or a call from counsel saying a name, logo, slogan, label, or product design is "too close" to someone else's...

DICTIONARY 2026-03-26

trademark registration

What it is not: a magic button that creates a brand from nothing or guarantees nobody else can ever use a similar name. A business can have trademark rights just by using a...

DICTIONARY 2026-03-24