Top 10 Mistakes to Avoid Managing Your Company’s Trade Secrets

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Whether you’re running a newly minted start-up or leading an established corporation, genuine trade secrets will almost always provide your company with a competitive edge in the marketplace under both federal and state law. But you must handle them properly. Unfortunately, that edge can deteriorate, or vanish entirely, if your company makes one or more …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

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

5 Keys to Understanding Copyright Protection

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Despite the advent of many new forms of digital technology, artists, authors, actors and architects still look to federal copyright law to protect their creative works. While copyright law is quite broad, you can’t copyright everything. Keep these five points in mind as you consider copyrighting your original works of authorship. 1. You Can’t Copyright …Read more

Downloading Pirated Software Without Installing It is Still Copyright Infringement

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If your business creates software or simply uses it to perform work – let’s face it, what business doesn’t use software in one way or another – we encourage you to take note of a recent ruling made by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The case – Design Data Corp. v. …Read more

Avoiding Common Pitfalls When Hiring an Employee from a Competitor

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When you seek to hire new staff you may immediately see the benefit of hiring an employee from a competitor. After all, he or she may already have the skills or knowledge to “hit the ground running” in your company or even bring with her valuable relationships with potential customers or partners. As you can …Read more

Biggest Threat to Your Company’s Trade Secrets

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For many people, trade secret theft evokes images of an international technological superspy using complex cyber-tools to engage in corporate or national espionage in cyberspace to steal the crown jewels of company or country. In reality, the more common, less dramatic and yet more dangerous threat to a company’s proprietary information comes from within. Current …Read more

Protecting Your Trade Secrets Where State Law and Federal Defend Trade Secrets Act Meet

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When it comes to protecting your company’s trade secrets, one of the most important remedies you can secure is a court order preventing a former employee from making use of the trade secret for the benefit of a competitor. From your perspective, it’s impossible for an employee who received your company’s crucial business information to …Read more

When Should I Use Patent Protection, Trade Secret, or Both?

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Intellectual property owners can protect certain information either by obtaining a patent or by maintaining its secrecy. A patent provides strong, exclusive rights for a fixed period of time, generally twenty years. A trade secret may last indefinitely, but protection can be lost through independent development, reverse engineering, or failure to maintain secrecy. There are …Read more