How to Resolve a Trade Secret Lawsuit by Entering a Standstill Agreement

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Why litigate a case for months or years, only to arrive at a settlement that would have been possible before the case began? In many cases, neither litigant would choose this approach, but it happens quite often nonetheless. About 60 percent of trade secret cases filed in federal court in the last decade ended in …Read more

How to Manage Trade Secret Litigation Costs

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Trade secret litigation can be expensive. Whether you’re bringing a lawsuit to protect your secrets or defending against alleged misappropriation by your company, here are some useful strategies to manage trade secret litigation costs. Identify the Trade Secrets Early Identifying the trade secrets involved in misappropriation litigation is just the beginning. Well before filing a …Read more

Trade Secret Misappropriation – Chinese Biotech Researcher Pleads Guilty

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The U.S. Department of Justice has secured another conviction against a Chinese national for trade secret misappropriation, which is part of a larger push to protect valuable intellectual property. Li Chen, a long time biotech researcher in a medical lab at Nationwide Children’s Hospital Research Institute in Columbus, Ohio, pled guilty to conspiracy to misappropriate …Read more

Protecting Trade Secrets – Recent High Profile Trade Secret Enforcement Cases

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Companies often consider trade secrets to be their crown jewels, particularly in Silicon Valley. In the digital age, where copying vast amounts of data and transmitting it via the Internet is as easy as one click, protecting trade secrets has become ever more challenging for highly competitive technology companies. Losing control over your trade secrets …Read more

Detecting Early Signs of Trade Secret Theft by Competitors

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Trade secrets are frequently associated with a company’s most valuable and profitable products and services. Maintaining control of critical confidential information is often essential to a growing a company’s revenue stream, enhancing product development, moving into new markets, and continuing to grow and succeed. Along with restricting access to trade secret information to a need-to-know …Read more

What to Do When an Employee Steals Company Trade Secrets

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If an employee of your company stole an item of tangible company property when he left to start another job – like a car, or computer, or airplane – would you just let it go? Of course not. Yet, studies show that 50 percent of departing employees take confidential business information from their employer before …Read more

How to Decide if You Should File a Lawsuit Against Your Former Employee for Trade Secret Theft

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Now that you know with certainty that a former employee has left your company for a competitor, and in the process, has stolen your company’s valuable trade secrets, you need to decide whether to file a lawsuit to recapture the stolen intellectual property and recover your damages from him and any other individual(s) involved. The …Read more

Proactively Protecting Your Company’s Trade Secrets from Theft by Employees

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A few years ago, the Symantec Corporation and Ponemon Institute released the results of a survey of employees working for companies in six countries, including the U.S., Brazil, China, France, Korea and United Kingdom. The results were remarkable. They should place every chief executive on notice of the risks of data security breaches her company …Read more

Understand Federal and State Securities Laws Before Raising Money

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The applicability of the federal securities laws is remarkably broad. The Securities Act of 1933 defines a “security” to include stock, bonds, notes, fractional undivided interests in oil, gas and other mineral rights, and “investment contracts.” The Supreme Court analyzed such contracts in the Howey case to mean investments in a common enterprise with an …Read more

How Not to Protect Your Company’s Valuable Trade Secrets

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A federal district court in Illinois recently reminded all of us of how important it is to take the necessary steps to protect the proprietary information that you consider to be a trade secret before any misappropriation occurs. If you do so after the fact you may lose your ability to enjoin the thieves from …Read more