Intellectual Property Law

Merrill Lynch Accuses Deutsche Bank of Employee Raid and Trade Secret Misappropriation

Posted on March 06, 2009
Portfolio Media, Inc. is reporting that investment giant Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. is seeking $100 million in damages from rival investment firm Deutsche Bank, claiming Deutsche Bank compromised its trade secrets when it improperly hired 12 former employees from Merrill's financial institutions group last February...

Algorithms as Trade Secrets

Posted on March 05, 2009

Trade Secrets Theft "Common" According to New Survey

Posted on March 03, 2009

Apple and Psystar Agree to Order Protecting Trade Secrets in Litigation

Posted on February 27, 2009

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

Nokia Lobbies for Intra-Corporate E-Mail Review Law to Bolster Trade Secret Retention

Posted on February 25, 2009
As many of you know, private employers in the United States routinely reserve the right to examine their employees' e-mails sent from, and received on, company computers. They do so under a general theory that employees of private companies do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in communications contained on company-owned computer systems...

If You Buy a Product Made With Stolen Trade Secrets, Are You a Misappropriator?

Posted on February 19, 2009
The National Law Journal has reported on a fascinating issue that is cranking its way through the California appellate courts - are customers who buy products made with misappropriated trade secrets liable for being misappropriators themselves? The issue is usually an academic one - rarely would a victim of trade secret misappropriation sue customers of the misappropriator...

ConnectU vs. Facebook Unredacted Trade Secrets Settlement

Posted on February 18, 2009
In a follow-up on a case we first reported on in July 2007, College News is reporting that inadequate redaction of a .pdf document containing settlement information has resulted in the disclosure of otherwise confidential terms.Specifically, the inadvertently disclosed portions revealed that ConnectU received somewhere between from $31 million and $65 million to settle its lawsuit--and that Facebook?s internal valuation was a hefty $3...

McAfee Estimates $1 Trillion in Trade Secret Thefts in 2008

Posted on February 17, 2009
The theft of trade secrets cost businesses about $1 trillion last year, with employees committing many of the offenses, according to research commissioned by McAfee Inc.In a survey of information-technology executives, 42 percent of respondents said laid-off workers were the biggest threat caused by the economic slump...

30 Months in the Hole -- Metaldyne Trade Secrets Sentence

Posted on February 14, 2009
That's what they give you, in Michigan at least.From MLive.com, a follow-up to our story from last September about guilty pleas in a case involving the sale of trade secrets.Anne Lockwood, who worked as a vice president for Metaldyne Corp. of Plymouth, Michigan, was ordered to the prison for 30 months for selling the company's trade secrets to a Chinese competitor...

Islamorada Marine Services Worker Accused of Stealing Secrets - Providing to Boyfriend

Posted on February 13, 2009
Apparently down in the Florida Keys they prefer to use the local sheriff, instead of the FBI, to investigate trade secret theft.An employee of a marine services company on Plantation Key is accused of stealing trade secrets from her workplace and giving them to her boyfriend, a potential competitor of the business...

TEKsystems Prevails in Trade Secrets Case Against Competitor Modis

Posted on February 12, 2009
Technical staffing company, TEKsystems announces that it has prevailed in a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California against its competitor Modis. The court awarded TEKsystems $450,000 for misappropriation of trade secrets concluding that Modis used information found in TEKsystems' proprietary database with knowledge that it came from TEKsystems, that the information constituted trade secrets, and that Modis refused to return the trade secret information or to delete it from its systems...

CA, Inc. (formerly Computer Associates) Settles Trade Secrets Case with Rocket Software

Posted on February 11, 2009
Software provider CA, Inc. this morning said it has reached a settlement with Rocket Software of Newton, Massachusetts, a competitor in the database administration software business, in connection with a 2007 lawsuit lodged by CA charging Rocket with intellectual property theft and misappropriation...

International Rectifier's RICO Case Dismissed in California

Posted on February 06, 2009
We first covered this case in our blog post here: http://wombletradesecrets.blogspot.com/search?q=international+rectifier. International Rectifier had accused its former CEO, Alexander Lidow, of engaging in a violation of RICO by stealing the company's trade secrets in an effort to bolster a newly-created competitive company...

ClearOne Obtains Expanded Trade Secrets Injunction

Posted on February 05, 2009
An order was issued by the federal court yesterday, in favor of ClearOne Communications, Inc. expanding the scope of a previously issued preliminary injunction order, and prohibiting WideBand Solutions, Inc., its principals, and others acting in concert with WideBand, from (among other things) the use, sale or marketing of ClearOne's trade secrets and WideBand's infringing products found to use these trade secrets...

Trade Secrets and the Mole at Microsoft

Posted on February 01, 2009
From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, an almost bizarre story concerning the CEO of a software company, Ancora Technologies, who went to work for Microsoft claiming that Ancora was no longer in business. Not only was that apparently not true, but his reason for joining Microsoft was to obtain evidence for a patent suit brought by Ancora against three Microsoft customers, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Toshiba America Information Systems...

Federal Indictments in Eaton Aerospace-Frisby Trade Secrets Case

Posted on January 29, 2009
From the Jackson (MS) Clarion-Ledger a story that follows up on our earlier postings (going back to 2006) here, here, here and here concerning the Eaton Aerospace-Frisby trade secrets case.A third criminal indictment has now been filed against five former Eaton Aerospace engineers on charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States and possession of trade secrets...

IBM and Papermaster (er, Apple) Settle - Papermaster Permitted to Commence Work for Apple in April, 2009

Posted on January 28, 2009
Apple just announced that 25-year IBM vet Mark Papermaster will start work as head of hardware engineering for the iPhone and iPod effort on April 24. According to Apple, Papermaster and IBM have settled the legal spat that occurred when Big Blue sued him for violating the non-compete clause of his contract in taking the job with Apple late last year...

SkinMedica Files Trade Secrets Action Against Histogen Alleging Theft of Cosmeceutical Ideas

Posted on January 23, 2009
We'd never heard of the term "cosmeceuticals" before so we thought we'd let you in on this story:San Diego-based SkinMedica, which develops cosmeceuticals for the skin care market, said today that it has filed a patent and trade secret action against competitors Histogen,Inc...

Big Alabama Trade Secrets Verdict Upheld

Posted on January 23, 2009
The Birmingham News is reporting that Mobile County Circuit Court Judge Robert Smith has upheld a verdict against Ineos Americas LLC and Ineos Phenol in a case brought Dr. Sven Peter Mannsfeld.Mannsfeld claimed that the chemical companies stole his trade secrets for a process that transformed some hazardous waste into valuable manufacturing ingredients...

International Rectifier Sues Former CEO For Theft of Trade Secrets of Gallium Nitride

Posted on January 19, 2009
International Rectifier has filed a federal suit accusing Alexander Lidow of engaging in an ongoing criminal enterprise ? also known as a racketeer influenced and corrupt organization, or RICO ? by stealing information, intellectual property and technology related to the company?s secret research on a superconducting material that could become the future of semiconductor power management technology...

Trade Secrets of the Grocers

Posted on January 19, 2009
From kgw.com in Portland, Oregon, a story arising out of natural food marketer, Whole Foods, and its attempt to defend itself against Federal Trade Commission claims that its purchase of Wild Oats Markets created a natural foods monopoly.According to the story, after months of battling to keep its trade secrets under wraps, New Seasons Market had agreed to hand over some operational information to rival grocer Whole Foods Market...

The "Trade Secrets" of the Use of TARP Funds

Posted on January 13, 2009
$350 billion has essentially been sent from the United States to banks of all shapes and sizes. The theory of the investments was that the government was going to provide banks liquidity that they could use to lend money and get our economy going again...

Litigation in India Over Trade Secrets Risks - Ever Heard of an RS 501CR Injunction?

Posted on January 08, 2009
First, the Chinese engaged in a crackdown of copyright pirates who were allegedly copying Communist era DVDs that the government sold for a profit. Now, we learn that India actually has an injunction aimed at employee defectors - an RS 501 CR injunction...

Bailout Trade Secrets

Posted on January 03, 2009
Remember, the accounting is all secret:

Pfizer Loses $38 Million Trade Secret Jury Verdict in California - Punitive Damages Phase Still to Come

Posted on December 24, 2008
A Santa Clara County jury has ordered drugmaker Pfizer to pay $38 million in compensatory damages to a leading medical research nonprofit for stealing trade secrets to develop a pain relief drug.The Superior Court jury reached the verdict Monday in a 2004 lawsuit filed against Pfizer by the San Bruno nonprofit Ischemia Research and Education Foundation...

Memphis ?VeinViewer? Trade Secrets Case

Posted on December 23, 2008
From the Memphis Daily News, a story concerning Memphis-based Luminetx Corp. which is accusing two former executives of allegedly taking trade secrets to a company that it is suing for patent infringement called AccuVein LLC.AccuVein, based in Cold Spring Harbor, N...

Grocery Secrets - Whole Foods Obtains Competitor's Competitively Sensitive Info

Posted on December 22, 2008
In 2007, Whole Foods acquired Wild Oats in an acquisition that many questioned on legal grounds. Well, now the FTC has brought on action challenging the legality of that acquisition/merger and Whole Foods is attempting to defend itself by subpoenaeing the records of OTHER companies in the business footprint...

Fed Refuses to Disclose Who's Getting What - Claims Trade Secrets Involved

Posted on December 12, 2008
The Federal Reserve refused a request by Bloomberg News to disclose the recipients of more than $2 trillion of emergency loans from U.S. taxpayers and the assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.Bloomberg filed suit Nov. 7 under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act requesting details about the terms of 11 Fed lending programs, most created during the deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression...

MySpace Suicide Results in Prosecution and Conviction Under Computer Fraud and Abuse Act

Posted on December 11, 2008
Lori Drew's was a suburban housewife whose daughter was friends with a certain Megan Meier. Drew's daughter and Megan Meier had a falling out that didn't sit well with Mrs. Drew - so she hatched a plan to create a fake MySpace young man who would communicate with Megan Meier...

Actress Kate Hudson "Sent Packing" Back to State Court in Trade Secrets Case

Posted on December 10, 2008
We first blogged about this case here: http://wombletradesecrets.blogspot.com/2008_08_01_archive.html. The U.S. District Court ordered today that Kate Hudson and David Babaii for WildAid LLC respond to 220 Laboratories' lawsuit as it was originally filed against them...

Bloggers, promote your law blog by nominating your blog for inclusion in USLaw.com's Law Blog Directory and RSS Reader. Benefits described.