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

The Musical Works Modernization Act is Congress’ Latest Effort to Bring Peace to the Music Business

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The Hatch-Goodlatte Musical Works Modernization Act was signed into law on October 11, 2018. The Act is Congress’ attempt to bring some semblance of peace to the various factions within the music industry. These groups have been waging legal warfare against one another since the invention of music streaming technologies and the advent of its …Read more

Warning to California Artists-Ninth Circuit Decision Limits Some Royalty Rights

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Who This Decision Affects Artists expecting a 5% royalty on sales of any “work of fine art” as outlined in a California state law that took effect January 1, 1977. This law was enacted to protect artists by requiring the seller, or seller’s agent, to withhold a 5% royalty and pay that to the artist. …Read more

How to Protect Your Company’s Software Assets Through Contract Protection

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If your company drives its revenue with proprietary software assets, you must ensure those assets are not improperly shared or misused by others. One way to protect your company’s software-related intellectual property (IP) rights is through a written contract. How Can Contract Provisions Help Protect Software? Most commercial software products are distributed in compiled object …Read more

Protect Your Company from Copyright Infringement Claims – Register Your DMCA Designated Agent

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If your company has a website that allows users to post any kind of content, you may be at risk for copyright infringement under U.S. copyright law if any of the content is not original to the party posting it. With most companies now leveraging multiple social media platforms, in addition to their traditional websites, …Read more