Intellectual Property Law

Judge Dismisses Aspects of Accenture's Suit Against Guidewire and Guidewire's Counterclaims.

Posted on October 17, 2008
By Anthony O'Donnell Insurance & Technology October 16, 2008 Through an opinion written by Judge Sue L. Robinson, the Delaware U.S. District Court has dismissed both Accenture's trade secret missapropriation charges against Guidewire Software, and Guidewire's countersuit alleging that Accenture's allegations constituted bad faith litigation that was harmful to Guidewire's prospects in the marketplace...

Employment of a General Director: What a Company Needs to Know

Posted on October 16, 2008
By Salans, Associate, Maria Landau, Alexandra Bludyan Employing a general director (president, general manager etc.) as a company's sole executive body is a complicated matter of particular concern to today's corporate owners and the authorized officials charged with the due maintenance of personnel documentation (i...

Don't be frightened of confidentiality agreements

Posted on October 16, 2008
By BRUCE FREEMAN, Scripps Howard News Service Dear Professor Bruce: I'm a small business owner and have a great opportunity to work on a project with a large technology leader. They want a confidentiality agreement; but, I hate contracts and am afraid that if I try to negotiate I'll lose the deal...

P2P file sharing networks - unintended gateway to trade secrets, employee sensitive information

Posted on October 15, 2008
Jackson Lewis LLP Joseph J. Lazzarotti The same software that allows you and your children to share music and movie files may be placing your company at grave risk. Commonly referred to as "peer-to-peer" or "P2P" networks, file sharing technology is being used by millions to share electronic files with one another...

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KNIGHTS ARMAMENT CO. v. OPTICAL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, INC.

Posted on October 15, 2008
568 F.Supp.2d 1369 (July 15, 2008) Manufacturer of night vision devices sued competitor, asserting claims for alleged trademark infringement, false advertising, unfair competition under Lanham Act and Florida law, and deceptive and unfair trade practices under Florida law...

UNITED HEALTHCARE OF GEORGIA, INC. et al. v. GEORGIA DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNITY HEALTH.

Posted on October 15, 2008
666 S.E.2d 472, 8 FCDR 2733 (July 28, 2008) Private health insurer that contracted with Department of Community Health (DCH) to administer state health insurance plan brought action to prevent DCH from disclosing, in response to a request under the Open Records Act, correspondence and form contracts submitted by insurer in connection with the contract, and requesters intervened and counterclaimed for disclosure of the documents, as well as of provider contracts and fee schedules prepared by insurer and never submitted to DCH...

Jury Verdict : Bury & Partners sued Mason, alleging breach of contract, tortious interference, breach of fiduciary duty and misappropriation of trade secrets.

Posted on October 15, 2008
Bury & Partners claimed Mason's actions caused a client to break off a contract and to not bring expected future projects to the firm. It claimed this cost it $89,000 in past and expected future projects, and sought that amount plus attorney fees. In September 2005, plaintiff Bury & Partners, a Houston civil engineering firm, hired Deborah Mason, a civil engineer...

Indian Innovation Act: Trade Secrets and Confidentiality

Posted on October 15, 2008
Wednesday, October 08, 2008 by: Kamakhya Srivastava The government's endeavour in bringing out a comprehensive legislation to boost research and innovation in the country has crossed the first milestone. The Draft National Innovation Act 2008 (hereinafter draft Innovation Act), put in place by the Department of Science and Technology, has a three pronged approach as evident by its preamble...

Outsourcing and its effect on Trade Secrets

Posted on October 14, 2008
Trade Secret Theft "Secured facilities and rigorous employee screening can cut the risk." From www.computerworld.com Taking work offshore may cut costs, but it still comes with a not-so-hidden price. Asian countries, including the No. 1 outsourcing destination, India, have weak or untested intellectual property laws, inefficient courts, and financial and public records mechanisms that make it difficult to conduct employee background checks...

Protecting Your Software IP

Posted on October 14, 2008
Data Loss Prevention and .NET Software Code: Protecting Your Software IP Date: Tuesday, October 14, 2008 Time: 2:00 PM Eastern; 11:00 AM Pacific Featuring speakers from: About the Webcast: While much attention has been paid to Data Loss Prevention (DLP), few organizations have remembered to protect some of their most valuable data: the intellectual property (IP) contained in deployed ...

Trade Secret Protection: International Trade and Investment Perspective

Posted on October 13, 2008
An Overview of International Trade Secret Protection from the International Trade and Investment Perspective Pedro A. Padilla Torres Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) protection is one of the most important and current legal issues in the international trade arena...

LEDs Magazine - Lighting Science Group obtains preliminary injunction against Philips

Posted on October 13, 2008
Company press release from Lighting Science Group Corporation *** NEW YORK -- Lighting Science Group Corporation, a developer and integrator of intelligent LED lighting solutions, announced that on October 7, 2008, the Superior Court of California for Sacramento County issued a preliminary injunction against Philips Solid State Lighting Solutions, Inc...

Licensing of Know-How and Trade Secrets

Posted on October 12, 2008
International Trade in Technology - Licensing of Know-How and Trade Secrets by Hans Verhulst One of the effects of globalization is the relocation of production from the technology rich countries towards low labour cost countries. This is a threat for SME suppliers and manufacturers in technology-rich countries, whose customers turn their heads to low labour cost countries...

Regis First Quarter Revenues Grew Two Percent to $680 Million

Posted on October 12, 2008
MINNEAPOLIS, Oct 06, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) ----Regis Corporation (NYSE:RGS), the global leader in the $170 billion hair care industry, today reported consolidated revenues increased 1.9 percent in the first fiscal quarter of 2009 to a record $680 million, compared to $668 million a year ago...

I-Flow Corporation Continues to Enforce Its Patent and Trade Secret Rights against Apex Medical's Solace(R) Pump Distributed by Zone Medical, LLC

Posted on October 11, 2008
LAKE FOREST, Calif., Oct 10, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- I-Flow Corporation (IFLO: 7.09, +0.95, +15.5%) continues to enforce its patent and trade secret rights against Apex Medical Technologies, Inc. and its president, Mark McLaughlin, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California...

Trade secrets as collateral: a US perspective

Posted on October 10, 2008
Scott J. Lebson Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice.2007; 2: 726-728 The collateralization of IP rights has emerged from the fringes of intellectual asset management and is now a major driver of commercial decisions as to how an IP portfolio should be cultivated...

Trade secret law and protection in India.

Posted on October 10, 2008
20 Intell. Prop. & Tech. L.J. 25 (October 2008) Wood, Larry R., Jr.; Hogan, Emmett M.; Bhadha, Charmayne; Dadrewala, Jennifer.

Intellectual Property and Indigenous Peoples

Posted on October 10, 2008
Texas Wesleyan University School of Law is pleased to host a symposium on the topic of Intellectual Property and Indigenous Peoples, on Friday, October 24, 2008. The purpose of this symposium is to examine intellectual property concepts - copyrights, trademark rights, patent rights, and trade secrets - as applied to the cultural heritage, art, and artifact of indigenous peoples...

Morgan Hill man charged with possession of stolen trade secrets

Posted on October 10, 2008
SAN JOSE - United States Attorney Joseph P. Russoniello announced that a criminal information had been filed, charging Robert Scott West with one count of possession of stolen trade secrets, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1832(a)(3). These charges are the result of a referral by Phillips Lumileds Lighting Company ("Phillips") and an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation...

We're too small for IT security policies

Posted on October 09, 2008
As an IT manager for a midsize manufacturing company, I have spent the last four years trying to make my senior management understand that by lacking formal IT policies we risk electronic property loss, stolen trade secrets, unnecessary downtime, etc...

United States, Intellectual Property, Top 10 International Trade Commission Developments For 2008

Posted on October 09, 2008
Article by Charles H. Sanders Offering speedy trials before IP-savvy judges and the powerful remedy of an exclusion order to stop infringing goods at the border, the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) has become an increasingly popular forum for enforcing IP rights...

Public Interest Groups Sue US Trade Representative Over 'Secret' Enforcement Treaty

Posted on October 07, 2008
By Kaitlin Mara Perhaps no topic over the past year has been cause for more uneasy speculation within the intellectual property community than the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), primarily because the negotiating process for this treaty has been behind tightly closed doors...

SAFE Corporation Opens Grid Computing System for Software IP Comparisons

Posted on October 07, 2008
CUPERTINO, CA, Oct 07, 2008 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) -- Software Analysis & Forensic Engineering Corporation ( www.SAFE-corp.biz), the leading provider of software tools for detecting and measuring software intellectual property, has just announced CodeGrid(TM), a distributed computing system that enables CodeSuite(R) jobs to be run many times faster than ever before...

India "National Innovation Act" and Trade Secrecy Provisions

Posted on October 06, 2008
Spicy IP blog reports that Indian government has now released a draft version of the National Innovation Act, 2008 (hereafter "NIA"). Trade Secrecy Provisions The interesting and perhaps most substantive (at least in terms of enforceability) part of this Bill are the provisions on trade secrecy or "breach of confidence"...

Managing Intellectual Property: India trade secrets law dubbed "absurd"

Posted on October 06, 2008
By Peter Ollier Parts of a statutory law on trade secrets proposed in a draft bill by an Indian ministry have been described as"absolutely absurd" by an IP lawyer in the country. The proposals are part of a draft National Innovation Act drafted by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry and released by the Ministry of Science and Technology last week...

TUF hit with $4.5m trade-secrets theft verdict in US

Posted on October 06, 2008
Bangkok Post Thai Union Frozen Products Plc (TUF) and two of its units have been ordered to pay a US food company $4.5 million plus legal fees in a trade-secrets case. Contessa Premium Foods Inc sued two of its former employees and TUF for trade-secret theft in California state court in Los Angeles in February 2006...

United States, Intellectual Property, Top 10 Intellectual Property And Regulatory Legal Issues For Biotech Start-Ups

Posted on October 05, 2008
Article by Kelli N. Watson Francuzenko, Judith Toffenetti and Jennifer S. Gee Start-up biotech companies should address these key legal issues with the aid of legal counsel. Biotechnology start-ups face a dizzying array of business and legal requirements and a limited budget that forces them to prioritize where they expend valuable compliance funds on outside legal counsel...

Australia not sharing trade secrets for beef gene research

Posted on October 04, 2008
Cross-country beef gene research Australia's Beef CRC has joined forces with the US Department of Agriculture and several American and Canadian universities to improve gene marker research. The gene markers of more than 15,000 animals will be studied...

Jury Verdict: Vax-D Medical Technologies LLC v. Allied Health Management LTD, et al

Posted on October 04, 2008
Plaintiff Vax-D Medical Technologies, LLC, and Allied Health Management Ltd. entered into a confidentiality agreement regarding Vax-D therapeutic tables. The parties agreed that Allied would keep confidential certain trade secrets and information related to the tables, which were used for spinal decompression treatments...

Jury Verdict: Cooper Technologies Inc. v. Thomas & Betts Corp.

Posted on October 04, 2008
In 2003 and again in 2006, plaintiff Cooper Technologies Inc., a Houston-based manufacturer of electrical equipment, obtained patents with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on two of its products -- connectors used by utilities to distribute high-voltage electricity...

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