Tag Archives: trade secrets

Trade secret owners have a powerful new remedy to protect their stolen trade secrets, one that is not generally available in civil actions. The Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) provides a right for the trade secret owner to ask the court for an ex parte order to seize property (18 U.S.C. § 1836). Ex parte […]

How far can businesses go to protect their intellectual property, and what is the minimum that they need to do to protect it? Two cases highlight the boundaries of trade secret law. This past February, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals held that the trade secret owner’s own lack of trade secret policies did not […]

How do you, the cautious employer, protect yourself from trade secret theft?  One way is through employment agreements.  Many of the court cases involving employee theft of trade secrets include employment agreements with intellectual property terms.  We believe that courts are more likely to conclude that the actions by a former employee are or will be a […]

On May 11, 2016, President Obama signed the Defend Trade Secrets Act (“DTSA” or “Act”). The bill was largely uncontroversial (imagine that), passing the Senate by an 87-0 vote and the House by a 410-2 vote. The DTSA is an important piece of legislation.  It is so important that we have decided to focus our […]

Dear Doc: I know that this is not a copyright question, but I have heard that trade secrets are about to get a lot more important. What’s up? Signed, Johnny Rivers Dear Johnny: You hear right.  On April 27, 2016, by a vote of 410-2, the US House of Representatives passed the Defend Trade Secrets […]

It’s time for a story.  We’ll start with the moral – read your non-disclosure agreements and comply with ALL of the requirements of the agreement to keep your information secret.  Back to the story: In license negotiations for an invention,  Convolve and another party signed a non-disclosure agreement.   Like many non-disclosure agreements, the agreement required […]

As Mike Yu learned, industrial espionage can earn you hard time.  Mr. Yu is a Chinese national with permanent residency status in the U.S.  He worked as an engineer for Ford Motor Company for ten years.  Before departing Ford in 2007, Mr. Yu purloined computer files containing several thousand of Ford’s sensitive documents, including design […]

A popular method for protecting and managing intellectual property (“IP”) assets — high valued assets, in particular — is to transfer them to a special company created for the purpose of creating, protecting, licensing, and monitoring, IP. Typically, a corporation may create a subsidiary to hold its IP, which it may license back to the […]

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