Summary: Most trade secret cases aren't lost in court. They're lost in the first 48 hours after the employee walks out the door. Being ready to protect your code, customer data, trade secrets, and proprietary files can dramatically affect a company's rights. This is a companion piece to our posts on building confidentiality infrastructure and creating a culture that treats IP protection as a business priority. Read More
Acting Quickly to Enforce Confidentiality
Confidential information is valuable because it’s confidential. That value is wrecked when a recipient of your confidential information discloses or uses it in a way that breaches your agreement. The fallout can’t be undone with an apology or a revised NDA, especially not if you wait. It may take hours, days, or weeks before your team discovers a breach. However, when you do, it’s important to take prompt action Read More
Enhancing Intellectual Property Protection Through Employee Engagement and Culture
Innovation drives growth, but protecting it keeps your company ahead of the competition. Intellectual Property (IP) isn’t just patents and trademarks. Trade secrets are the ideas, processes, and data that make your organization unique. They are invaluable precisely because they are not known to the public and provide you with a competitive edge. To maintain their status as trade secrets, you must actively Read More
The Evolution of AI and Intellectual Property Rights
While copyright in the U.S. was formerly instituted by Act of Congress in 1790, its origins lie in several hundred years of prior legal evolution driven by the introduction of the printing press. Ever since, copyright has been in a dance with technology, as new forms of expression made possible by new inventions push the law to consider and adapt. More recently, the boundaries of which works may qualify for a Read More
Copyright Cease and Desist Letters Demand Immediate Action
As we have discussed in prior blogs, proprietary knowledge is frequently key in helping businesses distinguish their goods and services from those of their competitors. In that regard, copyright can be a powerful tool that can serve as a shield as much as a sword. Understanding it, and its uses and pitfalls, is therefore increasingly important in today’s competitive business environment, including when sending or Read More
Protecting Trade Secrets In A World Where It Seems There Are None
The proprietary innovations individuals and organizations create are essentially the “secret recipe” that contributes to their success. For this reason, trade secrets are treated as a type of intellectual property that refers to any confidential business information that provides a competitive advantage to a company and is protected under the law. Although the progression and ease of data transfer technology and even Read More
Tyger Tyger: Safeguarding Against Predatory Copyright Takedowns
Tyger tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry? William Blake wrote these words while chewing on the conundrum that the hand that wrought the prey also wrought the predator. But he could have equally bent this thought to Congress, as it perhaps unwittingly spun prey and predator from the words of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 Read More
Why Trademark? Benefits both National and International…
You’re likely familiar with trademarks – the little ™ or ® symbol you see next to all of your favorite brands. That little symbol, however, pulls a lot of weight. A trademark can make a world of difference to your company and products, as well as help launch your business into a national or global brand. A Federal Trademark Protects Your Product Nationally The ™ symbol can be used on any mark to which a Read More
Not Just a Pretty Face: Some Tips on Protectable Marks in a World of Copycats and Grifters
Most people are familiar with the trademark symbol (™), registered trademark symbol (®), and their service mark equivalents. But most people are likely unfamiliar with the Lanham Act, which is the law behind those symbols. Enacted just a few months after the end of WWII, the Lanham Act established a number of the intellectual property protections upon which businesses depend today to signal and promote the quality Read More
The Peculiar Case of the Cease & Desist
“Stranger Things” was all the rage In 2017. Looking to cash-in on the popularity, a couple of friends launched a “Stranger Things” pop-up bar in Chicago. The bar was a hit with locals. But it was less so with the legal team at Netflix. It wasn’t long before Netflix sent the bar owners a cease and desist letter, threatening to call the bar owners’ moms and citing the horrors of Demogorgon if the bar lingered beyond Read More
