Intellectual Property Law

Think It... Ink It... And Get It Signed

Posted on March 02, 2008
Leslie Lyon "The number one de-motivator in the world of work, is not knowing what is expected" -Your Staff Contracts should be in place before you begin recruiting. And if you are an existing business, it's never too late to introduce these important documents NOW...

Agilent Technologies Files Litigation to Protect High-Performance Liquid Chromatography Trade Secret

Posted on March 02, 2008
SANTA CLARA, Calif.- Agilent Technologies (NYSE: A) today announced it has filed litigation against Advanced Materials Technology Inc. (AMT) in the Delaware Court of Chancery to protect confidential and proprietary information relating to its high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) technology...

Patent reform effort raises questions

Posted on March 01, 2008
Shifting to ?first-inventor-to-file? will dramatically affect the individual inventor, small firms and universities Paul Remus The Patent Reform Act of 2007, which has already passed the House of Representatives and is now being considered by the full Senate after receiving a favorable report from the Senate Judiciary Committee...

Judge Relents, Restores Wikileaks as Master of Its Domain

Posted on March 01, 2008
Keith Regan - LinuxInsider Before Friday's Wikileaks hearing, the ACLU said it planned to argue that the original order failed to consider the public interest. "The public has a right to receive information and ideas, especially ones concerning the public interest," said Aden Fine, a senior staff attorney with the organization's First Amendment Working Group...

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Tech worker admits stealing trade secrets for foreign sale

Posted on March 01, 2008
Mark Anderson - Sacramento Business Journal An El Dorado Hills technology worker accused of stealing trade secrets with military applications and offering them to foreign buyers for six figures in cash entered a guilty plea in Sacramento Friday, prosecutors said...

Tech worker admits stealing trade secrets for foreign sale

Posted on March 01, 2008
Sacramento Business Journal - Mark Anderson An El Dorado Hills technology worker accused of stealing trade secrets with military applications and offering them to foreign buyers for six figures in cash entered a guilty plea in Sacramento Friday, prosecutors said...

Plano principal reinstated despite allegations he gave copies of PSAT to brother

Posted on March 01, 2008
STACI HUPP / The Dallas Morning News A Plano high school principal will keep his job despite allegations that he gave copies of a college entrance exam to a Dallas test-prep company where his brother works. "I'm excited to be back," said Michael Novotny, 35, principal of Jasper High School...

Ore. universities can keep sports-marketing contracts secret

Posted on March 01, 2008
Associated Press SALEM, Ore. ? Payments in the sports-marketing contracts of Oregon's two large universities are trade secrets, and the schools can keep the amounts secret, Oregon Attorney General Hardy Myers said this week. The secrecy gives the University of Oregon and Oregon State an advantage over marketing contractors and other schools, an opinion from Myer's office said, and the value of the revenue the schools get as a result outweighs the public interest in disclosing the information.

When a trade secret strategy may be more appropriate than going the patent route

Posted on February 28, 2008
Summit TV takes a look at intellectual property in a 13 part series with leading specialists on the topic. The fourth show in this series features Claire Duggan from Sasol on when a trade secret strategy may be more appropriate than going the patent route

STANLEY-LAMAN GROUP, LTD. v. HYLDAHL

Posted on February 28, 2008
Superior Court of Pennsylvania. The STANLEY-LAMAN GROUP, LTD., William G. Stanley, James J. Laman, Esquire, Appellants v. Christian R. HYLDAHL v. William G. Stanley, James J. Laman, David Eaton and Stanley-Laman Group Securities, LLC., Appellants. Argued Oct...

Trade Secrets As Collateral: A United States Perspective

Posted on February 28, 2008
Scott Lebson Traditional intellectual property assets, i.e., those capable of registration with a central governmental authority such as patents, trademarks and copyrights, are particularly valuable because they enable companies to create and hold monopoly power on unique products and services...

Too much of a good thing

Posted on February 28, 2008
Astrachan Gunst Thomas Jim Astrachan In a recent case, the likes of which we see too often, a modular home builder sued its competitor and four former employees for copyright infringement and misappropriation of its confidential information and trade secrets...

Trade Secret Jury Verdict : Innovative Technologies Corp. v. James Silcott et al.

Posted on February 26, 2008
The jury awarded $6,475,855.44 in compensatory damages and $17 million in punitive damages. The jury found that the salaries of Innovative Technologies employees and its mapping strategies were trade secrets, or that Advanced Management Technologies and Kenton Trace Technologies misappropriated the plaintiff's trade secrets...

Encrypted computer memory vulnerable to hacking: research

Posted on February 24, 2008
Jordan Robertson, AP SAN FRANCISCO -- Want to break into a computer's encrypted hard drive? Just blast the machine's memory chip with a burst of cold air. That's the conclusion of new research out of Princeton University demonstrating a novel, low-tech way hackers can access even the most well-protected computers, provided they have physical access to the machines...

Sen. Dayton using position to help lawmakers snoop private records

Posted on February 24, 2008
Paul Rolly Given the Utah Legislature's tendency to interfere with the affairs of cities and towns, courts, schools and any other entity lawmakers want to bend to their will, it was just a matter of time before they gave themselves license to pry into your private affairs...

Microsoft has said its decision to share trade secrets about its software products

Posted on February 24, 2008
MUMBAI: Microsoft has said its decision to share trade secrets about its software products is not a mere tactical response to anti-trust challenges in European Union, but a step forward in the way its software will co-operate with rival products and multiple devices...

Top women in court battle on 'trade secrets'

Posted on February 24, 2008
Larissa Nolan and Enda Leahy Two high-powered businesswomen are battling it out in the High Court in a row that erupted over a multi-million euro contract to publish the Aer Lingus in-flight magazine. Publisher Norah Casey, whose company Harmonia Ltd is the biggest magazine publisher in Ireland, and Mary Kershaw, her former employee, are on either side of the case, which involves claims of stolen corporate trade secrets...

Ex-Broadcom worker acquitted of stealing trade secrets

Posted on February 20, 2008
Judge says a guilty finding of corporate espionage would chill workers' rights to change jobs. JOHN GITTELSOHN A federal judge in Santa Ana acquitted an ex-Broadcom Corp. engineer on three counts of stealing the company's "crown jewels" on Tuesday in a criminal case that tested the rights of workers to change jobs...

U.S. should define its secret technology

Posted on February 20, 2008
Commentator Robert Reich says that when it comes to technology the government doesn't know what should be sold to foreign countries and what should be kept secret.

INTRODUCING A TAKEDOWN FOR TRADE SECRETS ON THE INTERNET

Posted on February 19, 2008
2007 Wis. L. Rev. 1041 (2007) Elizabeth A. Rowe I. Introduction Late on a Friday afternoon in October, Wal-Mart executives discover that the content of their sales circulars for the entire Christmas season has just been posted on fatwallet.com, a bargain-shoppers discussion forum...

OIR files complaint to suspend Allstate : falsely labeling subpoenaed documents as trade secrets

Posted on February 19, 2008
Jacksonville Business Journal The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation has filed an administrative complaint, seeking to suspend the certificates that allow the Allstate Cos. to write new insurance policies in Florida. The OIR said the complaint is based in part on Allstate's failure to provide subpoenaed witnesses and documents, falsely labeling subpoenaed documents as trade secrets and falsely certifying its rate filings.

PRINCIPLES FOR RESOLVING CONFLICTS BETWEEN TRADE SECRETS AND THE FIRST AMENDMENT

Posted on February 19, 2008
58 Hastings L.J. 777 (March, 2007) Pamela Samuelson Introduction Preliminary and permanent injunctions are routinely granted in trade secret cases without offending the First Amendment, and this is as it should be. In the ordinary trade secret case, the misappropriator of trade secrets is an errant licensee, a faithless employee or former employee, an abuser of confidences, a trickster who uses deceit or other wrongful means to obtain the secrets, or a knowing recipient of misappropriated information who is free-riding on the trade secret developer's investment...

Trade secrets and free speech : Whistle-blower site taken offline

Posted on February 19, 2008
BBC NEWS A controversial website that allows whistle-blowers to anonymously post government and corporate documents has been taken offline in the US. Wikileaks.org, as it is known, was cut off from the internet following a California court ruling, the site says...

Psst. Can you keep a secret?

Posted on February 17, 2008
Samantha Stainburn Glen Belvis, 49, an intellectual property lawyer at Brinks Hofer Gilson & Lione in Chicago, how smart companies keep things under wraps. When should companies use patents and when should they protect their inventions by calling them trade secrets? A patent will allow you to stop someone who independently creates your invention...

Rocky Brands files lawsuit over use of its trade secrets

Posted on February 17, 2008
STEVE ROBB Messenger news editor NELSONVILLE - Rocky Brands has filed a federal lawsuit against a former employee and one of its boot manufacturers, claiming they are using Rocky trade secrets to make "knock off" boots. The lawsuit was filed last week in U...

China : Secret War

Posted on February 17, 2008
CHINA INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW NEWSLETTER February 2008 News Briefs Trade secret infringement lawsuits exceeded 100 last year, with about 90 percent of civil lawsuits related to job-hopping, statistics released by public security administrations show...

Jury verdict : Exel Transportation Services Inc. case

Posted on February 17, 2008
The case settled for $10 million from the TTS entities. The TTS entities also agreed to pay 10 percent of their gross margin for business with ETS's top 25 customers over 18 months, and restrict themselves from soliciting, hiring and contracting ETS agents or sales agents for 20 months...

China Dismisses US Spying Allegations

Posted on February 14, 2008
BEIJING (AP) ? China on Thursday called U.S. allegations of Chinese spying "groundless" and urged the U.S. to stop its "Cold War thinking." The reaction from a Foreign Ministry spokesman came after a U.S. Defense Department analyst and a former engineer for Boeing Co...

Tips for protecting your trade secrets : You can't copyright a bread recipe - but you could cover it with an NDA agreement

Posted on February 14, 2008
By Ryan Derousseau (FORTUNE Small Business) -- Dear FSB: Can I copyright bread? My wife makes a special kind of bread that's not available in grocery stores. We don't have our own baking facilities and would like to work with a local baker on a contract basis...

Comprehension of Underlying Source Code and Algorithm Unnecessary to Make Out

Posted on February 14, 2008
A software licensor that should have known that the third-party software it included in its product improperly contained plaintiff's trade secrets may be liable for trade secret misappropriation, even if the licensor could not understand or decipher the object code embodying the trade secret...

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