Intellectual Property Law

Lessons learned: Societe Generale and alleged theft of trade secrets

Posted on May 09, 2010
By: Marcia Savage, Site Editor SearchFinancialSecurity.com It's a nightmare scenario for any enterprise: An employee, a trusted insider, steals the company's most sensitive data, its trade secrets. For Societe Generale, the nightmare may have become a reality after the bank discovered that proprietary code used in its high-frequency trading system was apparently stolen...

Talent Agencies Cry Foul, Lawsuits Fly

Posted on May 09, 2010
By: MATTHEW FUTTERMAN Two talent-agency heavyweights specializing in sports and entertainment stars are locked in a battle over business poaching, with a fight that's spilling into public view in federal court. IMG says it is suing to mitigate the damage from the loss of trade secrets and proprietary information...

Software Buyers Not Liable For Trade Secrets In Compiled Source Code

Posted on May 09, 2010
By: Mike Masnick Silvaco Data Systems lost its argument that Intel and others could be found liable for violating Silvaco's trade secrets, because those companies purchased software from another company who had violated Silvaco's trade secrets. The quick background is that another company -- Circuit Semantics Inc...

Theft of company secrets on the rise from 'rogue employees'

Posted on May 03, 2010
By: Eli Segall Silicon Valley lawyers who specialize in this area of law say trade secret cases are on the rise. The improved economy, they say, has led to more people switching jobs and more people getting accused of stealing valuable, confidential information from their old offices...

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Citigroup, Inc (NYSE: C) Accuses Former Employee of Leaking Trade Secrets

Posted on May 03, 2010
Citigroup, Inc (NYSE: C) has filed suit against Gautam Hazarika, a former director in its global markets unit, alleging that he released confidential trade secrets to Deutsche Bank (NYSE: DB) before joining the bank, according to a new Business Week report...

China defines 'trade secrets'

Posted on April 30, 2010
A month after the conviction of Australian citizen Stern Hu for taking kickbacks and stealing trade secrets, China has issued definitions of what constitutes commercial secrets. The definitions, drawn up for China's hundreds of state-owned firms, are in line with a draft law that requires telecommunications and internet operators to give authorities access to information sent through their networks...

Are checkbook journalists less worthy of protection?

Posted on April 30, 2010
Opinion L.A. Los Angeles Times New iPhone prototype -- cost the company $5,000 up front, which seemed like a bargain at the time. The money went to the unnamed person who supposedly found the phone at the Gourmet Haus Staudt in Redwood City, where an Apple engineer named Gray Powell reportedly left it...

Gizmodo paid $5K for next-gen iPhone

Posted on April 20, 2010
By: Gregg Keizer Gizmodo, which posted photos today of what it said was the next-generation iPhone, paid $5,000 for access to the smartphone, said Nick Denton, head of Gawker Media, which publishes the blog. Apple's attorneys have not contacted Gawker Media, Denton added...

Jury clears Livermore lab officials of trade secret theft allegations

Posted on April 20, 2010
By: Suzanne Bohan Contra Costa Times An Alameda County jury ruled in favor of Lawrence Livermore National Security, or LLNS, in a trial alleging it stole trade secrets from a Bay Area inventor, according to a statement released Monday. An April 2008 lawsuit by Bay Area inventor Victor Kley alleged that laboratory employees co-opted a nanotechnology process Kley invented for creating an extremely hard diamond capsule that could be used in the fusion chamber of the National Ignition Facility...

Census swag costs, finally revealed: $22.7 million

Posted on April 16, 2010
By TERI SFORZA Samantha O'Neil, of the Census Bureau Public Information Office, told us. "We cannot provide detailed pricing information on promotion item costs because the information constitutes a trade secret of our main contractor -- DRAFT FCB." As we fitfully prepared to file our Freedom of Information Act Request, we got a phone call from a good-humored man named Stephen L...

BayWalk urges more patience to sign tenants

Posted on April 16, 2010
By: Michael Van Sickler Times Staff Writer ST. PETERSBURG -- Six months after they persuaded the City Council to cede a public sidewalk in front of BayWalk, its managers still have no major tenants to announce at the nearly empty shopping and entertainment complex...

Arthrex files misappropriation of trade secrets suit against Parcus Medical

Posted on April 16, 2010
Arthrex Inc. announced that it has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida against Parcus Medical, LLC. The lawsuit alleges counts of misappropriation of Arthrex's trade secrets, tortious interference with contract, and tortious interference with business relationships, according to an Arthrex press release...

Krispy Kreme Reports Net Income for the Fourth Quarter and Breakeven Results for the Fiscal Year Ended January 31, 2010 - MarketWatch

Posted on April 16, 2010
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C., April 15, 2010 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. "During fiscal 2010, we made substantial progress in building a stronger foundation for our Company and improving our business model. We generated positive Company same store sales in all four quarters despite the difficult economy, while also delivering substantially higher operating income...

Hu trial verdict leaves Chinese law on secrets undefined

Posted on April 08, 2010
By: Michael Sainsbury From: The Australian ON the evening of June 9 last year, as an unusually long and pleasant Beijing spring was sliding into its hot and sticky, unpleasant summer, Stern Hu stepped out of the heat into the cool air of one of the Chinese capital's business hubs -- Shangri La's swanky China World Hotel...

Trial begins in case alleging theft of trade secrets by corporation running Livermore Lab

Posted on April 07, 2010
By: Suzanne Bohan Contra Costa Times Jury selection began in a state courtroom in Hayward for a case alleging theft of trade secrets and breach of a nondisclosure agreement by Lawrence Livermore National Security, the corporation running the Livermore Lab under contract with the Department of Energy...

JUSTMED, INC. v. BYCE

Posted on April 07, 2010
After a bench trial, the district court entered judgment and ordered a permanent injunction against Byce, in favor of plaintiffappellee JustMed, Inc., Byce's former employer. Among other things, the district court found that JustMed owns the software program used on its digital audio larynx device under the work-for-hire doctrine of the Federal Copyright Act, because Byce wrote the source code for the company as an employee, not as an independent contractor...

X-rays help unravel mysteries of Apple's 'A4' system-on-a-chip

Posted on April 07, 2010
"Deconstructing processors like the A4 usually happens behind the closed doors of only a handful of companies. These global reverse engineering firms are the investigative arm of the electronics marketplace, gumshoes who do research for people who need to find out who is making what circuitry, as well as what manufacturing process they're using to do it," iFixIt reports...

AK Steel says ex-employees stole trade secrets

Posted on April 05, 2010
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS AK Steel Holding Corp. has filed a lawsuit alleging three ex-employees of its Rockport, Ind., plant stole company trade secrets. The lawsuit filed March 11 says Donald Earley resigned as a senior process engineer last year and accepted a job with ThyssenKrupp Steel USA...

Chinese Rio Tinto prisoners to contest jail terms

Posted on April 05, 2010
The two Chinese employees of Rio Tinto will challenge their jail sentence after being convicted of bribery charges and stealing trade secrets. According to their lawyers, Wang Yong and Liu Caiku were sentenced to prison for 14 and seven years respectively...

Deceuninck North America (DNA) Prevails in Trade Secrets Case

Posted on April 01, 2010
BUSINESS WIRE Deceuninck North America (DNA) sued the former vice president of its decking business and the deck manufacturing company he went to work for, Sensibuilt Building Solutions, for numerous claims including the misappropriation of trade secrets...

United States, Intellectual Property, A Statistical Analysis of Trade Secret Litigation in Federal Courts

Posted on April 01, 2010
By: Almelin , Snyder, Sapoznikow, McCollum and Weader Originally published in the Gonzaga Law Review, March 2010 Economists estimate that IP in the U.S. is worth about $5 trillion, which is equivalent to almost half of the U.S. economy. There is little data on the exact value of trade secrets because trade secrets are, by definition, secret...

Australia says China ties 'never' off track

Posted on March 29, 2010
By: Amy Coopes (AFP) Australia Thursday denied the arrest of Rio Tinto executive Stern Hu had ever disturbed trade ties with China, citing a record gas deal signed on the last day of his trial. Trade Minister Simon Crean said the 20-year contract to supply liquefied natural gas (LNG) to the state-run China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) heralded an era of long-term mega-deals between the two countries...

Deceuninck North America (DNA) Prevails in Trade Secrets Case

Posted on March 29, 2010
After a two-week jury trial Deceuninck North America won a $1.158 Million Verdict, plus attorneys' fees, in a trade secrets case against a former employee and the company he went to work for, Sensibuilt Building Solutions. When DNA first learned that the former employee had gone to Sensibuilt, a forensics review of his work computer ultimately led to the discovery that he had downloaded more than 2,000 of DNA's most confidential documents onto a flash drive in the weeks just prior to departing the Company...

Shanghai Court Sentences Rio Tinto Executives in Bribery

Posted on March 29, 2010
By: Anthony Lin The four employees of Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto Group charged in China with bribery and stealing trade secrets were found guilty Monday and sentenced to prison terms ranging from 7 to 14 years. The four immediately were dismissed by Rio Tinto, according to the Australian Associated Press; their actions were described by the company as "deplorable...

Trial set in Neb. election trade secrets case

Posted on March 23, 2010
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS A January 2011 federal trial date has been set in a case in which an Omaha elections systems firm sued former employees over trade secrets. Election Systems & Software sued two former employees and an Indiana elections consulting firm last year...

Rio employees' facing trial; Stern Hu pleads guilty

Posted on March 23, 2010
By: Jaspreet Virk Rio Tinto's employee Stern Hu, an Australian citizen, has pleaded guilty to charge of bribery in a Shanghai court, according to a lawyer. Hu is one of the four employees of the Rio Tinto Group who is facing trial in the Shanghai No...

Va man sentenced for stealing trade secrets

Posted on March 23, 2010
Associated Press A former DuPont Co. employee will spend 18 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to theft of trade secrets and obstruction of justice. A sentence higher than the 16 months the government had recommended as part of a plea agreement...

Judge bars photos in Goodyear trial

Posted on March 23, 2010
By: Jamie Satterfield Under a landmark decision by a Knoxville federal magistrate judge, the public will be barred from viewing and jurors from later discussing key evidence in a rare case of alleged corporate espionage. U.S. Magistrate Judge Clifford Shirley has inked his approval to federal prosecutors' request for an order keeping secret the contents of seven photographs two Greenback engineers are accused of snapping via a cellular phone of equipment at a Goodyear plant in Topeka, Kan...

AK Steel says ex-employees stole trade secrets

Posted on March 23, 2010
Associated Press AK Steel Holding Corp. has filed a lawsuit alleging three ex-employees of its Rockport, Ind., plant stole company trade secrets. The lawsuit filed March 11 says Donald Earley resigned as a senior process engineer last year and accepted a job with ThyssenKrupp Steel USA...

Defendants in Samsung 'secrets' case deny charges, says report

Posted on March 12, 2010
By: Peter Clarke Nineteen semiconductor engineers and managers indicted for stealing process technology and market planning details from Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and passing them to Hynix Semiconductor Inc. have all pleaded not guilty in court in Seoul, according to a Yonhap report...

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