Intellectual Property Law

I’m a little late on this one but, better late than never. According to marketwatch.com, ClearOne Communications was awarded in excess of $10 million by a jury in a federal trade secret case in Utah. ClearOne sued BiAmp Systems, WideBand Systems, Dr. Jun Yang (a former employee of ClearOne), Andrew Chiang, Lonnie Bowers and Versatile DSP, Inc. for misappropriation of trade secrets, breach of contract, breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing, and breach of fiduciary duty relating to the theft of algorithms and computer code.

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On November 5, 2008, the jury returned a verdict in the Intellectual Property Case in favor of ClearOne and against all of the Defendants. Accordingly, the jury awarded ClearOne approximately $3.5 million in compensatory damages and $7.0 million in punitive damages. Among other things, the jury found that all of the Defendants willfully and maliciously misappropriated ClearOne’s trade secrets. Based on that finding, the court may also award ClearOne exemplary damages and reasonable attorneys’ fees. The court left in place the previously-entered preliminary injunction, pending ClearOne’s application for entry of a permanent injunction against the Defendants.

Big win for ClearOne and congratulations to the Magleby & Greenwood law firm who obviously did an exemplary job of presenting ClearOne’s case to the jury. Big wins like this typically mean that a company has paid attention to its trade secrets protection plan and adhered to its implementation, including, confidentiality agreements, exit interviews, password protections, limited access, etc. Your company should be doing the same thing.