Intellectual Property Law

WISCONSIN CONFIDENTIAL: THE MYSTERY OF THE WISCONSIN SUPREME COURT'S DECISION IN BURBANK GREASE SERVICES V. SOKOLOWSKI AND ITS EFFECT UPON THE UNIFORM TRADE SECRETS ACT, LITIGATION, AND EMPLOYEE MOBILITY

Posted on April 17, 2008
2007 Wis. L. Rev. 1271 (2008) Michael Ahrens Introduction Corporations are like jugglers. In one hand they must establish a market for their product. In the other hand they have to train and retain a workforce capable of creating and developing the products necessary to maintain their place in that market...

From Maine : KELLY SERVICES, INC. v. Erin E. GREENE

Posted on April 16, 2008
535 F.Supp.2d 180 (D. Me 2008) United States District Court, D. Maine. KELLY SERVICES, INC., Plaintiff v. Erin E. GREENE, Defendant. Civil No. 08-23-P-H. Feb. 28, 2008. A former employer, engaged in personnel staffing business, sued former employee, claiming breach of non-compete and nondisclosure provisions of employment contract, occurring after former employee left to work for alleged competitor...

SD Fla - Tort claims posed substantial question of federal patent law.

Posted on April 15, 2008
Thanks to our friends from JurisNotes.com Clearplay, Inc. v. Nissim Corp. (4/2/08) Clearplay makes DVD players and related products. In 2001, Clearplay began marketing a filtering program and membership service allowing customers to filter their DVD movies by skipping or muting objectionable content...

SAP loses bid to keep 'highly confidential' info from Oracle

Posted on April 10, 2008
Chris Kanaracus A court-appointed official in California has shot down SAP AG's request that Oracle's general counsel be denied access to "highly confidential" information related to Oracle's ongoing lawsuit against SAP and its subsidiary, TomorrowNow, rejecting SAP's contention that sensitive and strategic information could find its way into the hands of Oracle's top executives...

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TAKING SECRETS BACK TO ASIA?

Posted on April 10, 2008
3/2008 IP Law & Business 18 Zusha Elinson Silicon Valley has always been a hot bed of trade secrets suits. But there's a new twist in an ongoing dispute between Applied Materials, Inc., the huge Santa Clara-based maker of semiconductor equipment, and a company started by its former employees: the former employees' business is in China...

Microsoft Releases 14,000 Pages Of Trade Secrets

Posted on April 10, 2008
4/8/08 CommWeb News (Pg. Unavail. Online) Microsoft continued to release formerly closely held application protocol documentation Tuesday, posting 14,000 pages of information for Microsoft Office 2007, SharePoint Server 2007, and Exchange Server 2007 at MSDN, a Web site for developers...

SYMPOSIUM ON THE TOPIC OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

Posted on April 10, 2008
Texas Wesleyan University School of Law Friday, October 10, 2008 Texas Wesleyan University School of Law is pleased to host a symposium on the topic of Intellectual Property and Indigenous Peoples, on Friday, October 10, 2008. The purpose of this symposium is to examine intellectual property concepts - copyrights, trademark rights, patent rights, and trade secrets - as applied to the cultural heritage, art, and artifact of indigenous peoples...

COMPANY FINDS TRADE-SECRET CHARGES CAN CUT BOTH WAYS

Posted on April 07, 2008
The Recorder, Vol. 132, No. 62 (March 31, 2008) By Dan Levine Executives at Broadcom Corp. may rue the day they sicced the FBI on engineer Tien Shiah. A Santa Ana federal judge acquitted Shiah of stealing trade secrets to benefit Santa Clara-based Marvell Semiconductor...

Trade Secret Jury Verdict : EMS Gulf Coast, LLC v. Tanner Construction Co. of Texas Inc. et al

Posted on April 07, 2008
EMS claimed lost profits of $1,140,000 million and argued that the defendants were also liable for $1,286,000 that EMS allegedly paid for the CenterPoint-Freebird agreement. In November 2006, Freebird Gas Storage awarded a contract to pipeline servicing company Tanner Construction Co...

Hogging the hedge? 'Bulldog's' 13f theory may not be so lucky.

Posted on April 07, 2008
12 Fordham J. Corp. & Fin. L. 1079 (2008) Edward Pekarek Introduction Two-Thousand-Six was a year in which the opaque investment pools commonly known as ?hedge funds? provided frequent headline-fodder through scandals, congressional testimony, and the collapse of Amaranth Advisors, a nine billion dollar hedge fund implosion that exceeded the financial scope of the Long Term Capital Management Asian currency debacle...

Random Search Stops $600 Million In Trade Secrets Bound For China

Posted on April 07, 2008
By Thomas Claburn InformationWeek A former software engineer for a telecommunications company based near Chicago was indicted for allegedly stealing trade secrets worth an estimated $600 million and trying to take the documents to China. The FBI said Wednesday that Hanjuan Jin of Schaumburg, Ill...

Stolen Trade Secrets?: Lawsuit Claims Exec Took $1M Study From Pulte Homes

Posted on April 07, 2008
Albuquerque Journal - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX Hollywood's cloak-and-dagger world of industrial espionage and purloined trade secrets isn't typically associated with housing developments. But Pulte Homes claims in a federal lawsuit that a top executive who was being laid off stole a highly confidential, $1 million Albuquerque market study and used it to create a similar report for a major competitor...

Cislo & Thomas LLP- Trade Secrets

Posted on April 02, 2008

Dallas firm Gardere Wynne Sewell announces slate of new partners

Posted on April 02, 2008
Tom Wright is a partner in the firm?s Intellectual Property Section. His practice involves both complex intellectual property litigation and counseling. His litigation experience includes patent infringement disputes, copyright infringement actions and cases involving the misappropriation of trade secrets...

Former Pentagon official pleads guilty in China spy case

Posted on April 02, 2008
Simon Montlake A former Pentagon official pleaded guilty in court Monday to an espionage charge over the disclosure of secret data to an alleged Chinese agent in the US. Gregg Bergersen said he was unaware that the Taiwan-born businessman was passing the information to China...

Giving Specificity to the Indecent Liberties Statute

Posted on April 02, 2008
Keith Gingery Since the school finance cases came out a few years ago, there has been some grumbling from the Wyoming State Legislature as to the activist role taken by the Wyoming Supreme Court in legislating school finance reform from the bench. Some legislators felt that the Wyoming Supreme Court had overstepped its judicial branch role and moved into the arena of legislating...

Trial delayed for engineer charged with stealing trade secrets

Posted on April 02, 2008
A judge agreed Monday to postpone for 13 months the trial of a Chinese-American engineer charged with stealing military and aerospace trade secrets on behalf of China. Kenneth Miller, the attorney for 72-year-old Dongfan "Greg" Chung, asked for the delay because he is involved in a lengthy trial, said Assistant U...

Why Don't Inventors Patent?

Posted on April 01, 2008
Petra Moser NBER Working Paper No. 13294 Issued in August 2007 This paper argues that the ability to keep innovations secret may be a key determinant of patenting. To test this hypothesis, the paper examines a newly-collected data set of more than 7,000 American and British innovations at four world's fairs between 1851 and 1915...

TODAY MARKS OUR 300TH POSTING

Posted on April 01, 2008

Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Fourth Department, New York : no evidence that former employee used any confidential information or trade secrets of former employer

Posted on April 01, 2008
852 N.Y.S.2d 510 (2008) Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Fourth Department, New York. RIEDMAN CORPORATION and Brown & Brown, Inc., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Robert D. GALLAGER and Hatch-Leonard/Markin Shaw, Inc., Defendants-Respondents. Feb. 1, 2008...

Court of Appeals of Texas : sequence of the process used by successor company in its water purification system was not a trade secret

Posted on April 01, 2008
244 S.W.3d 924 (2008) Court of Appeals of Texas, Dallas. GLOBAL WATER GROUP, INC., Appellant, v. Robert ATCHLEY and Aspen Water, Inc., Appellee. No. 05-06-00709-CV. Feb. 14, 2008. Rehearing Overruled Feb. 14, 2008. Background: Successor water purification company filed lawsuit against former president of predecessor company and such president's new company, asserting claims for breach of shareholder agreement, misappropriation of trade secrets, and conspiracy...

Lumenis adds more pressure on Alma with new claims for misappropriation of trade secrets

Posted on April 01, 2008
Medical Industry Week Lumenis adds more pressure on Alma with new claims for misappropriation of trade secrets Lumenis has filed a complaint in the Tel Aviv District Court in Israel against Alma Lasers and its four founders, Ziv Karni, Yoav Avni, Nadav Bayer and Ivgeni Kodritzki, all former employees of Lumenis , claiming misappropriation of Lumenis trade secrets and technology and for the use of such technology in Alma's primary Harmony products, which are sold worldwide...

Can software developed for government still be a trade secret?

Posted on April 01, 2008
Sally Albertazzie According to a federal court in Louisiana, software developed exclusively with government funding may lose "trade secret" status even as against third parties, at least if the developer fails to take steps to maintain the secrecy of the source code...

TRADE SECRETS ORDERED DISCLOSED TO POTENTIAL RIVAL DESPITE STIPULATION

Posted on March 27, 2008
3/24/2008 Conn. L. Trib. 268 A stipulated protective order was modified allowing a plaintiff, disclosed as an expert and seen as a potential competitor of the defendant motorcycle manufacturer, to view the defendant's confidential materials and trade secret information with conditions...

Trade Secret Jury Verdict : Ex-employees of Plastic Bag Maker Started Competing Co.

Posted on March 27, 2008
The jury unanimously found in favor of the plaintiff on the claims of breach of fiduciary duty and conspiracy, and awarded $16,457,866 in general damages plus $250,000 in punitive damages against Rabchev and $25,000 in punitive damages against Nakaoka...

HODES v. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT : FOIA & Trade Secrets

Posted on March 27, 2008
532 F.Supp.2d 108 (2008) United States District Court, District of Columbia. Scott A. HODES, Plaintiff, v. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT, Defendant. Civil Action No. 07-161 (CKK). Jan. 31, 2008. Background: Requester brought Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) action against Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) seeking information identifying individuals that held mortgage backed securities under Government National Mortgage Association's (Ginnie Mae) mortgage backed securities program...

RECYCLED PAPER GREETINGS, INC. v. DAVIS : Publisher of greeting cards sued commercial artist

Posted on March 27, 2008
533 F.Supp.2d 798 (2008) United States District Court, N.D. Illinois, Eastern Division. RECYCLED PAPER GREETINGS, INC., Plaintiff, v. Kathy DAVIS, Defendant. No. 08 C 236. Feb. 1, 2008. Background: Publisher of greeting cards sued commercial artist, claiming breach of contract to provide artwork for cards...

Settling technology disputes out of court better and cheaper

Posted on March 25, 2008
Grant Buckler It's a phrase nobody likes to hear, and one that should be used less in the technology sector, say lawyers with experience in arbitration and mediation. These alternative dispute resolution mechanisms are often cheaper and faster than litigation, make it easier to keep disputes confidential, and allow the parties to choose someone who understands technology to help resolve their differences...

NCR In Row with Former Exec Over Trade Secrets

Posted on March 25, 2008
Maria Bruno-Britz Blogger Bill Sloat describes a lawsuit Dayton, Ohio-based NCR has filed against a former employee, now at Hewlett-Packard, around trade secrets. NCR maintains that the ex-vice president of the company who left NCR for HP intends to leak information pertaining to the ATM giant's financial services practice and other key areas...

West Legal Education Center Trade Secrets Courses

Posted on March 25, 2008
When you are not in the mood to "press the flesh" you can keep up to date on trade secrets developments by taking courses at WestLegalEd Identifying, Protecting Litigating Trade Secrets Get practical advice to help identify trade secrets, understand how to ensure legal protection for those trade secrets, and avoid trade secret theft...

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